One might say, I had decided to marry the silent forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. So perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center point of all other loves. I attempt to cultivate this plant without comment in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most rare of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross.
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.
Here "Grace upon grace" is visible! "Gratitude upon gratitude" overcomes me. These are tears of joy that well up in me now. How grateful I am for everything, grateful for the gratitude! Forty days -- what wisdom lies in the exact measure of this time interval. Forty days, no more, no less! I am so grateful! I feel flooded with gentleness, acceptance, confidence, inner peace. May the veils never close again!
