Friday, January 28, 2011

Rule your self

Bismillah.

O son, as I was preparing my self for a long journey in search of providence, I flipped my books and saw these words of advice by Shaykh Abd Al-Mahmud al-Hayfan in Al-Wasiyya (The Bequest). One sentence was particularly striking as my takeaway - "So take heed of Allah, my sons, in all your doings, and Allah will take care of you in your end."

Under the chapter on 'The most honorable and highest of rule', the shaykh said:
"Then, my sons, be slaves (humble) in prosperity, masters (dignified) in poverty. By that you will reach perfection. You will then be truly of the friends of Allah because He who made you self-sufficient, made you masters of yourselves. The most honorable and highest of rule is the one over the self. The happy in reality is the one whom Allah gave success to rule his self, for there is in the rule over the self and its mastery the power to compel one's organs to agree to hear and to obey the commands of the Truth  (Allah) in man's likes and dislikes. This state is on the level of the Prophet's infallibility. In the grades of the friends of Allah, it is protection. So take heed of Allah, my sons, in all your doings, and Allah will take care of you in your end."

O son, I remind myself that we live with the end in mind, that we shall go back to where we came from. And we want to go back with a good ending - husnul khatimah. Bi-iznillah. We pray with the barakah of all the shuyukh whom we have been quoting, we will benefit from their teachings, we'll take heed and arrive at a good end. InshaAllah.



Translator credit: Uthman Sayyid Ahmad Ismail al-Bili
Credit: Garnet Publishing

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