Status Updates From Understanding Islam

Moreover, truths are profound, not because they are difficult to express for him who understands them, but because they are difficult to understand for him who does not know them; hence the disproportion between the simplicity of the symbol and the possible complexity of the mental operations.

The Sufi, following the example of the Prophet, wants neither "to be God" nor "to be other than God"; and this is not unconnected with all that has been said above and with the distinction between "extinction" (fana) and "permanence" (baqa). There is no extinction in God without universal charity and there is no permanence in Him without that supreme poverty which is submission to the origin.

At death all assurance and all cleverness fall away like a garment and the being who remains is impotent and like a lost child; nothing is left but a substance we have ourselves woven which may either fall heavily or on the contrary let itself be drawn up by Heaven like a rising star.