Tara Brach - Meditation: Embracing Life with an Open Heart (2020-03-25)

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

Meditation: Embracing Life with an Open Heart (2020-03-25) - In this short practice we connect with our aspiration to live from love, and then bring a caring presence to our own vulnerability, to a dear one, and to all beings everywhere. 

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Friends, we started tonight talking sheltering in love. You know, how do we really become the bodhisattva, offering love to our inner life, love to others? And it comes from trusting our belonging, trusting that the presence and the love is more the truth of who you are than any of the stories, any of the changing ways of experience, trusting this goodness of presence and love that really is a kind of shared field. So that even as you're listening right now, if you use your imagination, which again comes from the seeds of truth, you'll sense a lot of people also listening and reflecting around

the globe. A lot of people who like you are feeling a range of emotions, of difficult waves of experience, perhaps really intense fear, or maybe some, a sense of waiting like something is about to happen that's scary. But you'll sense that we're all experiencing these waves of difficulty and that in the background behind, you know, the thoughts and the feelings, there's a presence, a witnessing presence, a tender presence, that's really a field of belonging that we're all a part of. We can trust and live from that. That's the invitation of the bodhisattva path. So I'd like to close with a a short meditation with you to explore more about how we can shelter in love, how we can wake up

that loving, how we can manifest as bodhisattvas and really move through the most difficult time in this lifetime for most of us in a way that can create a more loving world. That's the hope. So please, if you will, take a few moments to close your eyes. Take a few nice, full deep breaths and then letting the breath resume in its natural rhythm. Take a moment to scan through your body and let go of any obvious tightness or tension that might have just automatically set itself up in your body as you were listening, maybe softening the shoulders and the loosening the belly, relaxing your heart. Sensing that image of being part of a whole web of beings who are reflecting, waking up together.

You might sense the challenging waves that you've experienced in these last days today, most recently. And as you do sense your deepest aspiration, How do you want to be relating to the life that's unfolding inside you? How do you want to relate to the life around you? What is that you want to commit your heart to in the days and weeks and months to come? And whatever the language, the words, our feelings that are there, just feel your sincerity and feel the goodness that comes knowing how to you. How many of us, how many of us are feeling that sincere longing to in some way bring more love into the world?

And from that space, that heart space, again, since the waves going on in this particular body mind, what's been catching you, where have you felt stuck? The pathway to awakening our heart is really, loving ourselves into healing? What wants inclusion right now? What have you been maybe judging or pushing away or not attending to? Taking these moments to honestly recognize what's here, what wants attention, to let it be here. Just you might even whisper, this belongs. It's a wave in the ocean. Since all of us feeling those waves, and allowing, making room, that we're in it together.

And as you feel the particular waves in your body, mind, it might help to put your hand wherever you're feeling vulnerability or whatever wants attention, just placing your hand, perhaps your throat or your heart or billy, letting the touch experimenting to let the touch be most tender and from the wisest, most awake part of your being, or from the wisdom and love in the universe, sensing what message right this moment might most bring healing and inner freedom. And sensing in these moments as you offer a message and then sit quietly, the possibility of truly bathing in love whatever most needs attention.

sensing the possibility of just relaxing open and being that loving presence, sensing the heart space, the shared heart space, the loving presence that we all share that holds these waves of our humanness, knowing that as your true belonging. You belong to this heart space and there's room for these waves with the waves of pain and sorrow and beauty and wonder, there's room. This is our refuge, this heart space. Know it as your true home. I'd like to close tonight with a favorite poem from the poet Mark Nipo. Everything is beautiful and I'm so sad.

this is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I've lost in the next room in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all,

what we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other. And it is there that I'm adrift feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured by a wholeiness. holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful. Namaste.