Tara Brach - Meditation: Letting Go…Letting Be (2019-01-09)

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

Meditation: Letting Go…Letting Be (2019-01-09) - This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness. 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. Don't try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest. ~ Tilopa

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. This meditation is really the art of letting go. The invitation is to begin by scanning the body and see what is there inside you that's feeling ready to let go right now. If you deepen the attention through the body and just feel your head and since you could inhabit your whole head, not just the front of your brain but the sides and the back and right

down to the root, since you're inhabiting the space between your ears and sense the possibility as you feel the volume of your head of just softening, relaxing wherever there's tightness or tension, and letting the eyes be soft, the brow smooth, letting the tongue fill the upper palate, relaxing down to the root of the tongue, slight smile at the lips. You might allow the shoulders to fall away from the neck and feeling inside both shoulders as if you could feel from the inside out. And since that possibility of letting go that comes with a melting ice to water, then water to gas.

You might sense letting go as a clenched fist that can slowly unfurl itself. So it's in its natural openness and receptivity. And feeling the volume and length of the arms, the weight of the arms. So you're inhabiting your arms. And feeling the hands from the inside out. Letting your awareness fill the hands. And again, softening, unclenching. Notice when you unclench and soften, when you let go, how much sensation you can feel, tingling,

vibrating, let there be an openness to the chest and inhabiting the chest, feeling your awareness, filling the chest, imagining and sensing that letting go, that unclenching. It can help sometimes to visualize. and sense a smile spreading through the heart, letting go and letting be. Sensing awareness filling the midsection of your body, the sides of the waist, sensing the distance between them, the distance from the navel to the back of the spine. So you're inhabiting your body and softening, letting go through the belly. As you let go you might sense this next breath is received.

in a softening, more spacious belly, this breath. And now this one, inhabiting the whole pelvic region, sensing the distance between the pelvic bones, letting the awareness fill that region, and again letting go, letting the breath be received deep in the torso, opening, letting be. of the legs, their length, volume, weight, feeling the aliveness that moves through them, right down into the feet. Again, aware of the hands, soft, awake, slight smile at the mouth, opening to sense this whole body as a field of sensation, sensing the possibility if there's any tightness

of just letting go even more deeply into this changing dance of aliveness. Aware of the sounds that appear and disappear. Aware of that openness, the space, the wakeful space that sounds appear in, resting in this moment-to-moment flow of aliveness, sound, sensation, letting everything happen, letting life be just as it is. And just like the body habitually retitens, the mind tightens into thoughts. And when you notice that you've been inside a thought form, just to relax open again, unclench the fist, reopen to the sounds and aliveness that are right here, letting go of the static virtual

reality of thoughts, reentering this living flow, letting be. No matter how far the mind has traveled, you can always pause, let go and reopen into sacred presence from the Tibetan teacher Tolopa. 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 with a curious and friendly attention, noticing where your attention is. Let go of what is past. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Relax right now. and rest. In these moments of closing, you might bring your attention to the heart, breathing

again in and out of the heart, offering yourself whatever wish, whatever blessing you'd like to send inwardly, whatever resonates in this moment, feeling that heart space that holds this world and sensing whatever wish or blessing you'd like to offer to offer to all beings to this world as we enter this new year.