Blessed are the Poor

 

December 23rd. The hour when the night has not yet retreated, and the day is but a pale suggestion upon the edge of the horizon, is the time when truths surface from the silence like ghostly ships. I sit before the white page and feel how the silence in my room is not an emptiness, but a fullness—a dense, almost tangible substance that compels me to look inward, to that place where words usually lose their weight. Today, a thought pulses insistently in my mind, one I heard in a half-sleep or perhaps read within the folds of my own memory: “The poor man is wealthier than the rich, but he often does not know it…”

How strange this statement is, how paradoxical, and yet how painfully true when viewed through the prism of the soul rather than the eyes of the world. In our culture, obsessed with possession, we are accustomed to measuring our worth through accumulation—of things, of statuses, of memories to be displayed like trophies. But in the quiet hours of self-reflection, when the masks of our social "I" fall away, I realize that true wealth is not in what we hold in our hands, but in the space we have cleared within ourselves to receive the divine.

Psychoanalysis teaches us that at the core of human existence lies a primordial lack—that empty space in the soul that we tirelessly attempt to fill. The rich man, in a material sense, is often the one who has succeeded in building the highest and most complex defensive walls around this lack. He accumulates objects to drown out the howl of his inner void, turning his life into an endless sequence of acquisitions which, however, only weigh upon his spirit. His "wealth" is actually a heavy armor that isolates him from the authentic experience of being. He possesses much, but possession itself possesses him; he is the caretaker of things that demand attention, care, and the constant fear of loss. In this sense, the rich man is a prisoner in a golden cage of his own identifications, where the echo of his own voice is lost amidst the noise of what he has acquired.

And the poor… the poor of whom I speak here is not necessarily the one deprived of bread, but the one who has remained prostrate before the naked truth of their own existence. He is wealthier because his poverty is his freedom. When you have nothing to cling to, you are forced to hold onto the Invisible. In his emptiness, there is room for God, for light, for the breath of eternity. He is like an empty vessel, ready to be filled with grace, while the rich man is a vessel overflowing with murky water, in which there is no room for the pure spring of the spirit.

Often, however, the poor man does not know of his wealth. This is the great tragedy of human self-awareness. We are inclined to despise our vulnerability, to be ashamed of our "poverty," without realizing that it is precisely this that serves as the portal to our true Self. In psychoanalytic terms, this is the moment when the Ego refuses to acknowledge its own impotence and instead embarks on a feverish search for external validation. We weep for what we lack, without seeing that the lack itself is a sacred space in which desire is born—that pure, metaphysical desire that pulls us toward the transcendent.

I remember the moments when I felt most lost, most poor in emotion and meaning. Then, in that quiet melancholy that resembles autumn rain, I began to hear the rhythm of my own heart in a different way. In the absence of external stimuli, my senses sharpened to the microscopic wonders of everyday life: how the light refracts a shadow upon the wall, how the coolness of water touches my skin, how a memory can be denser than any reality. This is the wealth of presence. The poor man is wealthier because he is closer to the authenticity of the "here and now." He has nothing to lose and therefore can afford the luxury of being real.

The spiritual dimension of this thought leads us to the idea of kenosis—self-emptying. To be filled with the Spirit, we must first become poor, to renounce the pretension that we know, that we can, that we possess. True prayer is not a begging for goods, but a state of total capitulation before Greatness. In this capitulation, we discover that we are heirs to the entire universe. The rich man is often too busy counting his coins (whether real or metaphorical, like knowledge and merits) to notice that the sky above him is free and belongs to the one who knows how to contemplate it.

Why, then, does the poor man not know it? Perhaps because the fear of nothingness is stronger than the longing for Everything. We are programmed to be terrified of the void, to see it as a threat to our existence rather than the womb of a new beginning. It takes immense courage to accept one’s poverty as a gift. It takes psychoanalytic insight to understand that your wounds are the places through which the light enters, as Rumi would say. But often we cling to the pain of the lack, instead of enjoying the space it liberates.

