Tara Brach - Meditation: Letting Life Live Through You (2020-02-19)

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Meditation: Letting Life Live Through You (2020-02-19) - We begin with a body scan, open to sounds and to listening to and feeling the moment. From spacious awareness the practice is simply to recognize and allow the changing flow of life. The meditation ends with the poem, "Hokusai Says," by Roger Keyes. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Feeling your body breathing and sensing the breath in particular in the area of the heart and the kind of inner listening, just sensing the state of your heart right now, and deepening that listening to sense what

What is your intention for meditation right now? What's your deepest intention for practice? This is the inquiry of what really matters to your heart. It's to feel your own sincerity, your longing for presence or longing to be open-hearted, deep realization, waking up. to feel our collective intention that these trainings of heart and mind bring a healing that can ripple out to be of benefit to our world. One of the most direct portals to presence is waking up awareness of the life of the body.

You might begin in a simple way by softening the eyes as if you're smiling into the eyes. Let the eyes be soft, let the brow be smooth. Feel the perhaps the fluttering of your lids, brightness or darkness, the sensation of tingling or vibrating. Let it spread through the face. You might have a slight smile at the mouth. Let the inside of the mouth be smiling. Let the tongue fill the lower palate. if you can down to the root of the tongue, feeling the aliveness and vibration through the mouth,

the gums, the teeth, the tongue, the lips, radiating out through the cheeks, becoming aware of the scalp and skull. You might feel the area of the throat and imagine the throat filling in the whole neck. So you can feel from the inside out, the volume and the space and the aliveness. in the neck, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck. And sense the awareness that fills the shoulders, the awareness of aliveness. You can feel the shoulders from the inside out. You might imagine a dissolving of ice to water, ice to water, kind of melting.

And then water to gas, letting whatever tightness or tangles remain, float in awareness. Let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way. Then explore softening the hands, softening again and feeling the hands from the inside out. Can you notice the tingling, the vibrating? Perhaps places of warmth, coolness, pressure, just as a cup is filled with water. whole body can be filled with awareness, letting there be an openness to the chest. You might smile into the heart area, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spread through the heart.

And this isn't to cover over but rather to help open space for whatever's here. The eyes are smiling, soft the mouth and smiling into the heart. and feeling from the inside out, the movements of energy, sensation, feelings that fill the heart and the chest cavity, letting them be as full as they are, loosening and relaxing down the torso, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and now this one and again, sensing the aliveness, sensing the awakeness of awareness that fills the belly, soft and open, breath after breath. Continuing to scan, sensing the pelvic region filled with aliveness and energy,

feeling from the inside out the life that's right here, aware of the legs, the length, the weight, the volume, the volume, feeling right into the feet so you can feel from the inside out the feet, tingling, vibrating so that if you widen the lens you can feel this whole body simultaneously as a field of sensation, not stopping anything, not controlling anything. Letting this life live through you, widening the lens, to include sounds, the soft, close-in sounds and the space around you, the appearing, disappearing of these words, the more distant sounds, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, sensing that boundless listening presence that includes even the most

distant sounds, just merging and opening into that presence that's listening, to and feeling the moment. The nature of awareness is wakefulness, open wakefulness, that knows and allows the changing weather, emotions, thoughts, feelings. At some point you'll notice instead of resting in awareness the mind is contracted and is time-traveling perhaps, in that virtual reality of thinking, remembering, planning, commentary. Not a problem. When there's a noticing of that, you can choose to relax open again, shifting from the thoughts in the mind to the actual sounds that are here, listening, re-relaxing the habitual contractions

in the body. relaxing the shoulders and softening the hands, loosening and softening the belly. And again, listening to and feeling the whole moment, noticing where the attention is. And if it's been distracted, relaxing back into presence, relaxing open the attention to listen, seeing what wants to let go in the body,

perhaps a little bit more, listening to and feeling the moment, letting this life live through you. We close our meditation with a poem by the poet Roger Keys called Hokusai says, Hokusai says, look carefully. He says, pay attention, notice, says, keep looking, stay curious. There's no end to seeing. He says, look forward to getting old. He says, keep changing. You just get more who you really are. He says, get stuck.

Accept it. Repeat yourself for as long as it's interesting. He says, keep doing what you love. He says, keep praying. He says, every one of us is a child. Every one of us is ancient. Every one of us has a body. He says every one of us is frightened.

He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive. Shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive, water is alive. Everything has its own life. lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says, it matters that you feel, it matters that you notice, it matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. and strength are life living through you. Peace is life living through you. He says, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.

Feeling again the presence that's right here and as you open your eyes, look around and begin to move around a bit, sense the possibility of continuing in this presence. Namaste and thank you.