Tara Brach - Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

We spend great swaths of time in a trance that removes us from awareness of our body and senses. This meditation reconnects us by scanning through the body, including sounds and then resting in the field of awareness and aliveness. We practice relaxing and gently arriving again when thoughts carry us away; learning the pathway home to living presence.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As you come into stillness, become aware of this body sitting here breathing. And sense the movement of the breath of the heart, as if you could be breathing in and out of the heart. We begin in a simple way, sensing our intention, what really brings you here to meditate, to gather as community, whether it's geographically right here, or more of a, in the field, in the cloud community. just feel what draws you to practice to this path of presence of heart. What's your intention right now for this sitting, for this time together?

What really matters to you? Listening inward to where you feel most sincere. Imagining an open blue sky, extending in all directions, and sensing that sky, filled with the curve of a smile, that kind of upliftment, that receptivity. And imagine your mind merging with that sky. So your mind is filled with that smile, with the feeling and the sense and the image of that smile.

And I sense the same image and felt sense of a smile spreading through the eyes. The outer corners lifted a little, the eyes soft, the brow smooth. And notice the aliveness in the whole region of the brow as you relax and sense the space of a smile. Allow a slight smile spread on the lips and feel that smile of the inside of your mouth, relaxing the tongue right down to the root. You sense how the image and sense of a smile allows the mouth to fill with a liveliness. Gums, teeth, tongue, lips.

Allow the shoulders to fall away from the neck since these shoulders is filled with awareness. So you feel them from the inside, letting whatever tightness or tension is there float. And notice from the inside out what movement you can detect. Perhaps you can begin to sense a bit of dissolving, a little bit of melting like ice to water, water to gas, feeling the aliveness in space inside the shoulders.

Now see if you can sense the length and volume of the arms. And can you feel inside the arms, sensing aliveness, movement, tingling, vibrating, sensing the energy flowing into the hands, now softening the hands and softening again and even again, become aware from the inside out of the aliveness in the hands. Can you notice some pulsing, tingling and vibrating? Just as a cup can be filled with water, this whole body can be filled with awareness. The direct experience of aliveness. You might sense an openness of the chest, smiling into the heart.

Again, that image and felt sense of a smile, still smiling a bit at the mouth. Eyes are soft. And feeling the heart from the inside out, sensing the space to connect with whatever's there, tension or tightness or flow, relaxing down the torso, again bringing the image and the felt sense of a smile, the curve of a smile to the belly. Let this next breath be felt in a softening belly, received in a softening belly right now, this breath. And again, and again. Let the abdominal area be filled with awareness, feeling the aliveness, the play of sensation,

the energy that's there. Letting that curve of a smile that felt sense spread through the pelvic region. that receptivity, sensing aliveness, letting the life express, aware of the legs, and see if you can sense the length and volume of the legs, energy and aliveness in the legs and flowing into the feet. Can you feel the sensations tingling, vibrating in the feet, and widening the lens, feeling simultaneously this whole body as a field of sensation, as patterns of aliveness, vibration, tingling, energy. To let go means to let everything happen,

letting life live through you, unopposed, expressing freely, including in this field of aliveness the play of sound, dancing this whole dance of sound and feelings, sensations, playing out in open, vast awareness. This changing flow of aliveness is like a home base. It's a portal to presence. Letting you know you're here. You might feel the whole play of sound, sensations, feelings. Or for some resting, more particularly,

the flow, the inflow and outflow of the breath might be helpful, or just sound, having a home base so that when the mind drifts, which it quite naturally does for all of us, into ideas, thoughts, memories, planning, worrying. There's a remembrance, oh, okay, this is thinking. And we can gently relax back to this living field. connecting with aliveness and awareness, continuing moment to moment, coming back from thoughts, arriving right here. And if this hereness has some difficult energies to it, unpleasant, fear, sorrow, tightness,

ache, then bring a quality of kindness and you're breathing with what's here. here, allowing it to be here, allowing it to change, saying yes to aliveness, moment to moment. If you notice the mind has drifted, then this is a good time to practice the pathway home. If you come back with kind of judgment, like something's wrong, that's what you see the next moment with, but if instead you come back into your senses with a gentleness, kind of interest, friendliness, then that's what you seed your next moments with. So land gently in this next in breath or out breath. You can re-relax to open to the aliveness that's here by maybe softening the shoulders

a little and the hands. Sensing that half smile, the mouth, smiling into the heart, relaxing the heart. This whole body can be filled with awareness and aliveness. Let your refuge be this living presence right here. We close by bringing the attention to the heart, feeling the breath as if you're breathing in, and out of the heart with a listening attention, sensing the state of your heart right now.

It might be numb, it might be raw, it might feel tender, might feel fearful, just an honest listening, letting the heart be filled with the aliveness of presence, a listening, a listening living presence. And as we end together, sense what your heart's intention is. As you move into these next moments, into the rest of your day, into the rest of your life,

your heart's intention.