Written transcript of the lecture
The Meshkat-e Noor teachings series🌼🔆🌼The Secret of Cherishing Poverty🌼🔆🌼
🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹
🔅🌹“The Bitter and Sweet Trial” “The Believer’s Immune System” “The Trial of Poverty and Wealth” “Supplication 20 of the Sahifa Sajjadiyya” “Session 218” and more … Summary with addendum 1403.02.13 Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903) 🌹🔅
🔅🌼An Overview of the Session 🌼🔅
🌼 When we attain humility, it is as though we have been equipped with every virtue. Whoever passes through the gate of humility has, in effect, passed through every gate of servitude.
🌼 When an act is adorned with humility, it is a sign that God has accepted it.
🌼 Every deed must be blended with the salt of humility so that the sweetness of servitude may be savoured.
🌼 Humility is a wondrous key to attaining the oneness of God.
🌼 The landscape of noble virtues is mapped out in Supplication 20 of the Sahifa Sajjadiyya.
🌼 Acquiring spiritual capital—and, more important, preserving what we have acquired—is the art Imam Sajjad, peace be upon him, teaches us: how to safeguard the edifice of servitude.
🌼A sound heart cannot be attained without humility.
🌼 Cherishing poverty does not mean loving poverty; it means being enamoured of God’s trials.
🌼 In this world, we are not seated at the table of pleasure; we are seated at the examination table.
🌼 In one respect, we face two kinds of trial: the trial of pleasure and the trial of hardship.
🌼 To flee from the trial of hardship is to become like cattle. Entering the arena of appetite and lust is to turn into beasts.
🌼 Through His many trials, God has willed to display His knowledge!
🌼 The claim to faith marks the beginning of divine trials.
🌼 God wants a believer who has been tempered in the furnace.
🌼 Without adornment, there would be no desire.
🌼 The world around us is God’s mobile testing ground.
🌼 At every moment—including while we sleep, from the instant we are conceived and formed in our mother’s womb, and after birth—we are tested by God, second by second.
🌼 When we wish to repent, we must return to the Realm of ذر and even before it, and repent.
🌼 Through the trials of poverty and hardship, God has not humiliated us; He wants to make us champions.
🌼 We must choose our path of servitude. Whichever path we choose, we will take part in its particular trial.
🌼 How many people have entered this great contest, triumphed in every discipline, and hung a range of medals around their necks!
🌼 Humility and the pride of the end times are now at their peak and fullest expression.
🌼 Arrogance belongs to the forces of ignorance, while humility belongs to the forces of reason. Humility in this age is unlike what it was at the dawn of creation.
🌼 From the moment arrogance was born of ignorance until now, it has grown ever larger and reached maturity.
🌼 Human souls have suckled arrogance and made it grow fat.
🌼 Humility is the summit of knowledge; with this humility, we must go to battle against arrogance.
🔅🌼Humility Has Its Roots in God’s Majesty 🌼🔅
🌹Humility carries the taste of nearness to God.
🌹Whoever discovers the joy of humility will never leave its abode.
🌹Only worship that has passed through the gate of humility is pleasing and acceptable to the Most High.
🌹Only those brought near to God and those who affirm His oneness know the peerless atmosphere of humility.
🌹🔆وَ أَصْلُ التَّوَاضُعِ مِنْ إِجْلَالِ اللَّهِ وَ هَيْبَتِهِ وَ عَظَمَتِهِ وَ لَيْسَ لِلَّهِ عَزَّ وَ جَلَّ عِبَادَةٌ يَرْضَاهَا وَ يَقْبَلُهَا إِلَّا وَ بَابُهَا التَّوَاضُعُ وَ لَا يَعْرِفُ مَا فِي مَعْنَى حَقِيقَةِ التَّوَاضُعِ إِلَّا الْمُقَرَّبُونَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْمُتَّصِلُونَ بِوَحْدَانِيَّتِهِ قَالَ اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَ جَلَ وَ عِبادُ الرَّحْمنِ الَّذِينَ يَمْشُونَ عَلَى الْأَرْضِ هَوْناً وَ إِذا خاطَبَهُمُ الْجاهِلُونَ قالُوا سَلاما[1]
🔆Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him: “… The essence of humility comes from the majesty, awe, and greatness of God, Exalted is He. No act of worship or obedience is accepted and pleasing to the Lord, Exalted is He, unless its gateway is humility. Yet none truly understands humility except those among His servants who are brought near to Him and devoted to His oneness. God, Exalted is He, says: ‘The servants of the All-Merciful are those who walk upon the earth with humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, “Peace.”’”
