Tara Brach - Meditation: Relaxing into Awake Awareness (2019-10-02)

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Meditation: Relaxing into Awake Awareness - We realize our true nature by relaxing back into what is always, already here. Starting by scanning and opening through the body, we explore resting in the awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all of life. The guidance is, when we recognize thoughts, to simply relax back, and allow life to be just as it is. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. In the stillness, you might begin by sweeping through the body with your awareness and noticing if there's any areas of obvious tension or tightness. It takes some moments to see what might want to let go a little and with a mindful awareness sweeping more slowly through the body, you might soften your eyes and sensing that you can smile into your eyes, letting the outer corners be lifted a bit, and let the brow be smooth

and feel the sensations of aliveness that come into awareness as you relax that region. In a similar way you can bring a slight smile to the mouth. Let the inside of the mouth smile. See if you can relax your tongue, feel down to the root of the tongue relaxing. And notice the sensations that come alive in the lips, tongue, gum, teeth as you relax that area. Let yourself be aware of the sensations and the scalp and skull, the back of the head and the neck. You might sense the throat filling the neck and allowing the shoulders to relax back

and down. Let the awareness fill the shoulders you can feel from the inside out the movement of energy, the aliveness that's there. Let the awareness spread down the arms so you feel the energy that flows in and out of the hands and softening the hands and see if you can soften again and feel the energy And feel from the inside out the aliveness that becomes available as you soften. You might feel the aliveness inside the thumbs, the space and aliveness inside the thumbs, the aliveness inside the forefinger, the space and aliveness there.

And can you feel the aliveness and space in the bones and flesh of those fingers and between those fingers. Can you feel the aliveness in the middle finger? Space and aliveness inside the finger. And softening the ring finger, feeling the space and aliveness inside that finger. And the small finger, the pinky, softened. Feeling the space and aliveness there. And feeling the space and aliveness between the fingers. And feeling the space and aliveness between the palms and the backs of the hands, the intimate presence. And just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body can be filled with that intimate presence, that awareness.

The eyes are still soft, smiling, slight smile at the mouth, the hands soft and alive. You might smile into the heart, letting the curve and the feeling of a smile spread through the chest. This is to help you have the space for anything that's right here, feeling the region of the heart so you can feel the aliveness, the mood, the space that's there. The eyes are soft and smiling, the mouth, the heart. You might imagine and feel the curve of a smile for the belly, softening, opening. Letting this next breath be resched. received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again and again.

Feeling the space and aliveness that fills the whole abdominal region and letting that awake presence extend downward through the pelvic region. Again you might imagine and feel that sense of a smile and feel the aliveness and space that's there. From the inside out, aware of the legs, their length and volume. I'm feeling the feet from the inside, tingling, vibrating, sensing the rootedness, part of this earth, this whole huge, vast field of energy, letting it flow up through your body, filling every cell, the spaces between the cells, relaxing back and letting this aliveness totally live through you, vibrating, tingling.

There may be light, darkness, tightness, flow, just letting it all happen, including in the field of awareness, the arising of sound, disappearing of sound, relaxing back, resting, back, resting in the awareness that includes sound and sensation, space and aliveness, letting everything be just as it is. You might sense a witnessing of what's happening and relax back again and sense the awareness that's aware of the witnessing, wakeful openness. And before too long there's the natural rising of thoughts and get to the awareness. and getting lost in them, ideas about the future or the past, commentary, kind of virtual reality.

And the practice is just to notice when you become aware of thoughts, simply relax back again. Just notice the difference between being inside the thought and this mysterious, changing, living, Reality right here. It helps to stay connected to presence with the breath. You might rest with the inflow and outflow of the breath as a way just to keep a steadiness, a continuity of attention, unhooking from thoughts and receiving whatever's right here with interest, friendliness, aware of the sounds and sensations. aware of witnessing the sounds and the sensations,

just relaxing back and resting in awake awareness, letting life be just as it is, moment to moment. These last few moments you might sense that you're not meditating, awareness is meditating. Everything's happening in the space of awareness. Awareness is aware of the changing sense. of the changing sound and sensations. Awareness is aware of the light of its own presence.

It's a way of closing you might sense this awake awareness in the region of the heart. From that heart space, sensing whatever prayer you'd like to offer to yourself, whatever wish for your own well-being arises naturally. And from that heart space you might sense your care holding all beings and sense your prayer for all of life.