By my life...

By my life, these verses contain a cure for every ailment were one to act upon them, and their zenith is being pleased with what Allah decrees: ‘And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint, none but persons of the greatest good fortune.’ (Qur’an, 41:35). These sacred verses, coming from the fountainhead of wisdom and the personification of infallibility, contain guidance as to how one can attain such a high status.

Among such guidance is that one must shy away from his worries, for this is one of the greatest preludes to attaining such a status. Worries spoil the heart the most. A heart occupied by worries turns away from its Lord, becomes distracted from Him, Glory to Him, because of its worries and griefs. Thus, the heart is done injustice by distracting it from its Maker. The body will, therefore, collapse, and one may fall very seriously ill, leading to its damage and annihilation.

After despondency, the inability to tackle things, when hopes and aspirations are dashed, you find someone saying, ‘ Everything depends on Allah, ’ as if Allah entrusted him to his own personal measures which do not fatten anyone, nor do they put an end to hunger! All of this results from ignorance of Allah’s purpose, of the way of (‘a), of feeling comfortable with what the evil-insinuating self is accustomed to.

What (‘a) have advocated is that a believer must accustom himself to avoiding worries so that his heart will be totally filled with remembrance of his Maker. Allah, the most Exalted and the most Great, has said, ‘... those who believe and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of Allah: without doubt, hearts do find rest in the remembrance of Allah.’ (Qur’an, 13:28).

When the heart turns to the remembrance of Allah, to His kindness, grace, compassion and mercy..., worries, griefs and depression flee away from it. The latter ills result from paying attention to the [evil insinuating] nafs, to doing things as it requires, the feeble that it is, to contraction, to bias in everything, to the desire to keep what is in its possession[^2].

One must constantly remember his own single pit [grave]: Anything far from it is near, and anything hard is easy when compared to it. Anything in comparison to it is one and the same. Its requirement is kindness and mercy; so, where are worries and griefs in comparison to it, and why should one then be so sad and depressed? If one feels sad about the past, it will never return.