🔅🌼 Rooted Humility 🌼🔅
🌹Let us strengthen and safeguard the system that protects our servitude to God. “Rooted humility” is a policy insuring us against arrogance, self-conceit, and every form of pride.
🔅🌼 The Landscape of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya’s Makārim al-Akhlāq 🌼🔅
🌹The landscape mapped out in Imam Sajjad’s, peace be upon him, exalted vision of Makārim al-Akhlāq is the vast realm of servitude to God. It holds the pure secret of worship and the well-being of our servitude.
🌹More important than acquiring wealth and resources is preserving them—and that cannot be achieved without a system to safeguard our servitude.
🌹In Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya, Imam Sajjad, peace be upon him, teaches us how to design and build the great edifice of the arts of servitude. Divine servitude is like a mighty tree, laden with ripe, sweet fruit of every kind. Protecting its fruits, wealth, resources, sweetness, honey, and the hive of servitude is a sign of the wisdom that servitude entails.
🌹Our mission is not limited to acquiring good deeds. We must also help them grow and flourish, and, by preserving and tending them, bring them safely to their destination.
🌹The body’s immune system must be healthy and strong if it is to protect the well-being of our servitude to God. Humility contributes extraordinarily to strengthening it.
🔅🌼 The Well-Being of Servitude through a Sound Heart 🌼🔅
🌹The human heart is strengthened by the noble virtues, and humility stands at their summit.
🌻🔆Ash-Shu‘ara: 88 يَوْمَ لا يَنْفَعُ مالٌ وَ لا بَنُونَ
🔆The day when neither wealth nor children will be of any benefit,
🌻🔆Ash-Shu‘ara: 89 إِلاَّ مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبٍ سَليمٍ
🔆except for one who comes to God with a sound heart.
🌻🔆As-Saffat: 83 وَ إِنَّ مِنْ شيعَتِهِ لَإِبْراهيمَ
🔆And indeed, Abraham was among his followers.
🌻🔆As-Saffat: 84 إِذْ جاءَ رَبَّهُ بِقَلْبٍ سَليمٍ
🔆when he came to his Lord with a sound heart.
🌹The heart is the representative of our deeds and intentions, and the greatest sign of our servitude to God.
🌹Let us come before God sound, in all our beauty, adornment, and maturity.
🌹Let us guard the wealth of our servitude against its afflictions, corruptions, and moral failings.
🌹Preserving our being and our deeds from every affliction, fire, worm, dust, and from being transformed, degraded, distorted, or annulled is a sign of the growth of our servitude. In other words, our deeds must be protected from every downward transformation. They must ascend, rather than fall among deeds that are animal, vegetable, mineral, barren, and fruitless.
🔅🌼 The Secret of Embracing Poverty 🌼🔅
🌹Who is the champion in the contest of poverty? Embracing poverty means welcoming God’s trial of poverty in the hope of earning His pleasure.
🌹Who volunteers to be tested and to compete in poverty? No trial is permanent; it is only temporary and passing.
🌹The arena of true servitude is no place for livestock, beasts, or those enslaved to their appetites. Anyone who flees hard trials and clings to worldly pleasures is like an animal.
🌹God, Mighty and Majestic, has invited His servants to the greatest contest!
🌹Every creature in this world has, in effect, accepted God’s invitation to the contest of servitude. Each will be tested according to their ability and understanding.
🌻🔆Al-Baqarah: 155 وَ لَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ بِشَيْءٍ مِنَ الْخَوْفِ وَ الْجُوعِ وَ نَقْصٍ مِنَ الْأَمْوالِ وَ الْأَنْفُسِ وَ الثَّمَراتِ وَ بَشِّرِ الصَّابِرينَ
🔆We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger, and loss of wealth, lives, and crops. Give glad tidings to those who are patient.
🌻🔆Al-Baqarah: 156 الَّذينَ إِذا أَصابَتْهُمْ مُصيبَةٌ قالُوا إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَ إِنَّا إِلَيْهِ راجِعُونَ
🔆Those who, when calamity strikes them, say, “Surely we belong to God, and surely to Him we shall return.”
🌻🔆Muhammad: 31 وَ لَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ حَتَّى نَعْلَمَ الْمُجاهِدينَ مِنْكُمْ وَ الصَّابِرينَ وَ نَبْلُوَا أَخْبارَكُمْ
🔆We will surely test you until We make known those among you who strive and those who are patient, and examine what you report.
