First: Doubting the Creator Is Doubting the Reality of Creation
Peace be upon you. To begin:
Whoever casts doubt upon the existence of creation is, in fact, casting doubt upon his own existence. Doubting the essence is itself doubting its attributes. If a bottle does not exist in the first place, how can we say that it contains water or any other drink? We cannot attribute anything to a container that does not exist at all. The same applies to our relationship with the Creator and creation: doubt about the very foundation of existence cannot be separated from doubt about all the attributes, names, and realities that proceed from it.
Consider this from the standpoint that the test you are undergoing is your own test, and that, without realizing it, you are participating in choosing your position toward the Creator. Imagine that the matter is in your hands, and that you must choose a true Creator, complete in His attributes and names, a good Creator whose essential goodness is untouched by evil. Why should you choose such a Creator? Because this very act is, in reality, your own act, even if you do not realize it.
When you think well of the Creator and regard Him as good in His very essence, you do good to His creation. Indeed, the Creator does good to His creation through you. And when you show kindness to creatures, you participate in manifesting the Creator's goodness toward them. But if you judge the Creator to be evil, that evil does not remain confined to your conception of Him; it extends to your conception of yourselves and of all creation.
Whoever believes that the Creator is evil makes evil an attribute that extends to creatures. And whoever believes that creatures are evil in their very essence is thinking ill of the Creator who brought them into existence. Thus, a person gradually moves from doubting the reality of the Creator to doubting the reality of His creation, until existence itself becomes a matter of suspicion.
The Creator whose goodness is doubted becomes, in the imagination of the one who doubts Him, the cause of the evil he perceives in creation. Therefore, whoever truly knows the Creator understands that there is no room to doubt His goodness toward any creature, and that everyone receives goodness according to the extent of their connection with it and their recognition of it.
When you do good to creation, you also do good to yourself, because your kindness toward them is an extension of your faith in the Creator. But if you mistreat them, or make their existence a reason to doubt the Creator, you are not doing good to yourself. Rather, you are weakening the relationship that connects you to existence.
Here, we must distinguish between someone who truly believes in himself and someone who merely pretends to do so. It is not easy for a person to claim that he believes in himself while, in reality, he fears his own existence, doubts his abilities, and does not trust the Creator. Genuine self-belief requires profound trust in the Creator, to the point that a person trusts the Creator more than he trusts himself, because this trust is what gives him the ability to show goodness toward himself and others.
Those who possess inner knowledge and understand the secret of the Creator realize that His goodness toward creation is not something open to doubt. They know that the Creator is never absent from the reality of what He has created, that the created being is never separated from the governance of its Creator, and that the Creator's goodness is not merely a possibility we await, but a reality we must learn to perceive.
Second: Divine Spontaneity and the Secret of Goodness
Consider the relationship between the cells within the human body. Each cell performs its function, interacts with others, and participates in forming and sustaining the body. Not every cell is required to manage the work of all the other cells, nor does it need to know every detail in order to perform its function. There is an order that unites them, and a spontaneity that allows the parts of the body to cooperate without each one having to manage the whole.
This is spontaneity, and this is the natural self-organization that we should contemplate in our relationship with creation.
A person who trusts himself and treats himself well can open the door to spontaneity even while possessing plans and arrangements. Despite the mistakes and sins he may commit, he can open the door to forgiveness. Despite wars, he can open the door to peace. He can communicate with others on different levels and interact with them under different circumstances, because his trust is not confined to a single image of life.
This is the divinity I mean in this context: being capable of dealing with change without losing the foundation of trust, and remaining capable of doing good despite changing circumstances.
When we say that God is the Self-Subsisting Sustainer, those who are awake are the ones who understand the meaning of this sustaining. As for those who are asleep, they do not perceive that there is a higher governance beyond their own. They imagine that everything is in their hands and that they possess absolute authority, even though creation does not independently possess control over its own affairs.
How can a created being govern everything when it is not even the originator of its own existence? It did not choose its original creation, nor was it free to decide whether to exist or not to exist. By what meaning, then, can it claim absolute freedom?
Recognizing this truth does not mean abolishing human freedom of choice; rather, it means understanding its limits. The human being is a created being, and his freedom exists within an existence he did not establish himself. Therefore, belief in oneself cannot be separated from belief in the Creator. Whoever does not believe in himself doubts everything, while whoever is certain of himself finds in that certainty an entrance to certainty in the Creator.
