Question: Mother Theresa once said, “The more you have, the less you have to give.” Would it be good for us to be poor? Why do physical possessions seem to have this corruptive nature that is so antithetical to the spiritual life?

Answer: In a word: identification. Now add to this idea what it means to be attached to things. We are never attached to the objects themselves; rather we are attached to the sense of self we derive from our ideas about these objects as to what they “make us.” Goodness has nothing to do with either poverty or wealth relative to this world and its possible possessions. There is a poverty that true spiritual aspirants discover, but it has nothing to do with ownership or the lack of it. This poverty is the discovery that we had mistaken ourselves to be something we were not. This realization is the beginning of real riches.