The complete worth of a person is in this point that he...

The complete worth of a person is in this point that he becomes the leader of his own soul and not the slave of it. For example, when a person becomes angry, is one's own tongue in his control or not? Or when a person has the flames of jealousy burning up inside of him, does his true faith (Iman) put out such a fire?

In summary, a person has been placed at the intersection of two roads - one road which leads towards Allah (SwT) and Paradise; while the other path - which is not limited to one particular path, rather it has many other ways branching off of it - is going towards the Hell Fire. To discuss this issue is very easy, however, to put these things into practice is extremely difficult.

Sometimes, our leaders who are traversing the path of closeness to Allah (SwT) (Sair wa Suluk) use the following expression, “He is a person who has done a lot of work (on his soul).” By this phrase they mean that the person has fought against his own soul so much and has fallen down to the ground and gotten back up again and has continued to fight against his soul until the point that he becomes triumphant and has taken control of it for it takes self-discipline to win control over the soul.

It also entails to have a complete knowledge of the meaning of the Qur`an and the traditions of the Ahlul Bait in order to continue on this path. Each and every day, a person who wants to win control over his soul must read the Qur`an, the commentaries of the Qur`an and the traditions and transfer this knowledge into his mind and take energy and power from these things.

There are some people who say that, “We know that such and such act is not right, however when we are about to perform this act, we lose control over ourselves and we don't know why?!” This is the true meaning of being a servant. A person knows why (he is doing an act) but he does not know how to stop it because he is not the one in control of his own self.

It is similar to a driver who is going down a steep hill and his car picks up speed and he says, “I have lost control of my car” and then his car smashes on the side of a mountain or he ends up in the ditch and is killed. Another example is that of a person at the top of a mountain who is going down at a fast speed with nothing in front of him to control his descent and speed. However, when he reaches the bottom of the mountain, then his speed will eventually slow down and he will come to a rest.