Tara Brach - Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness - By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Having the eyes close and feeling the movement of the breath and perhaps sensing the breath at the heart, as if you could breathe in and out of your heart, taking these moments to listen and sense what your intention is right now for your practice. for meditating. It's really the question, what is my heart really long for? What most matters?

And the way you know you've connected with your heart is there can be a quality of sincerity, kind of innocence. One of the most powerful pathways to presence is awakening through the body, inhabiting these bodies with awareness. You might begin by gently scanning through your body and noticing if there's any areas of really obvious tension or tightness. Sense what wants to let go a little. Sometimes around the eyes you can feel a tightness and just by smiling into the eyes

there can be a softening and a relaxing, a smoothing of the brow. You can relax the habitual tightening of a jaw with similarly a slight, a slight, a softening slight smile. And for many of us, there's a chronic tension in the shoulders. You might sense if you fill that area with awareness, if there can be a natural softening, releasing, let the hands be soft, allowing the chest to be open and softening right down through the belly. Perhaps feeling the contact points where your bottom is sitting on a cushion or chair, you're Hands are touching, your thighs or each other, the warmth, pressure, your feet touching the floor. So you can feel this whole body sitting here, breathing.

If you pay attention to your feet right now, you might sense is it that you have feet? Are you actually living inside your feet, inhabiting them? What happens if you bring your whole attention and awareness inside the feet, the toes, the space between the top of the feet and the soles, heels, filling the feet with aliveness? Are you able to sense the tingling and the vibrating there, the space that the aliveness is floating in? In a similar way, can you fill the legs with aliveness? Can you sense the length and the volume of the legs?

Let awareness fill the legs, feeling the movement of energy. Can you fill the pelvic region with awareness? Opening to the aliveness there, space and aliveness. You might soften the belly again, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again, feeling awareness filling the whole abdominal cavity, again an openness at the chest and see if you can feel from the inside out, the area of the heart. Are you aware of the vibrating and pulsing, perhaps a squeeze or flow,

warmth, aliveness, letting the shoulders be filled with awareness, inhabiting the shoulders so that you can allow whatever tightness or tension remains to float in awareness. The length of the arms with awareness, feeling the volume from the inside out, the movement of energy right down through the hands. Hands are very soft and feeling them from the inside out, tingling, vibrating, floating in space, sensing the cylinder of the neck filled with awareness as if your throat could fill your neck aware of the tingling, vibrating, flows of energy there

and again that slight smile at the mouth the jaw unhinged and you feel from the inside out the sensations of the mouth gums, the teeth, tongue, the lips and widening out to feel the whole face filled with sensations the scalp, the skull, the brain. Since this whole body is a field of sensation filled with space and aliveness,

feeling everything all at once, not stopping anything, not opposing anything, you might imagine the space that extends outward to either side, endlessly, space behind you, in front of you, above and below, extending outward and outward beyond the furthest stars. Can you imagine that outer space and this inner space is continuous space?

Continuous space. Can you imagine that continuous space filled with the light of awareness? It's effused with awareness, resting as awareness in this awake space, allowing and including the changing flow of sound and sensation, feelings, thoughts, all appearing and dissolving in this continuous space that's suffused with awareness. At some point there'll be a noticing that the mind's drifted and in those moments there's this opportunity to gently relax back, the pathway home back to this open, awakefulness is a relaxing back, again aware of the sounds that are right here,

the aliveness and sensations right in this moment, listening to and feeling the moment, sensing the aliveness and the space that's happening in, moment to moment, sensing the quality of hereness being right here, living presence, its continuous space, suffused with the light of awareness. We close with a simple prayer. May we come home to the light, love and aliveness that's our deep nature. May we live our lives from loving presence. May that loving presence ripple out in a way that brings peace and healing to our world.

Namaste.