Pearls of Wisdom....202

1. Whenever you desire to do a certain thing or abstain from doing it, flee to God, and call to Him for help. Accustom yourself to that.

2. Take heed not to lose confidence in God. Trust in God, for God loves the trustful.

3. Knock on the door of dhikr, seeking shelter with God and avowing your need of Him, if you desire to have spiritual sufficiency.

4. Sustenance is Divinely apportioned. It is not the piety of a pious man that increases it, nor it is the impiety of an impious man that diminishes it.

5. Display not your knowledge in order that men may consider you to be sincere, but display your knowledge in order that God may consider you to be sincere.

6. Act toward God with certainty. Stand fast where He has established you, abstain from forbidden where He has forbidden you, with true insight (basira) in the religious certainty, and be not one of heedless.

7. If a person loves God, and He loves him, his friendship is brought to perfection.

8. The lover in very truth is he over whose heart there is no authority belonging to any except his Beloved and in which there is no will other than His will.

9. He whose friendship in relation to God has been established for him feels no aversion in meeting with God (on the Day of Judgment).

10. The veritable friend (of God) is not averse to death if it comes to him, since one who has tasted of intimacy with his Master will love meeting with Him. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]