Tara Brach - Meditation: Resting in Awake Awareness

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

Meditation: Resting in Awake Awareness - This practice opens with a body scan, employing the image and felt sense of a smile to awaken awareness through the body. We then open to all the senses, and rest in the awareness that includes this changing life.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. And the direct ways of waking up presence is by relaxing and bringing the attention fully into the body. Sometimes the image or visualization of a smile can help us do that. You might imagine a great sky around you extending in all directions and sense the curve of a smile spreading through and suspended in that great open sky just to visualize that, that receptivity and openness of a smile and then let that curve, that smile descend to spread

through the eyes so the outer corners of your eyes are lifted slightly. The brow is smooth, the eyes are soft. Notice the sensations that you become aware of. The eyes are smiling, letting a light smile spread through the lips and even feel the inside of the mouth smiling. Let the tongue fill the lower palate. down to the root of the tongue. Notice what sensations you become aware of in the mouth.

You might allow the shoulders to relax back and down a little, letting the shoulders fill with awareness so you can feel them from the inside out. You might imagine a kind of dissolving or melting from ice to water, then water to gas. noticing the sensations you become aware of inside the shoulders. Check and see if the hands can rest very easily, softly, effortlessly, feeling the hands from the inside out. And as you soften the hands again and again, notice what sensations you become aware of inside the hands.

The eyes are soft, smiling. the mouth, relaxed, slight smile there. You might visualize and sense a smile spreading through the heart and chest area, that curve and receptivity of a smile, not to cover over but to enhance your sensitivity, allowing whatever's there to be there, and noticing the sensations or feelings that you're aware of in the area of the heart,

perhaps slightly lengthening the breath and letting the breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, belling the belly, exhaling. And another breath, received in a softening belly, you might visualize and sense that smile, that curve of a smile spreading through the area of the belly and feeling from the inside out, noticing what sensations or feelings you become aware of in that region. In the same way you can visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the whole pelvic region, perhaps sensing the base of the smile at the base of the spine, letting the energy of the earth flow up into that bowl, into that pelvic region. Noticing what

sensations you become aware of. Feeling the legs from the insides, you can sense the length, the volume, the weight of the legs, the streams of energy of sensation, right into the feet, let your awareness fill the feet. Notice the sensations, the aliveness there. If you expand the field of attention now. Perhaps you can sense this whole body as a dance of sensation, letting everything happen, tingling, vibrating, heat or coolness, pressure or flow. If you widen the attention even more, including sound, the symphony of sound, listening not just with your ears, but your whole awareness, relaxing back into the awareness that receives sound, sensation, feelings, sensing the quality of presence that's right here, wakefulness, openness,

and a kind of tender sensitivity to the life that's playing through us. Now you might have found the mind has drifted. Quite naturally our attention leaves that open presence and gets lost inside thoughts of the future or the past. See if it's possible without any judgment to notice when the mind drifts and simply pause and just re-relax open again. to the sounds that are here, feeling the dance of sensation, and perhaps re-relaxing again in the body to more directly feel that aliveness and again resting in that awareness that's

listening to and feeling the changing life that's here. For some it's supportive to rest in that awareness and listen to and feel the breath. just to help create some stability of being right here, having an anchor, feeling the inflow and the outflow, relaxing with that. For others, sometimes listening to sounds, feeling the sensations in the hands or throughout the body. The key is to know that you're right here. Sense this quality of heerness and as you do you'll sense the difference between the

that and that virtual world of thinking, coming home again and again to the aliveness of the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this whole play of sound and sensation. A beautiful way to close your sitting is to bring the presence that's here right to the heart, sensing the state of your heart right now and offering the presence. to your own being, whatever wish or blessing most resonates. What do you wish for yourself? Extending care inwardly and sensing that heart space, that which is caring and how inclusive it is, sensing the other beings in your life and really all beings everywhere in your heart

and offering your prayer, your blessings. to all beings in whatever way resonates for you.