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al-Hikam al-'Ata'iyya
The aphorisms
of Ibn 'Ata' illah
I.
A feeling of discouragement
when you slip up
is a sure sign that you put your faith in
deeds.
Your desire to withdraw
from everything
when Allah has involved you in the world of means
is a hidden appetite.
Your desire for involvement
with the world of means
when Allah has withdrawn you from it
is a fall from high aspiration.
Aspiration which rushes on
ahead
cannot break through the walls of destiny.
Give yourself a rest from
managing!
When Someone Else is doing it for you,
don't you start doing it for yourself!
Your striving for what is
absolutely guaranteed to you
and your laxness in what is required of you
are evidence that your inner eye is dull.
If you make intense
supplication
and the timing of the answer is delayed,
do not despair of it.
His reply to you is guaranteed;
but in the way He chooses,
not the way you choose,
and at the moment He desires,
not the moment you desire.
If something that is
promised does not happen
even though the time for it is set,
do not doubt the promise!
If you do, that will dim your inner eye
and put out the light of your secret.
When He opens a way for you
and makes Himself known to you,
then do not worry about your lack of deeds.
He only opened the way for you
because He desired to make Himself known to you.
Do you not see that while He grants gnosis of Himself
to you,
you have only deeds to offer Him?
What He brings you -
What you bring Him -
What a difference there is between them!
Different states have
different outcomes.
This accounts for the variety of types of action.
Actions are merely
propped-up shapes.
Their life-breath is the presence of the secret of
sincerity in them.
Bury your existence in the
earth of obscurity.
If something sprouts before it is buried,
its fruits will never ripen.
Withdraw the heart into the
arena of reflection
- nothing helps the heart more than that!
If the forms of phenomenal
beings
are embedded in the mirror of the heart,
how can it be illuminated?
If it is fettered by its appetites,
how can it travel to Allah?
If it is not purified of the great impurity of its
heedlessness,
how can it aspire to enter the presence of
Allah?
If it has not turned away in regret from its lapses,
how can it hope to grasp the subtleties of
secret knowledge?
Phenomenal being is utter
and total darkness.
It is only the manifestation of the Real in it that
gives it light.
When you see phenomenal
being and do not see Him
in it, with it, before it or after it,
then you are truly in need of light.
You are veiled from the
suns of gnoses
by the clouds of secondary traces.
One way He shows you the
existence of His overwhelming power
is by veiling you from Him
by that which cannot exist alongside Him.
How can you imagine that
something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest by
everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is made manifest in
everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest to
everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He was the One who was Manifest before
there was anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is more manifest than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One with whom there is nothing
else?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is nearer to you than
anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when if it had not been for Him, there would
not have been anything?
A marvel!
See how existence becomes manifest in non-existence!
How the in-time holds firm alongside Him whose
attribute is eternal!
II.
You have not abandoned
ignorance at all
if you want something to take place in any
moment
other than what Allah has manifested in it.
You put off action until
you have nothing else to do?
That comes from the foolishness of the
lower self.
Don't ask Him to remove you
from one state
in order to use you in another.
If He wanted to,
He could use you without removing you.
When the aspiration of the
wayfarer desires to halt
at what has been unveiled to him.
then the invisible voices of the Reality call
out to him.
"What you're looking for is still in
front of you!"
When the outward aspect of
created things display their beauty to him,
then their inner reality calls out to him,
"We are a trial!
We captivate and tempt you!
Do not disbelieve!"
If you make demands on Him,
you doubt Him.
If you seek Him, you are absent from Him.
If you seek other-than-Him, you are shameless before
Him.
If you make demands on other-than-Him, you are
distant from Him.
Every breath you breathe
emerges according to a preordained decree.
Don't look forward to being
quit of others -
that will cut you off from watchful awareness
of Him
in the place where He has put you.
Don't think that worry and
sorrow are out of place
as long as you are in this world.
It only brings forth what its attribute and
quality demand.
A goal you seek by your
Lord:
no delay here.