Here, we must not confuse selfishness with doing good. Some people imagine that goodness may conflict with their interests, and that the Creator may punish them simply because they have failed to attain the image of perfection they imagine. But who said that the Wise, Merciful, Compassionate Creator wishes to torment His creation? Where did this conception come from?
Someone who believes that the Creator does not do good to him may, in reality, be someone who does not love himself and cannot accept his own existence. And whoever does not love himself cannot truly love creation, because his relationship with all existence is affected by his relationship with himself.
Third: Faith as an Awakening from Death
Faith is not merely verbal affirmation; it is an awakening from death. But what is death? And what does it mean for a person to stand firm in the face of it?
Imagine the bravest person in the middle of a battle, with a sword driven into his chest. Can he remain steadfast? Not merely on the physical level, but also on the levels of the soul, mind, and consciousness. Death is difficult, regardless of how much a person prepares for it or how much he imagines that he understands it.
Yet there is something that can remain steadfast even in death, and this is what I wish to point toward when I speak of the Creator.
Imagine that everyone has fallen asleep, that everything has become still, and that only one thing remains awake. That part which continues to function even when everything else sleeps, and that mind which remains capable of returning even after undergoing an experience of madness. This is the true mind that endures, the one that does not lose its essence regardless of the disturbances it encounters.
Someone who truly trusts his mind can take it through the most extreme states of disturbance and still return. But whoever fears losing his mind along the way does not trust it completely. And whoever remains firm within himself and connected to his heart can face hell without becoming part of it.
The one who can rise from the very heart of suffering is the one who distinguishes between bliss and torment. Torment is not merely what happens to a person through external events; the matter concerns his ability to preserve the foundation of his existence and his faith in himself.
The Creator is the Creator of male and female, night and day, good and evil, darkness and light. These are all aspects of creation, and therefore we should not reduce the Creator to a single image that conforms to our desires.
Consider true strength: if we saw a soldier enduring the enemy's attacks until everything was destroyed and he alone remained standing, we would recognize his strength. Why, then, should we not learn the secret of survival from this example instead of entering an endless argument?
Those who possess reason say: Let us understand the secret of this endurance and learn from it. We do not wish to enter into conflict with the Creator; we wish to attain salvation through His salvation and preserve ourselves within His peace. What would it cost Him from the treasures of His forgiveness or His generosity? Why all this argument, as long as goodness remains goodness?
The person who trusts himself is the one who believes that he deserves goodness and does not make evil a foundation through which he judges the Creator or creation. Instead of doubting himself, we should learn another way of relating to the Creator: contemplation, reflection, and consideration of His attributes and names.
Fourth: The Relationship with the Self Is the Relationship with Creation
Belief in oneself is, in one sense, belief in creation, and belief in creation is belief in the Creator, insofar as these realities are interconnected.
You may say: My relationship with creation is such and such, and my relationship with myself is such and such. Yet you may not realize that these two relationships are connected. What you do to yourself reflects what you conceive of the Creator, and what you do to creation reveals the true nature of your relationship with yourself.
Faith here is faith through knowledge, not merely belief. You must trust that you are capable of understanding yourself, and understand that knowing yourself is not separate from knowing the Creator.
A person who doubts his own existence doubts everything: himself, his attributes, his abilities, and his place in the world. But someone who is certain of himself finds a foundation upon which he can build the rest of his knowledge.
This is the difference between sound ideas and false ideas: ideas founded upon a stable origin do not need to constantly negate their own existence, whereas ideas that contain an internal contradiction with the foundation of existence remain doubtful.
Goodness should not be doubted in its very essence, and we should contemplate the source of the evil that makes a person doubt himself and the Creator.
That is why I say that faith is a resurrection from the dead, that faith is endurance in the face of death, and that whoever can rise from the heart of suffering can distinguish between what destroys his existence and what restores him to it.
Fifth: The Tree of Good and Evil and the Secret of Guidance
We have eaten from the Tree of Good and Evil, and then found ourselves asking: What is good? What is evil? And how do we distinguish between them?
Were it not for the guidance that reaches us from the Creator, we would not be able to understand the true distinction between them. Guidance, in this context, means learning to distinguish between what preserves our awareness and existence and what confuses us until we become incapable of knowing ourselves.
