XIII -
The Enemies of Aspiration

Question: What is the reason for our falling into the pit of apathy?
The Answer: Life consists of activity and motion, and eagerness and enthusiasm are the mount which you ride through your life. When your aspiration is seated on this mount and emerges into life's arena of combat, the first determined enemy it encounters is despair. Despair will attempt to break its morale, so wield the sword of.
Do not despair¹
against that enemy. Then the tyrannical force of personal ambition will attack, seeking to usurp the place of disinterested service to God. It will strike a blow at the head of aspiration, and throw it down from its mount. Send the truth of:
Be for God²
against this enemy. Then haste will emerge, urging you to leap over the succession of intertwined causes, and cause the foot of your aspiration to slip. Make of,Be patient, vie with each other in patience, and strengthen each other³ a shield against this enemy. Next you will be confronted by individualism and self-centredness, something which defeats the wishes of man, for he is by nature a social being and bound both to observe the rights of his fellow-beings and to seek the fulfilment of his own rights among them. Send out to combat against it that champion of high aspiration.
The best of men is the one most useful to his fellows.⁴
Then adherence to mere routine, taking advantage of the laziness of others, will attack and seek to paralyze aspiration. Make the impregnable fortress of,Upon God, and none other, let them place their trust, whoever so wilts⁵ a shelter for your aspiration. Next comes the treacherous foe of abandoning tasks to others, a habit arising from weakness and lack of selfconfidence; taking your aspiration by the hand, it will invite it to sit and be rested. Send out the luminous truth of,The one who has gone stray cannot harm you once you are guided aright ⁶against this enemy, so that its hand will be unable to reach the skirt of your aspiration. Then comes the irreligious enemy that would interfere with the performance of God's work; he will seek to strike aspiration in the face, and to pluck out is eye. Send against it the long-labouring and conscientious truth of,
Be steadfast, as you have been commanded.⁷ * And conspire not against your master,⁸
so that he is brought up short. Next comes the mother of all trouble, the source of all evil, which is the desire for ease and tranquillity. It tries to bind aspiration and cast it into the dungeon of lowliness. Send against that bewitching but heartless enemy, the champion of lofty fame that is,Man possesses nothing naught save that which he strives.⁹
For it is in toil that true tranquillity is to be found, for the ease of man, an unquiet being by nature, is to be found only in striving and struggle.
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1. Qur'an, 39:53
2. Pan of a Hadith.
3. Qur'an. 3:200.
4. A Hadith.
5. Qur'an, 14:12.
6. Qur'an, 5:105.
7. Qur'an. 11:112.
8. A Hadith.
9. Qur'an, 53:39.