Wanting Nothing, Knowing Nothing, Having Nothing (Meister Eckhart and the Love of God #9)
Meister Eckhart on the Seat of Blessedness
This is the ninth in a series of meditations drawn from Meister Eckhart and the Love of God, a retreat I led at the Mandali Retreat Centre in northern Italy in September 2025.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” These familiar words conceal one of the most radical teachings in the Christian mystical tradition. What does it truly mean to be poor in spirit? Meister Eckhart takes this poverty far beyond humility or simplicity. To be poor in spirit is to want nothing, to know nothing, to have nothing. It is to stand so free of oneself that even the sense of being a self dissolves.
In this meditation, we explore Eckhart’s uncompromising vision of spiritual poverty, a poverty so complete that there is no longer a place within oneself for God to act. What remains is neither absence nor negation, but the fullness of being as it was before it was clothed in experience, before it seemed to divide into self and other, standing as itself alone in eternity.
Causeless joy in its wisdom declared blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
And what does it mean to be poor in spirit? To want nothing, to know nothing, to have nothing.
When you want nothing, you are what you want and you want what you are. There is no distance or difference between what you are and what you want. You stand still in your own being and the taste of your being is pure happiness.
It is only when there is a distinction between what you are and what you want that happiness turns into desire.
What is the true object of our desire? Whatever its temporary object may seem to be, it is always happiness. That is the state of beatitude in which what you want is what you are and what you are is what you want. All desire seeks ultimately to dissolve the distance between what you are and what you want.
