Isaiah 29:16 Meaning You Turn Things Upside Down

Ghurūr: Being fooled about yourself Al-Ghazali used this word for believing you stand somewhere you do not. A person slides into living as though they were self made, not by arguing for it, but by planning as if no one above them has a say. Seeing the slip plainly puts them back at their own size.

Tanzīh: Keeping God beyond comparison Ibn Arabi returns to this constantly, along with the Quran's plain line that nothing resembles Him. The mind quietly pictures God as a larger version of a person, with the same limits and the same blind spots, and then argues with that picture. Dropping the picture takes the argument with it, since a person was measuring their maker by their own scale.

Faqr: Poverty before God The word points to owning nothing of your own, down to the next breath. Anyone who looks closely finds that their body, their gifts and their existence all arrived from outside, and are held in place moment by moment. Dependence stops feeling like an insult once it turns out to be the ordinary condition of everything alive.

Does the one who created not know: nothing made is hidden from its maker The Quran puts this as a plain question. People hide their plans and half believe the hiding works, because it works well enough on each other, and the habit spreads until they hide from God the same way. Knowing that your maker sees the inside as easily as the outside empties the hiding of its point, and the strain of keeping things covered goes with it.

Tadbīr: Running your own affairs Ibn Ata Allah wrote that you can rest from managing what has already been handled for you. Someone gripping every outcome spends the whole day arranging people and events in their head, and the arranging never finishes. Setting part of it down leaves them with the piece that sits in their hands, which is smaller and lighter than they assumed.