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All spiritual journeys for fallen humanity must begin with contrition (iniibah) and repentance (tawbah). Tawbah is Arabic meaning literally "turning around." We must change the direction of our souls, turn around and face the Divine Reality with our backs to the world. But those who wish to progress upon the path must make this turn- about permanent. Turning one's back to this world means overcoming the vice of the soul's attachment to the multiplicity that surrounds it externally, and therefore the practice of the virtues of detachment, mindfulness, piety, chasteness, and scrupulousness in matters of religion. It means asceticism in the inward and spiritual sense...
But in order to advance to higher stations it is necessary to possess the ascetic virtues. It was from the ground of asceticism and fear of God prepared by the early Mesopotamian Sufis that the trees of Sufi love and gnosis grew in later centuries. Likewise, in the case of individuals it is necessary to gain the virtues associated with the station of zuhd and wara' in order to be able to drink the wine of Divine Love and to bathe in the light of illuminative knowledge.
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Seyyed Hossein Nasr (The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition)