Tara Brach - Meditation: The Sea of Awareness (2019-08-21)

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Meditation: The Sea of Awareness (2019-08-21) - We begin this meditation with awakening to the aliveness in our body, using the imagery of a smile, and a body scan. Then we are guided to sense the vastness of awareness and to rest in that open wakefulness, allowing the changing thoughts, sounds, sensations and feelings to come and go. When we let life be just as it is, we become a sea of awareness that includes all the waves. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Perhaps one of the most direct portals to the awakened heart mind is by waking up our awareness in the body. And to do that with a gentleness, it helps to have the image and sense of a smile. and you might visualize that spread through the whole sky,

the curve and receptivity of a smile spreading through a vast sky and then let your mind merge with that vast sky, sensing the smile filling your mind and with that an openness or receptivity and perhaps you can soften your eyes and sense the curve and image of a smile, spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners and softening again.

So the brow is smooth. You can feel the receptivity in that whole region of the brow, bringing a slight smile to the lips. Ticknodhan calls the smile yoga because it helps connect us to a very natural sense of benevolence and ease. Maybe you can feel the inside of your mouth smiling. And as you do, let the tongue fill the lower palate, see if you can relax down to the root of the tongue. Can you imagine and feel all the aliveness through the mouth, the gums, the teeth, the tongue, the lips, the aliveness that spreads through the face, the tingling and vibrating and the scalp and

You might sense the throat filling the neck, the aliveness and sensation in the throat, and allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck, and feeling inside the shoulders, sensing that awareness can fill your shoulders and feel the aliveness that's there. It might be in the form of tingling or vibrating or it might be tension or tightness. We're just open to what's there. And if there is tightness, you might let whatever's there float in awareness. Allow the hands to rest in an easy and effortless way. And explore what happens when you soften the hands.

Soffening them and feeling from the inside out the aliveness. Softening again and again, sensing an intimate presence inside the hands. feeling tingling and pulsing, vibrating, aliveness. Again, softening the eyes, smiling in the eyes, smile at the lips, and the curve and the image of a smile to spread through the heart area. Visualizing it and experiencing the felt sense. This is not to paper over, but really to make room for the life that's here.

here. You sense the space and aliveness that fills the chest, in the upper back, scanning down to the midsection of the body. See if you can let this next in breath be received in a softening belly, this breath. And now again, continuing to let the body and the belly soften, letting the breath be received deep in the torso and feeling from the inside out. the aliveness of sensation that fills you, the awareness fill, the mid back, the lower back, the pelvic region, relaxing to aliveness, aware of where your feet touch the floor, pressure, temperature, aware of where you're sitting on your cushion or chair and you might imagine beneath you that dimension of the

earth that's supporting you and sense the energy of the earth flowing up into you, animating this body as an expression of earth, earth energy pouring up through you, perhaps right up through the base of the spine, filling the back in the belly and the body with aliveness. Perhaps you can imagine the lifeness extending outward from either side out beyond, and the furthest stars, the space of aliveness. And perhaps you can imagine aliveness and space extending in front of you, beyond the furthest stars and behind you outward and outward and outward, beyond the furthest stars, above and below you, extending infinitely outward, beyond the most distant stars, since

sensing the vastness of space and aliveness and sensing the inner space and aliveness as continuous, a wake space filled with the light of awareness, resting in this openness and receptivity of awake space, sensing in the midst of it the simple rise and fall of the breath happening on its own. You might sense the possibility of resting completely, feeling the movement of the inflow and the outflow of the breath, like waves in this vast sea of awareness, and receptive. You might notice that the mind moves from waves of the breath to waves of thought

and perhaps gets lost in them. When there's a noticing of that, you can just note it, Thinking, thinking, waves of thought. And relax open again. Be that sea of awareness, letting the different waves come and go. Letting the breath be in the foreground again. It has a way to calm and collect the attention. Moment to moment, breath to breath.

And if some other strong wave comes along, strong emotion, strong. strong sensations, perhaps pleasant tingling or an unpleasant kind of tightness, let those waves come and go, feeling them, saying yes to them and also resting in the sea of awareness. Notice what happens to your attention when strong sounds appear and see if you can let them be waves. coming and going. This too are when strong emotions fear, sorrow, grief, are more sound. What happens? Notice the possibility of simply allowing the waves to come and go. Moment to moment resting in this openness and wakefulness. You might ask yourself, is it possible to let go just a little bit more right now, to relax back, to let life be just as it is,

breath by breath, sensing in the foreground the changing waves of sound, sensation, the movement of emotion, thought, and in the background this great alert sea of awareness that gives rise to all the ways. Relaxing back, let everything be just as it is.