How poverty of spirit can "shape the mind"

Interesting conversation follows the most recent post at Mount Jesus. Here's a snip from Nate's long comment:

A victim of marital unfaithfulness, for example, or a mother who has just lost a child. Peter when he denies Christ. Going beyond the text of Matthew 5 a bit, I would say that these times actually shape the mind in a way that can't happen in any other situation. What they do is rip control(or the illusion of it) out of our hands, out of our grasp completely. They destroy the pretentions we have to being capable, able to create the type of life that we need, or desire. They destroy the notion that I'm not in a position of utter need all the time. They destroy the idea that this life is meant simply to garner as much happiness as possible, and that at all costs my reputation must be preserved. If we have had any of the Gospel at all, it will cause us to cling bitterly to the only thing that lasts, and hopefully, reroute our circuits so that dependence is, ever so slightly, more of our "default position" than it was before.