While you are alive, your worldly self is like a collector of benefits from Allah's bounties, which come to you from myriads of hands.
Ibn ArabiRead
Each person is oriented toward a quest for his personal invisible guide, or . . . he entrusts himself to the collective, magisterial authority as the intermediary between himself and Revelation.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the individual's search for personal guidance versus relying on external authorities for spiritual insights.
Ibn Arabi emphasizes the internal journey of each person in seeking their own unique guidance, contrasting it with the tendency to depend on established authorities or systems for spiritual understanding. This highlights the importance of personal experience and inner revelation in one's spiritual quest, suggesting that true understanding comes from within rather than solely from external teachings or figures.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth during a workshop, this quote can inspire attendees to trust their inner voice.
While you are alive, your worldly self is like a collector of benefits from Allah's bounties, which come to you from myriads of hands.
I believe in the religion of Love, whatever direction its caravans may take, for Love is my religion and my faith.
Your personal nature seeks its paradise.
There was a time, when I blamed my companion if his religion did not resemble mine. Now, however, my heart accepts every form....Love alone is my religion.
Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you - indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another.
My creed is LOVE; _x000D_ Wherever its caravan turns along the way, _x000D_ That is my belief, _x000D_ My faith.
The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.
To know that you are neither the body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind.
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
When you give up vengeance, make sure you are not giving up on justice. The line between the two is faint, unsteady, and fine...Vengeance is our own pleasure of seeing someone who hurt us getting it back and then some. Justice, on the other hand, is secure when someone pays a fair penalty for wronging another even if the injured person takes no pleasure in the transaction. Vengeance is personal satisfaction. Justice is moral accounting...Human forgiveness does not do away with human justice.
The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.
There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
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