Poverty

He, then, is very unwise who, when sweetness and spiritual delight fail him, thinks for that reason that God has abandoned him; and when he finds them again, rejoices and is glad, thinking that he has in that way come to possess God.

More unwise still is he who goes about seeking for sweetness in God, rejoices in it, and dwells upon it; for in so doing he is not seeking after God with the will grounded in the emptiness of faith and charity, but only in spiritual sweetness and delight, which is a created thing, following herein in his own will and fond pleasure. It is impossible for the will to attain to the sweetness and bliss of the divine union otherwise than in detachment.  St. John of the Cross

The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can only be contained in an empty and solitary heart.  St. John of the Cross

And I tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.  Meister Eckhart

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.  Blake

And in the light of love and with inward observation, he (the wise man) will taste of the multitude of consolations and good things; and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God.  Ruysbroeck

Become pure till you neither are nor have this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.  Meister Eckhart

To lose all is to gain all.  Anandamayi Ma

Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with himself. Nothing else, however elevate, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness.  St. Teresa of Avila

Every soul which flees away from poverty and non-existence is misfortune fleeing away from prosperity and good fortune.  Rumi

When souls discover the divine purpose, they put aside all pious works, systems, books, ideas, spiritual advisers, in order to be alone under the sole guidance of God and his purpose which becomes the only source of perfection for them. They are in his hands as saints always have been, sure that he alone knows what is best for them. And so this mysterious force directs and leads them by ways it alone knows, and they drift like air, God manifesting his will from one moment to the next.  Jean Pierre de Caussade

My perfect joy awaits me in the total annihilation of my hopes. The man who has become really desperate, who no longer expects anything from the world of phenomena, is flooded by the perfect joy which at last he ceases to oppose.  Benoit

I see that all my negative states are at bottom humiliations, and that there is the 'asylum of rest', the unique harbour of safey, the only place in the world in which I can find perfect security.  Benoit

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