Crying - its role in spiritual practices

[seekingbuddha]

Recently I  came upon the topic of  "crying",  during some contemplation.   I thought  i should  write  down  some of my  thoughts  in this forum.   Crying  is common phenomenon among those who are on a spiritual path. Why do  these people, who are more spiritual than an average person,  cry ?  I  think one reason could be the fact that spiritually inclined minds tend to be more sensitive than others;  they feel their feelings  more  deeply  than an average person.  Gender does not matter  - crying arises from the depth of the mind. It  is to be treated as yet another phenomenon of mind and should be treated just like any other feeling that arises - with equanimity, overcome those emotional waves, and stabilize the mind, without  rolling/dwelling  in that emotion for long time.

 

It is also possible that crying occurs as a reaction of  empathy / loving-kindness, either directed towards oneself  or directed towards some other person.   Upon  feeling the pain of  one's own mind, or the pain of  someone else's  mind,  crying could arise.  This only means that your practice of spirituality is  diving deeper.   There is nothing to be ashamed about.   Haven't  you seen  animals cry ?  If not,  check out some internet videos on this topic.  This  is an expression of nature.

Edited May 12, 2015 by seekingbuddha

[MooNiNite]

i find that like we go through the hardest times before we go through the best times. one point along my journey i cried on the side of the road for hours. i attribute it to the experience of opening the heart chakra.

 

sometimes seeing truth causes us to cry. 

[Silent Answers]

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Edited May 28, 2015 by Silent Answers

[seekingbuddha]

I  agree with both of you.   I realize  that  the feeling  of  empathy / compassion / love  that arises from deep within (like in the case of  a  heart chakra getting touched by mind)   can  invoke  crying as a physical  response.   It is also possible to cry  without  having  any  associated  sadness  that  typically  accompanies normal  crying.    I got reminded of  the  crying  that arises from  love & compassion,   towards  the end of  the  youtube  video  on  Pam  Renolds'   near death experience.  I think  the BBC documentary  on  NDE  (available on youtube)  called   The day i died,  is  something  that is worth watching.

[Spotless]

As a great teacher of mine used to say often when someone was crying "the more you cry the less you have to pee".

Of course they often began to laugh not long after hearing this or they would laugh and cry at the same time which would make us all laugh.

 

Crying can happen for so many reasons. It has happened to me recently though it is tears, but I am so thankful and their are not words to describe it but it needs to pour out somehow.

 

The matters of heart bring tears and crying most often. Matters of heart can be assumed to be easily summated into a recognizable group but they can be as low as jealousy and simply feeling sorry for oneself as children sometimes do, to matters of the right sided heart in the higher realms of universal being / resonance.

 

Feeling the crush of time differential when we judge ourselves against future or past - this puts our ideal of ourself in the midpoint and it can be extremely difficult to bear the blow to our perfect pictures we have of ourself and where we "ought" to be. Judgement is a rough one - usually we are tougher on ourselves than others. These are always based on a "perfect picture" often acting as a lens through which we see ourself and others and the world - these are core pictures that are hardest to explode, they do not just ebb away in the course of meditation - they require chisels and picks and usually events - often buckets of tears and wreckage.

 

Have a child - you will surely look upon them and at times tears will well up at just how stunning they are.

 

Sometimes crying is fear with nowhere to go and it needs sound and outpouring - a tragedy, an accident, an injury, a loss - super scary at the time "what will happen?", "Will I die", " will they come back?" The dark unknown.

 

Little of crying is the mind - it is extrapolation upon our limited physical body - the great speed of the powerful spirit twisting within this great vehicle we have the grace to inhabit. Lower mind is the monkey mind and it is insignificant except from the damage it does holding the reins we hand to it. If mind has its hand in crying it is in this monkey mind mixing with lower emotion in such things as jealousy and self pity. Higher mind has little to do with crying, not that crying is below it, it simply does not have much to do with what makes crying happen.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Spotless

[noonespecial]

Ah, the tears from nowhere, this sort of deep nostalgic sadness that opens up sometimes, the pangs of the the great mother who must eat her cubs to ensure her own survival.
 

Joy and pain, like sunshine and rain - rob base & dj ez rock

[seekingbuddha]

Hmmm..... this is a surprise  to me.  Never  saw a  wild life  video  where  cubs are being  eaten by the mother.  Which  species does this ? 

 

I  suddenly  wonder  if  anyone  evolves  spiritually  into  higher mind  states,   without  ever  going through  crying.  I am sure,   this is not  something  our  spiritual   gurus  would like to  talk  about,   given  the  negativity  that gets  associated  with a  crying  person.   Come  to think of  it,  I have never seen  a video  of  any  spiritual   guru,  where  he/she   talks  only  about  the  bad things  he/she   did  in his/her  past.   (I  am talking  graphic  descriptions  of  how  low  they  stooped  in their  life,  before  gaining  fame/glory  as  a guru).

[seekingbuddha]

      When  i read  what  Spotless  has  mentioned as  "matters of the right sided heart in the higher realms of universal being / resonance",  I  remember  that  Pamela Reynolds'  husband  talked about her crying out of empathy (see video i mentioned in previous post).  The lower mind crying (as mentioned by Spotless)  is the typical  crying  of  a child or teen (suffering based crying).

 

Anyways.... an uninteresting topic to many, but i wanted a  thread  to mention  the recent video i saw. In my search, i could not find any previous threads talking about that video.  I  felt the empathy that is mentioned by  Pamela's  husband  and wanted to share that in this forum.  Also wanted to share the thought that  higher minds create "crying",  but  from a different  base.

[wilfred]

my deepest tears are the most humbling experience, as if the ego is literally shrinking and the futility of all the storytelling that goes on in my head has become blindingly obvious. like a big depressurization of built up mental charge, deflating like a balloon. my reflection is generally 'what on earth have i been doing to myself?' and yes it feels like an empathetic reaction, for myself in such instances. there's something deeply beautiful about seeing the madness we put ourselves through for what it is. likewise upon seeing others reflect in a similar manner, experiencing deep empathy for a person trying to put the pieces together and struggling in similar plight to let themselves be free.

[seekingbuddha]

Here  is some  thought  that came, regarding this topic......
 

Sometimes  crying  comes about,  when  a piece of ignorance  departs.

Sometimes  laughter comes about,  when a piece of wisdom  arises.

Then  times change, and equanimity  trumps  them all.

[cheya]

Years ago I had a meditation teacher who... how to describe this?... "meditated us".

It was a group thing, and together we floated very high, very ecstatic, maybe not very grounded....

But coming back, that was when tears would just overflow...

 

I asked him what that was about. There was no pain, no sorrow— maybe a little gratitude— but mostly just these overflowing tears.

 

He answered that we were so expanded in the meditation that when we had to "come back down,"  all that energy simply could not fit into our normal fields, and it just overflowed into tears.

 

We cried a lot.

[blue eyed snake]

to me, at least part of it is the letting go of tears never cried.

To allow yourself, lovingly, to cry those tears, at last, so to become free of them.

 

To let go of all the old hurt and pain that are locked up in ones self, so to become free of that pain and those energetic and physical blockages that go with it.