A goal you seek by yourself:
not easy.
A sign of success in the end:
turning to Allah in the beginning.
A radiant beginning:
a radiant ending.
Everything that is stored
away in the warehouse of invisible secrets
has to appear in the visible world of outward
manifestation.
What a difference!
This one is guided by Him.
That one seeks information about Him.
The one guided by Him gains
direct knowledge of the Real
and verifies the matter from its actual Source.
Seeking information about
Him comes from
not having reached Him.
This must be the case
because when was He absent
so as to make it necessary for you to seek
information about Him?
When was He distant so that you would need tracks to
lead you to Him?
As for those who have
reached Him:
"He who has plenty should spend out from his
plenty."
As for those who are travelling to Him:
"it is he whose provision is restricted."
Those travelling to Him
are guided by the light of turning their faces
toward Him.
Those who have arrived
have the lights of face-to-face encounter.
The former belong to
lights,
but the lights belong to the latter
because they belong to Allah, and are His
alone.
"Say: 'Allah'
then leave them plunging in their games."
III.
Better to look at the
defects hidden within you
than to look for the unseen worlds that
are veiled from you.
The Real is not veiled
- it is you that are veiled from seeing Him.
If there was anything veiling Him
what veiled Him would cover Him.
If he was covered,
His existence would be contained.
If something contains something else,
it overpowers it.
But He is the Conqueror, overcoming His slaves.
Among the qualities of
humanness,
get rid of every quality incompatible with
your slavehood
so you can answer when Allah calls and be near
His presence.
The root of every act of
rebellion, every appetite
and every moment of heedlessness
is satisfaction with one's self.
The root of every act of obedience, every restraint
and every moment of wakefulness
is lack of satisfaction with one's self.
Better to keep the company
of an ignorant man
who is not satisfied with himself
than a man of knowledge who is satisfied with
himself.
What knowledge does the self-satisifed scholar have?
What ignorance does the ignorant man who is not
self-satisfied have?
The light of the inner eye
lets you see His nearness to you.
The source of the inner eye lets you see your
non-existence by your existence.
The truth of the inner eye lets you see His
existence,
not your own non-existence or existence.
"Allah was and there was
nothing with Him.
He is now as He was."
IV.
Do not let the intention of
your aspiration veer to other-than-Him.
Hopes can go no further than the Ever-Generous.
Do not ask other-than-Him for what you need
since He is the One who will bring it to you.
How can other than the One who put it there relieve
it?
How can someone who is unable to relieve his own need
relieve someone else's?
If you do not think well of
Him because His qualities are beautiful
then think well of Him because of the way He
treats you.
Has He made you used to anything but good?
Has He bestowed on you anything but favours?
How utterly amazing is
someone who flees from something he cannot escape
to seek something that will not last!
"It is not the eyes that
are blind,
but the hearts in the breasts are blind."
Do not travel from
phenomenal being to phenomenal being.
You will be like the donkey going around at the mill.
It travels to what it set out from.
Travel from phenomenal
beings
to the Maker of Being.
"And the final end is to
your Lord."
Look at the words of the
Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:
"Whoever emigrates to Allah and His Messenger,
his emigration is to Allah and His
Messenger.
Whoever emigrates to something of this world or a
woman to marry,
his emigration is to what he emigrates
to."
Understand his words, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace:
"His emigration is to what he emigrates
to."
Reflect on this matter if
you have any understanding at all!
Peace!
V.
If someone's state does not
lift you up,
and his words do not lead you to Allah
- then do not keep his company!
It may well be that you are
in a bad state -
but to keep company with someone worse than you
would allow you to see good in yourself.
No action from a heart
without attachment is insignificant.
No action from a heart full of desires is great.
Good actions are the
results of good states.
Good states come from grasping the reality
of the stations where you alight.
Do not give up invocation
of Allah
because you are not present with Allah in it.
It is worse to forget to invoke Him
than to be inattentive while invoking Him.
