Tara Brach - Meditation - Living Presence (2017-07-26)

Episode Date: July 27, 2017

Meditation - Living Presence (2017-07-26) - This practice uses the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, include sound and relax back into the awareness that is the source of all experience. By letting life be just as it is, we become pure living presence - wakeful, open and tender. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. This body lives in the present moment. And when we wake up our attention inside the body, you can rest in a very vast and still quality of presence. and gently scan through the body and you might begin by noticing if there's any areas that are asking for attention in your body, places of tightness or tension that you might gently soften

in, do a little letting go. The image and the felt sense of a smile can help deepen the quality of presence and ease through the body. I invite you to just visualize a big open blue sky, vast sky. And imagine the curve of a smile just spreading through that sky, open and biting, and then let the mind and that sky merge

so this mind is wide open and filled like the sky with a smile. Sense the curve and it felt sense of a smile, just filling your mind. Brightness, receptivity, openness. You might visualize and imagine that curve of a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes slightly. Can you sense the brow becoming smooth, a softening around the eyes? See if it's possible to have a slight smile at the mouth

and the felt sense of the inside of the mouse smiling. Can you let the tongue fill the palate, relaxing the tongue? And notice what happens if you relax right down to the root of the tongue. The jaws unhinged. What are the sensations like that fill the whole area of the mouth? The gums, the teeth, the lips. You sense the space that fills the mouth, the aliveness of sensation.

You might visualize and sense a smile spreading through the throat. You just sense the sensations and aliveness that lives there. The eyes are smiling, the mouth, the throat. You might imagine and feel that felt sense of a smile spreading through the heart This is not to paper over what's there, but really to open you to the space that's there, that has a room for whatever is arising, sensing that smile spreading through the heart, and notice what are the sensations, the feelings there, sensing from that smile of widening and an opening from the chest,

concentric circles, rippling outward, so that there's more sense, space even around the shoulders that the shoulders can relax back and down. Can you imagine the awareness filling the shoulders? You can feel the space inside the shoulders, sense the aliveness of energy inside the shoulders. And if there's areas of tightness, knots in the shoulder, you might imagine them floating in awareness, perhaps a bit of the melting of ice to water.

and water to gas. And can you sense the length and the volume of the arms? The space inside the arms and the aliveness there. You might notice what happens if you soften the hands and then feel the hands from the inside out. Can you notice the space inside the hands, the vibration, the tingling, the movement of energy inside the hands?

the hands. Again, sensing the openness at the chest, that smile that can spread through the heart area. And scanning down, you might visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the belly, softening, relaxing, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath. And now this one, and again, sensing the space. and aliveness that fills that whole region of the belly. From the inside out, the eyes are smiling, soft. The mouth, hands are soft, the smile and the heart, the belly soft, and visualizing and connecting

with the felt sense of a smile spreading through the whole pelvic region, opening to the space and aliveness there, feeling the length, the volume, of your legs, placing the awareness inside the feet and feeling this space, vibration, aliveness there, sensing the rootedness and connection to the vast earth below and around you. Just imagining and sensing this flow of aliveness from the earth and through this body is pouring through so that if you widen and... your attention, you can sense this body is a field of sensation,

a field filled with tingling and vibrating, perhaps heat or cool, swirling, heaviness, lightness, occurrence of energy, and points of light in a dark sky, living presence, sensing how this field of aliveness Also has the vibration of sound. You're listening not just with your ears,

but your whole awareness, an edgeless, boundless field of awareness that includes even the most distant sounds, listening to and feeling the whole moment, completely relaxing with the changing flow, letting everything be just as it is. It's natural that the attention will drift off into thoughts and when there's a noticing of that,

the practice is to gently relax back, again to listen, listen to this changing symphony of sound, maybe re-relaxed the obvious areas of tightness in the body, softening the shoulders, the hands, living presence, listening to and feeling,

the changing flow, moment to moment. And we close by bringing the attention, the sense of living presence to the heart. And again, just sensing that smile and the space that's here in the heart, the aliveness, the tenderness, perhaps the vulnerability. For some, maybe a sense of numbness and others, angst, whatever's there to regard with gentleness.

And close by offering to this heart of ours, whatever prayer or blessing resonates in this moment. I'm feeling the tenderness of heart space that's really timeless and vast, holding the world, all beings in our heart, we offer our blessings. blessing to all. And since your wish, your prayer that holds all beams.