Tara Brach - Meditation: Refuge in Sacred Presence (2020-04-15)

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Meditation: Refuge in Sacred Presence (2020-04-15) - Our experience includes a foreground of changing experience - sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts. In the background is an alert inner stillness, the awareness that is our true nature. This meditation guides us in opening to the moment-to-moment flow through our senses, and learning to relax back to inhabit the mystery and vastness of awake awareness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The title of this meditation is Refuge in Sacred Presence. And we begin in a simple way, if you will, just to feel your heart, perhaps breathe in and out of the heart, letting the breath touch the heart. and as you listen inwardly, sense what your intention is for this sitting, for this practice. Perhaps it's for presence.

It might be to open your heart, to touch some peace, whatever you feel sincere about. Just to honor that, you might inwardly bow to your own aspiration. May it be so. Then aware of this body sitting here, breathing. You might begin extending the in-breath to a count of five, breathing in and filling the chest and the lungs. Nice, deep in-breath. And to a count of five, exhaling, a slow out-breath, relaxing, releasing, and letting go. And again, inhaling deeply to the count of five, filling the chest and lungs, and a slow, smooth out-breath.

releasing, relaxing outward, letting go. And again, inhaling deeply to the count of five, and exhaling to the count of five. Inhaling to the count of five, exhaling to the count of five, letting go with the out breath, relaxing outward, and then allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm,

noticing the quality of presence that's right here. And we deepen that presence as we scan gently through the body, relaxing and opening, beginning with the region of the brow, softening your eyes. You might smile into the eyes, sensing the outer corners of the eyes lifted a bit. The eyes are soft, the brow is smooth,

aware of the tingling and vibrating in that region, perhaps the flickering of darkness and light at the lids, being a slight smile to the lips, sensing the inside of the mouth smiling, relaxing the tongue right down to the root, and then opening to the sensations that fill the mouth, the tongue, gums, teeth, the lips, letting that receptivity to sensations spread through the face, the scalp, the skull,

and then becoming aware of the throat, letting the throat fill the neck. You might visualize and have the felt sense of a smile spreading through the throat, the neck, helping you to find the space for whatever sensations are there. Receptive presence. You might invite your shoulders to relax back and down a bit, and then let the shoulders fill with awareness. See if you can feel from the inside out, whatever movement of energy is there.

And if there's tightness, tension, to sense you can let it float in awareness in its own way to untangle, to loosen, perhaps sensing that movement of ice to water, the dissolving, and then water to gas, the air of the sensations that move through the arms, letting your hands rest in a very easy and effortless way, and softening the hands,

softening again and then again, feeling from the inside out. Can you feel the vibrating, perhaps the pulsing, tingling, can be filled with water. This whole body can be filled with awareness. Awareness and aliveness. Let there be an openness to the chest, filling the awareness, feeling it through the heart area, feeling from the inside out the heart. And you might explore smiling into the heart, visualizing

and having the felt sense of a smile spreading through the heart area, sensing how that can create more space for whatever emotions, sensations, energy is here. Scanning into the belly and you might soften the belly,

soften again, feel the breath received deep in the torso as you soften your belly. And again, you can visual visualize and sense that curve of a smile in the belly, helping to create space for the aliveness that's right here, continuing to soften the belly and feel from the inside out the energy, emotion, sensation in that region, bringing the awareness into the pelvic region, again opening to feel the aliveness that's there, receptive presence, legs from the inside,

out, feeling right down into the feet, aware of the pressure, weight, places of contact, warmth. And then from the inside out, the tingling and the vibrating in the feet. And then widening the attention so you can feel simultaneously this whole field of bodily sensation. Letting the intention be to let life be just as it is. including in this awake awareness, the appearing and disappearing of sound. These words, the spaces between words, background sounds and the space that you're in, perhaps the most distant sounds you can detect,

arising and passing through a vast awareness, a vast receptive presence. So you're listening to and feeling the whole moment in the four-grising, In the foreground, changing stream of sound, sensation, emotion, aliveness. And in the background, an alert, inner stillness. Be that stillness that's aware of the changing experience. resting in that sacred presence that includes this whole changing flow of experience. And if it helps to keep a gentle resting in the breath, the foreground, the inflow, an outflow of the breath as a kind of portal, a way to have a steadiness, a stability in presence,

then let the breath be your anchor at some sort of a steadiness. point there'll be a noticing that there's no longer a resting in presence. The mind has gotten distracted, time traveled into the past to the future. And the power of the pathway back is all to do with not judging, but rather just noticing, oh, mind is drifted and with interest and kindness, choosing to relax back into presence. Be aware of the sounds that are right here instead of the sounds of the thoughts in your mind. Listen. Gently scan the body again, perhaps releasing tightness that accumulates so quickly in the shoulders,

softening a little. Relaxing the hands, softening your belly, relaxing your heart. Again, feeling the aliveness. through the body, listening to and feeling the whole moment, sensations, feelings in the foreground, and in the background, that alert inner stillness, it's the silence that's listening, openness that includes the life that's coming and going, resting in presence, the center of now. for these last few moments, letting go of any effort, just letting life be just as it is. I'm sensing the quality of the awareness that's right here, open, tender, and awake, just resting in that.

The light of your own awareness. The poet Mary Oliver writes, I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery, that the light is everything, that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading, and I do.