The soul will never become pious and purified except through undergoing afflictions. It is the same as gold that can never be pure except after removing all the base metals in it.
من عابَ أخيه بذنب، لم يمت حتى يفعله. ابن القيم
Whoever faults his brother for a sin, he will not die until he commits it himself.
More than one person has said to me: “When I repent to Him; [turn to (Him) in obedience, avoiding disobedience, depending on him and seeking refuge in Him] and performing righteous actions; my sustenance is straitened and difficulty comes upon my livelihood. However, when I return to disobeying Him and give my soul its desires, then sustenance, relief and other than it comes to me.’’ So I said to some of them: “This is a test from Him to see whether you are truthful or untruthful in your seeking refuge with Him, responding and submitting to Him in obedience and exercising patience upon (what He has decreed of afflictions for you with absolute justice and wisdom) so that there are (good) end results for you; or whether you are untruthful so that you return to what you were upon (of evil).”
The essence of tawbah is to return to Allāh and to adhere to what He loves and renounce that which He dislikes. Tawbah is a journey from the disliked to the liked.
Get yourself out of this limited world of diseases to the wide world of the hereafter, which has what the eyes have never seen. Nothing is impossible there, and love is not lost. O you who sold yourself for the sake of something that will cause you suffering and pain, and which will also lose its beauty, you sold the most precious item for the cheapest price, as if you neither knew the value of the goods nor the meanness of the price. Wait until you come on the Day of mutual loss and gain and you will discover the injustice of this contract. “There is no God but Allah” is something that Allah is buying. Its price is Paradise, and the Messenger is its agent, and you will be pleased to part with a small part of this worldly life to obtain it. The part you lose is a small part of something that as a whole is not worth a mosquito’s wing.
And if you reflect on most people’s situation, you will find that they look at their rights over Allah and do not look at Allah’s right over them, and from here is where they broke off from Allah.
The key to the life of the heart lie in reflecting upon the Quran, being humble before Allah in secret, and leaving sins.
When Allah tests you it is never to destroy you. When He removes something in your possession it is only in order to empty your hands for an even greater gift.
When a person spends his entire day with no concern but Allah alone, Allah will take care of all his needs and take care of all that is worrying him; He will empty his heart so that it will be filled only with love for Him.
Whoever has offended you and then approached you to apologize, humility obligates that you accept his apology whether it is truthful or not, and that you leave his secret thoughts to God. The sign of generosity and humility is that if you notice a defect in his apology, you do not address it nor hold him against it.
From the perfection of Allah’s ihsan is that He allows His slave to taste the bitterness of the break before the sweetness of the mend. So He does not break his believing slave, except to mend him. And He does not withhold from him, except to give him. And He does not test him (with hardship), except to cure him.
If the heart is fed by love, the greed for pleasure would disappear.
Everyone has two Muezzins, one calling them to God, the other calling them to evil.
