Tara Brach - Meditation - Space, Aliveness and Letting Be (2016-02-03)

Episode Date: February 5, 2016

Meditation - Space, Aliveness and Letting Be (2016-02-03) - This practice guides us into the openness of awareness, and then invites a deep resting, a letting be. Free download of Tara’s new 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 guidance for sitting posture is really whatever best serves you for sitting upright. Sitting tall and that just helps you to be wakeful and alert and also at ease. See what you can relax right from the get-go. A little bit of letting go.

might bring the attention to the breath. And in a very simple way, breathing in, a nice long, full breath, and breathing out slowly, matching the length of the breath, the exhale and the inhale. She was breathing out slowly. And without any pause again, breathing in. It's kind of like six counts in, six counts out. Relaxing and breathing.

and letting the breath be natural and letting the attention come to the area of the heart. I'm just noticing the state of your heart right now. Without any judgment, taking some moments to bring an intimate attention, sensing what mood is here. And as you listen to and feel the heart area, you might notice whatever you sense,

is your deepest intention for being here right now. This is the inquiry into what really matters. If you can connect with your sincerity about presence, about waking up your heart and your being, one of the direct pathways to awakening is through bringing a very alive presence to the life of the body. We're engaged presence.

I'd like to invite you to begin by feeling the region of the eyes. And you might let that sense of a smile spread through the eyes so the outer corners are uplifted a bit, softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth, then just feeling and receiving the sensations, the aliveness in that area, perhaps noticing light and dark vibrating. In a similar way you might feel the area of the mouth and let a slight smile spread in the mouth. The lips slightly upturned and the inside of the mouth smiling, relaxing the tongue to the root.

And feeling the sensations inside the tongue, the sensations and the gums, the teeth, the lips, feeling the throat, Feeling the throat, sensing the throat expanding to fill the whole neck. And feeling the sensations and aliveness inside the neck area. I might imagine the sensations is floating in space. You're sensing both the aliveness and the space that's there, allowing the shoulders to gently fall away from the neck. Feeling the shoulders from the inside out,

softening and sensing the movement of sensation, the aliveness in the shoulders. See if you can sense sensations as floating, unfolding, moving in space. You might even imagine the interior space out of which the sensations arise, kind of like the nucleus of an atom. There's a lot of space between the particles and they arise out of emptiness. They appear and disappear. Points of light in the night sky. Feeling the length and the volume of the arms.

Feeling the hands and letting them rest very easily, effortlessly, softening them, maybe softening again and feeling from the inside out, again aware of sensations. This dance of aliveness, sensing the sensations in the hands as floating in space as arising out of interior space, points of light in the night sky, vibrating, tingling, let there be an openness to the chest and feeling the heart area from the inside out. Again aware of the play of sensation. tingling, squeezing, vibrating, sensing the space that this aliveness is happening in, the interior space it's unfolding from, loosening the belly, bringing the attention down, the awareness down

so that you can feel this next breath received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again, feeling the whole abdominal area from the inside out, aware of the play of sensation there. Can you sense the space that sensation is happening in, interior space, letting the awareness scan down to the pelvic region, feeling that area from the inside out, the aliveness, the sensations there, the receptive presence, sensing the space. sensing the space that sensations are unfolding in. Aware of the length and the volume of your legs.

Feeling the feet from the inside out. This whole constellation of sensations there, the vibrating and tingling and aliveness. Again, floating in space. You can imagine beneath you, the aliveness of this whole planet beneath you, around you, sensing that the earth energy is flowing into you, filling you so that your whole body is filled with aliveness.

Feet and hands and legs and arms, pelvic area, belly, chest, head, filled with aliveness. You just sense sensations as a field, open, living feet. field, sensations floating in space. This whole body is a field of sensation like points of light in the night sky, letting everything happen, not opposing or resisting, relaxing back to include sounds, listening not with your ears but with your whole awareness, sensing sounds and the vast space that they're happening in. So you're listening to and feeling the whole moment to moment flow and the sensations and the space they're happening in, the sounds, space that's happening in as continuous space,

not inside or outside. Continuous space. Space it's filled with the light of awareness. with the light of awareness. Sensing this awake space as your own present, a great sea of knowing, resting as awake awareness, this whole dance of life being received moment to moment. If it helps to stabilize presence by having in the foreground the inflow and outflow of the breath, that's quite fine. letting the breath be received from the dimension of awake awareness. Awareness knowing the breath. Knowing the breath is coming in.

Awareness receiving and knowing the breath leaving. You'll notice at some point that the mind contracts from open awareness into thought forms. Totally natural. and that very noticing is reawakening. You're beginning to wake up again. So as you notice thinking, just gently release the thought

and reopen to what's actually happening here. This play of aliveness in the body, the sounds of the moment. And again, sensing that vast space it's all happening in. relaxing back and just being that openness, that receptivity that knows moment to moment it's changing dance of life. There is nothing to do.

These last few moments just notice what it's like to let go of all control. And simply let this life be just as it is. What's it like to not control anything? to simply let be.