Ashtadāridryam: Understanding How Trauma Shapes Us
Ashtadāridryam (अष्टदारिद्र्यम्) is a powerful concept in Indian spiritual and scriptural traditions that refers to the eight types of lack or poverty — not just material, but also emotional, mental, and spiritual. It is often mentioned in spiritual texts as conditions that obstruct the flow of divine grace and inner abundance.
The term comes from:
Ashta = Eight
Daridrya = Poverty or Lack
These eight forms of poverty represent inner limitations or afflictions that lead to suffering, bondage, or disconnection from one’s own Spirit or the Divine. These lacks block our path to the wholeness of our Spirit.
These eight inner lacks are not just spiritual concepts—they show up in real ways in our daily lives, relationships, and self-worth. In my healing work, I often find that one or more of these poverties are active beneath a client’s presenting concern.
All religions have characters, stories and mythological characters who display these lacks or poverty in their stories. Can you identify such mythological characters who embodies these lacks? Look into Greek mythology, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Christianity..etc. It’s interesting to study how some of them transmuted their lacks through grace, love and wisdom.
But all great stories move towards victory. We are not meant to stay in lack. Through sacred dialogue, energy clearing, ancestral resolution, and psycho-spiritual therapy, we begin the return.
1. Jnana Daridryam (Poverty of Wisdom)
This is the absence of true knowledge of the Self. Trauma clouds our perception, separating us from our inner knowing and making it hard to access clarity, direction, or purpose. We may feel lost, disoriented, or uncertain of who we are.
2. Shraddha Daridryam (Poverty of Faith)
This is the loss of faith in oneself. Emotional wounding can close the heart center, cutting off trust and hope. Healing here begins by restoring our felt sense of worth, divinity, and connection to a greater field of love.
3. Swasthya Daridryam (Poverty of Health)
Trauma often manifests as diseases in the body: chronic illness, stress-related conditions, autoimmune conditions and chronic illness. It impacts all our energetic bodies—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Chronic illness, fatigue, autoimmune issues, and nervous system imbalance often stem from unresolved trauma. When we release the imprint, the body begins to soften, ease, and repair.
4. Shakti Daridryam (Poverty of Strength)
A person who has experienced trauma may feel powerless, lacking the inner strength to move forward. Everything is energy. This poverty is essentially the depletion of energy, motivation, and momentum. Trauma can sap our inner power, leaving us feeling weak, stuck, or incapable. Restoring strength means reconnecting with life force, and moving forward from a place of grounded vitality.
5. Sampatti Daridryam (Poverty of Wealth and Resources)
Many people with unhealed trauma struggle with financial stability or an abundance mindset due to subconscious fear, scarcity pattern, misplaced systemic loyalties and victim identification. Once the trauma energy is released and reset, we see the origin and the owner of these lack stories, and that knowledge brings in release and freedom.
6. Santosha Daridryam (Poverty of Contentment)
A restless mind, anxiety, and an inability to experience joy are often rooted in past or systemic suffering. Contentment begets contentment. Counting the blessings in our life and being grateful for just one thing in our life as a starting point, helps us start nudging our mind and psyche to bring in the mindset of contentment.
7. Sanskriti Daridryam (Poverty of Culture and Values)
Trauma can disconnect individuals from their roots, causing a loss of identity, purpose, truth and openness. The judgments that we have faced in the family, community or culture bring in these distortions at a much larger scale than the individual and it takes rounds of deep work to break through such trauma patterns. Once we release the charge of such lack in our life, we feel the strength of the Spirit as the great leveller, and we are filled with the power to manifest the best version of ourselves.
8. Bhakti Daridryam (Poverty of Devotion)
Spiritual emptiness or disconnection from self and the divine is one of the deepest wounds trauma can create. What if I told you that the only objective of our life is to embody all our divinity. The tool for that is awareness. By celebrating every shift from poverty to abundance of Spirit, we anchor that divine awareness as seeds within us. And allow the rest of our existence to slowly resonate to that divinity. And awareness is our choice. That is our free will.
“From pain to power. From fragmentation to fullness.
We fall. We fear. We forget who we are. Yet through awareness, We rise. ”
Let’s move, resolve and return. Each session is a sacred returning. Would you like to reflect on these within yourself—or explore them through a session? You are welcome here, book a clarity call with me.
