Tara Brach - Meditation: Widening Rings of Being

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We'll take just a few moments, if you will, to find your way of sitting or whatever posture it is that supports you when you practice. The basic guidelines are a way of being that you're upright enough so that you can feel alert and awake and also at ease. And that at ease is really where I'd like

to start right now, just to take some breaths, it can help to collect and relax your attention, coming out of whatever has been going on already today, into the space of this moment, and you might feel the in-breath and take it in in a slow, full, deep way. So you really feel it filling your chest and your lungs. And then let the out-breath be slow and a real releasing, a letting go, letting go. And again, a nice, full, deep in-breath, slow out-breath and feel a sense of releasing, relaxing outward, letting go. And again, breathing in nice and full and deep, and then releasing slowly. You can feel a letting go through your body a bit as you let go of the breath. And staying with the breath

as it resumes its natural rhythm. Sensing it helps you to settle to deepen coming into stillness to increase a sense of presence. You might even notice the difference between just a few moments ago and the quality of awareness that's right here. You continue to deepen that presence as we scan through the body, just inviting whatever wants to let go right now to release, to dissolve a little. You might sense the region of the brow and see if there's any little micro-releasing, a letting go and softening at the brow, the eyes. Just a suggestion of softening can help.

Let the jaw unclench if there's any clenching. You might bring a slight smile to the mouth because that in a way invites a deeper relaxing. See if you can let the tongue fill the lower palate and just to feel and relax the tongue down to the root. and be aware of the shoulders and sense the possibility of allowing the shoulders to relax back and down a bit to fall away from the neck and to feel the shoulders from the inside out and invite whatever dissolving whatever melting is possible just to sense the movement, slight letting go,

releasing. You can let the breath assist you so that with the out breath there can be even more letting go. We carry so much unconsciously. It's a gift to invite that letting go. Check and sense if your hands can rest in a more easy and effortless way and explore softening the hands and softening again and feeling them from the inside. So you can be aware of the space inside the hands and the tingling and vibrating arising in that space, letting the attention fill the chest, sensing an openness to the chest and feeling the area of the heart. You might sense if there's any tightness around the heart, again that invitation to dissolve. noticing that with the out breath it's possible to let go just a little bit more, scanning

down to the abdominal area and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again receiving the breath deep in the torso, sensing what softening and dissolving as possible. as you continue to breathe and open in the belly area. Relaxing down to the hips, buttocks, the genitals, feeling the legs, the volume, the waves, length of the legs, right into the feet. You can soften the feet. You can feel from the inside out the aliveness in the feet.

Notice what happens when you wide in the attention and sense this whole body as a field of sensation, including in that field the sounds that come and go. So you're listening to and feeling the whole moment, sensing in the foreground the changing sensations, feelings, sounds, and in the background that alert. and vast stillness that's awake, aware, receptive. It's natural that thoughts will arise and you'll discover you've been carried off inside of thought. When you notice that, without any judgment, just gently reopen the attention to include sound,

listening and sensation, relaxing back, being the awake space of awareness, being alert to thinking. You might ask, am I dreaming? Notice that conceptual film that keeps arising between you and living reality. You might sense the space between thoughts. What's that like? Relaxing back into the space between thoughts. Relaxing with what's right here. The poet Rumi writes,

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? move outside the tangle of fear thinking live in silence flow down and down in always widening rings of being