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BEING TOUCHED AND BEING MOVED: THE SPIRITUAL VALUE OF TEARS
In his book, Feelings:Our Vital Signs (Harper, Row Perennials, 1979), Willard Gaylin makes the following distinction:
“Touched is generally a light emotion, although we do experience feelings of being deeply touched. The fact that we speak of it so (and it is not considered redundant) merely affirms the sense of touch as being a gentle feeling. The caress is its symbol. It arises almost inevitably in terms of something that is done for us by someone. It is a person-to-person emotion.
Being moved, on the other hand, is a deep and intense emotion and it rarely relates to a transaction between people. More often than not, the feeling of being moved is in relationship to certain abstractions, events, concepts, and sensations—The most common experience of being moved is in relationship to some encounter with grandeur(p.196)—
There is a physical feeling implicit in the very name of the emotion “being moved.” We do tend to feel “transported” by this emotion—the feeling of our being lifted out of ourselves—establishes an identification of ourself as a part of something bigger.(p.197) It is the emotion of spiritual communion, and, as such, may be the essential feeling of the religious experience.”
It is so pleasing to me to hear someone make such fine distinctions between “feelings” as are more often made between “ideas.”
In my experience, “being touched” and “being moved” are very often signalled by a sheen of tears in the eyes, nature’s signal to us that “This here-and-now is important.” We think of tears as related to painful experiences and overlook how often they signify love, happiness, joy, awe, reverence.
If we pause and use Intuitive Focusing to “sense into” the meaning signalled by the tears, we find ourselves enriched by a “tap root to the core of your Being and to the Universe.” See this excerpt below on using Focusing to find the meaning in tears:
From Chapter Six, manuscript The Wisdom of Tears © Dr. Kathy McGuire
FINDING THE MEANING IN TEARS
By now you have experienced the sheen of tears. Perhaps you have come to treasure moments of being touched and moved. They are an instant channel to energy, a tap root to the core of your Being and to the Universe.
You may find yourself asking some questions:
— What does it mean to “be moved by” something?
Am I supposed to do something?
— Do my tears mean anything? Are they trying to
tell me something?
— Why do I always cry when I see a particular
thing?
— Are my tears related to something from my
childhood?
— Do the same things touch other people as touch
me?
What Is ‘Meaning’?
You experience the meaning of living by having feelings in your body, not from ideas in your head. “Meaning” lies in your unique feeling response to any situation, based on your own lifetime of experiences. One man might experience a terrible grief when his father is dying: “Oh, I can’t go on living. He means so much to me. Everything that is important to me is wrapped up in him.” Another man may have a different experience at his father’s death, a sadness tinged with joy: “I’ll miss him, but it means that he is free. His time has come.” By carefully making words for feelings, you can find your own unique meanings.
Being open to tears, anger, embarrassment, love, and other emotions allows you to discover, through the exploration of the “felt meaning,” the personal meanings which give value and direction to your life. It might help to think of feelings as “felt meaning”– your feeling of the meaning of the situation to you. They are your access to the network of thoughts and beliefs which gives a goal and a direction, a meaning or a purpose, to your life.
For instance, when I saw a slender, Asian woman stand up as the violin soloist at a concert and launch into sound, I welled up with tears. The tears indicated that the situation had meaning for me. I found the precise meaning as I made words for the texture of the feeling: “It’s not just that she is a woman, but that she is small and feminine. I can be feminine and be powerful. A small, feminine person can be the vehicle for excellence. I have never seen this before. Always before the vehicle has been a man. Women can do this. I can do this.”
If I had not allowed myself to experience the emotion, to taste the tears and look for words to describe them, I would have been cut off from the profound meanings in the situation, meanings that could affect the entire course of my life.
The capacity to feel the meaning in situations, to be moved to tears, is a skill and a gift overlooked in our society. Psychologists and philosophers note the feelings of isolation, alienation, and despair called the “existential neurosis:” “What’s the meaning of my life?” The loss of meaning can be traced to the downplaying of the ability to feel and thus to discover the personal values which can guide meaningful action.”
You can begin to notice the landscape of your tears as an Eskimo can decipher 100 different kinds of snow.
Download “Being Touched and Being Moved: The Spiritual Value of Tears for many examples of how tears and Focusing interrelate and “Finding The Meaning In Tears” for exercises for using Focusing to find the meaning in your tears. Both articles are packed with real-life examples of how tears “touch us” and “move us” in positive ways.
You can try out “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”
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Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director
Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
www.cefocusing.com
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