I look through the window as the world slowly wakes. People will go about their tasks, they will buy, they will sell, they will accumulate impressions and things, trying to prove to themselves and others that they are "rich." And I ask myself: how many of them will dare to stop for a moment and feel the grace of possessing nothing other than their own breath?

The wealth of poverty lies in its transparency. The poor man (in the spiritual sense) is transparent to the divine. He does not cast a thick shadow of pride and self-sufficiency. His soul is like a mountain lake—clear, cool, and reflecting the heights. The rich man is like a stormy sea, full of debris from shipwrecks, in which it is difficult to see the bottom or the reflection of the stars. And yet, how often have I myself forgotten this? How often have I felt unhappy because I do not possess a certain emotional security or social recognition, missing the fact that precisely in this insecurity lies my greatest strength—the ability to transform, to change, to be fluid like water.

Transformation happens exactly where the Ego suffers defeat. In psychoanalysis, this is the moment of crisis, which is also the moment of breakthrough. In spiritual life, this is the "dark night of the soul." When we feel absolutely poor, when every support has been taken from us, we are closest to discovering the inner sun that does not depend on external circumstances. This is the wealth that no one can take from us, because it is not acquired; it is recognized. It has always been there, hidden beneath the layers of our desires and fears.

To be rich in this way means to possess silence. To possess the skill of forgiving oneself for one's imperfection. To possess the ability to love without possession. How few people know that this is the supreme form of abundance! We are taught to want "more," without understanding that true "more" is found in "less." Every time I let go of something—an old grudge, a material object, an ambition that no longer feeds me—I feel my soul becoming lighter, more radiant, wealthier.

The poor man is wealthier because he has access to the source, while the rich man only has bottled water that will sooner or later run out. The source is faith, intuition, the deep connection with the Whole. But to reach the source, one must walk the path through the desert, where there is nothing but sand and sky. And exactly there, in the nothingness, the poor man discovers that he is the source himself. This is the great secret that the world tries to hide from us with its noisy advertisements of happiness.

I often find myself writing these lines as a prayer, as an attempt to convince myself of this truth, which my body sometimes rejects in moments of weakness. It is hard to be "poor" when society screams at you that you must be "successful." But success is only an illusion, a small figure in the theater of shadows. Real success is to return to oneself and find that it is cozy there, that there is a light that does not go out, even when all the candles of the world are blown out.

Perhaps the greatest wealth of the "poor" is his memory of eternity. Since he is not rooted in earthly acquisitions, his roots stretch upward, toward the invisible gardens of the spirit. He remembers where he came from and where he is going. The rich man often forgets the way, blinded by the glitter of his temporary palace. He believes he is the master of time, while the poor man knows he is but a guest of the moment and therefore treasures every breath as a precious stone.

In this intimate journal of my soul, I record: May I never forget my holy poverty. May I always have eyes to see the wealth in a shared silence, in the reading of an old verse, in a humble bowing before the unknown. Because at the end of the day, when we close our eyes for the last time, we will take with us only what we have given away, and what we have managed to turn into light within ourselves. Everything else will crumble to dust.

The poor man is rich in his incompleteness. He is a project of God that is still developing, while the rich man often feels finished, and finishedness is a type of death. Life is in the movement, in the longing, in the searching. Blessed are those who feel the hunger of the spirit, for they shall be filled with true meaning.

I close the notebook. It is already light outside. The world is the same, but I feel wealthier. Not because anything in my room has changed, but because I realized that my lack is my greatest gift. I am poor in security, but rich in possibilities. Poor in answers, but rich in questions that lead me to Him. And this knowledge, though sometimes fragile, is an anchor that holds me in the deep, there, where the true treasures are born.

Now I can step out into the day and be simply a woman who carries silence in her pockets like invisible diamonds, without the need to show them to anyone. Because the most beautiful things are those that remain unsaid, those that only the heart can hear in the rhythm of a humble, yet grace-filled existence.