The Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’illah / Chapter 9

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

75. The best that you can seek from Him is that which He seeks from you.

76. One of the signs of delusion is sadness over the loss of obedience coupled with the absence of resolve to bring it back to life.

77. The Gnostic [al-‘arif] is not one who, when he makes a symbolic allusion, finds Allah nearer to himself than his allusion [ishara]. Rather, the Gnostic is he who has no symbolic allusion due to his self-extinction in His existence [li-fana’ihi fi wujudhihi] and self-absorption in contemplating Him.

78. Hope [ar-raja] goes hand in hand with deeds, otherwise it is a wish [umniyya].

79. That which the Gnostics seek from Allah is sincerity in servanthood [al-‘ubudiyya] and performance of the claims of Lordship [ar-rububiyya].

80. He expanded you so as not to keep you in contraction [al-qabd], and contracted you so as not to keep you in expansion [al-bast], and He took you out of both so that you not belong to anything apart from Him.

81. It is more dreadful for Gnostics to be expanded than to be contracted, for only a few can stay within the limits of proper conduct [hudud al-adab] in expansion [fi’l-bast].

82. Through the existence of joy the soul gets its share in expansion, but there is no share for the soul in contraction.

83. Sometimes He gives while depriving you, and sometimes He deprives you in giving.

84. When He opens up your understanding of deprivation [al-man‘], the deprivation becomes the same as the gift [al-ata’].

85. Outwardly, creatures [al-akwan] are an illusion [ghirra], but, inwardly, they are an admonition [‘ibra]. Thus, the self looks at the illusory exterior [zahiri ghirratiha] while the heart looks at the admonitory interior [batini ‘ibratiha].

86. If you want a glory [‘izz] that does not vanish, then do not glory in a glory that vanishes.

87. The real journey [at-tayy al-haqiqi] is when the world’s dimension [masafat ad-dunya] is rolled away from you so that you see the Hereafter closer to you than yourself.

88. A gift from man is deprivation [al-hirman], and deprivation [al-man‘] from Allah is beneficence [al-ihsan].