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.
Just as we cannot leave contemplation to contemplatives, we cannot leave mysticism to mystics. It would mean cutting off the roots of human life. By putting mystics on a pedestal in our mind, high, out of reach, we don’t do justice to them, nor to ourselves either. Paraphrasing what Ruskin said about being an artist, we could say: A mystic is not a special kind of human being; rather, every human being is a special kind of mystic. I might just as well rise to this challenge and become that unique, irreplaceable mystic that only I can become. There never was and never will be anyone exactly like me. If I fail to experience God in my own unique way, that experience will forever remain in the shadow of possibility. But if I do, I will know life by the divine life within me.
~ from GRATEFULNESS, THE HEART OF PRAYER by Br. David Steindl-Rast
