Tara Brach - Meditation: Coming Home to Heartspace (2020-12-16)

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Meditation: Coming Home to Heartspace (2020-12-16) - Our pathway to our hearts is through presence. This meditation helps us awaken presence through our body and all our senses. We then open to the awareness that can meet whatever arises with tenderness and kindness. This meditation includes a reading from the Radiance Sutras, interpreted and translated by Lorin Roche

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Wherever you are, take these moments to find the way of sitting that really feels resonant for you. Kind of listen to your body and sense the posture that will work for being awake and also at ease. and you might close your eyes and feel from the inside out if there's any more adjusting and then settling. You might begin by simply feeling the movement of the breath. And we'll breathe together extending our in-breath, filling the chest and the lungs with the in-breath.

And a slow-out breath, letting go, letting go. again breathing in deeply, filling the chest in the lungs, and a smooth, even slow out breath so you can feel the sensations as you release the breath, letting go. One more time, inhaling deeply, a slow out breath, relaxing outward, letting go, and then allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm. you're observing and also feeling the breath and also sensing the quality of presence that's right here. Let your senses be awake. Aware of the sounds in the background. Aware of the sensations in your body and perhaps the mood or emotion that might be strongest right now. You can deepen that

presence as you gently scan through the body, both letting go of tension and also So with a receptive attention, just opening to what's here. I invite you to soften the eyes. When we're thinking a lot, there tend to be a lot of contractions in those little micro-muscles. So just softening. You might sense a smile spreading through your eyes so the outer corners are lifted a bit. Let the brow be smooth. bring a slight smile to the lips, sometimes described as the half-smile of the Buddha,

and Ticknardhan, a Zen master, calls it smile yoga. Because it sends a message to the whole nervous system to be at ease. Relax that fight-flight freeze, slight smile at the mouth, and you might feel the inside of the mouth smiling. And then real rest of perceptive presence, feeling the sensations in the mouth, the gums, the teeth, tongue, lips. Letting that receptivity to aliveness fill the whole face, scalp and the skull. Letting the throat fill the neck. So you feel the neck from the inside out. Shoulders to fall away from the neck.

letting awareness fill the shoulders. And if there's any tightness or tension, as you become aware of it, see if you can let it float in awareness, let it naturally untangle or unwind. Maybe you can sense a kind of melting or dissolving of ice to water and then water to gas. Allow the hands to rest in a very easy, effortless way. It's bringing all the the awareness inside the hands, and softening the hands, and softening again. See if you can notice the tingling, the vibrating, the aliveness in the hands, letting there be an openness to the chest. Feeling the awareness fill the chest from the inside out that you can sense whatever's there,

energy, emotion, sensation. You might explore visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile, spreading through the heart and chest area, smiling into the heart, not to cover over anything, but to create the space for the life that's here. Really receptive to the feelings in the area of the heart. Scanning down the torso, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath. Now this one. And again, feeling the awareness fill the belly. You can explore visualizing and having the felt sense of a smile spread through the belly. Just to help create the space that allows life to be just as it is. Letting that receptive, presence spread through the pelvic region, relaxing, sensing the aliveness,

the length and volume of your legs, the weight of the legs, letting the awareness fill the legs, the feet, feeling from the inside out, and widening the attention to feel this body as a field of sensation, not stopping anything, controlling anything, including sound, in this field of awareness, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, letting the sounds wash through, listening to and feeling the whole moment in the foreground of a changing stream of sensations, sounds, feelings, and in the background, that alert inner stillness, that awake awareness that experience is arising from, dissolving into, being the awareness that includes all experience.

Quite naturally, the mind will drift into thoughts and leave this open presence. And when there's an awareness of that, to simply reawaken your senses. listening again to the sounds that are here. Instead of your thoughts, the actual sounds right here and now. Listening. Perhaps re-relaxing the body a bit and feeling the aliveness in the body. And relaxing your heart. Sensing the open-hearted awareness that can include whatever arises.

And if something arises, it's difficult, some unpleasant sensations. fear, disturbance in some way emotionally, to sense that it's possible to offer kindness, tender, kind presence to what's here, to say yes to it, to let it come, let it change, see what happens when there's open-hearted presence. Each time the attention drifts is an opportunity to practice this pathway of homecoming, coming back to our senses and coming back to our heart

to that open-hearted space of awareness that includes what's here. You might listen to these words from the radio, SUTRA. There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon. Quiet ecstasy is there and a steady regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here.

For these last few moments, having that intention to rest in heart space, to meet whatever arises with a profound tenderness and presence. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here.