The Hikam
of Ibn 'Ata'llah
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.