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There is a radical freedom offered in practice when we learn to open in all conditions. From the book, “Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness,” comes this account of Henry Thoreau from his sister, Sophia, in his last couple of months before dying of tuberculosis in his early forties:
One friend, as if by way of consolation, said to him, “well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go.” Henry replied, “when I was a very little boy I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so of course I am not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me.” …
I feel like saying that Henry was never affected, never reached by it. I never before saw such a manifestation of the power of spirit over matter. Very often I heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well as ever. He remarked to me that there was as much comfort and peace in perfect disease as in perfect health, .… The thought of death, he said, could not begin to trouble him.