I am not speaking about isolated commandments or rulings detached from their purposes. I am speaking about a deeper understanding: Why is something forbidden? And why is something permissible?
Anything that confuses human perception and makes a person doubt his reality, himself, and the Creator deserves serious consideration. Whatever preserves his connection with truth and what is recognized as good, without making him doubt the very foundation of his affairs, is something he should hold on to.
This does not mean that every difficulty or disagreement a person encounters is evil, nor that everything that comforts him is good. The point is to distinguish between what corrupts the foundation of perception and what preserves it.
In our Algerian culture, we say: Keep that thing; a day may come when you need it. We can apply this meaning to our relationship with the Creator as well. Do not sever your relationship with Him, for a moment may come when you need Him, whether you anticipate that moment or not.
Whoever says that he will never need the Creator is simply ignorant of his own limitations. Even if he does not feel that need today, he should keep the door of the relationship open, because he does not know what tomorrow may bring.
Here, the importance of understanding limits becomes clear. A person who knows his own limits is neither reckless nor submissively humiliated. He knows what he can do and what he cannot do. He knows when to advance and when to stop, when he is content, and when he has exceeded the limits of what he can bear.
But limits are not fixed forever. Mountains change, trees change, and forms change. Political and civilizational boundaries change as well. The Roman Empire was once vast, then what remained of it became confined to Italy. The Ottoman state was once an extensive empire, then it became Turkey, a state with different boundaries.
Everything changes. Therefore, we should not confine the Creator within fixed boundaries that we ourselves construct, then judge Him according to them. Leave the boundaries between yourselves and the Creator open, and do not impose upon Him a narrow conception of what He ought to do.
Sixth: Let the Creator Govern His Own Affairs
Imagine that you enter a factory, and a supervisor comes to take you on a tour, explaining how things are manufactured, how the machines work, and what function each component performs. Would you then proceed to redo his work? Would you ask him to leave his position so that you could take over the management of the factory?
In this situation, you are a visitor, while he knows his work. If the supervisor knows what he is doing, why insist on managing the factory instead of him?
This is the meaning I wish to convey regarding our relationship with the Creator: Let the Creator do His work.
Someone who does not leave room for the Creator's governance does so because he imagines that God may forget, become heedless, leave something unattended, or need someone to remind Him of what He ought to do. This is why we hear people say: O God, do not forget us; O God, remember us; O God, do this or that, as though the Creator does not know what He must do at every moment.
The Creator knows what He ought to do and does not need us to teach Him His work. You are not required to reorganize existence on His behalf.
This does not prevent you from praying or making requests, but it changes the nature of the relationship: Do not turn prayer into a permanent complaint against a Creator whom you imagine to be incapable of governing properly, and do not make your requests an accusation of deficiency against Him.
If you trust yourself, then let the Creator govern His own affairs, and do not make yourself His opponent in the management of existence.
Seventh: Necessities, Luxuries, and the Secret of Contentment
I have come to the conclusion that, ultimately, the Creator does what is necessary. The differences that arise often concern luxuries and additional matters, rather than the foundation of necessity itself.
God is the necessity from which existence cannot be separated, whereas luxuries are matters beyond what is fundamentally required for existence to continue.
Some people may doubt the Creator because He has not fulfilled their desires for luxuries. They imagine that they were created incomplete and that they are constantly required to obtain something that will complete them. Yet they exaggerate the importance of luxuries until these become, in their eyes, necessities without which life is impossible.
Here, we must understand that luxuries are called luxuries precisely because losing them does not destroy the foundation of existence. You may grieve the loss of something, and you may suffer, but not every loss is destruction, and not every difference is torment.
Disagreement is secondary, whereas harmony is the foundation we should not lose. Sin, error, and misguidance, however great they may appear to a person, should not turn him into an enemy of all existence, nor make him forget the vastness of forgiveness and mercy.
Someone who mistreats creation and then claims that the Creator made them incomplete or biased against them is, without realizing it, mistreating the Creator. And someone who curses himself and considers there to be a fatal defect in the very foundation of his creation makes himself an object of accusation and, together with himself, makes the Creator an object of accusation as well.
