If your soul directs you to seek sincerity then first turn your
attention towards your yearning and slaughter it with the knife of
renunciation. Then turn your attention towards praise and commendation
and forsake it with the asceticism of those who loved the world for the
sake of the Hereafter. When your slaughtering of your yearning and the
renunciation of praise and commendation becomes firm then attaining sincerity will become easy for you.
If it is asked: what may facilitate the act of slaughtering ones yearning and renouncing the love of praise and commendation?
I would reply: as for slaughtering your yearning then this is made easy
by you having certain knowledge that there is nothing that one would
desire except that its treasures are in the Hand of Allaah alone and
none has power over it save Him. There is no one who may bestow these
things to a servant except for Allaah.
As for renouncing the love of praise and commendation then this is made
easy by your knowing that there is no one who can praise you such that
it would benefit you, or censure and vilify you such that it would harm
you save Allaah alone. This is what occurs in the hadeeth in which the
Arab said to the Prophet (sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam), "my being
praised is adornment and my being vilified is disgrace," to which the
Prophet (sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam) said, "that is (for) Allaah."
[Reported by at-Tirmidhee [no. 3266] with a saheeh isnaad from Baraa`a bin Aazib (RA).]
So renounce the praise of one whose praise cannot beautify you and the
vilification of one whose censure cannot disgrace you! Instead desire
the praise of the One whose commendation contains perfect beauty and
the One whose censure contains total disgrace. This cannot be attained
except after patience and certainty for when there is no patience and
certainty then you are like one who wished to traverse an ocean without
a vessel to carry him!
Allaah said,
uttaqun: