(Poverty & Richness)
Poverty in the language of Sufism means that an initiate claims possession of nothing and is freed from all kinds of attachment toward worldly things, feeling utmost neediness and destitution before God in his relationship with Him, based on servanthood on his side and the Sole Object of Worship on God’s. It is not ‘poverty’ as understood by people, nor does it mean begging from people by displaying one’s privations.
Poverty consists in cutting relationship with all else other than the Eternally Besought-of-All and depending on Him in meeting all of one’s necessities. For this reason, the more in detachment one is from whatever is worldly and temporary and the more annihilated in dependence on Divine Attributes and Essence, the more one has attained Poverty and is right to repeat the saying of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, Poverty is my pride.
As it is stated in a blessed saying, when poverty becomes a dimension of faith and submission, a man no longer depends on the help, will and power of anyone else save God. Even if such a man had so much wealth as to fill the whole world, since it is subject to decay and exhaustion, he never thinks of depending on it and turns to God with all his strength and feelings, conscious of his essential poverty and helplessness. How beautiful is the following couplet of Nabi, a 17th century Ottoman poet:
Do not despise poverty, O Nabi!
Poverty is the mirror where independence of others is reflected.
http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/faqr_o_ghina.htm
