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"I" leads you to "I" and not beyond "I"
Q: What do you think about asceticism? Don't you recommend us to practice it?
A: Asceticism is hardship; there are no hardship and suffering where love is. Hardship is what you get with hardship; it will not lead you to God. Sadness will bring you sadness and trouble and not happiness and divine bliss. The continuation of bliss is bliss.
Closeness to the Lord brings joy and comfort and not suffering and discomfort. Asceticism is self-inflicted pain and since the Lord is not separated from one's self, therefore, tormenting oneself is tormenting God...
It is absurd to believe the Lord enjoys tormenting His creature. The Lord of creation is in love with His creation; He, therefore, is seriously unhappy with his creature's suffering. Those who have such beliefs, knowingly or not, accuse the Most High Creator of masochism.
Those who slander the Lord Most High are not blind, for a blind cannot see; but they are pessimist fabulists who see only their own delusive hallucinations and live upon them...
One cannot reach the Lord through asceticism. Those tears that get one closer to the Lord are not shed out of weakness and depression but they streams out of a loving enthusiasm. When hardship is combined with ones love for the Lord, it is not hardship anymore; it becomes joy and comfort; for love is an elixir and an alchemist that transforms sorrow to rapture, suffering to healing and asceticism to purity.
There is no hardship and unpleasantness along the divine path. Asceticism is a delusion in divine guidance. When you love someone and cherish him, if you endure the hardest miseries and the strongest pressures, it feels like a pleasure and not a pain. Love begets enjoyment and not pain and hardship...
When "I" am, pressure and hardship are present. This "I" desires something and that "I" desires something else. There will be a quarrel between these two and one will win over the other. One will enjoy while the other will suffer. However, in the realm of love and in the world of the Beloved, there will be not a single or any other "I" to suffer or to enjoy.
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