Here's How to Train your Soul

Know also that what prevents you from honoring the intermediary (wāsiṭa) are your lower selves, which incline toward leadership and prestige, or imagine themselves to have knowledge, gnosis and proximity to God. Your halting with those imaginations, without referring back to their root and witnessing God’s gratuitous kindness upon you, is what prevents you from honoring the intermediary. Be aware, then, that whenever something weighs heavily on your soul, it points directly to a deficiency within you.

Drive your lower selves toward the Lām, and all other things will come to you; knowledge of the soul is the root of knowledge. ‘Whoever knows their soul, knows their Lord.’ If you want training (tarbiya), then first go against yourself (khālif nafsaka), then strive against it until it becomes at peace, then accompany it to the Presence of God. The people of God have established foundational principles that will help you find the treasure that is buried within you. They established the wearing of the patched cloak, of begging in the markets, and of hanging the rosary around the neck, so that you have no interest in what anyone thinks of you, but only what God thinks of you.

Practicing these foundational principles frees you from the shackles of your lower self so that you gain non-qualification and non-delimitation (iṭlāq). If someone is unable to wear the patched cloak or place a rosary around his neck, how can he wander in the wilderness, or walk barefoot in the markets calling out to his Lord? How can he sleep among graves, and so experience the slumber of the grave before he dies? So prepare for that night which has no light, and no one to give you comfort, and adorn your days with beautiful and righteous deeds so that it manifests itself to you in the form of a human being of pleasant appearance in the grave, to give you comfort and make you forget what you left behind in the here below.

— Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari (qs)

Taratil al-Ha'iyya