I told you that, in the end, I discovered that only what is necessary will remain. When this meaning becomes clear, a person can find peace even when faced with the loss of things he once believed he could not live without.
And nothing will remain except the Face of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honor.
This Face, in the meaning I contemplate here, is that reality which does not allow death to bargain away its rightful claim to existence, nor does it doubt its fundamental deservingness of life.
Blessed is the one who knows his own worth and recognizes the true measure of God.
Eighth: Facing Death and Thinking Well of the Creator
When I faced death, I thought well of what deserved my good opinion. And when things began to turn in a direction contrary to what I had expected, I did not panic or collapse into every possibility that appeared before me. Instead, I said: Perhaps returning here is better, and perhaps going back is the more appropriate choice.
I did not want to lose the ability to recognize the level I was entering. I was trying to remain aware of what was happening and not allow fear to make decisions on my behalf.
God is Exalted in Rank, and we should not confine His greatness to the extent of what we ourselves perceive in events. The Creator is not required to descend to every conception we construct of Him, nor to appear to us according to the boundaries we draw.
Consider the veil behind which the Creator has concealed Himself from the worlds. This concealment is not necessarily a sign of absence or evil; rather, it may itself be what preserves the relationship from becoming confused. Not everything concealed from you should be uncovered, and not everything unknown should be penetrated.
Removing the veil recklessly may be the result of doubting oneself. When a person feels that his existence has no meaning, he begins demanding that the unknown reveal itself to him, without possessing the ability to deal with what may be revealed.
Everything you feel and experience is connected to the existence that created you, but you do not always know what you ought to do in every circumstance. Entering the unseen may mean entering a domain in which the knowledge you are accustomed to relying upon is no longer applicable.
The unseen is not merely a place unknown to you; it is a domain in which the validity of many familiar conceptions comes to an end. Therefore, knowing the Creator requires understanding that He is the Creator of everything, and that creation is far broader than the boundaries of the life you know.
Ninth: The Unity of Consciousness and the Origin of Difference
There is an idea I would like to pause and consider: people speak frequently about differences in consciousness, until they have begun treating this as an obvious truth that requires no questioning.
People imagine that one person's consciousness differs from another's because their thoughts differ and because each person sees things from a particular angle. But where does this certainty come from that one consciousness is separate from another?
Where did your soul come from? Where did your consciousness come from? And where did this thing you call your own possession come from? You did not create your existence or establish its origin. How, then, do you treat consciousness as though it were an independent possession, separate from the Creator?
The idea I wish to contemplate is the unity of consciousness, not the multiplicity of its origins. There are not two independent consciousnesses at the foundation of existence. Rather, there are branches and differences in manifestations, attributes, and additional qualities.
Imagine that you are looking at something yellow, and another person looks at it and also sees it as yellow. We should not assume that the reality one of us sees is fundamentally different from the reality the other sees merely because there are differences in expression or perception between us.
Differences in secondary qualities do not mean differences in necessity, and branching does not mean that the origin has been divided.
If the origin is one, then the multiplicity we observe should not make us imagine that unity has divided into independent and conflicting units. The One remains One, even when its manifestations and branches multiply.
This is the conviction we should hold on to when conceptions become disturbed: the conviction of unity, and the refusal to make differences in manifestations a reason to doubt the origin.
Tenth: The Forbidden and the Disconnection from Reality
In this contemplation, what is forbidden is not merely something we place on a list of prohibitions. Rather, we should understand its effect on human perception and on a person's relationship with himself and with existence.
Anything that makes a person doubt his reality, then doubt himself, and then doubt the Creator is something whose danger we should contemplate. Reality is the domain in which our existence is realized. If a person becomes separated from familiar reality without possessing what can bring him back to it, he may find himself in a space without stability.
The decision rests with the Creator, and the One who holds the decision is the One who possesses the ability to restore a person's center.
When a person leaves the reality to which he is accustomed and breaks through the veil of familiarity and habit, he may find himself in a space without an axis or gravity to hold him steady. Some people enjoy this separation, while others are terrified by it.
The difference between them is that the first may feel pleasure when separated from what is established, while the second feels that the space is swallowing him.
But we must understand that this separation does not necessarily mean an eternal ending. Falling into the unknown may continue as long as a person finds nothing to hold on to, but it is not necessarily a fall from which there is no return. Governance, decision, and proper guidance can provide the means of returning.
