A Treasury of Rumi's Wisdom. Muhammad Isa Waley

I do?’

       (San¥’Ï, ¤adÏqat al-^aqÏqa, p. 500, bayt 2)

      ‘Don’t sell yourself short; your value is immense.’ God Most High says: ‘I have purchased you, your every breath, your property, your lifespan. If they are spent on Me and given to Me, their value is eternity in Paradise. That is what you are worth to Me.’ If you sell yourself to Hell, you will have wronged yourself, like the man who stuck a dagger worth a hundred [gold] dinars in the wall and then hung a pot or gourd from it.

      (FMF no. 4, 15; DOR 27–28; SOTU 17)

      To possess nobility, in any sense of the word, is a privilege granted by Providence – a Divine gift – which imposes obligations on the recipient. Since the Author of the Qur’an tells us (17: 70), ‘We have ennobled the Children of Adam’, all humanity owes allegiance to the One from whom all gifts have come. Such is His generosity that He has undertaken to reward with eternal felicity those who sell Him their selves and their property – even though all of us and all our property already belong to Him – telling us, in effect, ‘That is what you are worth to Me.’ To refuse such an indescribably generous offer is ingratitude that brings terrible loss; but as R‰mÏ’s great predecessor San¥’Ï expresses it, ‘If you don’t know your own worth, what am I to do?’