The Essence of Faiths
Whispers from everywhere
The Blessings of Spiritual Poverty
A good job, house, car TV, loving spouse and children, respect in the community. These are all easily lost and are thus a source of insecurity. When you choose to have none of these then you have nothing to lose and there can be security. But this is external or material poverty which, of itself, brings little spiritual comfort.
Spiritual comfort, or at-one-ment, comes with internal poverty. This involves giving up those internal ‘things’ which are culturally conditioned patterns of thought. The blessedness of spiritual poverty comes when you no longer desire, know, or possess any of these illusory patterns of thought.
Your urge towards particular patterns of loving and knowing arose after your birth. There is an essence from which you came, which drives you now, and which will continue after the worms have eaten your flesh and bones. That ‘Essence’ does not ‘love’ or ‘know’, it just ‘is’. The blessedness of spiritual poverty comes as a result of reunion with that uncreated, eternal, Oneness which just ‘is’.
Those who are not ‘poor in spirit’ have the illusion of a personal ‘I’ with a personal will. They may try to replace this personal will with God’s Will. They may try to create a pure space within themselves so that God may enter. But this misses the point. There is still the ‘I’ who tries, and who is somehow apart from God. Vows of external poverty may or may not help to tame the ‘I’ that loves and knows but, of themselves, they cannot get rid of it. So what is to be done?
Students of Zen Buddhism are asked to consider the question,
‘What was your face before you were born’.
The essence just is. The essence that you ‘know’ is your own cultural creation and is not the real essence. The task is to reach a state where you will and desire as little as you willed and desired before you came into creation; a state of being free of all the loving and knowing that were created in time; a state of awareness beyond the ignorant language games of subjects acting on objects; a state of gracious acceptance with a following of the inevitable flow; a state of at-one-ment; a state which allows appreciation of the following words:
“I am my own self cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is in time” (Meister Eckhart)
"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt 5:3)