Sri Chinmoy has spoken in powerful, evocative, direct words about the nature of our inner cry and how to cultivate it:
“How can we have inner peace? We can have it just by crying, crying for inner peace. Now, how can we cry for the inner peace? It is not easy to cry sincerely. How can we cry sincerely? We can cry by looking at our own image. If we cannot perceive our face without a mirror, we must stand in front of a mirror and see how helpless, how hopeless we are. We will see that millions of thoughts come and float right on our face. Now at this point, we must not be depressed. What we have to do is feel, ‘Is this my face? Is this my lot? Is this what I actually look like? I want to change my face, my fate; but how? By feeling tremendous inner confidence that I am God’s child. Until now, I have allowed myself to be eaten away by ignorance. Now I will not allow anything or anybody to devour me. I will only allow God to devour me. Let Him eat me up.’
“When we can have that kind of offering or feeling in our life, that we are ready to be eaten by God, piece by piece, each drop of blood, then we will see that a cry automatically comes. When we are ready to give, there comes a cry: ‘God, take me; what I have and what I am, take me. What I have is absolute ignorance, within and without. What I am right now is Your infinite Consolation and Your infinite Compassion and my very limited determination. The only thing I have is a bundle of ignorance on my shoulders.’”
– Sri Chinmoy