Tara Brach - Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence - This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As a way of arriving, you might check your posture, however you are sitting. If you're standing or lying down, that's fine. But check it in sense that you're here, that you're awake in your body.

And invite your attention inward. you might close your eyes or lower your gaze and perhaps take a few nice full deep breaths. Feeling the breath and sensing that you can feel the breath right in the heart. So breathing in, letting the breath touch your heart. Breathing out, releasing and letting go. Letting the awareness of the breathing at the heart deep in a kind of inner listening. asking yourself, what is my deepest intention right now for being here, for practicing meditation? What is it that really matters to me?

What is my heart long for? And listen inwardly. Sometimes initially we get a kind of rote response or we're just blank. But listen and sense really, if I could make any wish that this meditation might in some way deepen presence or open my heart, help me touch peace, help me realize the truth of who I am. What is the wish to feel your sincerity, feel that heart presence, and to gently bring the palms together at the heart.

So we'll chant as community, as sangha. The simple mantra, ohm, it's a sound current of connectedness. We'll chant it three times. Feeling your heart as you chant, your care, inhaling deeply. In the stillness, begin to let the awareness scan through your body, noticing if there's any areas of particular tightness or tension, and sensing the possibility of softening. relaxing, letting go. You might pay attention to the eyes and soften the eyes, let the brow be smooth.

You might let a very slight smile spread through the lips and sense the inside of your mouth smiling, relaxing the tongue, letting it fill the upper palate, noticing if you can relax right down to the root of the tongue. letting go and sensing the natural sensations that arise in the tongue, the gums, teeth, the lips. And I sense the neck area and let the throat fill the neck. Sensing the aliveness there, allowing the shoulders to relax back and down a bit. Letting the awareness fill the shoulders so you can feel from the inside whatever tightness or tension, whatever sensations of energy inside the shoulders.

Just imagine it's floating in awareness. Let the hands rest easily, effortlessly and explore softening the hands and then softening again, feeling from the inside out, whatever tingling or vibrating, or vibrating, whatever aliveness you can detect in the hands. And just as a cup can be filled with water, this whole body is filled with awareness. Let the awareness fill the chest, the heart area, so that you can feel in an intimate way, the sensations,

the aliveness that's there, letting the awareness fill the midsection of your body so you can soften the belly and feel from the inside out. again, the aliveness, sensations, some energy that's there, letting the awareness fill the whole pelvic region. And again, feeling from the inside out, the movement of energy, the play of sensation, feeling the legs, the length, the weight, the volume, feeling the feet where there's pressure, warmth, where there's contact with the floor.

And from the inside out, the tingling and vibrating and aliveness there, still feeling the hands vibrating and alive. Opening to feel this whole body is a field of sensation. See if you can feel everything simultaneously. Sometimes describes the energy body. Dance of sensation. Letting go of any resistance, not stopping anything. So that you're letting life live through you. through you, unimpeded, including in this awareness the sounds that come and go, including

the most distant sounds you can hear, letting sounds wash through you, letting life live through you, it's resting in the awareness that's listening to and feeling this changing moment to moment experience. At some point you'll notice that instead of of that open awareness, the mind has contracted into a train of thought, commentary, going into the future, the past, just completely natural and it's part of the capacity of awareness to notice that. You can even note it, thinking, thinking.

And then open out of that virtual reality and relax back here again. listening to the actual sounds that are coming and going, relaxing areas of obvious tightness and feeling the movement of aliveness inside your body, inside the shoulders, inside the hands, mood and the heart, listening to and feeling the changing life that's here and if it's helpful to stabilize the attention some, you can listen to and feel the movement of the breath, relaxing with the inflow and the outflow, letting everything come and go as it is, letting life live through you, resting in that awareness that's listening to and feeling the changing flow.

Let go of what has passed, let go of what may come, let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. and don't try to make anything happen. Relax right now and rest.