Tara Brach - Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness (16:06 min)

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Our habit is to try to manage our experience from a mental control tower. This meditation awakens us through the body, and then invites us to rest in that vast presence that includes the changing flow of life. When we inhabit that openness, there's a natural arising of peace, wakefulness and tenderness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Please be aware of your body sitting here, breathing. We'll take some moments to scan down through the body, relaxing and waking up from the inside out. You might feel the region of the eyes, softening the eyes,

letting the brow be smooth, just feel the aliveness, the tingling and vibrating, perhaps a sense of darkness and light to the lids. Let your senses be awake, letting the jaw be unhinged, the tongue filling, the lower jaw. Relax down to the root of the tongue. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth,

a smile in the inside of the jaw, inside of the mouth, receiving the sensations in the region of the mouth, the dumbs, the teeth, the tongue, the lips, letting the shoulders all away from the neck, allowing the shoulders to be filled with awareness so that whatever you feel inside, whether it's a tightness or twisting or pressure, whatever's there, not, just letting it float in awareness. Loose and loosely. You might sense a gradual dissolving and a movement of sensation.

Sometimes it's like ice to water. I'm melting. Just letting the light of awareness do the work. Ice to water. Water to gas. Let us sing if you can sense more space inside the shoulders. Space and aliveness.

Let the hands rest in a... rest in an easy and effortless way, softening the hands. Again, feeling the hands filled with awareness, receiving the aliveness of tingling and vibrating, and also the space that it's happening in, let there be an openness to the chest, and feel the whole region of the heart, filled with awareness, again receiving the sensations of aliveness, sensing the interior space that they arise from and that they're happening in, scanning down and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath, and now this one, and again, doing the region of the belly, letting sensations be received by awareness, the tingling, pressure, vibrating, squeeze, flow,

whatever's there, sensing the space it's happening in, the interior space that it rises from, space and aliveness, standing down into the region of the pelvic area that you can feel again filled with awareness. receiving sensation, sensing the space sensations are happening in, the interior space they arise from aliveness and space in the pelvic region, sensing around you and beneath you the aliveness and space of Earth. This body is part of that energetic expression so that this whole body can be experienced.

as a field of sensation, including an awareness, the appearing and disappearing of sounds. So you're listening not just with your ears, but your whole awareness, listening to and feeling the whole moment with awareness. Continue to sense in the foreground, the changing dance of sensations, feelings, sounds. We're in the background of this alert, inner stillness, the awake space that everything's happening in, arising from, dissolving into, noticing the quality of presence, it's right here, that sense of heerness, open, wakefulness, receiving the changing, play of sensation, sound, that the mind feels very activated, going off into a lot of thoughts.

And if it's helpful to keep in the foreground, a sense of the breath moving in and out, just steady the mind. Please feel free. Or for some, the anchor or home base might be sounds. Or the sensations of the whole body sitting here. Let your practice be simply, noticing when the mind's drifted.

When you do notice a relaxing back, relaxing back to just listen again to the sounds that are actually here, the feel the sensations, the aliveness that's here, listening to and feeling the moment-to-moment experience, resting in that vast background of presence of awareness that's your true home. If the mind is drifted, you might appreciate this as a moment of awakening,

of relaxing back home again. And simply listen, listen to the sounds that are right here. See what might want to let go a little in the body. This receives sensations, feelings, relaxing the heart. So again, you're listening. listening to and feeling this moment, the whole moment, with an awake presence. And as you and this formal part of the meditation

invite you to explore bringing forward this awake presence, receptive presence, that awareness that recognizes the sounds and sensations sensations and feelings and the aliveness that's here, just to bring that into what's next. As you move out of the still sitting posture, as you open your eyes, as you re-engage,

to let there be a continuity in presence. It's a great gift to your life.