Crying in Meditation.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Namaste Deepak, I started meditating a week ago and I can’t stop crying. I feel like I literally opened up Pandora’s box and all these emotions are coming out. I am studying for a big exam but can’t seem to focus. I know I am not depressed because I wake up ready to study and start working. But then I have these emotional feelings coming out of me and I can’t stop crying. I can’t focus on my work. I am really trying hard but it just feels like my emotions have a mind of their own. How can I be at peace? I just want peace in my soul, focus on my work, and have some joy in my life. But my heart feels heavy. What is going on?
Response:
The bouts of crying indicate that there is an old stockpile of unresolved sadness and loss that was waiting for an opportunity to be released, and the meditation served as that opportunity. But because there was such a backlog of grief, its release can’t be confined to the meditation period and it is spilling out into the rest of the day. (Some people even find themselves crying in their dreams.) The first thing to realize is that this is old stuff and it just needs time, patience and the deep rest of meditation to release and resolve itself. You don’t have to spend a single moment trying to figure out what is causing this or what connection it has with your present life, because most likely it has no connection whatsoever. This means that you can, in a certain sense, let the crying come and go and then get back to studying the way coughing fits can come and go when you are getting over a chest cold. Once you know that the crying is not anything you need to worry about, you can accommodate it and then quickly switch right back to studying.
The other thing that might be a factor in this crying jag hanging around so long could be that the release is not as complete as it could be when the emotion comes up. So if you want to help each crying episode release more fully and in a way that doesn’t take as much out of you energetically, you can make audible tones or sounds that resonate with what you are feeling inside. Hold the tones or change them in whatever way matches the emotional quality in your body that wants release. This toning will greatly facilitate the clearing process and should reduce the number of crying episodes as well. And once the majority of the old trauma has been healed the crying will stop and the rest of the grief issue will resolve itself in a more comfortable way.
Love,
Deepak
