Crying can be a most intimate form of prayer.
I gave myself the gift of a four day prayer retreat last week, and it was much needed and profoundly appreciated. I spent the majority of those days in rapt attention to my interior beingness, and my experience of my Source and was again deepened and expanded. I am grateful to be at a place in my spiritual emergence where I am mostly cooperative with my authentic urges. When I feel the call to take added time within, I arrange to do that as quickly as I can. The benefits of this cooperation are immeasurable. Something(s) was calling to be attended to, and giving myself the time and space to do that resulted in clarity, spaciousness, insight, and a couple of good old fashioned snotty cries.
I feel blessed to have a friendly relationship with tears. That wasn’t always the case. The big boys don’t cry syndrome had me in its vice for awhile, and it was a contributing factor to an extended period of emotional paralysis that thankfully has passed. My ability to freely feel has been augmented by a lessening of the dualistic logic of many New Thought teachings. The “if I’m doing it right I will always feel peaceful, joyful, and filled with love and light” perception. That tripped me up for longer than I care to admit. Now I embrace the fact that an actualized spirituality is in alignment with a healthy psychology. It isn’t about always feeling good. It is about being really good at allowing myself to feel. I don’t identify with my feelings anymore than I do my thoughts. But I am an open space for both to pass through without resistance.
And so knowing that I had given myself the gift to tuck away within my Beloved for a few days brought forth both tears of relief and joy, and some of grief and remorse. I sometimes feel when I have extended meditation and prayer time that I am leaning into the enormous breasts of a Divine mother, and that she is tenderly holding me throughout whatever I will allow myself to experience. She is wondrously intuitive, and she either holds me gently or tightly, depending on which is most appropriate to the moment. She never shuts me down, no matter what the velocity of the tears or even sobbing may be. She understands that tears are an enormously intimate and healing form of prayer. She knows that tears are Holy water that flow from a heart that is open enough to allow the flow. She hears the silent scream that has been suppressed, and is finally liquefying and taking stream. She knows that tears are real and vital and authentic. They are so often stifled behind stories of defense and deadening logic. When I tap into the beginnings of an erupting cry and I choose to allow those tears to flow and fall, I know I have honored something that needed expression. Whether it be grievous or joyful, I have gotten real with myself and with my Source. I have chosen not to withhold or withdraw. My prayer has filled my heart and fallen from my eyes. And I know I have been heard, felt, and supremely comforted.
Crying can be a most intimate and profound form of prayer. It can’t and needn’t be forced. But it also won’t be suppressed indefinitely. In the world in which we live there is much to grieve both individually and collectively. There is also an astounding array of beauty and transcendence. The fullness of the human condition is only experienced in a heart that is open to feel the entire spectrum. Truth is often accompanied by tissues. I am grateful to be able to cry my losses and also the lessons they reveal. Gratitude will often be accompanied by as many tears as is grief. They are both movements within my heart, and they both translate to activity within and from my eyes. And so I let them fall. I pray the tears and they are a baptism from my Soul. A beautiful flowing baptism occurring within my Source Beloved. And for that recognition, I may surely weep.
www.taylorestevens.com
