poverty 4 impact of poverty on our psychology and of our psychology on poverty

This is an analysis of how the vow of poverty is lived also at the level of psychological life. To fully understand what is meant by the three levels of human life you have to refer to my previous post on this topic: "Vocation and our capacity to respond to it.


Poverty and the three levels of human life
We have seen previously that human life is based on three levels:

Psycho- physiological
Psycho-social
Spiritual-intellectual

We saw also that love, which is the engine of our life, when acting at these three levels takes the form of Eros, Philia and Agape. Since love is the key for understanding all the vows, we can try to see how the vow of poverty applies to the three levels.

Psycho-physiological level. This level regards the relationship of the person with himself, his desires and passions. The desire to possess things serves to cover or satisfy the need of avoiding sufferance, avoiding hard work, and also to avoid the fact that we see ourselves as weak, unsafe, not trustworthy.

Poverty has a very important role in strengthening and in training our body. Of course we cannot deny ourselves completely of material things, since our bodies need things to survive. But we should be able to distinguish well between the physical needs and the psychological ones. The latter ones bring us always to abuses and dependency.

So at this level poverty is not deprivation of the necessary (misery), but the control of the sufficient. We don’t speak of negation but of detachment. The vow of poverty in the form of detachment from things can help to overcome the impulses and to take out our inner strengths.

Psycho-social level. Here we have the relationship with others. At the beginning of the relationship, the person feels the need of confrontation with the others, competition. We want to appear stronger than the others, otherwise we are not safe; we need to appear smarter, more intelligent in order to attract other people and their approval. We need more money in order to buy the friendship of other people. So we can say that here the desire of possession can serve the purpose of covering or satisfying these needs and overcome the low self esteem and incapacity of relationships. Of course also in this second level, material things can be not only useful, but sometimes even necessary. The question is if the use of such things becomes beneficial for the quality of our relationships, or instead, it becomes prioritarian, more important or even taking the place of the relationship itself. Richness usually does not create friendship, but jealousy, dependence, slavery, and often the possession becomes more important than people. This is the case of corruption, stealing etc.

Here the vow of poverty takes the shape of sharing, collaboration. Love, in the shape of Philia, is better built among people of the same level, and so is friendship. Poverty has to teach us to control our impulses and our fear and teach us to reach out to others. Sharing with others, not only doesn’t diminish our qualities, but instead brings them to a higher level because most of the human qualities need true relationships in order to develop.

There is a special kind of possession which is the possession of people. Sometimes we desire to own, to possess another person rather than to build a true friendship. In this case we become dependent on them or dominate them. Here the vow of poverty becomes mixed with the vow of chastity and teaches us that we can never own another person but only build up a relationship based on respect and freedom.

Spiritual-intellectual level. When we start analyzing the reality, our intelligence tells us that human nature is limited and weak, and by itself will never be able to reach that perfection which would be the aim of every person. The knowledge of this could create more fear and low self esteem. Our spiritual life tells us that there is somebody who is the creator of all things, who is the provider, the rescuer. If our faith in such person (God) is strong, then the fear disappears. But many are weak in faith and looking only at the negative part. Many think that either God does not exist, or, if he exists, he does not take care of them. As a consequence of the lack of this trust, the person looks at material things as the only possible way to achieve what faith missed out. Of course, as we have seen in the other two levels, the accumulation of things not only doesn’t solve the problems, but it creates problems.

The vow of poverty, in the shape of surrender and trust in Providence, helps to boost our faith.

This is the experience of the Sanyasis who lived in poverty for the sake of searching for the only one who is “enough”. All through the history we have examples of such people, both in Christian religion (St. Francis, the Hermits), and other religions (the Sufis among Muslims, the Sanyasis among Hindus, the Monks among Buddhists, etc.).

At this level we do not deny much the value of the material things, but we question the use of them. Material things are the instruments given to us by God, to solve the problems, but are not the solutions in itself. God is the solution. He gives us things. We use things for what it is necessary and then we praise God for the results. So in a few words we come to what Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.

Of course the division between the three levels is clear only on the paper, but not so well marked in the daily life. The three levels influence each other continuously. Achieving the maturity in one level brings us automatically to a better fulfillment at the other levels too.

Furthermore we understand that material things are not bad, and as the Church teaches in its social doctrine, human beings have a natural right to possess things. All the problems come only when the material things become too important, more important than people or God.