ReHANA BIBI's Key Ideas from The Forty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak

It was always like this.

When you spoke the truth, they hated you.

The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.

Real filth is on the inside.

The rest simply washes off.

There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul.

You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.

In general one shouldn't be too rigid about anything because to live means to constantly shift colours.

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings.

Don't ever take words at face value.

When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obselete.

That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.

What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours.

All the Prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror!

How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships?

It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad.

Anybody can do that.

The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church.

But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.

Did you know that Shams says the world is a huge cauldron and something big is cooking in it?

We don't know what yet.

Everything we do, feel, or think is an ingredient in that mixture.

Weneed to ask ourselves what are we adding to the cauldron.

Are we adding resentments, animosities, anger, and violence?

Or are we adding love and harmony?

How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves.

If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us.

If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.

It is easy to love God,

But difficult to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects.

There is no wisdom without love.

Unless we learn to love God's creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.

Fret not where the road will take you.

Instead concentrate on the first step.

Thats the hardest part and thats what you are responsible for.

Once you take that step, let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow.

Do not go with the flow.

Be the flow.

What good could come out of a man who cannot settle down?

If a man has no sense of belonging, he can drift in every direction, like a dry leaf in the wind.

The perfect victim for sheitan.

Why worry about the aftermath, an imaginary future, when this very moment is the only time we can truly and fully experience both the presence and the absence of God in our lives?

Motivated by neither the fear of punishment in hell nor the desire to be rewarded in heaven, Sufis love God simply because they love Him, pure and easy, untainted and unnegotiable.

Love is the reason. Love is the goal.

In this world take pity on three kinds of people.

The rich man who has lost his fortune,

The well-respected man who lost his respectability,

And the wise man who is surrounded by ignorants.