Tara Brach - Meditation: Living Presence (21:08 min.)

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

This meditation guides us to awaken to our senses through scanning through the body and then listening to sounds. When distracted by thoughts we relax open again and again, learning to rest in the formless awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all passing experience. 

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I sense right now what wants to let go a little bit, noticing where there might be holding or tension, feeling this body breathing and letting the awareness of the breath be at the heart, as if you could breathe in and out of your heart, and asking yourself, what is my intention for practicing right now? My intention for meditation, for being here. What's the deepest intention?

And if you've never done this before or done it 10,000 times, just sense where your sincerity is. What is it you care about? In the stillness you might imagine a wide open sky around you and since that sky filled with the curve of a smile, that openness and brightness and felt sense of a smile, it's filling the sky and then allow your mind to merge with that sky. So the whole mind is filled with that felt sense of a smile, lit up, open, receptive. of, edgeless.

And sense that you can smile right into the eyes so the outside corners of the eyes are lifted slightly. The brow is smooth, the eyes are soft, sensations are floating, tingling, vibrating in the whole region of the eyes. You can feel the aliveness there and the space that it's floating in. You sense a very slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. You might sense the tongue filling the lower palate. Relax down to the root of the tongue.

And again notice the whole constellation of sensations, pulsing, tingling. See if you can sense the aliveness that's floating in space there. The eyes smiling, the mouth. You might visualize and feel a smile spreading through the throat, essentially throat filling the neck, the sensations, vibration, energy that's moving in that region, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck, the shoulders be filled with awareness, feeling from the inside out the vibration, the movement of energy. If you notice tension or tightness, can you let that float in awareness? Notice what changes. Sense if anything's holding still, that the

hands rest in a very easy, effortless way, softening the hands and softening again. What do you notice from the inside out? What are you aware of? Can you feel the movement of energy, pulsing, vibrating? Can you sense the space the energy's floating in, moving in, appearing out of, dissolving into? Again, the eyes soft and smiling, the mouth, smiling, throat, and smiling into the heart, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the heart, the heart and chest, not to cover over what's happening, but to make room for it.

Sounds, sensations, sensing the heart space that can include what's here. Scanning down to feel the abdominal area, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again. You might visualize and sense that curve of a small. smile spreading through the belly, feeling from the inside out, noticing the life that's here. You can bring that same image and felt sense of a smile to fill the pelvic region, opening your attention in a full way to the light, to the whole movement of sensation and aliveness

that's there. Space and aliveness. I might feel down into the earth that we're on as a again, this vibrating living organism, just allowing this earth energy to flow up through you, fill you, sensing yourself as part of this whole living earth body, vibrating and alive, including in awareness the sounds that are here, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, listening to and feeling the whole moment and completely relaxing with what's happening. In the foreground, this changing, vibrating world of form and in the background, that formless presence, that alert, inner stillness that's awake, space that everything's happening in. At some point you'll notice the mind's gone off in a trance of thinking.

It could be a dramatic train ride into the past or future or more subtle veil of commentary or thoughts. Either way without any judgment, more with interest and friendliness, relax, open. Again, listening to the sounds that are right here. feeling the life that's right here. You might feel the inflow and outflow of the breath, aware in the background of that presence, that wakeful openness that's really our home.

Let your practice be simple to just notice the drifting and gently relax back to the senses, to presence. And if coming back you feel a sense of fear or physical and pleasantness to bring a lot of kindness. We can love ourselves back into presence. Friendly, gentle, easy, resting again and again in the life of the moment. No matter where the mind has traveled, you can begin fresh in any moment.

That's in your meditation and in life. The key is the quality of heart. Bring a real gentleness to bring an interested attention. What's happening right now? Can we relax open and rest in the changing experience that's right here? As a way of closing this meditation, you might review your experience over these last 15, 20 minutes, since where you've been, where the attention's been, perhaps what's been challenging, holding whatever's there with a real allowing acceptance.

What might you have learned? What do you appreciate about your experience? What might you want to remember? Closing with an inward bow of respect for the process of waking up our hearts and minds.