Tara Brach - Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart - Especially when we're stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.

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 to find a comfortable posture where you're awake and alert, and that usually means sitting upright, but also at ease, sensing whatever parts of you that can relax,

letting them relax, closing your eyes and taking some moments, to settle in this way, become aware of this body breathing, and extending the breath, taking a nice deep, long in-breath, and a slow out-breath that allows you to release, to relax with the letting go. Then again, a nice full deep in-breath, and a slow, even out-breath, releasing, letting go, letting go. And once more, inhaling deep, full breath. And with that slow out breath, you might sense you could soften down the length of your body, letting go, letting go. And then as you allow the breath

to come back to its normal rhythm, you might feel whatever presence has emerged just through these few moments. And from that presence, sense your intention for this meditation, perhaps for being here, awake, kind, meeting whatever arises with presence and care. We begin, as we sometimes do, with the image and felt sense of a smile. You might feel the region of your eyes and let that smile spread through the eyes, sense that the eyes can soften, the brow become smooth, bringing a slight smile to the lips, and imagine and sense the experience of a smile filling the mouth, see if you can relax the tongue, letting the tongue fill the lower palate, relaxing right down to the root of the tongue, becoming aware of the sensation, the tongue, gums, teeth.

lips, and letting that sensitivity to aliveness spread through the face, bringing some ease to all the micro muscles used to maintain an expression, just relaxing. You might allow the shoulders to relax back and down some, let the awareness fill the shoulders, inviting that kind of dissolving from ice to water, a melting, and water to gas. From the inside out, sensitive to the movement of energy, to any areas of tightness, tension, flow, just letting whatever's there float in awareness. A gentle, intimate presence,

letting the hands rest in an easy and effortless way. Now explore softening the hands and then softening again. What do you notice as you feel from the inside out, receptive to the aliveness? Perhaps sensing how the more you relax, the more the attention becomes intimate, receptive, and the more aliveness we experience. Letting there be an openness to the chest. and visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the heart and noticing how that can make space for whatsoever is here,

sensing the felt spaciousness of a smile, the inclusiveness, the friendliness, letting this next breath be received now in a softening belly, this breath, and now this one, and again, you might visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the belly, and with it that spacious, gentle presence that allows life to be just as it is, an intimate presence, letting the pelvic region fill with awareness. And again, bringing that image and felt sense of a smile,

letting it spread through the pelvic region. Again, noticing how that creates space, a gentle, open space for the life that's right here. Feeling the legs, the length, volume, the weight, feeling the feet from the inside out. So that as you relax the feet, you might receive the sensations there. widening the lens to feel the whole body simultaneously as a field of energy of aliveness.

That same intimate, allowing presence, letting life be just as it is, not stopping anything or opposing anything, including not only sensations but the dance of sound, the comings and goings of sound and the space around you, the most distant sounds you can perceive. a spacious, gentle presence, listening to, feeling, receiving, the changing experience of life. At some point, you'll notice the mind has drifted, leaving this open, receptive presence, entering into the narrowness of thought. The pathway back is to simply relax open listening again, reawaken the senses, listening to sounds, perhaps reawakening in the body, softening where there's tension, and bringing that intimate presence to receive sensations,

the shoulders, the hands, the belly, and feeling the movement of the breath, and perhaps feeling the moods of the heart. As you continue bringing, a relaxed and kind attention to the changing experience moment to moment. To steady your attention, it can help to rest with the breath. When something arises that's asking for your attention, perhaps something that's either unpleasant physically or emotionally, are extremely pleasant. and letting go of the breath and opening to the wave that's right here, saying yes to it, discovering the freedom of letting the life that's here be fully here with kindness. Letting it come, letting it go.

You can begin fresh in any moment, finding your pathway back to a spacious quality of presence. and heart, noticing the sounds, listening, opening to the aliveness in the body, relaxing your heart, perhaps smiling again into the heart, and opening with gentleness to whatever's here. Our freedom comes from saying yes to whatever arises in the moment, letting it belong here, like a wave in the ocean. And sensing that open-hearted space of awareness, the ocean of awareness, that has room for what's here.

Again and again, waking up from thoughts, opening into this heart space. You might sense this heart space is vast and edgeless, that you can experience the whole world from this boundless, tender presence. I'd like to close with a few lines from the poet Dana Falls. The ruthless mind may dig to find what's lacking, but we are the love we long for.

We are the love we long for. No end and no beginning. Bigger than our deepest fear, fresh and clear in every moment. It's love that makes us whole.