Tara Brach - Meditation: The Return to Presence - Rest Your Mind in What Is (2021-11-03)

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

Meditation: The Return to Presence - Rest Your Mind In What Is (2021-11-03) - It's natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As you come into stillness, let the attention go inward. You're feeling your sitting posture from the inside out. You're feeling your body sitting here. This breathing body. A very beautiful way of beginning is to simply

bring your attention to the area of the heart and sense what your intention is, what your deepest intention is for being here, for practicing, for meditation. What is it your heart really longs for? The sign of really being in touch with a deep intention is that there's a quality of sincerity, it doesn't feel rote. There's a sense of, yeah, this is a sense of, yeah, this is. this is what matters to me. Or of the movement of the breath, you might extend the breath so that the in-breath is full and deep. And the out-breath is very slow,

so you can actually feel the sensations of the breath as it leaves the nostrils. And again, filling the lungs, filling the chest with the in-breath, and a slow out-breath, a slow releasing, a slow letting go, continuing in this way with a long deep in breath and a slow conscious releasing, letting go, letting go, sensing with the out breath that you can release tension and tightness, softening as you let go of the breath. Pulling up fully on the in-breath, slow release, conscious release on the out-breath and then letting the breath resume in its natural rhythm, just sensing the possibility of relaxing with the

inflow, as if a balloon is expanding when the breath comes in, just expanding, receiving, opening, relaxing with the outflow, settling, releasing, let your senses be awake, just noticing the quality of presence that's here, that background wakeful, that background wakeful, and that's noticing what's happening. And presence becomes more alive as we embody it. You might sense the presence in the areas of the eyes, just the awareness of tingling and vibrating there. It helps to soften the eyes a little.

You'll feel more and be aware of more. Feeling presence and aliveness in the mouth, relaxing the tongue right down to the root of the tongue, and the awareness inside the shoulders. You might imagine a dissolving of ice to water and water to gas. You can feel the presence and aliveness, the space inside the shoulders, softening the hands, and then feeling from the inside out the presence and aliveness that's there. The awareness fill the chest, the heart area.

This feeling from the inside out of the heart, the aliveness of energy might be tension or flow or warmth, coolness, vibration, feeling the presence and aliveness there. Relaxing in the abdominal area so this next breath is received in a softening belly. This breath, now this one, and again, you can feel the awareness, the aliveness, the energy and the belly, letting that awareness spread down and fill the whole pelvic region. Feeling the movement of energy, vibration, aliveness that's there. Awareness be inside the legs, sensing the length and the volume of your legs. Awareness inside your feet, be aware of the pressure and warmth, tingling, vibrating in the feet.

Just as a cup can be filled with water, this whole body can be filled with awareness. Just widening the lens and sensing this whole body is a field of sensation, springing from awareness, floating in awareness, points of light in the night sky. So there's an awareness in the foreground, this changing, moving life, the aliveness of sensation, perhaps the awareness of sound, feelings. In the background, this open space that everything's happening in, this wakeful openness, it's infused with awareness, and rest in this wakeful openness, relaxed, at ease, When the mind gets active in thoughts, you can relax back.

Just resting the mind in what is right here. You might let the movement of the breath be a kind of home base or anchor. Stay connected with this presence, this openness. So you know you're here, right here. Something difficult to rise, some unpleasant sensation or emotion. to gently breathe with what's here, to say yes to it, contacting with kindness, sensing that there's room in this open presence for all the weather systems to move through. When there's no weather that's drawn your attention again, just to rest with the simple

movement of the breath, just to rest in this open wakefulness, aware of the change, changing flow moment to moment. Mind drifts off, time travels to the future or the past to simply notice and then relax back. Just resting your mind in what is right here. Resting the mind and the aliveness of sensation and the simple movement of the breath. It's a beautiful training to keep relaxing back. noticing if the mind's been contracted, just re-relax. Resting your mind in what is.

Resting your mind in what is. As a way of closing once again, just explore that relaxing back. You might see if it's possible to let go and relax a little more in the body. your mind in what's true right here and resting your heart in what's true in the life that's right here, resting your entire being in the mystery of this presence right here. Knowing this is your true home.