Subtleties and Allusions

1) Absolute Submission and Delegation

The station of submission is higher than the stations of trust and contentment. Trust is among the moral virtues, but it is one of the stages along the path of the seeker’s perfection. At this stage, a person who has desires and knows that even if they have all the known means and resources, due to ignorance of many matters, they will not achieve all their desires, and if they do achieve them, they are unable to preserve them, appoints God the Glorious, who is pure knowledge and absolute power, as their agent. Similarly, at the higher stage, which is the station of contentment, it is about the person liking and being content with God’s pleasure.

Being content is secondary to seeing oneself and seeing one’s nature, desire, and discernment, because after a person determines something to be pleasing to themselves, they say to God: “My pleasure and desire is the same as what You are pleased with and desire.”

In the station of submission, due to the feeling of humility that the seeker has in the presence of God the Glorious, they never see themselves: “What am I, O Lord, and what is my significance?”(88) So they have no desire, nor do they say: “I like what the Beloved likes.” The station of submission is the station of absolute delegation (tafwīḍ), which is higher than the station of contentment and is in harmony with perfect monotheism, because the overwhelming unity of God leaves no room for any multiplicity.

2) The Servant’s Repentance Between Two Divine Repentances

In every repentance, first the grace of God encompasses the sinful or deficient servant, alerting them and making them aware of the ugliness of their actions or their inherent deficiency. Then, as a result of this awakening and awareness, the servant turns back to God the Glorious and repents for their shortcomings or inherent deficiency and lassitude. Subsequently, this repentant servant becomes the subject of renewed divine favor, and God accepts their repentance. Thus, every human repentance is encompassed by two repentances from God the Glorious.

On this basis, the reality of repentance, which means return and recourse, has three sequential stages:

a) A repentance from God towards the servant, which causes their alertness and attention and is the source of awakening, for the state of turning and attention is a blessing, and the owner and giver of every blessing is God the Glorious: “And whatever blessing you have, it is from God”(89).

b) A repentance from the servant towards God, which is manifested in their expression of regret and remorse for sin or inherent deficiency.

c) A repentance from God the Glorious towards the servant, in which He admits them to His presence and accepts their repentance regarding shortcomings or deficiency.

It should be noted that the acceptance of repentance by God the Glorious is accompanied by forgiveness and leniency, for He says: “He is the One who accepts repentance from His servants”(90). The word “from” (ʿan) here indicates overlooking and forgiveness, because there is a literary difference between “God accepts from the God-fearing”(91) and “He accepts repentance from His servants”; meaning that if the repentant does not meet all the conditions and their repentance lacks some necessary elements, God overlooks it.

Another point is that, based on God’s continuous bestowal of grace, humans are always subject to divine favors. However, if someone does not benefit from this continuous grace and deliberately abandons it, losing the opportunity for repentance, the doors of divine mercy will not be opened for them: “Indeed, for those who deny Our signs and are arrogant toward them, the gates of heaven will not be opened”(92). Of course, this refers to the gates of the heaven of knowledge, spirituality, and divine unseen realm; not the gates of the material heaven and the visible world, which disbelievers can access through manned or unmanned spacecraft.