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She was poor but she was rich. Her being rich was poor in that she didn't know how long (or even whether) it would last. So there was an inner poverty to the comfort she temporarily felt, a feeling of its only being for a time. Meanwhile her being poor was rich.
Poverty was rich insofar as it didn't worry and didn't bother about worrying. It was actually sufficient, for now and now and now. It was comfortable not because it was but because it had decided to be, no matter what. It didn't fret about what it didn't have. The moment it fretted it became poor, even if its supply of money was bottomless. Bottomless!
So the sense of being well off was a state of mind that had nothing really to do with money. Except that the state of mind itself was a bit like money, in that it could be collected or spent.
And if she thought about it in that finite way ("collected or spent") then she became poor no matter how much she had.
But there was always a point at which poverty stopped. And that point was always rich.
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Prayer and behavior -- in the world -- they must be a single seamless entity, a garment with no seam. If you "withdraw" into prayer, well, a valid prayer does not *leave* you there, abandoned and withdrawn. Prayer is action, prayer is behavior. "Prayer changes things". What doesn't change must not have become prayer.
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When I am happy I am sad. The happiness stops at a point. The world stands outside. Ummm, the sadness has an inner red seam that is already happy or at least will be. Not will be, is. It is there. And the self is always ready to turn inside out. The transience -- that men are "a puff of wind" -- that is part of the definition, intrinsic. The discipline to accept that sadness and live with that is... well, that's what happiness is.
The closer you approach the One who puts reality off and on like a garment, the happier you will be, even not to be happy. And the sadness -- that too is something you cherish and do not readily surrender. So it continues.
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