Tara Brach - Meditation: Resting in Reality (2018-01-24)

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

Meditation: Resting in Reality - This guided practice awakens attention to sensations, sounds, space and aliveness, and encourages a continued "relaxing open" from thoughts into the living stream of experience. We are learning to recognize and rest in the moment to moment flow, "being reality," at home in what we are. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You might feel the body breathing and let your attention rest in the heart area, as if you could breathe in and out of your heart. And take some moments to sense what your intention is for meditation practice. what it is that most matters to you, what you'd most like to experience or realize,

so you can connect with your sincerity. A direct gateway to presences by waking up the attention in the body. You might begin, because we'll be scanning down the body, by feeling the region of the brow and the eyes, you might sense that you can smile into the eyes to the outer corners or lifted a bit and let the eyes be very soft, the brow smooth. So you can begin to sense the tingling and vibrating in that area,

maybe light and darkness, the sense of space that it's happening in. Let the jaw be unhinged, the tongue relax, relaxing down to the root of the tongue. You can feel the tongue filling, the palate. Sense all the sensations in the mouth, the gums, the teeth, and the lips. Notice if you bring a slight smile to the mouth, perhaps a subtle shift in the whole way you're holding experience, let the inside of the mouth smile, let the shoulders fall away from the neck.

You might feel from the inside out and sense the... the transition or shift of ice to water, a kind of melting inside, ice to water, and then water to gas, sensing the space of awareness inside the shoulders and the aliveness there also, aware of the hands resting in an easy, effortless way, and softening the hands, softening again and feel from the inside out. and what are you aware of? You sense movement and aliveness vibrating, tingling,

and you sense the space inside your thumbs and the aliveness that's there and the space inside the forefingers and the aliveness there. The space between the fingers, the space between the palms and the backs of the hands and the aliveness that fills your whole hand. And just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body is filled with awareness.

Aliveness, the space that it's moving through, might feel the region of the heart. Explore smiling into the heart. You might visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through your heart. The eyes smiling, the mouth, the heart. Sensing the region of the heart and the alive. That's there, whatever sensations you're aware of, pressure, vibrating, tightness, flow, sensing the space inside the region of the heart, the aliveness that's there, and gently scanning down, sensing the region of the belly.

You might let this next breath be received in a softening belly. breath, now this one, and again, waking up the awareness deep in the torso. Can you imagine and sense space inside the belly, the aliveness, sensations moving through? The awareness fill the belly and then extend down to fill the whole pelvic region, relaxing, opening. Again, sensing the space and the aliveness. it's here. Awareness, fill the legs, feeling the length and the weight, the volume of the legs, flowing into the feet, filling the feet. Can you imagine and sense the space and the aliveness

inside the toes, inside the feet, feeling connected and rooted to the earth? So you can sense this earth as this great space of living, dancing energy, flowing up through the feet, through you, connected to them belonging to the earth, the body of the earth, widening the lens to feel this whole changing dance of sensation. No boundary. Just not stopping anything. It might include sounds, listening to the changing, rising and disappearing of sound. the close-in sounds, letting them come and go, spaces between the sounds, the more distant sounds,

all arising in the vastness of awareness, resting back in this awareness that includes sound and sensation, feelings, whatever arises. The mind drifts back into thoughts, which it naturally does. when there's a noticing to gently relax open again, reconnect with your senses, listening to the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness lives through these bodies. So there's a letting go of thoughts and a relaxing back in presence over and over

that helps you to have in the foreground the particular movement of the breath as a kind of home base and gently let the attention rest, rest there, the inflow, the outflow. So you're coming back again and again and resting in reality. The changing currents is sound and sensation. It's a way of saying yes to what's right here, moment to moment. Sometimes thoughts are real obvious, we're really lost in the story, and sometimes it's a

much more subtle veil. Just noticing where the attention is. and again and again letting go of the contraction of concepts of mind and relaxing back again into the river of what's right here, sound, sensation, feelings, and trusting yourself to the moment. If you find something in the moment-to-moment flow that's challenging, and see if you can call in a real kindness, a gentleness to the presence.

It's noting or naming what's challenging, fear, burning, aching, discomfort, sorrow, anger. Just meet it with kindness. Yes to this too. This belongs. It's part of the river of experience. Let it be. Surrendering the train of thought the moment and reopening this whole river of experience right here, noticing the difference between any thought and this living mystery right at the center of now, the reality that's right here as reality.

Be it. We close by bringing relaxed presence to the heart. and taking a moment to offer whatever wish, whatever blessing you'd like to your own being, for your own well-being, for your own freedom, from your sincere heart to your own being. Sensing the heart space that's here that's all-inclusive includes those you know and those you don't know, all beings, living beings, those that have passed, all beings everywhere. sensing this natural benevolence and care as we close with the prayer of metta our loving kindness that all beings everywhere may be held in loving kindness filled with loving kindness

may all beings everywhere touch a great and natural peace may there be peace on earth may there be peace everywhere May all beings awaken and be free. And must stay.