Tara Brach - Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence - Often, when we're really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out towards a loving awareness that is great enough to offer comfort and safety to our wounded self. When we feel held by a caring presence, by something larger than our small frightened self, we begin to find space in our heart for the difficult currents of our life, and for the lives of others. The suffering that might have seemed "too much" can now awaken us to the sweetness of compassion.

The following reflection is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or reflections or to join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. So our practice today is a version of taking refuge in the Beloved. There is a value, a wisdom, an intelligence to reaching out at times, to reaching out to others, and when we're meditating to reaching out to what seems to be beyond us. So that's the practice. Taking some moments to feel as much as you can your senses open and awake, to feel the fullness of aliveness in your body,

to experience the heart area and the state of your heart right now, whatever mind state might be here, just to recognize without any judgment how it is right now. You might scan and sense if there's some place part of you that is asking for attention, for healing, some place of doubt or fear, some place of vulnerability, of separation. And if you happen to be sitting here and feeling utterly at one with the universe, you can still do this practice. But if you find in your body and your heart some place of vulnerability you'd like to bring

some healing to, take some moments to deepen your attention there. And it's fine to allow whatever background story wraps around it, the story that's kind of a portal to what's going on. It might be a story that has to do with relationship with others where you feel separate, where there's been pain, hurt caused either by you or towards you. It might be some way you've been in relationship with yourself, where you've hurt your own being, some way where you've, some situation where you feel in some way you have been not enough

that you've fallen short or that you fear your will be deficient in some way. Let's take a moment to sense if there's any stories like that floating around, any part of yourself that wants that attention. If there's a story like a movie in the mind, just to let it be paused right at the place that gives you most access to what's most difficult, where the doubt gets strongest, where the fear comes up the most. If there's others involved in your story, just to see the faces or the doubt hear the words that might be spoken that evoke the feelings.

If there's some future incident that you're anticipating and fearing to let that be included, what you're most afraid of won't happen, what you're afraid will happen, what will go wrong. And to feel in your body, throat, the chest, the belly, where the vulnerability most lives where that energy of doubt or fear hurt, letting the breath help you to stay right with where it's most strong. Let yourself kind of sit down into the felt sense, really sensing it from the inside out and sensing if this place in you, this doubt or fear place could let you know what

what it most deeply wants, what at its core it most longs for, fantasizes about, desires, you know, is it to be embraced, to be loved, understood, held safe? What's the yearning in there? Just listen in as if that place could say in words what it's prayer or longing or yearning or want is. Maybe simple words, please love me, please love me. As you sense into what's wanted, sense if you could fantasize or imagine the perfect source, that which could offer what you most long for.

It might be a sense of a deity, form or formless, that could hear the cry and respond. or it might be a person in your life, dead or alive, known directly or someone that you don't know directly, that embodies the qualities that you most trust, could embrace you, soothe you, see you, love you, could be a dog, part of the natural world, but just sense the call that please love me or see me or hold me. directed to that which might provide, that you wish would provide. The more deeply you contact the longing, both the pain of separation and the longing,

and really sense the prayer from there, the more fully it's possible to experience the response to the prayer. Just imagine if it's love you're wanting, how you'd want it to be felt, Would it be light or warmth surrounding you, embracing you? Do you feel bathed in a cellular way? What is it you want to feel? What exactly is it you most want to feel that that place in you most wants to feel?

These next moments of silence, just let that voice of longing be a whisper in your mind of words, reaching out and imagine and sense the possibility of how you might receive. Let it happen. Continuing to sense the prayer for love, for understanding, safety, the response, imagining that, sensing the felt sense of that. But let the form of the responder dissolve so all there is is the light or warmth. our felt sense of care.

Just let go into that, merge into that. Just dissolving into the field of loving presence, letting prayer be the bridge between longing and belonging. Mary Oliver writes, So every day, so every day, I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.

So every day, so every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. So I'm just going to make a brief comment about this practice of refuge, that at any given time,

practices are a match or are not a match for where we are. So for whatever reason, you weren't in a place that you needed to bring attention to something, just that that's completely natural. And also, even if you were, this particular pathway of prayer is a life practice. And that the more you do it, the more you learn this art of getting deeply in touch with the yearning, the pain slash yearning. It's a place that's all mixed. The deeper you go into it, the more powerful, the reaching out in prayer, and the power is in the receptivity, that when you're in touch with the pain of separation, you can become very receptive to the love that's here. And so the love that at first feels

out there because you feel separate, by calling on it and opening, you discover in that openness and tenderness that it's always here. But first you need to reach out sometimes. So if this is new to you just to invite you to put aside any judgment and experiment, find your way in and enjoy it. It's a quite a powerful and beautiful pathway to freedom. Thank you.