Reminder: Do not be angered if you are called ignorant

Do not be angered if you are called ignorant; for does a person truly resent a title that he deserves? Indeed, the acknowledgement of ignorance may well be the first gate to knowledge and the most truthful path to wisdom. Do you not see that you are ignorant of the Creator, ignorant of creation, and even ignorant of your own self which dwells within you? Do you not ignore the origin of your will, the source of your passing thoughts, and the hidden spring from which the impulses and inclinations of your soul arise?
You are ignorant of your own emotions and feelings, and you know little of the mystery of love and hatred. You love without knowing why you love, and you hate without understanding how that aversion first took root within your heart. At times you behold a face and your heart inclines towards it without proof or reason; and at other times you encounter a person whose very presence weighs heavily upon you, though for no apparent cause, save that in the depths of your soul lies a hidden secret whose keys have not been given to you.
You imagine that you know the road, yet the road itself is but a labyrinth of conjectures and suppositions. You walk along it with confident steps, but when you turn back and look behind you, you discover that you have been walking through a thick mist, guided more by your illusions than by your certainties. How many things have you taken to be undeniable truths, only for the passing days to reveal that they were nothing more than forms of illusion.
Most remarkable of all is that this ignorance often escapes your notice until doubt suddenly overtakes you, awakening within your mind questions that had never before occurred to you. Then you pause in perplexity, contemplating yourself as though you were seeing it for the first time, and you ask: Who am I? How did I come to be? Why do I love this and despise that? What is the secret of this soul that shifts between contentment and anger, between tranquillity and unease?
Suppose, then, that you are ignorant, there is no disgrace in ignorance when it becomes the path to the pursuit of knowledge, nor is there humiliation in acknowledging one’s deficiency when it is the key to perfection. The true disgrace lies only in being ignorant while claiming to know, in living within the darkness of one’s own self while pretending to see the way.
So do not be angered if it is said to you that you are ignorant. Rather, smile at the remark with the calm awareness of one who knows the truth of himself, and say quietly and with confidence: Yes, I am ignorant… yet I seek knowledge and strive towards it as best I can, in the hope that one day I may attain a portion of its light.

(by: Dr Mohammed Akram Nadwi, Oxford, 18 Ramadan 1447)