🌹The secret of “We make known” lies in bringing divine knowledge into manifestation. God Most High has made the world of being a stage on which His knowledge is displayed; time and place are its interpreters.
🌹From one perspective, divine trials take two forms: trials with an outward appearance of pleasure and delight, such as beauty and wealth, and trials whose outward appearance is mingled with pain and hardship, such as poverty and illness.
🔅🌼Only the champion of the test of servitude is truly noble🌼🔅
🌹God Most High tests His servant with wealth and riches. Though wealth and blessings are gifts of divine grace, only the servant who emerges from this trial with honor is truly worthy of esteem. No one, then, should boast of their wealth, status, or privileges.
🌻🔆Al-Fajr: 15 فَأَمَّا الْإِنْسانُ إِذا مَا ابْتَلاهُ رَبُّهُ فَأَكْرَمَهُ وَ نَعَّمَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَكْرَمَنِ
🔆As for man, when his Lord tests him by honoring him and granting him blessings, he says, “My Lord has honored me!”
🔅🌼Poverty is a divine trial🌼🔅
🌻🔆Al-Fajr: 16 وَ أَمَّا إِذا مَا ابْتَلاهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَهانَنِ
🔆But when He tests him by restricting his provision, he says, “My Lord has humiliated me!”
A trial is temporary, even if its resolution is delayed
🌹Rock climbing is temporary; every ascent has a descent.
🌹The sweetness of victory outweighs the bitterness of every hardship.
🌹Let us distinguish between those who are at fault for their poverty, those who are wronged, and those whose poverty is a trial. Poverty caused by oversleeping and laziness, idleness, unemployment, wasting opportunities, lack of good judgment, inattention, carelessness, excessive consumption, extravagance, wastefulness, and the like should be distinguished from poverty that is a trial. Those at fault bear the consequences of their own failings.
🌹The poverty of someone who has been wronged may be an instance of the trial of poverty, though they retain the right to defend their rights. If poverty has been imposed on them through the oppression of tyrants, the oppressor is condemned all the same.
🔅🌼Forgetting that life is a trial is the cause of every complaint🌼🔅
🌹Anyone who complains about having to compete while still in the contest is surely slow-witted, dim, foolish, forgetful, lacking in memory, and out of their mind.
🌹How many disciplines of servitude are you studying? The graduates of every discipline of servitude are Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him and his family)!
🌹Whatever you seek, whatever discipline, rank, or position you choose, you must pass the corresponding test.
🌻🔆Al-‘Ankabut 29:2 أَ حَسِبَ النَّاسُ أَنْ يُتْرَكُوا أَنْ يَقُولُوا آمَنَّا وَ هُمْ لا يُفْتَنُونَ
🌻🔆Do people think they will be left alone to say, “We believe,” and not be put to the test?
🔅🌼Tests That Wear a Pleasant Face🌼🔅
🌻🔆Al ‘Imran 3:14 زُيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ حُبُّ الشَّهَواتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ وَ الْبَنينَ وَ الْقَناطيرِ الْمُقَنْطَرَةِ مِنَ الذَّهَبِ وَ الْفِضَّةِ وَ الْخَيْلِ الْمُسَوَّمَةِ وَ الْأَنْعامِ وَ الْحَرْثِ ذلِكَ مَتاعُ الْحَياةِ الدُّنْيا وَ اللَّهُ عِنْدَهُ حُسْنُ الْمَآبِ
🌻🔆The love of worldly desires—women, children, heaps of gold and silver, fine horses, livestock, and cultivated land—has been made alluring to people. These are the enjoyments of the life of this world, while with God is the fairest return.
🌹Let us not take lightly tests that seem pleasant, delicious and enticing. Whoever fails them loses true and lasting joy and pleasure.
🌹Those who, amid pain and pleasure, sing only of God and call upon Him have attained the aims of the test.
🌹Whatever whets the appetite is a sign of trial and testing.
🌹We find ourselves amid permanent and mobile testing grounds, tested between truth and, in the thick of illusion.
🌹The real test takes place within our hearts. Let us not neglect the tests of thought and heart, the manifest and the hidden.
🌹Without a doubt, every moment in this world is a test: from sleep to waking, from birth to death, in sorrow and joy, poverty and wealth, and so on.
🌼Ali Sa‘i (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141 (903)🌼
[1] Misbah al-Shari‘a, p. 73 Attributed to Ja‘far ibn Muhammad (peace be upon him), the sixth Imam. A‘lami, Beirut, first edition, 1400 AH.
