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Woolf, Virginia - from A Writer's Diary
Identifier
021631
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
VIRGINIA WOOLF. From A Writer's Diary (London, 1953)
Often down here I have entered into a sanctuary; a nunnery; had a religious retreat; of great agony once; and always some terror; so afraid one is of loneliness; of seeing to the bottom of the vessel.
That is one of the experiences I have had here in some Augusts; and got then to a consciousness of what I call "reality": a thing I see before me: something abstract; but residing in the downs or sky; beside which nothing matters; in which I shall rest and continue to exist.
Reality I call it.
And I fancy sometimes this is the most necessary thing to me: that which I seek. But who knows-once one takes a pen and writes? How difficult not to go making “reality” this and that, whereas it is one thing.’