Tara Brach - Meditation: Natural, Open Awareness (2018-07-11)

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

Meditation: Natural, Open Awareness (2018-07-11) - When we are stressed, our attention narrows and fixates, often into obsessive thinking, worry and judgment. This meditation relaxes and opens the mind, first by a body scan and a "smile down," and then by including all changing experience in a spacious awareness. As our attention shifts from mind objects like sensation and sound to the space of awareness itself, we discover the Beingness that is our formless home.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. In the stillness, you might fill your heart and mind with the quality of kindness by visually seeing the image of a smile. Perhaps imagine a smile spreading through the whole sky. Imagine a great blue sky filled with the curve of a smile.

Imagine your mind merging with that sky, so your mind is filled with the brightness and the uplift of a smile. Softening the eyes, imagining the eyes smiling, floating in that great sky of mind. A slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. And so your continents can help to sense the possibility of relaxing through the whole face. Receptive, light, open. Let the tongue relax so that you can feel it spreading through the lower palate.

Relaxing right down to the root of the tongue. Notice how the mouth might fill with sensation. Tongues, gums, teeth, lips. sensing the throat filling the neck, a smile spreading through the throat, aware of the sensations from the inside out, allowing the shoulders to relax back and down a little, feeling from the inside out the shoulders, allowing whatever knots or tension that might be there to float in awareness. Let the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way. As you soften the hands, you might notice from the inside out what the sensations are like.

Soughing more. Intimate attention inside out in the hands. The eyes still soft, smiling, the mouth smiling, letting a smile spread through the heart so you can visualize and feel that from the inside out, making space for what's here. Letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath, and now this breath. And again, you might visualize and sense of smile spreading through the belly, very receptive and open to the life, the energy that's there. And still soft, slight smile at the mouth, continuing to scan down, letting that image and the felt sense of a smile spread through the people. pelvic region receptive to the energy and aliveness there.

Belly still soft, hands still soft, eyes still soft. Aware of the legs, the length and volume. So you're feeling from the inside out. Right down to the feet and the pressure, the warmth, the temperature, the warmth, the temperature, and the aliveness inside the feet. and belly still soft hands still soft eyes soft

and widening the attention so you can feel sensations throughout the body a field of sensation simultaneously a soft open attention letting everything happen including the sounds

that are in the space right here and the most distant sounds you detect. Sensing the edgeless space, the awareness that includes this whole field of sensation and sound, be the awareness that's listening to, receiving, feeling the moment. Utterly awake senses wide open, literally open, non-fixating awareness. just letting everything happen. And for some it'll stabilize this open presence if you have a very receptive light,

attention to the breath in the foreground, listening to and feeling the movement of the breath. For others, just resting as awareness, aware of the changing sound, sensation, the breathing, moods. And if you notice the mind has contracted into a train of thought, time traveling, in that trance of thinking, it's so natural. Awareness starts to notice thinking. You can even mentally note thinking, thinking.

It's a virtual reality. Gently reopen the senses. to the sounds that are right here. Softening where it's tight, the eyes, hands, the belly, the heart. Resting in open awareness, including the whole changing flow moment to moment. Noticing if there's a veil of thinking between you and really resting in reality. With whatever is seen, just explore what happens, letting go again. relaxing the grip unhooking from thoughts, just noticing and relaxing back into what is right here.

And as a way of closing, the sitting, gently bringing the attention to the heart, feeling the breath there, and sensing your intention, your aspiration as you enter these next moments, what we call informal, meditation, bringing your presence, your heart into your life. Namaste and thank you.