A sign of the death of the heart: lack of sadness about beneficial actions you have missed, and lack of regret about your mistakes.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the importance of feeling emotions related to one's actions, indicating that a lack of sadness or regret can signify a disconnection from one's heart and values.
Ibn Ata Allah emphasizes that a true sign of a healthy heart is the ability to feel sadness over missed opportunities for doing good and to experience regret for past mistakes. This emotional engagement is essential for personal growth and moral consciousness; when one becomes apathetic toward actions and their consequences, it indicates a deeper spiritual decline.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
Whosoever is determined to seek guidance and follow a path of right conduct must search for a shaykh from amongst those who have realization, one who follows a path methodically, who has abandoned his passions, and who has firmly established his feet in the service of his Lord.
Actions are but lifeless forms whose soul is the secret of sincerity in them
Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: "Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me."
God Most High has said, "Is the reward of virtue aught save virtue?" . . . Know, O man, that the covenant of servanthood is incumbent upon you, and that the covenant of Lordship is incumbent upon His magnanimity, as He Most High has said, ". . . and fulfill your covenant, I shall fulfill My covenant."
. . . persist in that invocation until the unity of the world is subsumed for you in a single sphere, so that with the eye of your heart you will see naught in the two worlds save the One.
The most excellent of those who perform good deeds are those who most often remember God in all situations.
Take heed of the Vinegar of sweet Wine, and the Anger of Good-nature.
There is nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck.
Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
I learned a long time ago that advice is a quick trip to nowhere. It's the commitment that only you can make in yourself, the responsibility to assume control of yourself.
By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?
The severest test of work today, is not of our strategies, but of our imaginations and identities.
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