Setting aside the natural rest that the soul obtains when it is free from images and forms, the soul becomes free from anxiety about whether they are good or evil……The soul has no need to desire to know all this if it devotes no attention to imaginary forms.  It can better use the time and energies that it would have wasted in dealing with these images in another more profitable practice, that of the will with respect to God, and in taking care to seek both detachment from the world and poverty of spirit and sense.  The more the soul withdraws itself completely from all figures of the imagination, the more it will approach God.  –St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.  

…the anawim, “the poor and lowly ones” The expression turns up often in the Psalter. It indicates not just the oppressed, the miserable, the persecuted for justice, but also those who, with fidelity to the moral teaching of the Alliance with God, are marginalized by those who prefer to use violence, riches and power. In this light one understands that the category of the “poor” is not just a social category but a spiritual choice. It is what the famous first Beatitude means:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5,3). The prophet Zephaniah spoke to the anawim as special persons:  “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of wrath of the Lord” (Zep 2,3). —Pope John Paul II