Faqr
Poverty in spirit: not the lack of goods, but the awareness that man needs God in everything; a major station of the path.
Faqr is poverty, need, indigence. The Qur’an states the truth Sufism lives out: ‘O men, you are the poor who have need of God (al-fuqara’ ila Llah), and God is the Rich, the Praiseworthy’ (XXXV, 15). The creature is poor by essence; faqr is the awareness of that truth, lived and not merely thought.
The masters call it a station, a maqam, not a social condition: one can be rich and carry faqr, poor and ignore it. Tradition attributes to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) the saying: ‘Poverty is my pride.’ The faqir, the disciple, takes this name for what it says of reality: nothing he has is his; everything comes.
Faqr stands against self-sufficiency, the istighna’ the Qur’an names as the root of transgression. On the path it illuminates the disciple’s first act: to present oneself poor before the guide, with a will and nothing to trade. See the state of the disciple.