Someone who consumes something that disturbs his perception may enter a state in which what he once considered unreal becomes real in his eyes, while what he once regarded as real appears unreal. His scales are reversed, and he imagines that he is walking along the original path while, in fact, he has moved away from it.
This is one of the secrets of disturbed perception: a person does not always know that he has left the path. He may even imagine that he has reached the truth, while he has actually lost the standard by which he distinguishes truth from illusion.
That is why guardians and sages warned against paths that confuse a person's routes to knowledge, not merely to frighten people, but because they understand that losing the standard allows suffering to find a new entrance into the human being.
Eleventh: The Storm, the Void, and the Loss of Control
Imagine that you are in a vast space, with emptiness surrounding you from every direction. If you did not trust yourselves, you would feel that the void was swallowing you and showing mercy to no one.
But a person who preserves the foundation of his trust does not need to control everything happening around him. Events may occur that he cannot control, yet he can still protect himself from being swept away by them.
In certain experiences, the events unfolding before a person may resemble a complete loss of control. The mistake, however, is to try to control every event or become involved in details for which one does not possess the tools necessary to deal with them.
Sometimes the correct response is simply to let the storm pass.
Imagine millions of zombies surrounding you, where every wrong movement could make you their prey. In such a scene, you need extreme spontaneity and precision in your actions so that nobody can predict what you will do.
A wrong movement may make you part of the storm itself.
This also applies to certain unknown realities that human beings encounter. There are planets, so to speak, that do not know the meaning of life as we know it, nor do they follow the familiar patterns to which we are accustomed on Earth. You may enter a world governed by storms that have continued for millions of years, where you find none of the standards you recognize.
Imagine that you have fallen onto a distant planet, arriving from space in search of Earth. There, you may encounter beings or forms of existence that you do not know, and which know nothing about you. What you consider familiar reality may not exist for them at all.
Earth knows how to deal with its inhabitants because they have become familiar with its laws and ways of living. But entering another world does not mean that this world will deal with you according to what you are accustomed to.
You may become, in the eyes of that world, a strange being with which it does not know how to interact.
This illustrates how narrow the boundaries of the reality we know are when compared with the immense expanse of existence. The time we live through is only a tiny portion of an expanse that may extend across billions of years, and there may be forms of life whose beginnings and endings we do not know.
Therefore, knowing the Creator requires understanding that He is the Creator of everything, not merely the Creator of the life we know. Creation is broader than our conception, and we should not confine it within the boundaries of what we are familiar with.
Twelfth: Madness and the Separation of the Faculties of the Mind
What is called madness can, in this context, be understood as the departure of the faculties of the mind from their coordinated movement.
The mind does not function merely through the existence of scattered thoughts. Its faculties must move in an interconnected manner, allowing thoughts to follow one another according to a system that a person can relate to external events.
When thoughts become disconnected and no longer follow one another according to a shared system, a person begins to lose the ability to distinguish between what corresponds to reality and what does not.
But I believe the matter goes deeper than the mere strangeness of an idea. Two ideas may be extremely strange, yet the mind may still find a relationship between them and reconcile them through a new arrangement.
This is what I mean when I say that I always try to connect things to one another, even when dealing with ideas that appear unfamiliar or do not belong to the same category.
The mere difference between ideas does not mean that the mind has become separated from itself. A person may be able to bring together distant ideas as long as he remains capable of perceiving the relationship between them.
But danger begins when the fundamental threads that enable the mind to reorganize events become loose.
The calculations may suddenly change, and a person may begin to believe that what he once considered madness is the truth, while what he once considered truth is madness. This reversal may happen quickly, leaving him unable to return to the previous order.
The breakdown of these fundamental threads is not merely the breakdown of an idea or the forgetting of information. It may reach what could be called an existential malfunction, in which a person becomes unable to recover his center and his awareness of himself.
That is why I warn you against underestimating these transformations. No one should imagine that he has escaped merely because he feels that he has emerged from death or passed beyond danger. It may be that his standards have actually been reversed, and that he has begun rejecting a return to life while believing that he is rejecting death.
Understanding what happens in the body, soul, or mind when exposed to toxins and disturbances is important, because certain substances may affect the connections that enable the body to recognize itself, or that enable the mind to distinguish itself from the influences entering it.
