Tara Brach - Meditation: Living Loving Awareness (20 min.)

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the light of awareness. This meditation attunes us to these dimensions of awareness: continuous open space, heart space and full aliveness. We end with a Zen poem that invites us to rest in this living, loving awareness, and know it as home.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We open with a very simple reflection. What is your deepest intention for being here right now? For practicing? What is it that your heart longs for? What feels most important?

sensing how the gateway to sacred presence is through this embodied being. You might let the eyes soften, let the brow be smooth, when there's a lot of thinking and worrying, all those little micro-muscles tense up. It's relaxing. You might visualize and feel a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners slightly. Letting a smile spread across the lips, a slight smile,

the inside of the mouth smiling. You might sense your tongue can fill the upper palate of the mouth and feel the sensations of aliveness, the lips, the guns, the teeth, tongue. let the throat fill the neck, feeling the aliveness there. Allow the shoulders to fall away from the neck. Let the awareness fill the shoulders. Can you feel them from the inside out, both shoulders simultaneously?

Let there be a balancing and a feeling of aliveness through the shoulders. And perhaps that melting since they're saying, of ice to water, water to gas. Sensing whatever tightness or tension might be in the shoulders is floating in awareness. Let the hands rest without any effort very easily, relaxed. Now softening the hands, softening again,

and notice the aliveness from the inside of the inside of, out, very receptive, intimate attention, letting the chest be open and feel the aliveness that fills the area of the chest. See if you can feel the heart from the inside out, noticing the sensations, the energy, and also the space that it's emanating out of it, the interior space, space and aliveness. Letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath. Now this one.

And again, feeling the midsection of the body from the inside out. Seeing if you can sense the energy that's moving. And sensing the space it's in, the interior space that it arises from, space and aliveness. letting that awareness of energy and aliveness fill the whole pelvic region, down through the legs, the feet, widening the attention. So you can feel simultaneously all this whole body, this energy body,

like a field of sensation, tingling or vibrating, pulsing, tightness and flow, heat and cool, sensing the space it's happening in, the interior space everything is arising from, the sounds appearing, disappearing, and sensing the vastness of space of awareness that sound is happening in, extending out in all directions beyond the furthest stars. You might sense the interior space in his body and the vastness of space as continuously, space, continuous space. And sensing this continuous space is filled with the light of awareness.

Sense how this light of awareness fills your body and the space environment around you. Sense how this light of awareness expresses as the sensitivity of the heart in your body and the space around you. heart space, and sense how this light of awareness, this experience is pure awareness of aliveness through the body and in the environment around the body. Pure, lit up aliveness. Living, loving awareness, sensing this living, loving awareness as your true nature,

your true home from one Zen poet, right here, right now. Be absolutely still and notice the experience of pure awareness without resistance. This attention is the universal attention. It has no boundaries. It is awake, pure, alive, and nurturing. So dip into this awareness. Rest in purity for one second, ten seconds, and thirty seconds. Keep diving in complete surrender, allowing whatever sensations to be and to move. Keep resting in this place.

Soon you will see it as your home. It is your essence. Like an ice cube on the sea, you apparently melt into this ocean. and there's only bliss, this bliss of freedom of homecoming. Right here, right now, be absolutely still and notice this experience of pure awareness. Keep resting in this place. Soon you will see it is your home. It is your essence.

Namaste and blessings. Thank you.