The Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’illah / Chapter 6

And he said (may Allah be pleased with him!):

48. A sign of the heart’s death is the absence of sadness over the acts of obedience that you have neglected and the abandonment of regret over the mistakes that you have made.

49. Let no wrong-action [dhanb] reach such proportions in your eyes that it cuts you off from having a good opinion of Allah, for, indeed, whoever knows his Lord considers his wrong-action as paltry next to His generosity.

50. There is no minor sin [saghira] when His justice confronts you; and there is no major sin [kabira] when His grace confronts you.

51. No deed is more fruitful for the heart than the one you are not aware of and which is deemed paltry by you.

52. He only made an inspiration [warid] come upon you so that you would go [warid] to Him.

53. He made an inspiration come upon you so as to get you out of the grip of otherness [min yadi’l-aghyar] and free you from bondage to created things [min riqqi’l-athar].

54. He made an inspiration come upon you so as to take you out of the prison of your existence to the unlimited space of your contemplation [ila fad’i shuhudika].

55. Lights [al-anwar] are the riding-mounts [mataya] of hearts and of their secrets [al-asrar].

56. Light is the army of the heart, just as darkness is the army of the self. So when Allah wishes to come to the help of His servant, He furnishes him with armies of Lights [junud al-anwar] and cuts off from him the reinforcements of darkness and otherness [mada az-zulm wa’l-aghyar].

57. Insight [al-kashf] belongs to the Light [an-nur], discernment [al-hukm] to inner sight [al-basira], and both progression [al-iqbal] and retrogression [al-idbar] belong to the heart [al-qalb].

58. Let not obedience make you joyous because it comes from you, but, rather, be joyous over it because it comes from Allah to you. “Say: In the grace of Allah and His mercy, in that they should rejoice. It is better than that which they hoard.”

59. He prevents those who are voyaging to Him from witnessing their deeds and those who are united with Him from contemplating their states. He does that for the voyagers because they have not realized sincerity [as-sidq] towards Allah in those works; and He does that for those united with Him because he makes them absent from contemplating those states by contemplating Him [bi-shuhudihi].