Life is holding a person firmly by the hand and leading him on. Man is doomed to follow it like a small…

Life is holding a person firmly by the hand and leading him on. Man is doomed to follow it like a small child. But if we depict the situation a little more tragically, the picture looks like this – life has put a chain around man's neck and is dragging him.

Or perhaps we could draw a cheerful picture – man runs ahead of life, playing and skipping. Let us go higher still – man himself leads life by the hand. Is life not a piece torn off from a portion of time and given to man? Has everyone's life, then, been cut piece by piece out of vast time? Or is it water measured out from the river of time? Does everyone drink it? Everyone has a vessel in hand – the water of time has been poured into the vessel, and we drink and drink until we finish it.

What makes this water dirty? Enmity? Envy? Ignorance? Vileness? Everything of that sort makes it dirty. Then we are drinking muddy water! Within the human body lives the soul. If a small hole opens somewhere in the body, the soul may escape through it. Just as air trapped in a bubble quickly escapes through a small hole, the soul too escapes through a small hole in the body.

If that place is not quickly treated and patched, the soul suffers around that hole. For the soul's departure from the body, they say, is very painful.

When we enter into communication with someone, we actually communicate with their soul. If we cannot forget someone, it is their soul we cannot forget. If the body goes far away, the soul has gone in its cage, while your soul in its cage, unable to reach the one it loves, flutters and beats itself against the bars of the cage like a bird.

Imagine what will become of our soul if we make it drink the water called life, polluted with enmity and envy, greed and lust. Our heaviness and sluggishness, our weakness and dejection come from the sickness of our soul.

We brought it to this state by giving it poison to drink. To cleanse it, let us drink the medicine of dhikr. Let us drink the medicine of dhikr without ceasing.

If a person does not protect his soul with his intellect and righteous deeds, Satan puts it in chains and the ego takes possession of it. The soul, chained by the ego on one side and Satan on the other, moans in a wretched state. Unaware of what it is doing, the body does whatever it does. Says whatever it says.

If we do not have mercy on one another, our hope for the mercy of Allah is in vain. If we do not forgive one another, it is useless to think, “God will forgive me.”

If we do not help one another, waiting for help from God will bring no result.

Whoever says he loves God but does not love what He has created remains deprived of love.

Whoever does not take God's friends as friends will not find God's friendship.

Whoever wants mercy must show mercy, whoever wants pardon must pardon, whoever wants help must give help, whoever wants love must love, and whoever dreams of friendship must be able to be a friend.

Then the water of life will be clean, and when we drink it, we will not be poisoned. And Allah knows best.

Akrom MALIK