poverty.

"simple intention is a rare gift of God. rare because it is poor. poverty is a gift that few religious people really relish. they want their religion to make them at least spiritually rich, and if they renounce all things in this world, they want to lay hands not only on life everlasting but, above all, on the "hundredfold" promised to us even before we die.
actually, that hundredfold is found in the beatitudes, the first of which is poverty.
our intention cannot be completely simple unless it is completely poor. it seeks and desires nothing but the supreme poverty of having nothing but God. true, anyone with a grain of faith realized that to have God and nothing else besides is to have everything in Him. but between the thought of such poverty and its actualization in our lives lies the desert of emptiness through which we must travel in order to find Him."

-thomas merton.
[no man is an island]