In a state of disturbance, the mind may become an advocate for the very thing that has disrupted its balance, because it is no longer capable of distinguishing itself from the influence that has entered it.
Here, the importance of purification and refinement becomes apparent. In this sense, they resemble a defensive program that preserves a person's ability to distinguish between what he should accept and what he should reject.
A person may imagine that he is rejecting poison, while his very rejection may itself be one of the effects of the poison. Therefore, it is not enough for someone to say that he consumed poison and then rejected it. He must contemplate the nature of the rejection itself: Is it still coming from a mind connected to its origin, or has it become part of the very disturbance it is attempting to resist?
Thirteenth: Dissonance, Chaos, and the Necessity of Returning to Creation
Imagine that the world announces tomorrow that all contracts, laws, and moral principles have been abolished. What would happen?
I do not wish to describe this as good or evil merely by passing judgment on it. Rather, I want us to contemplate the extent of the change that the absence of shared rules might produce.
The house we live in might collapse, all the relationships to which we are accustomed might change, and a person might become unable to know what he ought to do.
Overwhelming chaos does not simply mean an abundance of events. It means the absence of decisive judgment, the absence of distinction between things, and the confusion of boundaries that once made everything recognizable in its proper place.
Here, the force of dissonance becomes apparent. It may cause the goodness existing within evil to be lost if nothing comes to restore it to its proper place.
Returning to creation means returning to the beginning, and returning to the beginning reaffirms the function of the mind. The function of the mind is to reconstruct the scene from its beginning and rearrange what has become confused until it can recover its order.
But someone whose ability to return has been impaired may find himself unable to go back, as though the mechanism for walking backward has stopped functioning.
This is why sages and those possessing inner knowledge warned against traveling certain paths alone. The fundamental principle of traveling is to do so with a group, or with a guide who represents the group, so that a person does not face the unknown alone without anyone to bring him back to what is known.
Fourteenth: The Guide and the Secret of What Is Known
A true guide is someone who can deal with the unknown without becoming lost in it, someone whom calamities do not stop and whom despair does not render incapable of continuing along the path.
A person may take a path from which there is no return and therefore need someone to stop him and say: This is the way back. Not everything you can enter is something you can leave on your own.
In essence, a guide is someone who understands the unknown through its relationship with the known, and who can preserve a person's connection with what is familiar even when he enters unfamiliar regions.
A person who is accompanied by a true guide does not become absolutely unknown, because there is someone who knows him and someone who can deal with him regardless of what happens.
Here, the value of the guide becomes clear: he does not need to tell you everything, nor does he need to turn you into a helpless follower. Rather, he preserves the path through which you can return.
A true guide does not direct you toward the unknown as though it were the final destination. He may instead lead you toward it so that you can understand the known more broadly. But someone who takes you into the unknown, denies what is known, and makes you doubt everything you once understood should not be taken as a guide, because he himself needs someone to bring him back to what is known.
What is known is the foundation of existence, and it should not be denied. Whoever allows others to perish without trying to preserve them opens the door to his own destruction as well. If one allows another to perish, and that other allows someone else to perish, the chain continues until nothing remains.
This indicates that minds support one another, and that souls are interconnected far more deeply than we imagine.
However, we should not doubt ourselves merely because we need a guide. This does not mean that we are incapable of managing our affairs, nor that we must always remain followers. Rather, we should leave the door open, because a day may come when we become incapacitated and need someone to take care of our affairs.
This, in brief, is the role of a guide: to be present when you need him, not to tell you what to do at every moment.
A guide should not impose the details of your life upon you. He intervenes when you reach a point at which you are no longer capable of knowing what should be done. At that moment, he may tell you: Do this, or stay away from that, until you recover your ability to manage your affairs.
But someone who makes you dependent on him in every small and great matter, and prevents you from knowing what you can do for yourself, is not fulfilling the function of guidance as it should be fulfilled.
Fifteenth: Returning to What Is Known and Trusting the Creator
Returning to what is known means returning to the existence we recognize and to the foundation upon which we can rely.
I told you that a person should sometimes act as though he does not need the Creator, not because the Creator is evil, but because He is such a good Creator that the person finds nothing to add to His goodness.
