Tara Brach - Meditation: The Sea of Awareness

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Meditation: The Sea of Awareness - Our attention habitually fixates on the foreground of thoughts and feelings, and fuels an unconscious identification with a sense of separate self. This meditation guides us in recognizing the awareness that is the background and source of all experience. By resting in and as the awareness that we are, all sense of separation dissolves revealing the vastness and oneness of Being.

We begin with our meditation. So find yourself a way of sitting a posture that support you that's comfortable, relaxed, and alert. You might begin by allowing yourself to settle and become still in the sitting posture. Let the attention turn inward. Just noticing what's happening inside you. gently scanning down the body, relaxing wherever there might be tension, and it helps to soften the eyes. You might imagine a smile spreading through the eyes, allowing the brow to be smooth,

perhaps a slight smile at the mouth, relaxing the jaw, letting the shoulders fall away from the neck. I'm just feeling inside out the whole area of the shoulders, allowing there to be a dissolving, releasing of any tightness. Letting the hands rest in an easy, effortless way, perhaps softening, feeling the aliveness inside the hands. Let the chest be open, relaxing the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. this breath and now this one beginning to feel the aliveness spreading through the whole body relaxing through the hips the buttocks the genitals the legs the length the volume the weight of the legs feeling the feet from the inside the tingling vibrating and again the hands tingling vibrating and feel the whole body now as a field of sensation noticing how the whole body can be filled with awareness. You might imagine the nucleus of an atom and just says there's space,

that all the subatomic particles arise and pass and that there's space inside all the sensations, interior space, and that aliveness is appearing and dissolving. in that space, in the awareness that's in and through your entire body. You might begin to listen, sensing the sounds that are all around you, and sensing the space in all directions that that sound is appearing in. Space in and through the body, in and through space all around you. continuous space filled with the light of awareness. It lacks in and as this infinite sea of awareness,

including the arising, passing, sensations, feelings, thoughts. Testing in the awareness, it's what you are. Effortless presence that naturally allows these changes. changing sensations, feelings, thoughts. And as you continue with this effortless presence, if there's something calling your attention, some strong sensation of tension or emotion, including it in the sea of awareness,

finding its location in the body. sensing its size, shape, the quality of the sensation. And now find the eye that is aware of the sensation, the sense of self, the eye that's having this experience. And notice where that eye is located, perhaps, inside the head or behind the head like a sphere, this ghost sense of self that's aware of sensation. Just notice where it's located, the felt sense of it, of the eye that's experiencing, that witnessing eye,

and then inviting the eye to open and relax, dissolving in and as the fullness of awareness, dissolving into the sea of awareness. Now checking back to the location of the original sensation or emotion that called you. And just notice if it's the same or different. I'm not trying to change anything. Gently feel how this experience might want to integrate. Does it want to relax and open as all of awareness, dissolving? Or does it want awareness to flow into it?

Or for the awareness that's already there, the interior awareness to wake up to itself. Letting whatever happens happen as you again rest as awareness, infinite sea of awakeness. And if the mind succeeds or goes off into thoughts, they simply notice. Relaxing back again, dissolving in, and as the fullness of awareness.

Being at one with the infinity of awareness that includes this arising, passing life.