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Masnavi III, 4462-67
Your resolutions and purposes now and then are fulfilled
so that through hope your heart might form another intention which He
might once again destroy.
For if He were to keep you completely from success,
you would despair: how would the seed of expectation be sown?
If your heart did not sow that seed,
and then encounter barrenness,
how would it recognize its submission to the Divine will?
By their failures lovers are made aware of their Lord.
Lack of success is the guide to Paradise:
Pay attention to the tradition,
"Paradise is encompassed with pain."1
1Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad.
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
From Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
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