Tears of Joy and Gratitude

SPIRITUAL:

Ma Prem Naina

People have almost lost the value of tears. They allow tears only when they are in deep suffering or pain. They have forgotten that tears can also be of happiness, of gratefulness, of tremendous delight and of celebration.

In certain moments when joy becomes unbearable, when joy is at the pinnacle, at a hundred-degree point, then only one is really joyful. When we see someone crying, we think the person is sad and in misery. We start consoling the person because we have not really heard of the expression 'tears of joy'. Tears have nothing to do with misery as such, tears come when something is overflowing in our souls. It may be sadness, anger, joy or love. Someone may start to cry when he or she is very angry, or a child who is overflowing with laughter might have tears in his eyes. Tears are an indication that the glass is full and has started overflowing.

Osho says, "Never be afraid of tears. The so-called civilization has made you very afraid of tears. It has created a kind of guilt in you. When tears come into your eyes, you start feeling embarrassed. You start feeling, "What will others think? I am a man and I am crying! It looks so feminine and childish. It should not be so." You stop those tears and you kill something that was growing in you."

Tears are far more beautiful than anything else that we have with us, because tears come from the overflow of our being. Tears are not necessarily of sadness; sometimes they come out of great joy and sometimes they come out of great peace and sometimes they come out of ecstasy and love. In fact, they have nothing to do with sadness or happiness. Anything that stirs our heart too much, anything that takes possession of us, anything that is too much, that we cannot contain and it starts overflowing - that brings tears.

To accept them with great joy, relish them, nourish them, welcome them, and through tears,we will know how to pray.

Through tears we will know how to see. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing the truth. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing the beauty of life and the benediction of it.

People cry and weep only when something goes wrong, so crying is like a complaint against existence. Crying seems to be an indicator of helplessness, so everybody has been taught not to cry because that shows his or her weakness.

Man particularly has been taught not to cry because that is the trait of women, feminine to be precise. 'Don't be a sissy! Don't cry. Keep your control. Be a man.' These are all foolish teachings but they have been conditioned into the mind. We have been fed on these false ideologies so crying becomes more and more difficult. But even when we want to cry, one immediately controls oneself. Whenever there is something within us that wants to cry, we repress it. It is because of tears that man is more miserable than woman. This way, we have stopped a source of immense significance. When a man does not allow tears to flow and goes on repressing them, he is basically repressing his sadness and other overflowing emotions because the tears would have taken it away.

The greater problem is when we repress our tears of sadness, suffering and misery, and we continue to repress them when we are happy and joyous. We do not allow our eyes to participate in our joy. And this repression becomes a part of our lives.

Crying has nothing to do with sadness or depression. It has something to do with aliveness.Whenever we are tremendously alive, we will feel a volcanic eruption within us and we will want to cry. That crying will be beautiful and blissful.

People always look fresher, beautiful and healthier after they have wept. If we allow tears of sadness, misery and suffering to come out, then the tears help take away the sadness, the darkness, leaving a more silent space behind.

Allowing tears unburdens us, cleanses us and breaks the repressive structure.

Osho points out, "If you can really cry deeply, it can become a rebirth. Tears are one of the most beautiful things in the world. Crying is more natural than laughter. If you are brought up by people who never laugh, you will not laugh because you will not know that laughter exists. It is certain learning. That's why animals cannot laugh. They can cry but they don't laugh.Laughter is social. Crying is natural, very deep, unlearned, original."

Laughter and tears go together hand in hand. They are not opposites but the two extremes of the same spectrum. If one is not capable of shedding tears, he will be incapable of laughter too. Suppression of tears leads to suppression of laughter.

To weep and to allow the tears to drop in torrents unburdens us and the whole rubbish of our mind goes out through our tears. We become more fragile, more delicate and we lose that egoistic attitude of always remaining in control. We become more free, spontaneous, more childlike. A man who really knows how to cry and weep will become able to laugh one day. He has earned it. Laughter that has no tears is very superficial, imposed, painted.

If we can cry and allow our total being to go into it and dissolve into it, we will have a totally different quality of laughter arising in us.

Osho devised the 21-day Mystic Rose Meditation therapy, which is a unique, dynamic healing and life changing process. The Mystic Rose Meditation is a three-week process, involving three hours per day. The first week is Laughter, the second week is for Crying, tears, and the third week is known as the Watcher on the Hill - Meditation.

[Ma PremNaina (Naina Rajkumari) is a Master's in Business Administration and also holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication. She was initiated into Osho's Neo Sanyas in 2003 and has been heading the publications and media relations at Osho World Foundation before moving on to join Solidaridad Network Asia as Head of Communications.]