Tara Brach - Meditation: Home to Awake Awareness (2017-06-07)

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

Meditation: Home to Awake Awareness - This guided practice establishes a kind, friendly attention with the image and felt sense of a smile, and evokes an embodied presence. We open to the awake awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing sounds and sensations; and then the awake awareness that experiences our own heart. We end with a lovingkindness prayer for ourself and the world. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The attitude which allows meditation to be very alive and rich and deep is really a quality of friendliness towards whatever is going on inside us. And a way of connecting with that friendliness is through the image and the felt sense of a smile. So I invite you to imagine a great smile spreading through a bright open sky,

the curve of a smile spreading through the sky, that receptivity and openness. And imagine as if there was no top to your head that your mind could merge with that open sky. The mind can be filled with the curve, the energy, the receptivity of a smile, sense that you can feel in a very precise way the curve of a smile spreading through the eyes lifting the outer corners. Let the eyes be soft, the brow smooth. You might sense a very slight smile at the mouth

until the inside of the mouth is smiling. Letting the tongue fill the lower jaw, relaxing down to the root of the tongue. It's feeling the sensations of aliveness to fill the mouth. You might imagine and feel the curve of a smile at the throat, sensing the aliveness, sensations and space inside the throat,

and smiling into the whole region of the heart, letting that curve of a smile spread through the heart, sensing a spaciousness, a receptivity that can include whatever's here, the eyes smiling and soft, the mouth, the throat, the heart. You might imagine that spaciousness at the heart, widening out, widening out, so that the shoulders are free to relax back and down some.

Feeling from the inside out, the aliveness, the space inside the shoulders, and perhaps noticing a little natural letting go, perhaps a dissolving of ice to water, water to gas, noticing the tingling, vibrating, and energy that's inside the hands. Just letting the hands rest very soft, very easy, still sensing that openness to the chest. And softening down to loosen the belly. See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, now this one.

and this one might imagine and feel that curve of a smile spreading through the naval area, through the belly. And with that sensing the aliveness that's there from the inside out, inhabiting your body, just as a cup can be filled with water, this whole body can be filled with awareness. You can visualize and sense the felt's experience of the smile spreading through the whole pelvic region. And with that, a kind of opening, relaxing,

feeling the aliveness that's there. Legs from the inside out, perhaps sensing the length and the volume of the legs, inhabiting with awareness, this body, and the feet, feeling the feet from the inside out. See if you can notice the tingling, the vibrating, the aliveness that's there. You might sense energetically how the feet are rooted to this earth

and sense this whole earth as a field of aliveness that flows naturally into you, through you, that you really belong to. So that if you widen the lens, you can sense this whole body as a field of living sensation, a dance of sensation. of sensation. Sensing this field is filled with the energy and receptivity of that smile,

luminous and open, including in this field of living sensation, the awareness of sound, taking in sound globally, letting it wash through you. Sensing this awareness that's listening to and feeling the whole moment. This awake awareness is your home. And you can return again and again. It's quite natural that the mind will drift, go off into thoughts. When you become aware of that, just simply noticing, thinking, and then reopening the attention, listening to the sounds that are actually appearing and disappearing right here, feeling the sensations that are moving through, awake awareness, listening to the sounds. to, feeling, receiving this moment-to-moment experience. Every time there's a shift from

thinking back to the senses, you strengthen the pathway home. You might sense if it's possible just to relax a bit more with what's going on inside you, letting go a little bit more right now, letting the sounds wash through, perhaps softening again the shoulders, the hands, relaxing your heart, relaxing back to that awake awareness that's listening to and feeling these changing moments. We close by sensing that awake awareness in the region of the heart. Just sensing how awake awareness receives the experience of your heart. And from that tender presence, offering whatever prayer or wish, most resonates to yourself right in these moments, mentally whispering that prayer and widening the attention to sense

the heart's face that really includes all of us, the earth, our mother in your lap, and all beings in this awake, open-hearted awareness. in these last few moments offering your prayer for all beings everywhere