Tara Brach - Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening - Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem "lost" by David Wagoner.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. If you will, find yourself that way of sitting or lying down or the posture that most will support presence. That gives you a sense of both ease and alertness and as a way of deepening your attention, helps to close your eyes or lower your gaze, you might explore that.

We start by breathing together, feeling the breath in the body and now together inhaling so that we fill the chest and the lungs. So a nice deep in-breath and then a slow-out breath, slow-out breath, letting go, letting go. And again, a nice full deep in-breath filling the chest in the lungs. and a slow out breath. So you can feel the release of the breath through the nostrils, letting go, letting go. And one more time, inhale deeply, slow release.

Sense a kind of softening down your body as you let go. Let the breath now find its natural rhythm. And you might gently scan through your body and see if there's any body. part of your body that wants to let go a little right now and begin listening, listening to the sounds that are here. You can put aside all doing, you'll find that listening is really receptive. So relax and come into a state of listening to the sounds in the room and see these words and to the spaces that come between the words,

listening to more distant sounds, listening to the furthest sounds away that you can hear, so that you're not just listening with your ears, but really with your whole being, your whole awareness, the space that includes even the most distant sounds, listening to your whole environment, not to one particular thing, more a global kind of listening.

So everything's taken in evenly. Listening to sounds and listening to silence. The space that's here. See what it feels like in your being to come into a state of listening. Not trying to do it right or to reach a goal. There's nothing to do. Sounds are known spine. by awareness. You'll notice there are sounds and there's the feeling of sounds

and listening into the space in the room. You can feel the space, sensing the underlying silence in the midst of sound. And let yourself feel that. Silence, sound, space around your body, and with the pure receptivity of listening, notice the surface of your skin, the contact area between your skin and outside of the body, still listening as you include the exterior of skin as it interfaces with outward environment. Just as you listen to the outer environment, Listen to the inner environment, receiving the changing flow of sensations, utterly receptive, letting go of any attempt to change experience, to figure anything out, listening to and feeling the changing experience of aliveness, pure allowing.

You might notice that awareness spontaneously moves around. let it do what it wants to do, listening to and feeling the life that's here, moment to moment. If you find you're hijacked by a thought, let it be a noise that happens. No need to get rid of anything. Just notice and continue to be aware of listening. Letting sounds wash through you. Notice in a state of listening, there's more spaciousness, more openness. Just notice that openness. Notice that awareness, notice that awareness starts to lose the fixation on the object and starts to rest in a natural state. Sense the openness of the awareness that's listening. Let your being feel what the

openness is like, what spaciousness is like. Relax into that Listening awareness, the more you relax, the more you'll notice the boundary between body and outside dissolves. It becomes one life. It's a natural tendency to go back to the trance of thinking. So when you do, just practice this pathway of listening again, letting listening be your home base or anchor, opening again into that allowing presence, listening to sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts, noticing the vast, open awareness that's listening, the silence that's listening, the pure non-judging presence that's listening, coming, coming up, home again and again into a simple and pure listening presence, relaxing back into listening.

What is it like to be this awareness that's listening? Just get drawn into that sense of true nature. This receptive presence, awareness itself, is not trying to accomplish a goal or to control. It's awake space, tender, receptive. Rest in your natural state, at home in what you are. The poet David Wagoner, stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers. I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying, here, no two trees are the same to raven. No two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,

you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. You might take a few full breaths. And as you're ready, if your eyes are closed, to open your eyes, to look around, to move around,

and to continue with a listening and receptive presence. Thank you.