Pearls of Wisdom....201

1. Take to yourself for armor ritual purification, fasting, worship, patience, performance of the dhikr, recitation of the Qur'an, and disclaiming the strength and power of God, and you will be in safety.

2. The increased blessings are actually the increases of religious knowledge, certainty, and intuitional knowledge (ma'rifa).

3. Every desire that summons you to long for the thing represented in the mind is the tool and weapon of Satan; and every desire that summons you to obey God and long to perform good deeds is praise worthy.

4. So long as your heart is attached to your knowledge and your striving, you are not as one going toward God, and you will not be such until you despair of everything, cleaving to hope in God with every breath---------then you will find help from God.

5. Whenever God honors a servant in his activities and moments of rest, He assigns to him service to perform (ubudiya) and conceals from him his personal gratifications.

6. Steadfastness before God with a clear consciousness of Him is the fairest of obedient acts.

7. He is described as niggardly and blame worthy who holds back his possessions on account of fear of poverty, wrong conjecture about God, contempt for the respect due to the believers.

8. Whenever you find pleasure in your outer or inner states, say: 'Whatever God wills, there is no force except with God.'

9. If we fear God with a fear that makes us secure from everything, then there is no sense at all in having fear of anything, since He is by everything, with everything, above everything, below everything, near everything, enveloping everything.

10. May your servant ship consist in resignation, contentment, acceptance of what is sent, good opinion of God in whatever you encounter, and being occupied with what is most worthy. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]