and need, my life acts as a mirror to the power, strength, wealth, and mercy of the Creator of life. Yes, just as the pleasure of food is known in proportion to the degree of hunger, and the degrees of light through the degrees of darkness, and the degrees of heat through the degrees of cold; in the same way, through the boundless impotence and poverty in my life, I understood the infinite power and mercy of my Creator, who answers my needs and wards off my innumerable enemies. I understood my duties of entreaty, supplication, worship, abasement, and seeking refuge with God, and I undertook these duties.

The Second Way is acting as a mirror to the universal and comprehensive attributes and acts of my Creator through the meanings in my own life like partial knowledge, will, hearing and sight. Yes, I understood through the many meanings in my own life and my conscious acts like knowing, hearing, seeing, speaking, and wanting —like my size relative to the universe but in far greater degree— my Creator’s all-encompassing attributes such as knowledge, will, hearing, sight, power, and life, and His qualities such as love, anger and compassion. Believing, I assented to them, and admitting this, I found another way leading to knowledge of God.

The Third Way is acting as a mirror to the Divine Names, inscriptions and manifestations of which are present in my life. Yes, as I beheld my own life and body, I saw hundreds of sorts of miraculous works, inscriptions, and arts, and observed moreover that I was being most compassionately nurtured. I understood therefore through the light of belief, how extraordinarily generous, merciful, skilful and gracious was the One Who created me and gave me life; how wondrously powerful and, if one may say so, ingenious, provident, and efficient. I understood too what the innate duties and aims of creation and results of life consisted of, such as glorification, sanctification, praise, thanks, exaltation, affirming God’s unity, and declaring His greatness and His praises. And I understood with ‘the knowledge of certainty’ the reason life is the most valuable creature in the universe and why everything is subjugated to it, and the wisdom in everyone having an innate passion for life; I understood that belief is the very life of life.

F o u r t h M a t t e r : In order to learn what the true pleasure and happiness of life consist of in this world, I again