As the verse,

"Whatever good happens to you is from God, but whatever evil befalls you is from yourself

teaches, the nature of the evil-commanding soul demands that it always considers goodness to be from itself and it becomes vain and conceited. Thus, in this Step, a person sees only faults, defects, impotence, and poverty in himself, and understandsthat all his good qualities and perfections are boun­ties bestowed on him by the All-Glorious Creator. He gives thanks instead of being conceited, and offers praise instead of boasting. According to the meaning of the verse,

his purification at this stage is to know his perfec­tion to lie in imperfection, his power in impotence, and his wealth in poverty.

As the verse,

"Everything will perish save His countenance"

teaches, the evil-commanding soul considers itself to be free and independent and to exist of itself. Because of this, man claims to possess a sort of dominicality. He harbours a hostile rebelliousness towards his True Object of Worship. Thus, through understanding the following fact, he is saved from this. The fact is this:

According to the apparent meaning of things, which looks to each thing itself, everything is transi­tory, wanting, accidental, non-existent. But accord­ing to the meaning that signifies something other than itself and in respect of each thing being a mir­ror to the All-Glorious Maker's names and charged with various duties, each is a witness, it is wit­nessed, and it is existent. The purification and cleansing of a person at this stage is as follows:
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