The Lost Art of Crying

When was the last time you’ve cried? For many, it has been since they were kids. For many others, the last time they were really sad. Some cried at the last romantic comedy they saw. When was the last time you cried for joy? Ever?

Crying has become declasse in our jaded world. We refuse to cry…or we hide our tears if we do. In men, it is often seen as a sign of weakness. In all of us, it is seen as a sign of over-emotionality, if we do it with any regularlity. 

Our psychiatrists and doctors prescribe us mood-altering drugs…to calm our tears, to modulate our emotions, to make us fly ‘nice and level.’ When our lovers leave us or die, we medicate ourselves to dull our emotions. We try to forget their memory, stop the tears, avoid the pain. We take therapy, or meditate. We get new lovers and ‘forget’ the old ones.

We run away from pain, away from tears.

Within our hips and hearts lie seas of unexpressed emotion. Our eyes brim with uncried tears. We fail to pay homage in the only genuine way we can. How important was that lover, if all she left in her wake was uncried tears? How much of an impact has the world made on us if we won’t even shed a tear at the tragedy, whatever it is? 

I cry.

I love to cry, even when it hurts. 

To give up my most precious water to mark the passage of emotions, to express them, and to cleanse myself of them. They say she was not worth the salt of my tears…I say she was. Every moment we spent was worth these tears. They wouldn’t have been so special if their loss didn’t evoke tears. 

Break my heart, make me cry rivers…puddles…lakes. That is the price of a lift ticket on the Love ride. I’ll pay gladly, for I know they free my soul, make space for more love…and pain. I will cry as well, for I fear there will never be another love like that one, maybe never another love, period. 

I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Without tears, the pent-up emotion would be crippling. Without the emotion, one would barely be alive. These emotions are the soundtracks of our lives, accompanying every moment. They play like no music can, direct from our hearts, have their roots in the heart. Music is emotions made audible, emotions are the heart made palpable.

I welcome those emotions. My sense of loss is winnowing my soul of ego and old stories, preparing the ground for newer, better love and relationships. Each low note provides a dynamic counterpoint against which the next high note can shine. Each tear has a counterpart in a laugh, has its root in it. 

I have this theory that some cancers are caused by emotion, unexpressed emotion. Their physiological, neurological, and spiritual effects have greater ramifications than we imagine. Toxins in foods can cause cancer, too, but what is more toxic than unexpressed or suppressed, negative emotions?

The last time a lover left me, I felt like I was dying. I was. The toxins in my mind, heart, and body made my will to live ebb. Had I not faced those emotions, cried out those bitter (but cleansing) tears, the ebb would have continued. Those negative emotions (or even general oposition to or skepticism about the world) cause my body’s pH to become more acid. 

The pH in my soul, as well. Not only will my body have the stench of decay and death, my mind and heart will. Every cell will soak in that acid, becoming an environment in which cancer can grow. As I cleanse myself, purge with tears and re-hydrate, I balance my pH, make room for new healing and growth. I release the old toxins, tears, and memories. 

I heal as I cry for joy as well. I help the energy flow, the new cells and possibilities and Life to bloom within me.

Crying is cathartic. It is acknowledging ourselves as the fragile beings we are, facing ourselves in our humanity. Gone are our stories and facades when we cry. Gone are our pretenses and defense mechanisms. Gone are our jaded, tough masks we face the world with.

Through tear-filled eyes we perhaps see most clearly – the humanity in ourselves and others. We mark those moments in our lives important enough to cry about…weddings and funerals, births and breakups. We pay tribute with our tears. Tears fill our eyes as we gaze toward the Divine, as we see the Divine Light reflected in the people and circumstances of our lives. 

Sometimes I cry even when I am not crying. Tears just flow, even though I am in the grip of no particular emotion. They flush my ducts, lubricate them for the next eventual and unavoidable tears of active crying.

I could not imagine a life without tears…I wouldn’t want one. 

I am more afraid of unfaced emotion than I am of any emotional pain. I fear numbness more than emotion, more than tears or pain. Tears and strong emotions indicate life. Tears are the seeds of laughter. 

Yet no one likes to cry alone. No one likes to feel alone when they cry. Tears shared can be sweet, but ultimately all tears are cried alone, all emotions faced and experienced in the solitude of ourselves. Yet we never cry totally alone. God cries and angels cry with us.

With my tears, I admit that I truly feel you, your effects on me and my intimate life. It’s nice to be heard, understood, known. But with tears I show you are felt…experienced at the most fundamental, emotional level. 

Tears for the poor, the lonely, for the sad state of the world. Tears for the beauty and pain of life, for the good and bad. Tears for me and tears for you. They flow freely, as I allow them to. 

