Tara Brach - Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence (2020-11-04)

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence (2020-11-04) - This meditation guides us to rest in the aliveness of the changing stream of sensations, sounds and feelings. As we open to the awareness that includes all life, we touch the peace, stillness and wakefulness that is our essence. We close with Wendell Berry's beautiful poem, "The Peace of Wild Things."  

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Take a few moments to set yourself in whatever position you'd like to be in for the next, oh, 20 minutes or so for practicing. And as you're ready to close your eyes, and with your eyes closed, feel that kind of a rive. or settling, just notice your attention coming right here into the moment. Let yourself be at home

in the moment as a way of supporting that. We'll do a little breathing together, some long, deep breaths. So extending the in breath, breathing in, and you might count to four or five as you do, filling the chest and the lungs, gliding right into the out breath, counting. to four or five, a slow, smooth release, inhaling again, filling the chest in the lungs, counting to four or five. And then that slow out breath and sense a letting go as you breathe out, relaxing outward, releasing. And again, the in-breath counting to four or five. And a slow, smooth out breath letting go letting go again breathing in long and deep exhaling slowly see if you can soften down the length of the body as you release the

breath and then allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm observing feeling the breath noticing the quality of presence that has begun to emerge. This presence can grow as you scan through the body now, relaxing and opening. You might let the eyes be soft and sense the brow smooth, just feeling the tingling and vibrating in the area of the eyes, perhaps a flicker of light and darkness, bringing a slight smile to the lips and sense a smile in the inside of the mouth, opening to the sensations in the mouth, and the mouth, the teeth, the gums, the tongue. Let the awareness spread through the face, relaxing all those little micro muscles that we use to maintain an expression, aware of the scalp, the skull,

and sensing the volume and the weight of the head, and allowing the shoulders to relax back and down some. And then let the awareness fill your shoulders. And if there's tightness or tension there, you might imagine and sense that it can float in awareness. It can naturally soften, untangle in awareness. Let the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way. And notice what happens when you soften the hands and soften again. Just feel from the inside out the life that's here. A receptive presence.

letting there be an openness to the chest, letting the awareness fill the region of the heart. You might smile into the heart, visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the heart. It helps to connect you with the heart space that has room for what's here. Receptive presence, feeling the life in the region of the heart, and become aware of the breath.

And see if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly, deep in the torso. This breath, and again this one, and again, continuing to let the belly be soft, a receptive presence, feeling the life deep in the abdominal area, down through the pelvic region, where of the legs, the length, the volume, the weight, let the awareness fill the feet. See if you can sense the tingling, the vibrating, and now widening the attention. So you can feel all the sensations through the body at once.

A field of sensation. Sense the possibility of letting everything be just as it is. This whole changing dance of tingling and vibrating. heat or cool, tightness or flow, space, density, weight, lightness. Just sensing the wildness and the mystery of this aliveness, all received with a very open presence. You might include the sounds that are here, the closin sounds, receptive, listening, listening in a global way, letting the sounds wash through. Symphony of sound, the dance of sensation,

this ever creative living experience moment to moment, received in an open, receptive, receptive presence. And know that when the mind drifts, which it will, into thoughts, memories, plans, worries, that your practice can simply be to pause, to notice that, and to choose to re-arrive, to relax back, listening, perhaps relaxing again in the body

and feeling the aliveness of sensation, resting in that open, still, awake awareness, that this changing flow is moving through. Each time you realize you've been often a kind of trance, thoughts about the world, reactive emotions. It's an opportunity to deepen the pathway back home, to get more familiar with it. This is true in meditation, formally, and in daily life.

So gently arrive back again, relax back. You might purposely scan the body and see what wants to let go a little right now. Maybe the shoulders can soften or the hands. Maybe you can loosen the belly a bit and let the breath come deep into the torso. Maybe you can relax your heart. Again listening to and feeling the changing flow that's right here, taking refuge in presence. We'll close our meditation together with the words of Wendell Berry, his poem, The Peace of Wild Things. When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood Drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feet, I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free. So for these last few moments, sensing that inner stillness, that presence that's receiving the moment.