Tara Brach - Meditation: Intimacy with Life (2018-05-09)

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Meditation: Intimacy with Life (2018-05-09) - This guided meditation begins with a body scan, bringing the friendliness of a smile into the body, and waking up our awareness of aliveness. We widen the attention to include sound and then sense and rest in the awareness that holds all experience. Our reminders are to wake up from trance by reopening to our senses, allowing for a true intimacy with the life that lives through us.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. This body sitting here breathing, bringing that friendly attention, a soft, clear, friendly attention to this body as a way of lighting up that attention, letting it be warm, you might have the image of a smile spreading through a great sky.

Just trying that, the feeling and image of a smile spreading through a great sky, receptive, open, bright, and then letting the mind merge with that sky so that the smile's filling your mind. You might sense it's easy to soften a bit in the eyes now. I'd even imagine the outward corners of the eyes up a bit, lifted in the smile. That sense of a smile spreading through the eyes. Let the brow be smooth. When we're thinking a lot, there's a lot of little micro-muscles around the eyes that tense up. So it really helps to soften, to smile into the eyes.

Soft eyes. and slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling, and let the tongue fill the lower palate. You might even sense a relaxing down to the root of the tongue. Noticing the sensations that are felt in the area of the mouth, the tongue, the gums, the teeth, the lips, sense the throat filling, the neck, perhaps even the image and sense of a smile,

spreading through the neck, to allow there to be an openness so you can feel the sensations there fully, a receptive, friendly presence, and visualizing and having the felt sense of the smile spread through the chest and the heart area. Again, not to cover over, but really to make space so we can intimately contact our experience in the body. From the inside out, the sensations, the feelings in the chest and heart area. I'm seeing if it comes naturally to let the shoulders fall away from the ears, feeling the awareness inhabiting, filling the shoulders.

So you can sense from the inside out the movement of energy there. And it feels very stuck, which it sometimes does. Just let that float in awareness, letting the hands rest in the very easy. easy, effortless way. And you might soften the hands, softening again, and then feeling from the inside out the aliveness and the space inside the hands, just the movement of energy, tingling, vibrating, a soft, receptive presence, letting the hands be soft, feeling the life that's there. And again, soft, you might notice that. there's been a re-tightening there, smiling into the eyes, a slight smile at the mouth,

feeling the smile again spreading through the heart, and feeling the aliveness inside the heart area, an intimate attention, continuing to scan downward. You might soften the belly, let this next breath be received in that softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again, Perhaps you can visualize and feel the curve of a smile at the belly and let your awareness fill the belly, feeling from the inside out, the aliveness, and the space that's there, continuing to scan down, aware of the whole pelvic region.

And again, you might visualize and sense that curve of a smile filling that region, allowing your awareness to feel, fill the pelvic region, receptive to the aliveness that's there. If you can feel the legs, the length, the volume of the legs from the inside out, the energy and the feet, letting the awareness fill the feet, widening the lens now. So you can feel simultaneously this whole body as a field of sensation, letting the aliveness be just as it is. not stopping anything, opposing anything, including in a receptive awareness the sounds that you're aware. Not just listening with your ear, but with your whole awareness.

Utterly awake senses wide open, utterly open, and non-fixating, allowing awareness, sensing everything you experience, the sensations, feelings, sounds, is all happening in this space of awake awareness, just resting back in that wakeful openness, letting this life be just as it is. If you find the mind moves into thoughts, you might let the breath be in the foreground as an anchor home base.

It helps to steady the attention, or for some perhaps just sound, some, the sensations in the body. You're choosing a sensory anchor as a portal to presence. It can be helpful to periodically check and sense, is this the trance of thinking? Is there a veil of thinking? Or is this presence?

Senses wide open, utterly awake, here. Intimate with the life, that's coming and going. It's natural for the mind to disconnect from the living reality and go off into a trance of sorts. And that moment of noticing is a key moment where you can relax open again, where you can choose presence,

listen to the sounds that are here, bring an intimate attention to the sensations, perhaps relaxing in areas that might have recontracted, perhaps smiling into the heart, being intimate with the heart, utterly awake senses wide open, utterly open, non-fixating, allowing awareness, intimate with all things. In these last moments, you might explore what it means to be truly intimate with the life that's right here,

moment to moment.