Question: At times, when praying and meditating on surrender, I am moved to copious tears. I feel these tears as different from those tears of soul's joy which I have experienced at times. The anguish which accompanies them, makes me feel that these are not even tears of aspiration, but merely of frustration, and this disturbs me. How can I aspire for, and concentrate on surrender without becoming so emotional? Even writing this question, I find myself moved to tears.

Sri Chinmoy: I am sure you know that when the soul expresses its joy with tears it means that the soul is expressing its deepest gratitude through the physical being. As you know, in the soul’s joy, there can be no frustration. There you get only the feeling of a vast and total oneness with the Highest on the strength of your surrender.

During your meditation and prayer, at times what you feel is the uncertain drive of your yet-uncontrolled emotional vital. Since you have, a few times, experienced the tears of your soul’s joy, which are a kind of divine light, the frustration that lies in your unlit emotional vital cannot last for long. Again if your prayer is flooded with purity and your meditation is surcharged with luminosity, even in the domain of gross vital, instead of frustration you will have a partial sense of psychic realisation, of Truth in the form of heart’s spontaneous joy. The spontaneous joy of the heart can easily enable you to meditate on total and integral surrender. Please try to illumine your emotional vital through your soul’s light. Once the limited emotional vital is illumined, it enters into the boundless sea of all-achieving and all-fulfilling surrender.