Tara Brach - Meditation: Center of Now (2012-02-01)

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Meditation: Center of Now (2012-02-01) - Tara is on retreat, so asked for a meditation from the archives to be posted.

The following meditation is led by me, Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You might close your eyes and find the sitting posture that most can support you in the meditation. The two qualities that are most important are uprightness so that you're sitting tall. Sense the dignity and the wakefulness of the posture.

and also relaxed a quality of ease, openness, inviting yourself to be right here, this moment, coming home right into the body, coming home to the breath. We'll open with a few full, deep breaths, breathing together, let's inhale deeply, filling the lungs, and then a slow out breath, releasing the breath consciously. Be aware of letting go, letting go. And again, inhaling deeply, filling the lungs, filling the chest, and a soft, slow-out breath, aware of relaxing outward, releasing, letting go. One last time, inhaling deeply, once you fill the lungs, holding the breath for a moment,

as you hold the breath, let the shoulders relax back and down, tucking the chin slightly, feel the stretch, at the chest and again a slow conscious release of the breath. Letting go, letting go, allowing the breath to resume its natural rhythm, letting your attention continue to rest with the inflow and the outflow, relaxing as the breath comes in, a balloon inflating, relaxing with a gentle out breath, noticing in just these few moments, and that increased sense of being collected and right here. So you're aware of the sounds around you, aware of the aliveness in your body, the whole field of sensation here.

Listening to your heart, aware of whatever mood or emotion might be here. As you sense the state of your heart, listen more deeply for your intention this evening. What is your intention? What brings you? what brings you here this evening. Sensing what matters to you. It might be a mentally whispered prayer for presence,

for open-heartedness, for clarity, for peace. We sense our shared aspiration that our practices of presence here serve the awakening of all beings, serve healing and freedom for all. In this stillness, be aware of the aliveness of your body from the inside out

and sense if there's any areas that feel tight or tense. Just letting your awareness go there, seeing if it's possible that they can untangle and loosen naturally in the light of awareness, paying particular attention to the shoulders. So if you feel them from the inside out, but you might imagine our sense a dissolving, a kind of melting sensation, ice to water. See if you can feel that. Water to gas, softening in a similar way down through the whole region of the arms.

Loosening, relaxing, feeling your hands from the inside. And just notice what happens when you soften. And you feel the tingling, the vibrating that's there. softening a little more. Just noticing as you relax how much life you can feel, there's an intimate presence. In the same way you might feel an openness

across the chest. And just feel the chest and the heart area from the inside out, the undefended heart, the aliveness that's there and the space that's there, relaxing down through the belly, softening the belly. can you imagine and sense the space and aliveness

in the belly in a similar way moving down the pelvic region the hips right down into the legs feeling from the inside out this life this changing flow of sensations of the pressure and contact where you're sitting the warmth where your feet touch the floor and from the inside out this changing dance

of tingling and vibrating right into the feet, in the center of the feet and outward, aliveness, opening the attention to feel the whole body in a simultaneous way, the whole field of sensation. Just let everything happen, not stopping anything. A kind of surrendering presence. As you open the attention, you can sense the sounds, this dance of sound. this changing symphony around you, just listening in a kind of global way, letting the sounds rush through, wash through, play out, listening to sound, listening to and feeling the sensations

that are right here in the center of now, see how much you can relax with what's happening moment to moment. If it's helpful, you might sense in the foreground the simple sensations of the breath moving, a kind of home base or anchor so that when the mind drifts into thoughts you can come back to this friend, this home base of the breath.

For some having the breath at the nostrils, that very subtle in-flow outflow, careful attention there can really help to bring you fully here and now. For some it's the perhaps the feeling of the chest, the rising falling there. For some it's the expanding, collapsing the abdominal area. Some find it helpful to feel the breath in a more global body way, a cellular way, just expanding through the whole body with the in-breath, letting go with the out-breath. Just find what's most pleasant and natural for you to rest your attention.

If not the breath, perhaps sound, might be physical sensations through the whole body. And the point is to know that you're here. You might even mentally whisper the word here, inviting yourself into the center of now, inviting yourself into the center of now. Mindful of when you drift away from this now-ness, so that you can discover, oh, been often thought, and without any judgment, rather really honoring, oh, this is a moment of waking up again.

Just relax open and notice again what's right here, this symphony of sound, re-relax in the body, to softening as we did before the shoulders, the hands, the belly, feeling the aliveness, relaxing the heart and listening to and feeling the whole moment coming home to the center of now. Brains are designed to leave now, to drift, to comment, to judge, to plan. So when you notice that you've left, the trick is to regard your own mind with a quality of friendliness.

Just to invite yourself back here gently, with curiosity, with good humor. Just come on back. Rediscover the aliveness and mystery of this flowing moment-to-moment experience. relax with what's right here in his last few moments. Again, invite yourself back in a very simple way. Just touch and connect with what's right here. Feel the aliveness in your body. Feel your heart.

Sense in the background, the presence that's right here at the center of now.