He might raise you up from
invocation with heedlessness
to invocation with wakeful attention,
and from invocation with wakeful attention
to invocation with presence,
and from invocation with presence
to invocation with withdrawal from all that is
other than the Invoked.
That is not difficult for Allah.
VI.
A sign of the death of the
heart:
lack of sadness about beneficial actions you
have missed,
and lack of regret about your mistakes.
Do not become so
overwhelmed by your wrong action
that it stops you thinking well of Allah.
Whoever has gnosis of his
Lord,
finds that his wrong action is insignificant
beside His generosity.
There is no minor wrong
action when you face His justice.
There is no major wrong action when you experience
His bounty.
No deed has more hope of
being accepted
than the one you do and forget about, thinking
it insignificant.
He only sent a
warid to you
so that it would bring you to Him.
He sent a warid to you
to deliver you from the control of otherness
and to free you from being a slave to effects.
He sent a warid to you
to release you from the prison of your existence
and to bring you to the open space of inner
witnessing.
Lights are the mounts of
the hearts and the secrets.
The army of the heart is
light.
The army of the lower self is darkness.
When Allah wishes to help
His slave,
He reinforces him with the armies of light
and cuts off the reinforcements of darkness and
otherness.
Light unveils.
The inner eye judges.
The heart both advances and retreats.
Don't be overjoyed at
obedience because it has issued from you.
Rejoice in it because it has come from Allah to you.
"Say: 'Let them rejoice in
the bounty of Allah and His mercy.
That is better than what they amass.'"
He prevents those who are
travelling to Him and those who have reached Him -
from seeing their actions and witnessing their
states.
The travellers -
because they have not made sincerity with Allah
in them a fact.
Those who have arrived -
because when they see Him,
He makes them oblivious to seeing their
actions.
VII.
The branches of abasement
only grow from the seeds of greed.
Nothing leads you on like
illusion.
You are free when you despair of it.
You are a slave when you are eager for it.
Whoever does not advance to
Allah by the tenderness of His goodness
is chained to Him by the fetters of trial.
Whoever is not grateful for
blessings is asking for them to vanish.
Whoever is grateful for them ties them up with their
own tether.
Fear that the fact that He
is good to you when you are acting badly towards Him
might be bait to draw you on.
"We shall draw them on bit
by bit, from where they do not know."
It is ignorance on the part
of the murid if he has bad adab
to then say when the punishment is delayed,
"If this were really bad adab,
He would have cut off help or sent me
into exile."
Help can be cut off while
one is unaware of it
- by stopping any increase
- or by letting you do what you like.
When you see someone whom
Allah has made persist in recitation of wirds
and then continues to help him in that,
do not despise what his Master has given him
because you do not discern in him
the mark of the gnostics or the radiance
of the lovers.
No warid, no
wird.
If a warid had not come, there would be no wird.
Allah makes some people
serve Him
while He singles out other people for His love.
"Each We help, these and
those,
from the gift of your Lord
and the gift of your Lord is not restricted."
VIII.
It is very rare that divine
warids come
in other than a sudden flash.
That protects them -
because the slaves cannot lay claim to them
because they are ready for them.
When you see someone
answering all he is asked,
and remembering all he knows
and interpreting all he sees
- that proves that he is an ignorant man.
He made the Next World the
place where He will reward His believing slaves
because this world is not vast enough to hold
what He wants to give them
and because He thinks too much of them to reward
them
in a dimension which lacks any
permanence.
If you find the fruit of
your deeds quickly,
that is a proof of your acceptance!
If you want to learn your
value with Him
look where He has put you.
When He provides you with
obedience and having no need of other than Him,
know that He has bestowed His outward and inward
blessings on you.
[Warid:
"arriving thing"; an overflowing experience which overcomes a
person's heart.
Wird:
a regular spiritual exercise involving recitation of a litany of
dhikr.
IX.
The best you can seek from
Him
is what He seeks from you.
A sign of being deluded is:
sorrow over loss of obedience while failing to get on with
it.
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