I cry tears of thanks and gratitude for my tears. They are gifts, transporting me from the logical world of the head to the feeling world of the heart. That is a gift indeed. 

So cry on, world, freely and unashamedly. Don’t hold it in, for that will kill you. Face it, shed a tear if need be, for that will free you. Then drop it and face the next moment with an open heart, for that will liberate you.

Let’s all become free and open with our tears. Let’s cry them when they need cried. Let’s bring the honor and art back to tears. They are honest, authentic tribute to life’s ups and downs, an open display of our ever-changing states, a catharsis and a relief.

Crying is a gift, an art, a sacrament. It is a gift we give ourselves, when we hold space in our pain, knowing it will pass. It is a gift we give others, standing naked of ego, holding space as our true selves, open and honest…and brave enough to show how we feel.

Emotions repressed or denied bring suffering, disease, and death. Emotions expressed and left to pass bring healing and life.

I could just cry for joy at that.

: )

Peace

AUMmmmmmm

Shanti

 

“Well, I cried me a river, I cried me a lake. I cried til the past nearly drowned me. Tears for sad consequence, tears for mistakes…but never these tears that surround me.”

    -John Hiatt/Thirty Years of Tears

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s In There…

It’s in there. I just know it is. I can tell because I experience it directly, it and its effects. All that negative emotion that gets held in the hips as tension. All that unreleased energy, all that bad juju, all that resonance and remnants of the past. All of that junk that lodges in our bodies…

This blog will be not about that emotion, but of its release. Not about the causes, but the effects and manifestations of it in our lives, in my life. This may seem nonsensical to many, but consider this…

In your waking state, your body is held imprisoned in tension. We think of this as muscular tension, a physical cause outside the control of our volition. You can only stretch and move in your normal channels of movement. Your hips or hamstrings are only so flexible, you think. That’s just the way it is, right? I mean, it’s not my fault right? I have nothing to do with this…

Yet if you are under anesthesia, and your waking consciousness is far away, your body is like a wet noodle. You can flex it in ways that would cause physical damage if you were conscious (seriously, just ask any Operating Room Nurse or doc). So where is that tension coming from when you are ‘awake?’

Yogis understand the existence of this emotion, the phenomenon of it lodging in our bodies as tension and disruption of normal energy flows, and in some cases as eventual disease and dysfunction. Yogis directly experience the results of the release of these emotions and the manifestation of them in the actuality of their bodies, where it is undeniable.

This blog may go beyond theory, into the realm of direct experience, where the constraints of logic and reason are moot. This blog attempts to get out of the mind, where everything is subject to debate and interpretation, and into the heart, into the body, where everything is directly experienced, felt in our guts and in every cell, and is undeniable and inarguable.

Many of us are disconnected from our bodies. We see ourselves as separate from our bodies, as a consciousness that looks out from the eyes, down at this foreign body and the ‘external’ world.

This sense of separation makes the body seem an ethereal envelope, a temporary pain in the ass, and perhaps even an enemy and traitor as we age and experience disease and discomfort. We use it like a tool, whip it like a mule…until it breaks down from our abuses and neglect.

So we withdraw from the body, keep our attention focused in the head. The neglected spaces we removed our awareness and attention from become tight.The thoughts we think and emotions we feel, our suffering and desires and attachments, they all lodge down there in the hips, where we can’t get at them.

They tighten us up and keep us prisoners in our own bodies…if we let them.

Yeah, it’s in there. But don’t believe me. In yoga, we know the only way someone can truly know something is to experience it directly, as their own authentic truth. This truth cannot be imparted by sages and wise men, and certainly not by me. It can only be uncovered by You. I invite you to come along, to ask the questions of your body and to hear the answers, to release the heart and mind, and feel the body release as well. I invite you to uncover your authentic truth. I invite you to liberation.

It’s in there. Are we gonna let it stay there, unreleased? Or are we gonna allow its release? This is not something we can strive for, or work to achieve. It is more something we allow. It is a practice, an ongoing process. Through it, we purify and unite the body, mind, and spirit.

As these emotions release, they have effects on our lives, our perceptions, our possibilities. This is where this blog will go, to those effects, observing the effects and being grateful for them, not so much pondering the causes (as my ego and mind are apt to do).

In this blog, I will try to express from the heart, from the hips. Time to get out of my head…

It’s in there. I just know it. I release a bit more each day. I begin to envision the day those things no longer hold me in constraints, in self-imposed and self-generated constraints. The yogis call it samadhi (or enlightenment). The Buddha calls it liberation. Jesus calls it the Kingdom of God. You can call it whatever you want, whatever the God of Your Understanding leads you to call it.

More importantly, I invite you to experience it…or at least travel with me as I experience it and blog about it.