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The saint’s protection is Truth’s sword: your time with him is worth as much as the cup of life itself.

All the wise have said the same: the one who knows God is God’s mercy to His creatures . . .

Companionship with the holy makes you one of them. Though you’re rock or marble, you’ll become a jewel when you reach the man of heart.

Plant the love of the holy ones within your spirit; don’t give your heart to anything, but the love of those whose hearts are glad.

Don’t go to the neighborhood of despair: there is hope. Don’t go in the direction of darkness: suns exist.

[Mathnawi I, 714-717, 721-724 from The Pocket Rumi, tr. by Kabir and Camille Helminski]

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Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure by Camille Helminski

It is interesting that Camille Helminski begins her book about women in Sufism with the Hidden Treasure Hadith. My intuition has always been that the Hidden Treasure symbolically points to the Divine Feminine, comparable with the Symbolism of the Holy Grail in the Western Esoteric Tradition.

“The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all.”

~ Ibn Arabi

Rumi says something similar in his Masnavi:

“She (woman) is a ray of God, she is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, you might say she is not created.”

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“As the mystical side of Islam developed, it was a woman, Rabi‘a al-Adawiyya (717-801 c .e .), who first clearly expressed the relationship with the Divine in the language we have come to recognize as particularly Sufic, by referring to God as the Beloved. Rab‘i’a was the first human being to speak of the realities of Sufism with a clear language that anyone could understand. Though she experienced many difficulties in her early years, Rabi'a’s starting point was neither fear of hell, nor desire for paradise, but only love. Her method was love for God because “God is God; for this I love God . . . not because of any gifts, but for Itself.” Her aim was to melt her being in God. According to her, one could find God by turning within oneself. As Muhammad said, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” It is love that carries and sustains us through this process. The door of Sufism will finally open only with Love, because—though knowledge may be important and can assist in our discrimination along the way and may help us to reach the threshold—it is ultimately through Love that we are brought into unity of Being.”

(from the introduction)

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“Quant à la phrase :“Depuis que j’ai réalisé l’unité je ne crains plus la séparation, etc.”, elle signifie : j’ai vu l’unité dans la multiplicité, de sorte que je ne crains plus de voir la multiplicité dans l’unité, comme je le craignais avant que je ne contemplasse mon Seigneur en chaque chose. Sans aucun doute, il n’y a de réalité hors Dieu ; ce n’est que l’imagination (wahm) qui Le voile à nos yeux, et l’imagination est vaine. En ce sens, le vénérable maître, le saint Ibn ‘Atâï-Llâh, dit dans ses Hikam : “Si le voile de l’imagination se déchirait, la vision essentielle aurait lieu, annihilant toute vision individuelle, et la lumière de la certitude voilerait, en se levant, toute existence relative”.”

Al-‘Arabî ad-Darqâwî, Lettres d’un maître soufi, trad. Titus Burckhardt, (1737-1823).

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“As for the phrase: ‘Since I realized unity, I no longer fear separation, etc.,’ it means: I have seen unity within multiplicity, such that I no longer fear seeing multiplicity within unity, as I used to fear before I contemplated my Lord in all things. Without doubt, there is no reality outside God; it is only imagination (wahm) that veils Him from our eyes, and imagination is vain. In this sense, the venerable master, the saint Ibn ‘Atâ’ Allâh, says in his Hikam: ‘If the veil of imagination were torn away, essential vision would take place, annihilating all individual vision, and the light of certainty, as it rises, would veil all relative existence.’”

— Al-‘Arabi ad-Darqawi, Letters of a Sufi Master, trans. Titus Burckhardt

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“There are no „others“. What appears to be „other than God“ is in fact foam upon the Ocean, forms manifesting meanings, the Hidden Treasure displaying itself outwardly, sunlight upon a wall. All multiplicity is the manifestation of Unity. (p. 304)”

― William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi