Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting TaraBrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. This fall we experimented for about six weeks with including an ad before this podcast. And we've decided not to move forward with any more advertising. Many of you shared that it disrupted the flow of your listening and I really understand it didn't feel aligned with the spirit of this offering. These teachings and meditations will continue to be freely available and your support truly makes that possible. Thank you friends. Thank you for whatever you've offered and for your continued generosity in whatever form feels right to you. The mood of meditation is one of a friendliness kindness. We can establish that mood through our whole body first by imagining and sensing a wide open sky that's filled with the curve of a smile. Just imagine that an open vast sky and a smile spreading through that sky illuminating sensing the receptivity of a smile. Everything in your mind merged with that open sky so you can sense that smile spreading through and filling and lightening up your whole mind. And sensing the eyes smiling the outer corners of the eyes lifted up so that smile spreads through the eyes and you can feel all the sensations of the eyes floating. It's a light and dark tingling vibrating letting the brow be smooth. Sense a slight but real smile also at the lips. Sense inside of the mouth smiling. The eyes are soft and smiling the mouth smiling. Notice that the tongue can spread naturally filling the lower palate. You can relax the tongue down to the root. You might become aware of all the sensations in the mouth, the teeth, the gums, the lips, the tongue tingling and vibrating in space. The eyes are soft, smiling, mouth. You might visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the area of the heart. Smiling into the heart. And sense how this doesn't cover over anything. It creates more space for the life that's here. Finding that friendly space hold whatever feelings experience is in the region of the heart. You might gently soften a bit in the shoulders allowing the shoulders to fall away from the ears. Feeling inside the shoulders. If you feel some tension or tightness, sense that might float a little in awareness. Letting be wake food. Letting the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way. You might explore softening the hands and softening again. And feeling from the inside out the aliveness that's right here. Notice how intimately you can feel the sensations. Again, sensing the eyes are soft and smiling. The mouth is slightly smiling. Smile spreading through the heart. As you scan down the body, feeling the midsection, you might imagine, visualize and feel the curve of a smile spreading through the belly. Perhaps you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath. And now this one. And again, feeling from the inside out the sensations and the aliveness through the whole midsection of your body. Hands soft, belly soft, breathing deep into the torso. Awake and hear. If you continue to scan down, you can visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the pelvic region. Loxin opening to the sensations there. The awareness deep in the torso, breath by breath, feeling the aliveness that's here. You might imagine the base of the spine. If you're sitting in a vase or the curve of a smile, directly contacting the base of the spine, just visualize that and sense the earth's energy pouring up through that vase into your body. Flowing up and filling your body with aliveness. Feeling the aliveness everywhere in the arms, the hands, the legs, the feet. So that if you widen the lens, you can sense this body as a field of sensation. Sensation vibrating and tingling and bubbling and changing in space. Flowing in space. Not stopping anything or opposing anything. Letting everything happen. Letting everything be just as it is. Along with sensation aware of the sounds, fearing, disappearing in the open space of awareness. The sounds, sensation, feelings, small changing stream of experience, unfolding moment by moment. In this wakeful openness. You might sense in the midst of all that's happening, the simple movement of the breath. Resting in that, letting that perhaps be the foreground. Still aware of the sounds and other sensations. Letting the intention be to have an alert and friendly and interested presence. Right here. Open to the changing flow. And then when the mind gets drawn off in thoughts, which it's natural and happens, it's inevitable. The practices to simply notice that when we do, we gently relax, open the attention again. Aware of the sounds that are actually here. Perhaps something that's smile in the eyes, the mouth, the heart. Reestablishing a friendly presence. Relaxing with the breath. Relaxing with the life that's here. Letting everything be just as it is. Relaxing with the breath. These last minutes, you might explore a bit more what it means to meet the moment with a friendly quality of presence. A gentle, clear attention. Letting the life be just as it is. 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