Tara Brach - Meditation: Spacious Clear Awareness (2016-04-20)

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

Meditation: Spacious Clear Awareness (2016-04-20) - This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara  

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We begin with our guided meditation. Take a few moments to find a seating posture that works for you. And by that I mean you might close your eyes. And then in whatever subtle ways help, adjust how you're sitting, so you feel two different things.

You feel a quality of sitting upright. There's a quality of being alert. And you also sense a quality of ease that you can relax around that uprightness. It said we sit like a Buddha halfway between heaven and earth. So we're rooted in the earth and yet like a tree rising up to the heaven, sitting tall. And in the stillness now,

Let your attention come to settle around the heart area. Feel your breath and your attention at the heart. We open our time together with a simple inquiry, what really is my intention? What is my intention for this meditation, for this time that we're here, to ask that question, and then just open wide and sense

what feels most sincere to you. We open together as community each week with a simple chant, the mantra oom, which is a sound current of connectedness. If you'd like to gently bring the palms together at the heart so that the chant really arises from that sincerity, from that caring heart space, please do. We'll chant three times,

and we open by taking a nice, deep in-breath, awareness to the breath, and lengthening the breath, extending the in-breath so it's full and deep, filling the chest and lungs, and lengthening the out-breath so it's slow, slow enough so you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath, releasing, letting go, letting go. And again, a full deep in-breath, filling the lungs, and a slow, complete, complete, out breath, sensing a kind of relaxing outward and letting go with the out breath. Please continue in this way, full in-breath, slow out-breath, letting the breaths be matched

in their length without a pause between the in-breath and the out-breath. It helps you to count, to count to four slowly. Please feel free so that the breaths are matched. You might sense with the in-breath and opening to receive, even in a cellular way, with an out-breath, releasing outward, letting go and letting go. Long, deep breaths, allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm, sensing a quality of collectiveness,

relaxing with the in-breath and relaxing with the out-breath, feeling your whole body breathing. We can deepen and await you. and presence as we scan through the body, feeling the aliveness and sensations. If it helps to bring the breath to certain parts of your body, to keep your attention there, then you can use the breath in that way. Beginning with the top of the head and the whole region of the scalp and skull, just feeling the tingling and the vibrating and the aliveness there,

letting the attention scan down to the brow, feeling the brow smooth, the eyes perhaps softening, and feel the tingling and vibrating and sensations in that region, letting the jaw be unhinged, letting the tongue spread and relax in the lower jaw, relaxing down to the root of the tongue, and feeling the sensations that fill the mouth, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck,

the arms relax the hands on the thighs or touching each other gently then feeling from the inside out the whole region of the shoulders and if there's a sense of tightness contraction there see if you can let it float in awareness you might imagine and sense a kind of dissolving releasing that can happen naturally with a simple presence softening the hands feeling from the inside out, the aliveness inside the hands, letting the chest be open, and feeling right into the heart area, sensing the sensations, the felt sense of aliveness in the heart, letting the sensations be just as they are. As you scan down the torso, you might loosen and soften the belly so that this next breath is received in a softening belly.

This breath and now this one and again. Feeling from the inside out, the dance of sensations, movement of life inside the belly, letting the attention scan down to the pelvic region, relaxing and feeling from the inside out the sensations, the life appearing, disappearing, this whole dance of sensations, the length and the volume of your legs and peeling the feet from the inside out,

the tingling, vibrating that's there, imagine, sense the feet spreading and open and receptive so that the earth energy that's beneath and around can pour in, can pour in, can received and moved through you. You feel yourself filling with earth energy, with the aliveness that's all around us, always within us, very much in consciousness,

opening to the whole dance of sensation, not opposing anything, not trying to control anything, opening and widening the attention to include the play of sound, close in sounds, the more distant sounds, sensing the space of awareness that everything's happening in, the appearing and disappearing sounds, the arising dissolving sensations,

just open and rest in that great, receptive, awake space of awareness, awake awareness, noticing this changing flow of sound and sensation, feelings, the life that's moving through us. For some it can help to stabilize presence by having in the foreground the movement of the breath, perhaps the in-flow outflow at the nose, the rising, falling at the chest or abdomen, maybe the whole body breathing,

yet still having the senses awake, aware of the whole play of experience. And if the mind gets carried into thoughts, simply notice that and in the moment of noticing there's a natural opening back into presence let the senses be awake just resting in that awake awareness that notices the changing flow

moment to moment moments that you notice thinking there's already an awakening back to presence let the senses be awake, listening, relaxing and feeling the life of the body, listening to and feeling this whole changing moment-to-moment flow of experience with presence noticing what's happening, what's predominant in your senses right now, receiving experience with a relaxed and open attention as a way of transatloming. transitioning from our formal practice, I'd like to invite you to feel the breath gently in the

foreground right now as a kind of home base or anchor. Then slowly opening the eyes. Just receiving with interest whatever form, shapes, light, darkness. So you're continuing in presence with your eyes open. And then in your own way, beginning to move, shift your posture, but feel the sensations that are occurring as you do it so that while you're not in a formal meditation any longer, you are continuing to be awake in your body and with your senses. Namaste and thank you.