Tara Brach - Meditation: Listening to Life

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Take some moments just to listen, listening and aware of the sounds around you. See if you can listen in a global way, letting everything in, completely receptive, listening to close in sounds, the sounds of these words, spaces between sounds, listening to the space in the room, listening to the more distant sounds, sensing the vastness of awareness that includes even the most distant sounds, noticing how with listening you can't control anything.

And sounds spontaneously arise and move and disappear on their own, relaxed, receptive, attention. Listening is one of the great templates for pure wakefulness and awareness, awake space, receptive, nothing to do. You can offer this same listening presence inwardly. I gently scan through the body, listening to and feeling the aliveness, liveness, perhaps starting with the region of the eyes, maybe softening a little, very receptive presence, just noticing the sensations as they are, vibration, pressure, flow, maybe the flickering of light and darkness at the lids, being aware of the region of the mouth, perhaps a slight

smile to enhance receptivity. It's feeling from the inside out, the tongue, the gums, teeth, lips. Receptive. Listening to and feeling the aliveness. You might allow the shoulders relax back and down some. And letting the shoulders fill with awareness, receptive presence. if you could listen to and feel the aliveness of the shoulders from the inside, letting the sensations be just as they are, if there's tightness, letting it float in that receptive awareness, the way ice can float and ice cube can float in water and naturally dissolve.

You might soften the hands and then feeling them from the inside. again, receiving sensations, listening to and feeling the vibrations, the tingling, the life inside the hands of the region of the heart, letting the awareness be filling that area. So there's a receptive, gentle presence, listening to and feeling the sensations, and the life in the area of the heart. You might sense how this presence can be very gentle and allowing. Just letting life be just as it is.

You might soften the belly a bit. Let this next breath be received in a softening belly. And then this breath, letting awareness fill the belly so you can feel from the inside out again in this, with this listening, receptivity, the life that's right here, a relaxed attentiveness, letting your awareness fill the whole pelvic region. Notice what happens when the intentions to listen to and feel the life that's here, receptive and allowing.

You might sense the length and the volume of your legs, let your awareness fill your feet, where the pressure, the warmth, or you contact the floor, and the whole world of sensation and aliveness in the feet and widening the lens. So you can simultaneously experience the whole body as a field of sensation, listening to and feeling this whole play of aliveness, letting everything happen, not opposing anything,

this receptive openness, again including the symphony of sound. You're listening not just with your ears but with your whole awareness, listening to the sound and to the silence. Notice what it's like to listen to and feel the whole, moment, sound, sensation, feelings, to sense the vast, boundless space that's happening and relaxing back and just being that silence that's listening, being that alert stillness that's aware of all this aliveness. It's the nature of mind to leave this weekful open this kind of empty, awake presence and move into thoughts about what's happening, thoughts about

the future, the past, totally natural. So when there's a noticing of that, you might just gently re-relax, noticing again, the sounds that are right here, listening, relax through the body. the shoulders soften, the hands, relaxing the heart. Again, listening to and feeling, the changing moment-to-moment experience. You might ask, is it possible to let go just a little more right now? Include what arises, sounds, whatever reactions to the sounds, sensations in the body, Let life live through you, resting in that wakefulness, openness, silence that's listening.