Tara Brach - Meditation: Spacious Sky of Awareness (2015-12-29) (retreat)

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Meditation: Spacious Sky of Awareness (2015-12-29) (retreat) - This meditation begins with 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, open awareness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. A key portal to awakening presence, deepening presence, is through the body, through being awake from the inside out in the body. You might let the awareness scan, beginning in the region of the eyes, softening the eyes.

You might sense the outer corners of the eyes slightly lifted as if in a smile, letting the brow be smooth and feeling the sensations, the aliveness there, bringing a slight smile to the mouth and feeling the inside of the mouth smiling. This image and felt sense of a smile

helps to create a shift in the nervous system towards ease. It helps to increase the power sympathetic activity. So there really can be more relaxation, more of an atmosphere of loving presence. Sensing that slight smile and relaxing the tongue down to the root of the tongue, dealing the sensations, the aliveness, the awareness inside the mouth. Letting the shoulders relax back and down a bit. Letting awareness fill the shoulders. So you can notice where there's tightness or tension or holding.

Just allow whatever's there to float in awareness. Perhaps to untangle itself a bit. Feeling the hands from the inside out. Softening some. And just noticing the tingling, the vibrating, the aliveness. an awareness inside the hands, letting there be an openness in the chest. You might smile into the heart, sense the curve of a smile spreading through the heart.

It's not to cover over what's there, but rather to connect you with the space that can hold what's here. Sensing the awareness and aliveness in the heart area. This is a cup can be filled with water. This whole body is filled with a water. awareness. Awareness experiencing the aliveness from the inside out, might scan down to the belly, softening some, letting this next in-breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and again, and again. You might sense the curve of a smile spreading through the naval area,

feeling from the inside out the aliveness that's there, letting awareness fill the awareness fill the pelvic region, again feeling from the inside out, the play of sensation, the space and aliveness that's there, feeling the awareness inside the feet, the aliveness there, and again the hands and widening to include this whole body. Perceiving this body as a field of sensation, letting everything happen, not opposing, controlling, widening even further to listen to the concert of sound, perhaps the more close-in sounds, soft sounds in the room,

extending the listening to include the most distant sounds you can perceive, the most subtle, listening into and imagining and sensing the space, sensing the space that includes sound, sensation, aliveness, that everything's happening. You can sense your awareness mingling with that space,

inhabiting that spacious sky of awareness that includes everything that's happening, sensing it as a wake space, as a knowing quality. Everything is known in the space of awareness, inhabiting, resting as awareness, and sensing how this space of awareness perceives the sensations and aliveness of the body, receptive, allowing, sensing how this spacious awareness experiences the breath, the simple inflow and outflow of the breath,

listening to and feeling the breath, receptive and allowing. As you continue to practice, practice from this position of spacious awareness, open, awake, receptive. If it's helpful, you can have your anchor in the foreground. Discover what it's like to experience the breath or sound, resting as spacious. awareness, witnessing and feeling moment-to-moment experience. Notice how spacious awareness can feel the life of the body from the inside out, that interior space and the space outside us is really continuous space. Awareness is everywhere. You find yourself caught in thoughts. The practice is simply to unhook from thoughts, to open out of thoughts, not to get rid of them, to become

aware again of the senses and of this spacious awareness that's knowing, that's awake, resting again. If you notice reactivity, difficulty, then there's the invitation to explore what attitude is there. In the moments that there's reactivity to physical pain or emotional pain, if there's simply the intention to say yes, there's a natural relaxing back into spacious awareness. If there's a remembrance to be kind, there's a natural relaxing back into spacious awareness. if there's an interest, a curiosity, again there's an opening and enlarging, a coming home to natural awareness, to being awake right here, letting go of any controlling or doing, simply letting this

life be just as it is, a relaxed, alert attention.