Tara Brach - Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We begin our meditation by collecting the attention with the breath, breathing in a breath that's long and deep and slow. You might count to six as you breathe in. And then the out breath is matched, six counts out, Slow release, without a pause breathing in again, six counts, and breathing out, continuing in this way a matched breath, the in-breath and out-breath matched, long slow in-breath, slow in-breath,

slow release, without a pause between, long, slow breath, bringing a relaxed attention to the sensations of breathing. and letting the breath resume in its natural rhythms. Feeling the quality of presence, it's right here. Taking some moments to let that presence, that awareness, scan through the body so you can relax and open from the inside out. You might feel the area of the brow, the eyes, and just gently soften the eyes

and feel the whole domain of sensations there, tingling and vibrating, perhaps the sense of light and dark, in the inside of the mouth. You might sense the tongue, relaxing the tongue right down to the root. The tongue is resting in the lower jaw. Feeling the sensations inside the tongue, the sensations inside the gums and the teeth. and the lips. You can feel the tingling and vibrating throughout the whole area of the mouth. Sensing down into the neck area you might imagine and sense the throat expanding to fill the neck. Feel from the inside out the tingling and vibrating there.

Sensing the space that that aliveness is happening in, bringing the awareness inside the shoulders. and you might relax the shoulders back and down some. And just feel the sensations, the movement of energy there, from the inside out. Can you imagine the space inside the shoulders that this aliveness is happening in? You might sense the length, the volume of the arms. And then feeling the hands and letting the hands soften,

feeling the hands from the inside out, feeling that field of vibrating energy there so that you're noticing very intimately the tingling, the warmth, the sensations in the hands. You imagine the space those sensations are floating in. And if you imagine the nucleus of an atom and how the particles emerge, just appear and disappear out of, in emptiness,

can you imagine the space that these sensations are emerging out of? that empty space that gives rise to this play of life. Sense an openness in the chest and feeling from the inside out the area of the heart. Noticing the sensations, the energy that's there. Can you imagine the space that the sensations, the vibrating and tingling of the heart is floating in? You imagine the interior space that it's arising from. space and aliveness, scanning down into the area of the belly, softening the belly. You might sense this next breath being received in a softening belly.

This breath and again and another breath, feeling from the inside out the aliveness of sensation in the area of the belly, sensing the space it's floating in, sensing the end of the inner, interior space it's emerging from in a similar way, scanning down and sensing the pelvic region from the inside out, relaxing, loosening, receptive to the play of sensation and aliveness there and sensing the space that sensations are arising in, appearing in, the length, the volume of the legs, feeling the feet from the inside out, aware of the aliveness of sensation there, the tingling, the vibrating so that if

you widen the attention now you can feel simultaneously this whole body as a field of sensation, just letting everything happen, sensing this whole dance of tingling and vibrating of heat and cool, tightness and flow, including sounds in this whole dance of aliveness. Can you imagine the space that this whole dance of aliveness is happening in? The openness, the boundlessness. See, you can just relax back and be that awake space, this awake awareness that moment to moment knows the sounds, sensations, the feelings that are coming and going.

It's quite natural that the mind will drift off into thoughts so that instead of inhabiting this awake awareness or in a kind of bubble or cloud of thinking but it's also natural for awareness to realize that. So when you notice thinking, just simply pause reconnect with your senses. Just reconnect. Feeling the aliveness from the inside out of this living body,

listening to the sounds that appear and disappear. Sensing that vast space that it's all happening in and relaxing back. Be that awake awareness, noticing moment to moment this changing flow of life, receiving the senses, sounds, sensations in awareness. And explore now bringing that awake awareness inside the heart, feeling the heart from the inside out with awake awareness, a very tender, receptive presence right here in the heart from the warmth and light of your awake heart, sensing whatever prayer you'd like to offer to yourself

as you close this meditation and widening the field to sense whatever prayer most resonates that you'd like to offer to your world, to all beings everywhere.