The Wisdom of Ali: A Journey from the Secret to Eternity

Counsels attributed to Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib set the path of this meditation, which begins from the thought that in an age of noise wisdom arrives as a whisper. The narrator starts by learning what it means to keep a secret between himself and his Lord, finding that dreams told to everyone lose some of their light while those left with God grow in silence like a seed beneath the earth. Later chapters take patience and prayer as the soul's wings, with patience teaching the heart to pass through the storm and prostration letting the weight of the world fall, then treat provision and death as mysteries held by God alone: provision already knows its owner's address, and death is an appointment that comes neither early nor late. He learns to forget his own kindness and the wrongs done to him, since resentment is a prison a person builds for himself, and after wandering through many cities finds that the greatest distance is the distance between the heart and its Creator. The epilogue gathers these counsels as a life to be lived and ends with the thought that eternity begins on the day certainty is born in the heart.