Tara Brach - Meditation: Morning on Retreat (2018-05-01)

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Meditation: Morning on Retreat (2018-05-01) - In this guided meditation we include an overview of different components of mindfulness practice. The reflection includes a body scan, establishing a home base for attention, and care in how to arrive in full presence after being lost in thought. We then explore opening mindfully to different experiences and the simple and liberating practice of "being here," letting life be just as it is.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. This part of settling in this morning, you might take a moment to reflect on your intention to sense this called to choose presence, to sense the intention for kindness, and beginning with our,

body as the domain of waking up awareness, kindness. You might at first sense a great sky around you and let that be filled with the curve of a smile, just visualizing that curve and sensing it's spreading in a receptive, alive, awake way through the sky, letting that descend and fill the whole mind with a smile, opening the mind, letting it be bright, warm, and sensing the mind and the sky merging. So you can really feel that openness that we lose track of when we're in our thoughts, that smiling, great open sky of mind. and letting the energy of that spread through the eyes, through the brow.

You might intentionally soften that area. You might feel the eyelids flickering a bit. Invite the brow to be smooth. And sense the mood, the atmosphere of a smile, and the receptivity to the sensations. You can bring that receptivity through the face by slightly smiling at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. This is a way of waking up metter, loving kindness through the body,

sensing the receptivity, sensations through the face, the inside of the mouth, you might let the tongue fill the lower palate, relax down to the root of the tongue, feel the aliveness and ease that fills the mouth. the tongue, the gums, the teeth, sensing the curve, the smile at the throat. It's usually a lot of tightening in the throat when there's tension, so just the smile makes room for that, can bring our awareness to that and help to dissolve.

The curve, the smile at the heart, letting it spread through the heart. Really contact the aliveness that's there. Intimate presence right here. See if it's possible to look at the heart. the shoulders relax back and down a bit and let that awake, receptive awareness fill the shoulders. It's noticing what's actually right here. Sensing if it's possible for whatever knots or tension might be in the shoulders to float so you can start sensing the space that's there in the shoulders and the movement of energy. You might feel the energy that moves through the arms.

right down into the hands, palms, thumbs, fingers. See if you can inhabit your hands with awareness. Softening and feeling from the inside out. Perhaps you can notice the tingling and vibrating and also the space that's happening in. The interior space that it's arising from. Living to be an openness to the chest, scanning down, sensing the belly,

See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again, letting the belly be filled with awareness, inhabiting the belly so you can feel the sides of your body, the front, the back, and the whole volume of space from the inside out. In the same way, letting awareness inhabit fully the pelvic region. receptive to the aliveness that's there, sensing the space, the spaciousness with sensations arising and perhaps sensing the interior space that they appear out of. It's like subatomic particles just appearing from emptiness, dissolving into emptiness.

You might sense if you can receive the movement of energy moving through the legs, sensing the volume of the legs, the space that's happening in, right down into the feet, tingling in aliveness, widening the lens, allowing this whole field of sensation to be experienced at once, not opposing or stopping anything. And sensing the movement of energy, tingling, pulsing, vibrating, cool, warm, perhaps pleasant, unpleasant, letting it all live through you. So you're sensing the aliveness and also the space that's happening in, the interior space it arises from, including in this field of aliveness, the play of sound, ever-changing symphony.

Sounds appearing and dissolving. Nothing to do. Listening not just. with your ears, but with whole awareness, listening to the sounds and the space that's happening in, sensations, feelings, appearing and disappearing in the foreground and in the background, this open wakefulness, see of awareness, that moment to moment experiences what's happening, listening to and feeling the moment-to-moment experience. You might sense the quality of heerness right here. You might also sense the more you relax back into this heerness, this wakeful openness, senses wide awake, more vivid and immediate, resting in the presence that your true home.

In not too long there'll be an awareness that you're no longer. you're no longer resting in presence, that there's thinking, commenting, planning, drifting. And then as we've been exploring the real freedom in our practice, because the noticing will happen is the relaxing open again, rediscovering the presence that's here. you realize you've been lost to reopen or reawaken the senses by noticing, oh, so what are the sounds right this moment? Listening, sensing the space that's here, taking your time to perhaps relax a bit in the body.

See you again, receiving the aliveness, the sensations, they're actually here, relaxing the heart, and listening to and feeling the moment-to-moment experience. And as a way to further stabilize the mind in this presence, we sense whatever anchor or home base helps us to be here. Perhaps listening to and feeling the movement of the breath in an intimate way. Or the field of bodily sensations or sound. Know that you're right here. sense the possibility of relaxing with what's happening.

Inquire right now, am I dreaming? Is there something between me and presence? Often thinking is like a veil that's quite subtle, a background commentary, and we're kind of lulled into thinking we're here, but it's actually between us and the more vivid aliveness, of reality.

Sometimes thoughts are much more obvious, and when we wake up a bit, we notice, oh, okay, totally off in the storyline. Either way, a crucial part of waking up from the trance is becoming aware of the difference between any thought and the immediacy and aliveness of this changing flow right here.

It can be really powerful to, when you first notice thinking, to open your senses, listening, feeling, and then recollect mindfully the thought, the thinking, and sense the difference between being inside any thought and the vividness, the mystery, the realness of what's right here. It can be helpful to note thinking for some to really sense the difference between virtual and real.

It could be a very light note, oh, thinking, thinking. Or it may be that you have some distinctive content to your thoughts and you kind of note that about planning, worrying, fantasizing. It's also helpful to become aware of really the process of the thought, the kind of expression of it or modality. It might be that it's like seeing little images or hearing sound bites. It might be like a movie. Really getting to know, ah, this is thinking.

And then, oh, hear again. right here. As you relax open out of the thought, it's not necessarily pleasant. You know, presence doesn't mean pleasantness. And yet as we open to the what's here, we discover the space, the tenderness, the quality of beingness that really is freedom. The final word as you deepen attention to awakening from the trance of thinking, not to make it an enemy. It's just part of things. It belongs.

And when you're not inside the cloud, as if you're in an airplane, you can see it as a cloud and there's no judgment. So, when you wake up, just to plant that seed of accepting, letting it belong, of kindness, and if each time you wake up from thoughts and open up your senses and come back in a... friendly way, that's the seed you're planting into the present right now. If you come back and there's a sense of the carryover of unpleasantness because all thoughts

have a correlation in the body, you're having thoughts that are worried thoughts, there's going to be some roots. If you wake up out of thinking and there's a sense of tightness or discomfort or unpleasantness, then rather than coming back to your anchor, sense what's in your body that's calling your attention, open to the roots of the thoughts that are in the body, just as we've been exploring with that acceptance and interest and kindness. And if you find nothing's calling you and letting the breath help to stabilize you right here and now, senses wide awake, moment to moment, relaxes.

with what's here, noticing, am I dreaming, opening the sense doors, listening, seeing what might relax in the body, waking up to sensations, feelings. You might explore these last couple of minutes, letting go of any active controlling or directing of the meditation. senses wide open, letting life be just as it is, utterly awake, senses wide open, completely open, letting life be just as it is. In closing inquiry, if there's nothing to do, no problem to solve. What's here?