Tara Brach - Meditation: Letting Life Be As It Is (2015-10-21)

Episode Date: October 24, 2015

Meditation: Letting Life Be As It Is (2015-10-21)

Greetings. I'm Tara Brock and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org. Thank you. You're right, from the start, you might sense if there's any part of your body that wants to relax right now, wants to just let go a little and soften. We take a few full breaths as part of arriving and let your attention come gently to the area of the heart.

And we take some moments reflecting together as we begin as to our intention for the evening. So you might sense to yourself what really brings you here? What is it that matters to you, that your heart longs for? And as you're listening inwardly, see if you can sense that sincerity that comes with really connecting with what matters, whether it's presence or more open-heartedness, more peace of mind, realizing deeply the truth of who you are, inner freedom. Feel that sincerity and from that place of caring and sincerity,

We'll do a very simple chant the mantra ome, which is the mantra or sound current of connectedness. If you'd like to bring the palms together to center the attention in the heart area, please do. We'll chant three times, inhale deeply to begin. The awareness scan gently through the body. It's a way of waking up in the realm of sensation and relaxing. You might feel the region of the eyes and the brow and just soften there. It can help to imagine and sense a smile spreading through the eyes, letting the outside corners of the eyes lift a bit.

The brow be smooth. I'm feeling the region of the mouth. Slight smile at the mouth. Even feeling the inside of the mouth smiling. Feel the volume of the tongue. relaxing down to the root of the tongue, aware of the sensations and the lips, relaxing. Feel the region of the neck.

You might imagine the throat filling the neck, feeling the sensations there, the aliveness and the space that fills the neck, letting the shoulders fall away from the neck, relaxing back and down. See if you can feel the shoulders from the inside out, letting whatever tightness or tension might be there float in awareness, perhaps untangle, loosen, soften.

Allow the hands to rest in an easy way, softening the hands, and then with an intimate attention feeling from the inside out, the life inside the hands, letting there be an openness in the chest, where of the chest, the upper back, space inside. You might feel right into the heart area.

The sensations and feelings can help to smile into the heart, sense the curve and felt sense of a smile, filling the heart area, not to cover over but to allow you to really feel what's there. Scanning down to feel the belly and the lower back, sensing the space inside the belly, side the lower back and the aliveness it's there

see if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly this breath and now this one and again scanning down into the pelvic region feeling the volume space and aliveness

you might sense if you can feel the breath being received deep deep into the torso aware of the volume and the length of the legs and feeling the feet from the inside out, feeling the places of pressure and contact, warmth where your feet touch the floor, tingling, vibrating from the inside out. You might imagine the earth energy just pouring up through the feet and filling your body, merging with the aliveness of your body.

That if you widen the attention, you can sense this body as a field of sensation, floating, unfolding in the space of awareness, a relaxed open attentiveness, letting this life live through you, the play of sensation, the appearing and disappearing of sound. So you're not stopping anything, controlling anything. Letting life be just as it is, sensing in the foreground, this changing play of aliveness, vibration, tingling, pulsing, heat, cool, even pleasant, unpleasant.

The play of sounds, close in sounds, space that's around you, and more distant sounds. In the foreground, this changing flow of experience. Perhaps you can sense in the background the stillness and presence that's aware right now. Keep relaxing back into the openness that's aware, allowing the changing experience to move through you, moment by moment. And if you notice you've drifted off into a virtual reality, into thoughts, just to gently pause and become very aware of that. You might even mentally note, oh, thinking, thinking, and relax back. again, reopening to the actual sounds that are playing, arising, passing in the moment,

relaxing back to experience this changing sensations that are right here, perhaps the movement of the breath, relaxing back into that openness that's awake, that's aware, and letting life be just as it is? With interest and friendliness, notice if the mind is engaged in doing something, pursuing thoughts, commentary, reviewing the past planning, or if there's some effort to do the meditation a certain way. And again, just gently let go and explore this radical practice of non-doing. True meditation, meditation that reveals reality as it is, is really a non-doing practice. Just being, letting life be just as it is, moment to moment. Let the simple intention be to notice when there's that contraction of doing, thinking,

trying to control experience, and to re-relax, to relax back again and again, resting in what's right here, relaxing with the sounds that are arising and passing, letting them wash through you, relaxing with the play of sensation, letting the life live through you, and sensing the wakeful openness it's all happening in, relaxing back into that beingness that lets life be just as it is, letting everything flow in and out of the stillness that's here.