There is a state called the melted heart and if you’ve ever seen Bawa’s picture of the rock heart you can have a pretty good idea of what the melted heart is. People who have become accustomed to the world, and who have found the world to be their playground, and have found it suitable to go after the supposed treasures of the world; become hardened. They become hardened in that they aggressively pursue their goals with arrogance because in order to obtain many things in the world it takes aggression to get them, or at least that’s what people believe.
I used to think that also, and I remember when I was a young lawyer I said to Bawa, “Is it possible to do this without being aggressive? Is it possible to practice law and still maintain the qualities that you’re supposed to maintain?”
And it was interesting because the response was, “Of course it’s possible. Just maintain justice, maintain your allegiance to the truth and don’t steer away from it, and then you can do anything in the world. You can do the most difficult things in the world as long as you maintain justice. What happens to the people who go after things no matter what, is they lose their sense of justice, and the desire and the need becomes more important than the way it’s accomplished.”
We are supposed to work in the world, and we’re supposed to be successful in the world, and we’re supposed to do the things that other people do in the world. We’re supposed to have businesses, we’re supposed to work, but we’re supposed to do things in an acceptable manner. We have to do things halal; we have to do things in a way that’s appropriate. And it’s not hard to do things appropriately, it’s just that many people feel that they won’t get what they’re supposed to get if they do things appropriately. What I have found is not only do you get what you’re supposed to get; you get abundance because you’ve done things appropriately…
