Inward Destitution
Inward destitution is the most difficult reality to accept because it strips away every illusion of spiritual achievement, leaving the soul with nothing to grasp. It is not just the absence of consolation, not just the feeling of dryness in prayer or the struggle of faith—it is the stark realization that all human effort, even at its most sincere, is incapable of bridging the gap between oneself and the divine. “Measure, if you can, the sorrow of realizing that you have a nature destined by God for the gift of a beatitude which utterly transcends everything that you are and can ever be; of finding yourself left with nothing but yourself; of finding yourself without the gift which is the only meaning of your existence.” [1] That is the heart of it. The awareness that you were made for something beyond yourself, something greater than all you know and feel, and yet you remain as you are—limited, incomplete, insufficient (Romans 3:23). There is no action you can take, no wisdom you can acquire, no moral perfection you can attain that will ever make you worthy of the divine life you were created for (Ephesians 2:8-9).
That is the wound of inward destitution. It is not a flaw in the human condition; it is the human condition (Romans 7:18). And yet, it is unbearable to recognize, unbearable to live with, because every instinct within us cries out to be something more (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Every spiritual discipline, every noble aspiration, every prayer whispered in the dark is, at its core, a longing to transcend the smallness of the self, to rise above weakness, to reach a place of union and peace (Psalm 42:1-2). But the higher you climb, the clearer it becomes that the summit is unreachable (Romans 7:24). The closer you come to holiness, the more unholy you feel. The more you seek, the more you are confronted with your own inability to find (Isaiah 64:6). “Then the highest perfection of natural life, of human understanding, the purest and finest tension of the human will reaching out in desire for everything that is perfect, appears to you as something essentially vulgar and worthless.” [1] What you once took pride in—your knowledge, your strength, your virtue—now appears as dust (Philippians 3:8). It is not enough. It never was.
This is why the saints wept, why they spoke of compunction as an unshakable sorrow, not of worldly suffering, but of the soul’s helplessness before the vastness of God (Matthew 5:3-4). “This is the root of what the saints called compunction: the grief, the anguish of being helpless to be anything but what you were not meant to be.” [1] It is the deep ache of knowing that no matter how much you long for divine union, you cannot make it happen (John 15:5). No matter how much you desire holiness, you cannot become holy on your own (Isaiah 6:5). And yet, this sorrow is not meant to destroy—it is meant to purify (2 Corinthians 7:10). It is meant to strip away every illusion of self-sufficiency, every attempt to grasp at God as though divinity were something that could be seized (Matthew 16:25). The only thing you are left with is nothing. And that is precisely where grace begins (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Inward destitution is not a punishment. It is a gift (James 1:2-4). The soul does not see it as such in the beginning, because it feels like loss, like deprivation, like standing in an empty, barren landscape with no sign of life (Psalm 63:1). But the absence itself is an invitation (Isaiah 55:1). “Then, as peace settles upon the soul and we accept what we are and what we are not, we begin to realize that this great poverty is our greatest fortune.” [1] When you stop fighting against your own helplessness, when you stop trying to manufacture grace through effort, when you accept, finally, that you are empty, something unexpected happens (Philippians 4:7). You realize that emptiness is not the enemy. It is the very condition for receiving what is beyond you (Matthew 5:6).
The mind resists this. It wants a sense of accomplishment, a sense of progress (Galatians 3:3). It wants to hold onto some proof that it is on the right path. But in truth, the greatest hindrance to transformation is the insistence on holding onto anything at all (Luke 9:23). “We become like vessels that have been emptied of water that they may be filled with wine.” [1] That is what inward destitution does—it empties you (2 Corinthians 4:7). It takes away every false security, every attempt to rely on your own strength, until you are left with nothing. And only then can you receive everything (Luke 1:53).
And once you have tasted that emptiness, once you have surrendered to it, something within you changes (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old fears dissolve. The need for control vanishes. The desperate grasping at spiritual experience, at some sign of progress, at some assurance that you are moving forward—it all falls away (Psalm 37:7). And instead, a new hunger arises, but it is not like the old hunger. It is not a hunger for achievement or even for understanding. It is a hunger to be nothing (Philippians 2:7). “Once we begin to find this emptiness, no poverty is poor enough, no emptiness is empty enough, no humility lowers us enough for our desires.” [1] You begin to long for less, not more (John 3:30). You begin to desire to be forgotten, to be unnoticed, to be stripped of even the last remnants of ego (Matthew 23:12).
This is the paradox of the spiritual journey. The more you surrender, the freer you become (Matthew 10:39). The more you embrace nothingness, the more you are filled (Psalm 34:18). “For God’s love is like a river springing up in the depth of the Divine Substance and flowing endlessly through His creation, filling all things with life and goodness and strength.” [1] That love does not need your effort (Romans 5:8). It does not require your worthiness (Titus 3:5). It flows where it wills, and it fills whatever is empty enough to receive it (John 7:38).
And in the end, you see that all the struggle, all the pain of letting go, was only ever leading you here—to this place where there is no need to struggle at all (Hebrews 4:9-10). “If we accept them in tranquillity, submitting to the pressure of the waters by a clean and unquestioning faith and a love perfect and detached from all resistance, God’s will enters into the depths of our own freedom and carries our lives and all our acts and desires away on the tide of His own joy.” [1] That is the secret. There was never anything to achieve. There was only ever the need to stop resisting (Psalm 46:10).
This is why the highest prayer is silence (Habakkuk 2:20). “We should receive His light in silence, tranquillity and deep thankfulness, realizing that at this moment the highest praise we can offer Him is to sacrifice every attempt to praise Him in human language.” [1] When words fall away, when thoughts cease, when you no longer reach for anything at all, you discover that you are already being held (Romans 8:26). The inward destitution you feared was not an absence, but a doorway (Matthew 7:7-8). And the one you have been seeking was always there, waiting for you to let go (Isaiah 41:10).
[1] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation