► (148) ◄

At this distressing time when my soul was vexing me and triggering impatience, this piece silenced it completely and induced me to offer thanks. It is attached here in the hope that it will be useful for you too, for I have it hanging beside me.

1. O my soul! In seventy-three years you have received more than your share of pleasures, and none is now owing to you.

2. You want passing pleasures to persist and start weeping when they disappear. You receive slaps for this error of yours, arising from blind emotions.

3. Underlying the injustices and calamities you suffer is the justice of divine determining. People oppress you for something you didn't do, but due to your secret faults divine determining both trains you through the hand of those calamities, and they are atonement for those faults.

4. My impatient soul! As a consequence of hundreds of experiences, you believe certainly that divine providence dispenses truly sweet results beneath apparent calamities. The verse, "It may be that you hate a thing but it is good for you" (Q 2:216) teaches a certain truth. It constantly recalls it. Moreover, the divine law that turns the wheel of the firmament, that vast law of divine determining, will not be changed just for your sake.

5. Make the sacred rule: "The believer in divine determining suffers no grief" [^78] your guiding principle. Don't run after fleeting, trivial pleasures like capricious unthinking children. Know that passing pleasures leave behind pains and regrets, whereas difficulties and suffering yield spiritual pleasures and rewards in the hereafter. If you aren't crazy, you will seek temporary pleasures only for thanks. They are anyway given to prompt the offering of thanks.

[^78]:al-Daylamī, al-Musnad, i, 113; al-Munāwī, Fayḍ al-Qadīr, iii, 187; 'Ali al-Muttaqī, Kanz al-'Ummāl, i, 106. [Tr.]

S a i d   N u r s i ∗∗∗

► (149) ◄

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Although it is personal, it occurred to me that I should write and tell you about a strange dispute I had with myself. It was like this:

Although the poster you know about that hangs beside me had totally silenced my evil-commanding soul, last night my blind emotions, which employ the weapon of the soul even more insistently, exacerbated certain