Tara Brach - Meditation: Sacred Presence (2021-01-23)

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Meditation: Sacred Presence (2021-01-23) - This meditation guides us to wakefully relax with the changing flow of moment to moment experience. As we open our senses fully, we discover the sacred living presence that is our very essence.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Let's do a little practice together, wherever you are finding yourself the position, the posture that will allow you to come into quietness and to feel that kind of balance where you're both relaxed. you're at ease, and also alert, awake. And for many, that will include having your gaze downward or maybe your eyes closed so you can right now begin to let your attention go inward. Notice your experience right here, right now. The poet Rumi says, do you make regular visits to yourself? So we're visiting ourselves.

pausing so we can be more intimate with what's here. And you might begin to be more aware of your breath, this life breath, so you can feel your body breathing. And you might notice if there's anywhere that you want to let go a little, just any part of you that feels ready to let go. Perhaps you weren't noticing some holding or tension or tightness in the shoulders. your hands were tense or tight or your belly was clenched. So a little softening and continuing to pay attention to the aliveness of the body.

You might scan through now in a slower, more systematic way. Just feeling your head you might start and sense the scalp and the skull and just feel whatever tingling or vibrating you're aware of there. Let the attention sweep down through the brow, softening the brow, the eyes, feeling the cheeks, feeling the mouth, letting the jaw be unhinged. It can help to bring a slight smile to the mouth.

Neuroscience shows that when we have a slight smile, it sends a message to the whole nervous system to be more at ease. See if you can feel your tongue and let it fill the lower palate and then trace back to the root of the tongue. Relaxing. Letting that relaxed presence spread through the whole mouth, the tongue, the gums, teeth, the lips and again through the face. Just noticing increased aliveness and presence here.

Again allowing the attention to sweep down through the shoulders you might have to be let the shoulders relax back and down some, let the awareness fill the shoulders. And if there's tension or tightness there, just sense it can float in awareness. It can naturally release at its own pace. Perhaps a dissolving or a melting like ice to water and then water to gas, let him go. Maybe you can feel energy moving through the arms. and you might explore softening the hands and intentionally softening again, noticing how as you soften or relax, you're able to feel so much more, placing your awareness inside the hands.

So you're intimately aware of the aliveness, tingling, vibrating. You might widen the attention again feel this body breathing and sensing the movement of the breath at the chest, feeling the awareness fill the chest, intimate with the sensations and feelings in the region of the heart and relaxing with whatever you sense here, right in the heart, the air of the upper back, that the awareness spread through the whole chest cavity so you can feel the upper back as you breathe and relaxing with the sensations there, softening, opening. I'm still feeling this body breathing, letting this life breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, now this one, and this next breath. So that as you continue to

feel the breath, you can also sense the belly soft that the breath is being received deep in the torso including the midsection of the back and the lower back, relaxing any tension as you let this life breath move through you. Relaxing through the whole pelvic region, breathing and relaxing, feeling the legs, the length, volume, the weight of the legs. And sense that the breath can be received deep through the legs, the energy moving through, through the legs right into the feet, this whole body breathing and aware of the feet, the aliveness inside the feet, and continue to feel this whole body breathing as you widen the attention and sense what's here is a field of sensation and breathing with and relaxing with this field of sensation and letting everything happen, tingling, vibrating, warmth or coolness, tightness

or flow, breathing with and feeling the aliveness that's here, extending this wakeful presence to include sounds. So you're listening to and feeling the breath, the aliveness within and around you. sounds, sensations, feelings in the foreground. And in the background, this wakeful presence, that which knows the moment-to-moment experience, alert, open, including everything. It doesn't take long to notice that the mind has drifted, has contracted, has contracted, away from that open presence back into a more virtual reality of thoughts.

Without any judgment, just to notice, notice what channel you are on and relax open again. Listening to the sounds that are here, relaxing with the aliveness in the body, perhaps noticing what might want to let go again, breathing with this changing flow of experience, No matter how far the mind has taken us, we can relax open again, have that pathway of homecoming to the sacred that's right here. Let your senses be awake, listening to the sounds that are right here now, open and receptive, and gently opening to the sensations and feelings in the body, relaxing with what's here, aware of,

of that background of presence that's always here, that awareness that knows what's happening, that tender space that includes the life that arises moment to moment. This poem by Ingrid Goughmanadoff is called Diamonds. What if recognizing diamonds was enough to make them yours and you saw them now every everywhere on the sunlit ocean, in the moonless sky, on winter fields and the tips of branches after rain, in smiling faces, the lake, the stream, the kitchen stove, stairs, puddles, ice, clouds, anywhere life glimmers and light glints, kisses, billy laughs, bubbly, wine, K and crumbs, flights of fancy, feathers, teeth, words, breath.

Diamonds, diamonds, all diamonds. Would you see then, in truth, the very richness that you are? Would you see then in truth the very richness that you are?