"If the forms of phenomenal beings are embedded in the mirror of the heart, how can it be illuminated? If it is fettered by its appetites, how can it travel to Allah? If it is not purified of the great impurity of its heedlessness, how can it aspire to enter the presence of Allah? If it has not turned away in regret from its lapses, how can it hope to grasp the subtleties of secret knowledge? "
-Ibn Arabi
Go sweep out the chamber of your heart.
Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved.
When you depart out,
He will enter it.
In you, void of yourself,
will He display His beauties.
-Shabistari
Do not think you are veiled from Allah
by something that is not Allah.
There is nothing besides Allah.
You are veiled from Him by the
Illusion that there is something other than Allah.
- Ibn Ata‘ Allah
-Yunus Emre
When my Beloved appears,
With what eye do I see Him?
With His eye, not with mine,
For none sees Him except Himself.
-Ibn Arabi
In the dead of night, a Sufi began to weep.
He said, "This world is like a closed coffin, in which
We are shut and in which, through our ignorance,
We spend our lives in folly and desolation.
When Death comes to open the lid of the coffin,
Each one who has wings will fly off to Eternity,
But those without will remain locked in the coffin.
So, my friends, before the lid of this coffin is taken off,
Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers."
-Fariduddin Attar
