Tara Brach - Meditation: Opening to the Sea of Presence

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Meditation: Opening to the Sea of Presence - When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Beginning by being aware of your breath and extending the in-brath so you can really fill your chest and lungs, nice deep, full in-breadth, and then a slow-out breath, slowly enough so you can feel the sensations of letting go. And again, a full deep in-breath and a slow output.

Letting go. Letting go. Letting go. And once again, inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly, softening down the length of your body as you exhale. Feel the sensations of letting go. And then notice as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm, feelings of relax. Feelings of relaxing with the inflow, relaxing open, and relaxing with the outflow, letting go. Be aware of the increased quality of presence, witnessing this breathing body.

The presence can deepen as you intentionally release areas of tightness and holding. You might feel the region of the eyes and see if you can soften, let the brow be smooth, sensing the eyes as orbs floating in pools of water, perhaps letting a sense of a smile spread through the eyes. Outside, corners of the eyes up, feeling a slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. The jaw relaxed.

See if you can feel down to the root of your tongue, relaxing, loosening, letting the shoulders fall away from the neck, from the neck and then bringing a very soft attention inside the shoulders. This feel from the inside out whatever tension or tightness might be there. And sense that you can let it float in awareness in space. Noticing that just offering awareness gives the space it's needed for tension to begin to untangle.

Let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way. And bring the awareness inside the hands, softening the hands, and noticing the aliveness that's inside the hands, tingling, vibrating, and the space it's happening in. Let there be an openness to the chest. And again, bring the awareness inside the chest, inside the heart.

And just notice the play of sensations there. sensing you can let this whole play of sensations float in space, feeling down into the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and this one, and again bringing the whole awareness inside the belly, feeling the sensations there, imagining and sensing those sensations, unfolding, moving, dancing in the space of awareness. In the same way letting the awareness fill the whole pelvic region, feeling the life that's there and letting this dance of life play in the space of awareness. Just as you soften the hands, you might soften the feet area.

Feel your contact with the floor, the ground. Feel the life inside the feet. Space, sensation, tingling, vibrating. And then opening the lens of awareness, the lens of your attention, to feel this whole energy body simultaneously. This relax, open, aware of this field of sensation. But everything happened, not opposing anything. not resisting, just be the relaxed openness that life is playing through in this open presence

aware of the arising and passing of sound, taking everything in evenly, not just with the ears but with the whole awareness, sound, sensation, feeling, all like waves in the foreground, and in the background, this vast openness, luminous with awareness. You'll notice at some point that the attention has drifted from this very dynamic open presence, gone off on a train of thought into the future or the past. So what makes meditation of practice is that when this happens, we just intentionally notice that. and choose to arrive again right here without judgment, just bringing our interest, a gentleness,

right here. You can even mentally whisper the word here and just sense the quality of heerness, senses awake, including the play of sound, including the play of sensation, feelings. You might feel the movement of the breath, like waves on the surface of the sea and in the background that alert inner stillness, that vast presence.

It's really the subjective essence of what we are. Formless presence. You might notice where your attention is. And if you've been often the trance of thinking that in a virtual reality, rather than judgment, just get interested. pausing, reopening the awareness to what's right here, relaxing open and relaxing back. You can feel this body breathing, relax if there are areas that have habitually retitened, recontracted.

Arriving again with your senses awake, aware of the ways of sound and sensation, feelings, breath, aware of the background, this open sea of awareness, so you can witness these changing waves with a real quality of presence of allowing and tenderness.