You do not need to keep asking and asking and asking, as though you possess nothing of what you have already been given. The Creator has given to you. Recognize the value of what He has given you, and be content with what you have.
But this contentment does not mean permanently severing your relationship with the Creator, nor does it mean that you cannot return to Him if you need something. Rather, the greatest aspect of this relationship is that you can go to Him whenever you wish and return whenever you wish.
This is the freedom I wish to point toward: that the relationship should not be founded upon fear, nor upon the belief that the Creator is evil, nor upon the constant feeling that you are incapable of living without asking for more.
The greatest evidence that things did not happen through mere coincidence or randomness is resurrection and repetition. Repetition indicates that there is a system that brings things back, and that events do not exist outside all governance.
Repetition is not necessarily bad. It may be a reason for increasing knowledge and certainty. When an experience is repeated, you acquire a previous record from which you can benefit the next time.
Do not consider failure the end of the road, and do not make a lost opportunity proof that you will never find another. A new opportunity may come, and it may even be better because this time you possess prior knowledge.
Resurrection itself is evidence that returning is possible, and that life should not be lived as though it were a single opportunity that can never be repeated.
Nevertheless, you should not behave as though you possess endless opportunities. Live your present life seriously, and benefit from your previous knowledge so that you do not have to repeat the same mistakes.
Sixteenth: The Ladder, Gradual Progress, and the Reserve of Knowledge
What is known is the foundation, not something evil from which we should flee. There are steps on a ladder, and you should not attempt to jump over all of them at once.
Only someone who possesses confidence and the ability to control his steps can leap over the entire ladder. But if you are not confident in yourself, you should proceed gradually until you acquire greater confidence.
Do what is recognized as good, because the end of doing good is self-confidence, and self-confidence is what gives you the ability to face the unknown.
A person possesses a reserve of knowledge, and this reserve is his provision along the journey. He should not remain in the unknown longer than his reserves allow, because staying there after his provisions have run out may leave him incapable of returning.
Imagine that you have five hundred liters of fuel and that you set out from a particular place toward another destination. You should not consume all your fuel reaching a place where there are no sources of replenishment, only to find yourself unable to return.
Knowledge is the same: do not consume your entire reserve in the unknown, and do not move so far away that you become unable to return.
If your path leads toward the unknown, increase your provisions as much as you can and advance little by little until you become familiar with the path. Once you become familiar with it, you become qualified for it. And once you are qualified, the unknown is no longer as unknown as it once was; rather, what is known to you has become greater.
Here, the importance of intellectual nourishment becomes apparent. Do not feed yourself with things you cannot defend, and do not make yourself accustomed to something whose connection to you cannot be established.
If you believe that there is something you cannot defend, do not make it your nourishment. Because when you feed upon something, you become responsible for defending your nourishment and protecting it from anything that might corrupt it.
This is the work of those who travel the path: magnifying what is known, reducing what is rejected, reducing denial, and increasing acknowledgment of what is recognized as good.
When you taste different tables of food, you will discover which ones you should avoid. Do not eat from a table that makes you deny all other tables, and do not make your acceptance of something today a reason to deny everything you knew yesterday.
Accepting something new does not necessarily mean that what you previously knew was wrong. You can learn something new without denying what was previously known to you.
This is the system that hallucination cannot easily mislead: remaining firmly connected to what is known, even while traveling through the unknown.
Seventeenth: Truth Is Greater Than Every Unknown
You should travel all paths except the path that confuses the paths themselves and makes you incapable of distinguishing between them.
Some paths require a stronger lamp because the lamp you possess may not be sufficient to illuminate them. You may enter certain paths believing that you can see everything, only to discover that your tools are unsuitable for that particular place.
Therefore, if you wish to advance toward the unknown, you need something known that is greater than every unknown, and that known thing is the Truth.
Truth is greater than every unknown, and yet it is known. God is greater than every conception, but He is not evil. This reality should remain present when you face the unknown, so that fear of it does not become a reason to doubt the very foundation of existence.
When Truth disappears, a person may become lost even in things he already knows. Do not imagine that knowledge alone is sufficient if you have lost the standard that makes it knowledge.
Consider the relationship between fathers, mothers, and their children. It is one of the strongest relationships known to human beings. Yet without the Truth that holds relationships together and preserves them, interests and instincts could turn against those who possess them.
