emptiness and freedom

.

.

What can I say about the emptiness and freedom 

into whose door I entered for that half-minute, 

which was enough for a lifetime, 

because it was a new life altogether?  

.

There is nothing with which to compare it.  

I could call it nothingness, 

but it is an infinitely fruitful freedom, 

to lack all things and to lack my self 

in the fresh air of that happiness 

that seems to be above all modes of being.  

.

Don't let me build any more walls around it, or I will shut myself out.

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~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

sketch by the author

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