The patient, that is, with their hearts, the truthful with their spirits, the devoted with their souls, the expenders of what they are able, those who ask forgiveness with their tongues. The chevaliers are those whose speaking is this and whose doing is this. In the heart, they are patient with the Real’s command, in the spirit, they walk straight in the Real’s covenant, in the body, they observe the rightful due of the Real’s command, with the wealth they spend in the Real’s road, with tongue they ask forgiveness and seek from the Real’s generosity.
3:17 The patient, the truthful, the devoted, the expenders, those who ask forgiveness at dawn.
The patient: That is, they are patients in the trial and they reject complaints until they reach the Patron, nothing of this world or the afterworld holding them back. They are patient in every trial and put aside complaints. They turn their faces away from both this world and the afterworld until they reach the Patron.
The truthful: That is, they speak the truth in seeking, so they aim straight, then they speak the truth until they witness. They speak truthfully and begin traveling. They travel truthfully to reach the domicile. They think truthfully to reach their destination. Then they put aside the marks bearing witness to truthfulness and throw themselves into the ocean to reach the shore of security and the seat of truthfulness, at an Omnipotent King [54:55].
The devoted: That is, in clinging to the door, drinking down sorrow, leaving aside loved ones, and rejecting companions until they realize proximity. They put on the clothing of poverty and hold up the hands of need at the door of the house of generosity: “Until You open, we will not leave, and until You caress, we will not go away.”
Sometimes they are in prostration, sometimes standing, sometimes in fear, sometimes in hope. From the Exalted Presence comes this caress: “The field of friendship’s road is solitariness, and the drinker of its wine is promised vision. Whoever is truthful will one day reach his desire.”
The expenders: That is, they are munificent with their property to the extent they are able, then with their souls in respect of deeds, then with their hearts through the truthfulness of states. Sometimes they expend possessions, sometimes states, sometimes the body, sometimes the spirit: possessions in the path of the Friend, states in the work of the Friend, the body in search of the Friend, the spirit in seeing the Friend.
Those who ask forgiveness at dawn. That is, they ask forgiveness for all of that when they reach sobriety at the manifestation of the glow from the heart’s dawn, not from the dawn that appears in the regions. As long as they are traveling, this is their quality and attribute, their description and conduct.
Then when attraction arrives and the morning of oneness dawns from the horizon of Self-disclosure, they ask forgiveness for the marks bearing witness to their fear and hope, their truthfulness and patience.
This is why Muṣṭafā said, “My heart becomes clouded and I ask forgiveness from God seventy times a day.” He passes beyond recognition and reaches the Recognized, he goes beyond friendship and sees the Friend. The way station of the friends is friendship, and the Friend is their homeland. Take your ease in the Recognized, not in the recognition!
This is why the Exalted Lord said, “Surely the final end is unto thy Lord” [53:42].
Alluding to all of these meanings Shaykh al-Islām Anṣārī said, “Where do I find a sign of new arrival in Your beginningless eternity? When the flood reaches the ocean, what then is known of the flood? All beings are nonbeing in the Self-Standing First.
“O resurrection of the marks bearing witness and destruction of the traces! The recognizer is alive through his own nonbeing. O Splendorous and Self-Standing, the world is full of day, and the blind man is deprived. You became manifest, I became talk, and no talks remained. You appeared, I became the eye, and no eye remained.”
