Tara Brach - Meditation: What Matters to your Heart?

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

Meditation: What Matters to your Heart? - Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome, friends. For many, entering the new year is really an opportunity to take a fresh look at our lives and reconnect with what most matters. And so in that spirit, I'd like to offer a short, guided meditation. that can help us listen more deeply to our hearts. It can help us become intimate with the current state of our heart

and really get in touch with our deepest longings or aspirations. I hope you enjoy. As a way of arriving, you might just sense your posture right now and make whatever subtle adjustments help you to feel awake and alert and at ease. and you might close your eyes or let your gaze be downcast and begin with a conscious breathing inhaling deeply perhaps to the count of five so that you're filling your chest and your lungs and then a very slow out breath letting go letting go nice deep full in breath again filling the chest and the lungs and with the out breath, a soft breath, a slow breath, releasing any tension or tightness.

Again, breathing in deeply and breathing out slowly, sensing the possibility of softening down the length of your body, letting go, letting go. Then allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm and still sensing with the breathing with the out breath that you can let go of any unnecessary holding or tightness, perhaps scanning gently through your body and sensing what wants to let go right now, bringing your attention to the heart, sensing that you can breathe in and out of the heart, contacting in an intimate way, the experience of your heart right now, that physical felt sense of the heart.

Now I'd like to invite you to imagine that you're walking down a path. Could be in the woods, by a stream, in the mountains, hills, and you know that soon you'll be walking around a bend. You're not there yet, but soon you'll be walking around a bend and what you'll see or hear or feel will in some way express the current state of your heart. So again, feel the area of your heart, breathing, present. Now imagine going around that bend and just see if there's an image that reflects the state of your heart right now at this juncture of your life.

It might be a particular landscape or an animal or a tree. It might be certain weather. be certain colors, certain forms, or maybe it's sound. Perhaps you hear certain music or are listening to certain words. What's the feeling tone of your heart? Deepening attention to anything your heart wants to tell you. Let your heart communicate how it's experiencing life. Now as you deepen an intimate attention with the current state of your heart, continuing to listen inwardly, sense what your heart most longs for. What's your deepest aspiration or intention at this part of your life?

what is it you most want to be experiencing, our trusting, our expressing, sensing, sensing what most matters. If you are at the end of your life looking back, what would most matter about how you lived this juncture of your life in some energetic way, bowing to or honoring, whatever you're noticing, trusting that you can continue to listen and be informed. formed by your heart. And depending on your circumstances, you might take some time to journal to write down whatever you discovered about the state of your heart and the aspiration, the intention that most resonates.

And if you have the opportunity to explore with someone else who's doing this meditation, you might share what did you learn as you listen to your heart. as a way of closing, I want to thank you for your attention, for your presence, for your caring heart. And take a moment to feel our shared aspiration, our shared prayer, that all beings everywhere might realize their very essence as loving awareness, that all beings might live from this loving awareness. That there be a growing expression of peace, justice, and compassion in our world. That all beings everywhere awaken and be free. Thank you my friends, all blessings.