This practice sets the atmosphere of loving presence with a smile-down and waking up all the senses. We relax into open awareness, receptive to the breath or whatever waves of experience are calling for attention. The invitation is to rest in Hereness, fully awake in presence. The meditation ends with a short offering of blessings.

This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness. We close with a prayer of loving kindness. "No matter how often the mind drifts, all that really matters is the quality of heart in the way you come back… to come back with interest and friendliness to this moment, then you plant those seeds for whatever else arises."

We keep searching for happiness through travel, surfing the internet, shopping, and other worldly ways – but does it ever last? Supreme happiness arises right here in the heart. When we are present and patient beyond measure, we are stronger than we know. This groundbreaking inner seeing is free of devices – and free of vices. Pure, wise clarity and conscious awareness disentangle and unburden the mind of fear, obsession, all distractions, and at last, all suffering! This is the key to our self-made prison of beliefs, thoughts and opinions. We wake up to our true inheritance – the liberating Truth of what we are.

In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the changing experience of breath, sensations, feelings, sound and thoughts. By resting in a wakeful and open heartspace, we can include all the passing waves with ease and tenderness.

This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…

This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.

Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.