Merton on contemplation…”doors fly open into infinite freedom”

“Contemplation, by which we know and love God as He is in Himself, apprehending Him in a deep and vital experience which is beyond the reach of any natural understanding, is the reason for our creation by God. …God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us. He moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us. …You seem to be the same person and you are the same person that you have always been: in fact you are more yourself than you have ever been before. You have only just begun to exist. You feel as if you were at last fully born. … And yet now you have become nothing. You have sunk to the center of your own poverty, and there you have felt the doors fly open into infinite freedom, into a wealth which is perfect because none of it is yours and yet it all belongs to you.” (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)