Tara Brach - Meditation: The Heartspace That is Home (2015-11-11)

Episode Date: November 13, 2015

Meditation: The Heartspace That is Home (2015-11-11) - This meditation awakens attention to the space of awareness, and then explores how this awake awareness is experienced as heartspace, the vast tenderness that is home.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. With your eyes closed, take some moments from the inside out to adjust your posture in any way that might help you so that you're sitting and feeling tall, that there's an upright quality, feeling a sense of balance. You might lean forward. You might lean forward. a little bit and then backwards to the left to the right and just sense as you send in center that feeling of balance so a bright balanced and then allowing whatever muscles that want to to relax some letting go a gentle attention to the heart area You sense the state of your heart right now.

It might be the first time you've checked in with your heart in recent history, or maybe not, but just notice without judgment if there's a numbness or if there's sensitivity, if there's excitement or if there's fear, or awake your heart feels, tender, defended. to maybe let that listening deepen. So you can sense into what your heart is longing for,

is wanting right now. What brings you here in a deep way? It brings you here to practice, to presence. And as you connect with some sense of that sincerity, that prayerfulness or longing, that feels deep, that feels true, you might gently bring the palms together, just establish that heart presence as we chant

and we'll chant the simple mantra ome it's the sound current of connectedness carrying us into oneness chant three times and we begin by inhaling deeply body sitting here your body breathing and consciously extending the breath so the in breath is full and deep and the out breath is slow

very slow, releasing, relaxing outward, letting go. And again, letting the in-breath be full and deep, filling the chest and lungs, and a slow out-breath, releasing, feeling the sensations of the breath as you release, letting go. And one more time, nice deep in-breath and slow out-breath, relaxing, releasing, and then allowing the breath to. come back to its natural rhythm, just notice the quality of presence that's here. We can awake and deepen presence as we scan through the body with awareness, relaxing

and waking up through the regions of the body. You might begin with the area of the brow. When we're thinking a lot, the little muscles around the eyes contract, so you might soften the eyes, even sense a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the corners, the outside corners up. Let the brow be smooth and just feel the sensations in that region of the forehead, the aliveness. Let the lips be relaxed.

The tongue relaxed right down to the root of the tongue. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth. You might imagine the inside of the mouth smiling. And then open to the re-relixt. region of the mouth, the sensations that are there, and also the sense of the space inside the mouth, inside the lips, the tongues, and the gums, the teeth. Let the shoulders fall away from the neck. Bring the awareness inside the shoulders.

Just notice the sensations there. If there's any tangling or tension or tightness, this is. See if you can let it float in awareness. You can begin to feel the aliveness and the space inside the shoulders. Feeling the region of the hands, letting the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way. And feeling the hands from the inside out. And see if you can notice the space and the aliveness inside the hands. Let there be an openness to the chest.

and bring the attention to the region of the heart again as if you can bring the whole awareness inside the heart feeling the aliveness of sensation and the space that's there interior space to feel space you might sense the sensations floating in space and also sense the space that's interior to the sensations that they arise out of

and dissolve in. Mending down and loosening in the abdominal area. See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one. And again, feeling the region of the belly, sensing the awareness inside the belly. So you can attune to the aliveness of sensation and the space that's happening in.

the space that's arising from, interior space. Continue to scan down the body, letting the awareness fill the pelvic region, opening to the aliveness there, the dance of sensation, and the space that it's happening in, letting yourself be aware of the length and the volume of the legs, the sensations of the feet,

where they contact the floor, pressure, warm, sensations inside the feet. And sensing this whole earth as a field of sensation that pours into you that includes you. Sensing this whole field of aliveness filling you,

floating in awareness and space. You might sense how this space and aliveness extends in front of you infinitely past the further stars and sense how the space extends behind you. Again, infinitely, past the furthest stars. You might sense how space extends to the left of you. Infinitely past the further stars.

And how space extends to your right. Finately past the furthest stars. You might sense how space extends beneath you infinitely past the furthest stars. You might sense how space extends above you infinitely, past the further stars. Then you might sense of the vastness of the space around you and the interior space within you is really continuous space, continuous space filled with aliveness. You might sense how this continuous space is diffused with the light of the light of the lightness. You might sense how this continuous space is diffused with the light of awareness.

You might sense how sounds appear and disappear in this vast, awake space of awareness. You might sense how sensations, aliveness appears, dances, dissolves in this spacious, awake awareness. You might sense how this wakeful awareness is experienced at the level of the heart, the edgeless heart space that knows the changing ways of emotions, sensations, feelings. Sensing this edgeless, tender heart space, the space of awareness as home, laxing back, is being that awake heart space letting this world play through you arise and disappear

in that tender wakefulness when the mind drifts just to sense the silence that's listening to the thoughts to relax back to that wakeful space that tender heart space that life appears in and dissolves in moment to moment.

How far you've wandered, this heart space, this awake, tender awareness, is only a half-breath of remembrance away. It lacks back.