and needed, whether inanimate, plant, animal, angel, or other creature, He told us that people are poor toward God: He is the one truly asked, for “in His hand is the dominion of everything.” Poverty toward God is the root. The knowers of God are those who preserve their states.
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Independence through God is poverty toward Him. Attribution through the expression poverty toward God is more fitting than attribution through independence, for independence is an intrinsic description removing correspondence between the Real’s Essence and creation. Every seeking indicates a correspondence: what is already attained is not sought. Seeking concerns only something the seeker does not possess while seeking. This is why it relates only to nonexistence, which is the very nonexistent. What is sought may be within an existent entity or not within an existent entity. There is only a seeker in creation, so there is only one poor toward what he seeks.
(Poverty in Existence and Nonexistence)
Poverty is distinguished from all other attributes by something belonging to no other: it describes both the nonexistent and the existent. Every existential attribute requires subsisting within an existent. Do you not see that in its nonexistence the possible being needs the one giving preference? When it exists, it also needs existence to continue and to be preserved for it. It never ceases to be poor, possessing poverty in existence and nonexistence alike. It is thus the most general of stations in ruling.
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