Emotions in Prayer

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A few friends of mine recently revealed to me that they attended a catholic conference. At this conference, they had dedicated prayer time. They were told to release their emotions to God, and many people at the event, including my friends, began crying. My friends described it as “worshiping God with their emotions.” Never hearing this before, I was immediately suspicious, but with a few searches online, I could not find anything accurately describing or condemning this proposed form of worship. My suspicions were founded in my understanding of a Protestant (I am not sure if this isn’t universally true) mindset towards prayer where a relationship with God is accompanied by an emotional journey. However, an emotional attachment to God is often weak and temporal. Therefore, should worship ever be focused around emotions?
 
Well there are biblically passages that show people praying emotionally. My favourite example of this is Hannah praying for a son. She gets admonished for supposedly being drunk, which she isn’t.

You can pray and cry, laugh, sing, be stoic, have no visible emotive response, be quite, be loud.

I don’t really think that being emotional during prayer times is “owned” by any one religion or denomination.

A few Orthodox Jewish women I know sometimes cry during the Amidah prayer.
 
Well my issue wasn’t that the prayer involved emotions, but that the entire prayer was centered around emotion. If emotion is the base of the relationship with God, it just seems odd to me.
 
I might get emotional with God in my bedroom or at a funeral or something.
Not going to turn on the tear faucets at some conference with a bunch of strangers though, sorry.
 
I knew the tears must be a sign of our repentance for our sins. If these people can achieve instant contrition in public and express it physically… then wow, great for them. But if they said just express your emotions to God I am not sure what they were doing.
 
Never heard of this before.

It is alright though to pray with feeling (some people call it emotion) in that we really pray with our hearts. This is called being open but actually it means to be just being natural without inhibiting or trying to hold your emotion. The idea is to allow yourself to be led by the Holy Spirit to express your repentence.

However, for some people it is difficult to let their feeling shows and so they may appear expressionless. However, I have seen many people of strong character, cried when they were touched by the Holy Spirit. Such expreience can be life changing to the person.
 
@CRUSADER_KING

I thing you many be true few protestants denominations maintain their Church in an emotional manner,your saying that the entire prayer was centered around emotion ,what do you mean by release their emotions? it should be rather a surrender to God or else it could be some new age practices mixing Catholicism with something else, then it should be avoided ,can you give more details about it ?
 
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http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...s/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html

Kindly read this document entitled PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR INTER RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE ,and study them in detail ,this authoritative document issued by the Holy See foe Catholic should be cautious of such emotional healing or prayers

The present study is concerned with the complex phenomenon of “New Age” which is influencing many aspects of contemporary culture.

The study is a provisional report. It is the fruit of the common reflection of the Working Group on New Religious Movements, composed of staff members of different dicasteries of the Holy See: the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue (which are the principal redactors for this project), the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.Its purpose is also to encourage discernment by those who are looking for sound reference points for a life of greater fullness

4 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN CONTRAST

Prayer and meditation: are we talking to ourselves or to God?

The tendency to confuse psychology and spirituality makes it hard not to insist that many of the meditation techniques now used are not prayer. They are often a good preparation for prayer, but no more, even if they lead to a more pleasant state of mind or bodily comfort. The experiences involved are genuinely intense, but to remain at this level is to remain alone, not yet in the presence of the other. The achievement of silence can confront us with emptiness, rather than the silence of contemplating the beloved. It is also true that techniques for going deeper into one’s own soul are ultimately an appeal to one’s own ability to reach the divine, or even to become divine: if they forget God’s search for the human heart they are still not Christian prayer. Even when it is seen as a link with the Universal Energy, “such an easy ‘relationship’ with God, where God’s function is seen as supplying all our needs, shows the selfishness at the heart of this New Age”.(75)

New Age practices are not really prayer, in that they are generally a question of introspection or fusion with cosmic energy, as opposed to the double orientation of Christian prayer, which involves introspection but is essentially also a meeting with God. Far from being a merely human effort, Christian mysticism is essentially a dialogue which “implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘you’ of God”.(76)


According to EFT founder Gary Craig, EFT combines two New Age techniques (which he refers to on his website as “well established sciences”) Mind Body Medicine and Acupuncture (he’s referring to the traditional Chinese medicine form of acupuncture, which is based on the alleged existence of opposing energy forces known as yin and yang rather than the medical form).

This should be Avoided it’s not in line with the Catholic Church and Her teaching
 
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