Tara Brach - Meditation: Energy and Source

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Meditation: Energy and Source - Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever-creative living world.  

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Just as a way of beginning, take some moments to adjust if you're sitting or for some people like to do these lying down, standing, however, adjust your posture so that you feel a sense of ease, also alertness, and you might let your attention go inward. And for some that's closing your eyes, some might find it helpful to just lower your gaze, whatever serves you. We'll begin in the simple way of breathing together, just become aware of this body breathing.

And you might lengthen or extend the in-breath, perhaps to the count of five, So you really fill the chest and the lungs. With a slow out breath, the same count, matching the in-breath and the out-breaths, you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath. And again, a long, slow in-breath and a slow out-breath. And again, breathing in, filling the chest and the lungs. And sense with the out-breath that you're actually letting go, releasing, relaxing out-brassing outward and again breathing in, opening, receiving, and breathing out a long, slow out breath,

softening down the length of the body as you release the breath. Now as you allow the breath to return to its natural rhythm, in a sense in observing of the breath, that it's possible to continue to relax with the movement of the breath, with awareness, perhaps sensing the presence that has increased just even in a few moments that you're more here, that we can increase that presence further as we scan down the body waking up in an energetic way. You might imagine and feel a smile spreading through the eyes. So the outer corners of the eyes are lifted a bit. Let that help a softening through the eyes,

a softening and a smoothing of the brow. In a similar way, you might let there be a slight smile at the mouth. Feel the inside of the mouth smiling, letting the tongue fill the lower palate, relaxing the tongue down to the root, and becoming aware of the sincere, that fill the mouth, gums, the teeth, the lips, and waking up to the sensations of the face, all the small micro muscles, allowing them to rest, the scalp and the skull,

and sensing the volume of the head, the sensations, the aliveness through the whole head, aware of the throat filling the neck, feeling the sensations and aliveness in the neck, and intentionally allowing the shoulders to relax back and down some, falling away from the neck. You might let your awareness fill the shoulders so you can feel from the inside out, allowing any tightness or tension to float in awareness, perhaps to soften a little, so you can begin to feel movement, aliveness through the shoulders and see what might want to let go a little more, sensing and awakening and letting go through the arms so you can feel the weight and the volume and the length of the arms filled with energy and feel your thumb inside out, the fingers,

the space between the fingers, noticing if you soften the hands now, you soften again, you feel from the inside out, you can become aware of aliveness, tingling, vibrating. And just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body is filled with awareness and aliveness, allowing the chest to be open, feeling the heart area from the inside out. You might smile into the heart. Let a smile spread through the heart in the chest, making space for what's here, for however the aliveness expresses in the chest area. Letting the breath go deep into the torso so this next breath is received

in a softening belly, this breath and this one and again, feeling the belly from the inside out, where of the movement of energy, the aliveness, the play of sensation, letting the pelvic region be filled with awareness, opening to the aliveness, fully awake, fully here, inhabiting these bodies, sensing the legs, the length, the volume, the weight, feeling from the inside out, the movement of energy, right into the feet, sensing all those nerve endings, tingling, vibrating, perhaps a sense of pressure, warmth where your feet contact the floor and the earth below. You might sense the great volume, massiveness of the earth, and all that energy flowing through you, receptive, letting that aliveness fill you, sensing that

you can let life live through you, that if you widen the attention, you can include the aliveness not only of sensation but of sound, receptive, listening, sensing in the foreground, this changing flow of sound and sensation. feelings and in the background that vast wakeful presence that which is aware the awareness the interior awareness that stillness that perceives all the sensations and that vast spacious awareness that's listening sensing how awareness lives interior through around everywhere when there's a record cognition of being lost in thoughts, simply relax open. Listening, listening to and feeling the aliveness that's right here and relaxing back into that

formless awareness, into that awake space that's really your essence. All that arises belongs like changing ways to this vast ocean. of your being. From the poet Dana Falls, trust the energy, the course is through you. Trust. Then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy. Don't push anything away. Follow each sensation back to its source in vastness and pure presence. So new, so fresh, you don't know who you are. Welcome in the season of monsoons. Be the bridge across the flooded river and the surging torrent underneath. Be unafraid of consummate wonder. Be the energy and blaze a trail across the clear night sky like lightning. Dare to be your own illumination.