Seeking Help from God the Most High

Tender, compassionate Lord, I ask for your help in this work. Whatever I say, to credit it to me is wrong; 'You did not throw when you threw' bears witness here. All that exists comes from you; nothing is ours. Our reason has no power to tell things apart. If we speak well, it reaches us from you; if we err, the error is ours to own. Forgive the mistakes in what we say; erase the unworthy lines from our record. Grant the seekers the light of the soul, so they will not grow suspicious of my words. Now the moment for speech has come; the eloquent parrot has begun to rain down sugar. It is behind a veil, and is itself the veil; from behind the mirror it nourishes the soul. Yet it still speaks in riddles, keeping a lid on the ancient secret, so the unworthy will not find the Beloved's secret. For now, listen to what it says. Perfect reason is the very essence of perfect love; the lover, in truth, is the truly wise one. Reason and love, in truth, are not two; only the perceptive grasp these words. Reason guides love, and love guides reason, yet each has its own station. They both point the way to the Beloved; they are guides to the seeker on a single road. In the highest station they are one, yet they are two for the sake of the seeker's task. This partnership does not arise from any real duality; even their quarrel is a staged quarrel, like goldsmiths' bargaining. Since on this road there is great danger, there is both the hope of the crown and the fear of losing one's head. Self-admiring reason is the path of its fear; reckless love is the path of its surrender. Reason keeps warning of the road's terrors; love keeps seeking surrender and acceptance. Your reason makes you aware of love's nature; it shows you the customs and the way to love's quarter. It speaks its own secret, not another's, yet it does so with thoughts of evil and good. Since the station of love has no calculating thought, weighing good and evil is not its trade. Reason makes you aware of this kind of thinking; that is why it beats the drum of duality. Since love has no goal but the Beloved, it has no concern with right or wrong. It is rebellious, lovesick, and mad, a stranger to all reckoning thoughts. It is a burning, blazing fire that consumes everything it sees except the Beloved. Reason tells you of its own terrors and warns you in order to guide you right. At love's beginning, reason is the guide; it warns you of its own rebellious nature, so that perhaps your heart will bleed at this defiance, and if you are no true man, you will leave its door. Love, at first, is rebellious and bloodthirsty, so that everyone who is an outsider will flee. Once your footing grows strong through the Friend's grace, you set foot on the path of union with the Friend. Right there, with his help, you cast the harvest of your own existence to the wind for him. You grew drunk on the wine of his grace and annihilated your own being in union with him. In the end your reason becomes love made young; at the moment of union, separation vanishes. Here reason joins hands with love, and this duality fades away.