Truth is what prevents every disagreement from becoming predation, every need from becoming aggression, and every hunger from becoming destruction.
The Creator is capable of all things. Therefore, we should not imagine that our existence is preserved because we have imposed boundaries upon Him, but because there is a Truth that preserves existence and prevents things from annihilating one another.
Eighteenth: Caution Without Exaggeration and Fear Without Collapse
Here, we should open a parenthesis of truth: whatever happens and however circumstances change, Truth should never disappear from our awareness.
But this does not mean exaggerating the dangers until we weaken people's spirits and make their minds timid. When we warn people, the purpose is not to plant terror within them, but to teach them how to take precautions to the extent of their abilities.
Excessive intimidation may achieve the opposite of what is intended, because it makes a person incapable of acting and causes him to see danger as greater than his ability to deal with it.
Rejoice when things are well, but do not allow joy to become a reason for destroying what already exists. Do not cut things apart and ruin them, then claim that everything is fine.
Caution is the provision of expansion, and joy does not contradict caution. You can be reassured without being heedless, and cautious without being terrified.
When things become disturbed, do not turn yourselves into fuel that makes the fire burn more intensely. If you see a fire burning, do not add more fuel to it.
The first thing to consider is reducing conflict and refusing to participate in igniting chaos. These words are directed toward innocent people and civilians who do not wish to become instruments in conflicts over which they have no control.
Return to your homes, to the places where you feel safe, where blows are fewer and reassurance can return. And return also to your own chests, to the place of memory, awareness, and connection with the self.
Fire only burns what fire is capable of burning, and it cannot return to the past to burn it again. There are things that fire cannot destroy, no matter how intensely it burns.
Therefore, hold on to memory, and remember whatever knowledge and truths you can recall that protect you from fire, temptation, and disturbance.
Nineteenth: Returning to the Past as a Reserve of Certainty
When you lose your way and no longer know where to go, do not make the future the first thing you turn to. The future may be unknown, and you may not possess sufficient guarantees concerning it.
Return to the past, to what you know actually happened, and to the experiences that have become part of your reserve of knowledge.
The past has already happened, and you can extract from it a certainty upon which to rely. The future, however, remains open to possibilities for which you possess no guarantees.
Returning to the past does not mean moving backward in the sense of regression. Rather, it means recovering the knowledge that gives you the ability to advance once again.
If you become disconnected from what is known, search for the last point at which you were certain, and begin from there. Do not allow the unknown to swallow your entire reserve, and do not let your desire to reach the future make you forget what you already possess.
A person who preserves his reserve of knowledge can continue advancing even if he loses certain things. And whoever preserves his connection with Truth can recover what he has lost, because he has not lost his mind, his being, or his ability to distinguish.
Thus, returning to what is known is a return to the self, returning to the self is a return to creation, and returning to creation is a return to the origin that we should never doubt.
Truth is the One, and the One is the origin upon which creation comes together, even when its manifestations and branches differ. Whoever knows this origin does not make differences in manifestations a reason for hostility, nor does he allow the gaps between creatures to become barriers that swallow everyone.
The world is vast, and distances within it are many. It is not necessary for everyone to overlap or fight in order to prove their existence. Every existing being can maintain the distance that preserves its existence while allowing it to interact with others.
The first wise person is the one who determines the appropriate distance and remains firm when things shake, so that his stability becomes a reason for others to regain their senses.
When things are shaken, do not become firewood that makes the flames burn more intensely, and do not become part of the storm that carries everyone away. Become an element of stability, hold on to what is known, preserve your provisions, and do not deny the Truth no matter how intense the unknown becomes.
Belief in oneself is not separation from the Creator, and belief in the Creator is not the cancellation of the self. Rather, both are interconnected at the foundation of existence. Whoever thinks well of the Creator does good to himself, and whoever does good to himself becomes capable of doing good to creation.
Therefore, salvation does not lie in knowing every unknown thing, nor in controlling every event. It lies in knowing what you should hold on to when you lose control, and what you should return to when the paths become confused.
Hold on to what is known, recognize your limits, think well of the Creator, and do not allow the unknown to sever your connection with Truth. Return remains possible as long as the foundation of existence is preserved, and salvation begins at the moment when a person regains his faith in himself, in creation, and in the Creator.
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