Tara Brach - Meditation: Resting in the Sea of Presence (2019-02-27)

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Meditation: Resting in the Sea of Presence (2019-02-27) - This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let go into the sea of presence, we discover an increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer. 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. The invitation is to make yourself at home in the moment, to relax back, to rest in this life breath. We begin in a simple way with a reflection on intention. To just ask yourself, what is your intention? right now for practice. What feels most important to you? What's your heart long for?

So listening inwardly, sensing what you feel sincere about, what you care about. I might be having more presence in your life, feeling more open-hearted, more clarity or balance. Maybe you care about serving from a more generous place or perhaps it's in a very deep way that freedom of knowing who you really are beyond any of the stories. And sense what matters, what brings you to meditation. A direct portal to awakening is scanning through the body with awareness and to set the mood you might envision a smile filling the sky. The curve of a smile, the openness and receptivity of a smile,

spreading through a great open sky, letting the mind merge with that sky. So your mind is filled with the light and the brightness of a smile. Let that mood and sense of receptivity and kindness fill you. You might sense a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes, softening the flesh around the eyes. Letting a smile fill the mouth, the lips in a slight smile, relaxing all the micro-muscles of the face, and feel the aliveness in the face.

When you soften with a smile, the tingling and vibrating, letting the tongue fill the upper palate and relaxing the tongue down to the root so you can feel the aliveness, fill the mouth, the gums, the teeth, the lips, allowing your shoulders to fall away from the neck. Feeling the shoulders with awareness. You might imagine a dissolving of ice to water, kind of melting, and water to gas.

Feeling both shoulders simultaneously filled with aliveness. And if there's tightness or tension, sense that it might float and let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way, And what happens when you soften the hands? Softening again and noticing. Can you detect the tingling and vibrating in the hands? Feeling the hands from the inside out, let there be an openness at the chest.

You might feel the heart from the inside out, sense the aliveness there, tingling, vibrating. There may be squeeze or pulling or pressure or full. flow. You can visualize and sense a smile spreading through the heart not to cover over what's there but to create space for it. The eyes are smiling, soft, the mouth, the heart. You might visualize and sense that same curve of a smile moving through the belly spreading again so that you can sense and open to the

the interior sensations, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath, and now this one and again. Can you feel the aliveness, the energy, moving, expressing through the whole abdominal area? Image and felt sense of a smile spread through the whole pelvic region, letting the awareness spell that area so you can feel the aliveness there, sensing the legs, the length and weight and the volume of the legs, and feeling the feet from the inside out, the tingling, vibrating there, and then simultaneously feeling the sensations of the whole body at once. Can you sense the body as a field of sensation, the changing dance of sensation?

widening the attention and noticing how this field of aliveness includes sound, sensations, feelings, arising, dissolving, all in the foreground and the background, that alert inner stillness, the presence that's our true home, relaxing back and resting in awareness, and sensing this changing play of phenomena, sound, sensation, feelings like surface waves in a vast ocean. If it helps to rest in particular with the movement of the breath, the waves of the breath, relaxing with the inflow, relaxing with the outflow, moment to moment sensing the presence that's right here, sacred presence to moment, breath to breath.

Right in the center of now, it doesn't matter how many times the mind drifts into thoughts. That's just the nature of the way the mind works. What's possible is that that can be noticed and you can take that sacred pathway of arriving again right here and choosing presence, relaxing back into the this inflow and outflow of the breath, relaxing back into the sea of awareness, letting the waves move as they do on the surface. You can begin fresh in any moment, re-chew choosing presence. Again feeling that inflow and outflow of the breath, be relaxing.

You might notice what part of you might want to let go a little right now, maybe the shoulders, Maybe to soften the hands, the sense of smile in the mouth and a smile at the heart, and relaxing back into that sea of awareness. Noticing the waves that come and go, sound, sensation, feelings, the movement of the breath, right here, moment to moment, relaxed and awake. And we've reconnected to presence, our prayer has a special tenderness and strength to it. So we close with a loving-kindness prayer. First, sensing the presence in the domain of the heart and with a listening attention

sensing what blessing or wish we'd like to offer to our own being right now. What is it you wish for yourself? that with kindness, with care, widening the field and sensing someone that's dear to you, holding that person in this heart space and whispering your prayer, mentally whispering your prayer to that person, what you wish for them, and widening out in an inclusive way, sensing this heart space that holds the earth our mother and all the world, our mother and all all beings everywhere. I'm sensing your prayer for life everywhere.

And sensing our collective prayer for all beings to realize the loving presence that's their very essence for all beings to touch a great and natural peace and for all beings to awaken and be free.