Tara Brach - Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts (2021-06-09)

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts (2021-06-09) - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Making yourself at home in this moment. It's really coming into the moment. Feeling your breath, and you might feel and sense the breath touching the area of the heart. We begin with an inquiry. What is your deepest intention? for meditation practice,

for being right here right now, listen inwardly to what feels most sincere, right, this moment, and feeling what most matters to you, and feeling our shared aspiration that these practices of presence will ripple out in a way that brings healing to our world. In the stillness, let your awareness scan,

through your body. Notice if there's any areas of particular tightness or tension. And see if just by bringing the attention there, there can be some natural loosening or softening. You can deepen that relaxation and ease by bringing a sense of kindness into the body. And we do that with the image and felt sense of a smile, letting a smile spread through the eyes. Let the outer corners of the eyes be lifted slightly, the eyes soft, and the brow smooth, noticing the sensations, the aliveness, ease spreading through the brow, bringing a slight smile to the lips and also to the inside of the mouth. If you can let the tongue relax so it fills the lower palate, let it spread and the relaxation down to the root of the tongue.

Feeling the sensations, the aliveness through the whole mouth, the gums, the teeth, the tongue, the lips. You can visualize and get the felt sense of a smile at the throat. So let it spread through the throat, relaxing and opening that area. You can visualize and smile into the heart. a smile spreading through the heart, the chest, making room for whatever's there. Having a sense of ease and openness widen out so that the shoulders can fall away from the neck so you can feel the shoulders from the inside out and let go a little more right now.

Let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way. Explore softening the hands. and softening again and feeling the hands from the inside out so you can experience the tingling and vibrating the aliveness there, that there be an openness to the chest, and relaxing down into the belly, receiving this next breath in a softening belly, this breath, and now this one and again, so you can feel the aliveness deep in the torso. You might visualize and sense the felt experience of a smile spreading through the belly, deepening that ease and wakefulness.

In a similar way you can sense the image and felt experience of a smile spreading through the pelvic region, letting your awareness fill that area, feeling the sensations of aliveness, that aliveness spread through the legs right down into the feet. You can feel the warmth and pressure where you contact the floor or the ground. So you can imagine this earth, this whole vast earth energy flowing up through the feet, through the legs, through your body. As you widen the lens, feeling this whole body is a field of sensation. saying how nothing is standing still, like bits of light in the night sky, this dance

of aliveness, continuing to widen the attention to include sound, the appearing and disappearing of sound, taking everything in at once, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, sensing the space of awareness that sounds are appearing and dissolving in. that sensations are bubbling up, moving, dissolving. In the foreground there's this changing dance of sound, sensation, feelings, thoughts. And in the background this vast, awake awareness, that which is noticing, that which includes this changing life, relaxing back again and again, aware of the changing movement of sound, sensation.

And if it helps to steady the mind, aware of this simple movement of the breath, the in-flow and outflow that lets you know you're right here in the center of now, no need to control the breath, just rest moment to moment relaxing with the breath. It's natural that the attention will get lost in the drifting clouds of thought. And they do, when you notice you've been inside thoughts, just that noticing, oh, thinking, thinking, will help to reopen the attention, relaxing back into this living world of sound and sensation, relaxing back to sense the movement of the breath. Notice the gap between thoughts, this mystery of presence, it's right here.

Make yourself at home in this presence. From the poet Wu Men, 10,000 flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.