During prayer a new state comes on. A kind of "largesse," an indescribable vastness, so great as to encompass the whole of creation. This immeasurableness simply flows right through me, no resistance from "self-important demands" blocks the flow, a feeling of absolute weightlessness and transparency. The expression "emptied of self" is a living reality.
It is the most supremely interesting moment in life, the only one in fact when living seems life, and
I count in the greatest good fortune to have these few months so full of interest and instruction in
the knowledge of my approaching death. It is as simple as one's own person as any fact of nature,
the fall of a leaf or the blooming of a rose, and I have a delicious consciousness, ever present, of
wide spaces close at hand, and whisperings of release in the air.
~ Alice James in THE DIARY OF ALICE JAMES