Remember your contemporaries who have passed away and were your age. Remember the honors and fame they earned, the high posts they held, and the beautiful bodies they possessed. Today all of them are turned to dust. They have left orphans and widows behind them, their wealth is being wasted, and their houses turned into ruins.
No sign of them is left today, and they lie in dark holes underneath the earth.
Picture their faces before your mind's eye and ponder.
O you who complain to people about your misfortunes, what good will it do you to complain to creatures? They can bring you neither benefit nor harm. If you rely on them and associate partners with the Lord of the Truth, they will make you distant from Him, cause you to fall into His displeasure.
I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: By his good character a believer will attain the degree of one who prays during the night and fasts during the day.
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.
To completely trust in Allah is to be like a child who knows deeply that even if he does not call for the mother, the mother is totally aware of his condition and is looking after him.