2 Corinthians 5:9 Meaning Therefore Also We Make It Our Aim

Himma: One aim held above the rest Himma is a want so concentrated that the smaller wants fall in line behind it. Carrying a dozen aims at once splits a person, and every new situation reopens the question of what matters most. With one aim on top, the setting can change completely and the person still knows what they are for.

Ikhlāṣ: Sincerity Ikhlāṣ means doing the thing for God alone. Second motives slip in quietly: wanting the work seen, wanting credit, wanting to be thought well of. When one person's approval is the whole point, praise from anyone else stops counting as payment, and the work comes out the same in a crowd or alone.

If I worship you for fear of hell, burn me in it: love that asks for no wages Rabia prayed this, and it separates serving someone from serving what they can hand you. Fear of punishment and hope of reward will carry a person a long way, and both keep the person themselves at the center. Wanting to please someone for their own sake changes the whole effort, because nothing is being collected at the end.

Worship God as though you see him, for if you do not see him, he sees you: no room is unwatched A saying of the Prophet, and the Sufis take it as the measure of any act. Behavior usually shifts with the room, tightening under a boss's eye and loosening once the door shuts. Held steadily, this erases the difference between rooms, since the attention a person is answering to never goes away.

God is pleased with them and they are pleased with him: the pleasure runs both ways The Quran repeats this pairing, and the Sufis read it as one state seen from two sides. Chasing approval usually comes with a knot of worry, an endless checking of whether you have measured up. When the wish to please is met by being pleased in return, the strain drains out of the effort, and a person can work without that anxious tally running underneath.