Subsistence Upon Subsistence

I said, "My rule is that whenever I like someone, from the beginning I show him only severity so that I may belong to him completely - skin and flesh, severity and gentleness."
This is because the characteristic of gentleness is that, if you show it to a five-year-old child, he then belongs to you. But a man is something else: When he sees how patient the leader is being with him and what affliction is reaching him, and that behind that affliction good fortune is showing its face, and (when he sees) where he is taking him, and that he is making him the possessor of the secret - he becomes bold and does not fear that he may perish, for he will not perish. Rather - subsistence upon subsistence, or rather upon a thousand subsistences.

Shams


"Me and Rumi" William C. Chittick - My Travels