Dear Sravna,
I have a question...all this talk about Kundalini or God etc...all these seem so virtual that is it only exists in some remote dimension of our mind but its not really in front of our eyes.
That is why now I have stopped consoling people by telling them to pray.
Sometime back I had a case of a person who lost her adult only son in a hit run accident case and he died on the spot.
I never told the lady to pray to gain strength..in fact I told her to cry..it takes quite a lot of time to get over grief..if she was depressed I could give her some meds for a while but most important is she should not try to fake being strong.
I noticed her husband not allowing to grief telling her to stop crying and pray to God for strength.
I told her to let herself cry...I let her cry right in front of me for almost 20 mins..I said feelings have to flow.
Crying is not a sign of weakness..its the road to gaining a clearer picture and acceptance eventually.
I told her by holding on to trying to be strong too soon we actually weaken ourselves.
I told her one has to have real people who care for us and to some extent if a person stresses too much on the need for prayer it might just seem that they do not want to really listen to you cry.
So find people who will hold your hand and let you cry and not someone who passes all the responsibility to God.
She finally recovered well cos she found people who would listen to her cry.
So do you think sometimes moving away from the concept of God actual helps recovery?
I would add this:
The events and point of time can be divided into two. 1) Pre catastrophy and 2) Post catastrophy.
And forces and their interplay that inexorably lead an individual through situations can also be divided into two. 1) those in the perceptible and visible realm and 2) those beyond human perception/visible spectrum.
When an individual grapples with the visible/perceptible powers and forces and loses the struggle, it becomes a pathetic helpless surrender and the individual needs 1) recuperation and 2)retaining self respect and self esteem to move ahead and meet life's challenges (more of them are on the way). At this stage we can call it gathering the self for self preservation. Self preservation needs answers to the questions 1)why to me? 2)What did/did not I do to deserve this? 3) Am I fit for nothing? 4) am I not equipped ? and finally 5) am I inadequate to the tasks of life?
Similarly when an individual grapples with "divine" punishments the situation can be explained with the same set of words as above.
In the two situations there is a difference. In the perceptible realm he can identify a particular deficiency in him to blame. But in the matter of catastrophies which visit without any reason there is no benefit of such blaming even.
So in both situations the God entity becomes handy. He can be blamed, he can be questioned no end, he can be even abused, mocked at, even garlanded with chappals -- and in the process what is achieved is self preservation by the victim for facing further onslaught of catastrophies.
This is only looking at the question of crying inconsolably mentioned in the quoted passage. This has nothing to do with philosophy or religion.
Whether it is a loss of fortune due to bombing by enemy or loss of life of a very dear one in a freak accident, self preservation is paramount post the incident and God comes handy. Just crying wont solve the problem and questions will stand echoing. All the answerless questions can be addressed to him and left in the air hanging as he wont answer and we know that.
Briefly put, pre catastrophic loss, chest thumping, challenging, persevering, fighting, feeling all powerful, muscle flexing and many more are all okay. They are natural to the upcoming struggle as a prelude. But after losing the battle/after the catastrophy the situation is different. a badly injured ego needs carefull nurturing and self preservation becomes the paramount task. To take the load of the mind God comes handy. He can be the sink into which you pour all the humiliation you feel, all the muck in you, all the unanswerable questions you have, all your secret deficiencies which you can not share with outside world and all your fears.
Do not just cry. For heavens sake, do pray or have a dialogue with God even if turns out to be just a monologue.LOL.
These lines from a tamil pasuram of Alwar stands out for the situation:
எங்கேயும் கரைகாணாது எறி கடல் வாய் மீண்டேயும் வங்கத்தின் கூம்பேறும் மாப்பறவை போன்றேனே!
