The Stations of Certainty

And then: he struggles against the self for the sake of the Lord of sentient beings, and through this he adorns himself with the stations of certainty. So this is called mujāhadah, which is jihād: struggling against the lower impulses of the self. It is a conscious struggle that one has to do. So we do backbite, but we have to struggle against it: ah — it is happening again. Entering into a state of remembrance, entering into a state of mindfulness, so that we become mindful of our actions — right action, right thought. We begin to enter into a state where: yes, I can do it, I can change, I can do this. And each time one stops it, one becomes stronger in this struggle, until it is finally conquered.

And then he says: and these stations are fear — which is a fear not like the fear of a tyrant, but a fear of being displeasing. There is a fear of being displeasing, like the fear that one has of upsetting one's parents: I do not want to upset my father; I do not want to upset my mother. That is the fear that is being talked about. Hope: that there is a hope. Gratitude. Patience — in perseverance, in struggle. Patience. Repentance: turning back, recognising that one will fall short.

There is the account of a man who was asked one day how somebody was doing, and who said: they hit the bottom of the mountain, but they have started back up again — meaning it as a good thing. And the questioner said: that sounds like the myth of Sisyphus. Which is pessimistic; there are a lot of pessimistic people in the world. And the answer given was a story once told in Mauritania to a student who was finding something difficult. A man told him a story about one of the students there who had studied one book nine times and could not get it. This book takes at least about a year to study. He could not get it. It is a foundational book in Islamic law, a very difficult book. And he decided to give it up. He was just going to forget it: I cannot do this. He went to a place and was sitting under a tree, and there was an anthill, and he watched an ant taking a crumb up the hill. And every time, right before it got to the top, the crumb would drop and roll back to the bottom of the hill. And this ant did it nine times. And on the tenth time, it made it over. And so the man said that he was not going to have the aspiration of an ant be greater than his own. So he decided to do it one final time, and he had his opening. So the idea is: no, it is not Sisyphus. Yes, the rock does fall down, and we do start up again. But there is a possibility of getting to the top, of achieving what we want, our spiritual aspirations.