“The vow of poverty is to live as much from the word which comes from the mouth of God as from the bread which enters the mouth of man.” Meditations on the Tarot
The Foundation: True Poverty as Receptivity
“The vow of poverty is the practice of inner emptiness, which is established as a consequence of the silence of personal desires, emotions and imagination so that the soul is capable of receiving from above the revelation of the word, the life and the light. Poverty is perpetual active vigil and expectation before the eternal sources of creativity; it is the soul awaiting that which is new and unexpected; it is the aptitude for learning always and everywhere; it is the conditio sine qua non of all illumination, all revelation and all initiation.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p112.
The Biblical Framework: Beyond Bread Alone
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew iv, 4).
“Let us ponder on this formula. It expresses, in the first place, the essence of the vow of poverty. For the vow of poverty is to live as much from the word which comes from the mouth of God as from the bread which enters the mouth of man. Then it adds to the law of biological nourishment, where the kingdoms lower than man serve him food, the new law of grace, where it is the kingdom higher than man, the kingdom of heaven, which feeds him.
“This is the significance of the words: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ Here is its principal implication: as the law of evolution, the law of the serpent, comprises the struggle for existence and as ‘bread’ or food is the principal factor in the struggle for existence, the fact of the entry of grace into human history since Jesus Christ signifies at the same time the possibility of gradually abolishing the struggle for existence. It is therefore the vow of poverty which will abolish it.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p142
Threefold Sacrifice: Poverty of Mind
“It is a matter, therefore, of sacrificing the three powers of the soul to heaven. This sacrifice is nothing other than the three traditional and universal vows—that of obedience or the sacrifice of the will, that of poverty or the sacrifice of thought, and that of chastity or the sacrifice of imagination. It is thus that the will, thought and imagination become reflectors of the revelation from above, instead of being instruments of human arbitrariness.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p324.
“It is the vow of poverty made by intelligence to the element which transcends it which renders it capable of perceiving this element and of receiving its intimate teaching, with regard to which it would be deaf and blind if it were not emptied of its own richness, i.e. if it did not know how to reduce itself to silence in order to listen.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p510.
Purification: Lightening the Load
“What the body really needs is purification by poverty. What it needs is to be quietly liberated from all these things that lard it up, both physically and spiritually, emotionally. You know, in the physical level, you know, there you would get the gluttonies, the habits, the indulgences, the self pampering, self consolation. But in the spiritual sense, it’s the things we were talking about earlier, the heavy weight of conditioning and postures that frame our responses to everything. And as we learn to allow our body to become poor, it also becomes lighter, not just, you know, not just physically lighter, but spiritually lighter.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 50:50 20 Thurs am Teaching.
Practice: Poverty as Instrument of Third Force
“So I think that’s the discipline and the drill. And I wanted to bring in those old vows, because most of us can remember poverty, chastity, and obedience. And if you can use those to reconstruct for you the direction in which the work in centers happens, this creates an instrument. And the instrument, when we talk about skillful action, another way of speaking about this is to say that we become at the disposal of third force. We become third force receptive. And I think this is where the third force being the holy or the reconciling principle that can flow through and harmonize a situation.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Guelph 2024, 45:17 14 – monday morning.
“It takes a prepared heart and a prepared nervous system to be able to partake directly of food of this subtlety. This is true both for the individual and for the group, but when that preparation has been carefully made, miracles can happen. We become a two-directional amplifier that nourishes not only each member in the group which draws strength from that web, but also pours out here in our world and gives back to worlds beyond. But it’s not just any group, it’s a group that’s come together for a common aim. It’s a group that is abiding by chastity, keeping our atmospheres clean and clear, collected within ourselves. It’s given over to poverty in the meaning of letting go of outcome, of where that nourishment and help is to flow and how, and also obedience by meaning listen, listen, listen from the depths.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter With Evil Feb 2023, 7:15 Gurdjieff Exercise Day 3
Practice: From Spiritual Poverty to True Knowledge
“Spiritual practice, or simply methods for entraining the mind and the heart and the heart, mind, and the feet, become the necessary starting place to reach the spiritual poverty. Otherwise we tend to objectify ourselves and make God an object to be known outside of ourselves through the mind alone.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Stonington 2021 June, 1:25:00 19 – Thursday Morning Teaching.
Dancing with the Living Father
“If you get into the dance, you will dance. And what you will know is that you’re sons and daughters of the Living Father because when you’re in the dance you’re in the relational field of that love. But if you do not know yourself and see how the implication is there is that you can’t know yourself apart from getting into the dance if you don’t know yourself then you are in poverty and you are poverty. To live your life as your realized false self what a pity. To have so much power and control in your life to so perfectly order your outer world that you don’t have to do any work of spiritual growth at all that you never know that the castle that you were building and protecting is empty.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga 2015, 33:53 Day 3.5 Afternoon Teaching.
Wisdom of the Desert: Poverty and Unfeigned Love
“An elder said: ‘Do not speak against your brother in your heart, saying: ‘I am more vigilant and more ascetic’, but rather submit to the grace of Christ in the spirit of poverty and unfeigned love, lest you lose your toil in a spirit of boasting.’” Desert Fathers
The Contemporary Call: New World from Proven Truth
“It’s a time of enormous expectancy and possibility. We are called to start not with the old world contracts, now that we know they’re all lies, but with what we know as truth, as proved by silence and science. So I call upon the nations to consider this as a possibility, that we should begin a new world with the one that actually exists. This is the moment to manifest this world by showing loving concern for poverty, loving appreciation for the needs of the world, and opportunities for accelerated development. We need to find ways to make these really happen.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Secret Embrace 2025 Holy Isle, 29:14 10 Day 4 Evening Closing – Christian Non Duality.
Logion 29
Yeshua says…
If flesh came into existence for the sake of spirit,
it is a wonder,
but if spirit exists for the sake of flesh,
it is a wonder of wonders.
I am truly astonished
at how such richness
came to dwell in such poverty.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
Read the Impression on Meditations on the Tarot.
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