Reminder: My darkness came from my purity

I am deeply enamoured of myself, profoundly deluded by her; I behold her in my eyes raised above her true measure, and I clothe her with attributes of purity that are not hers. I persuade myself that I have attained a degree of sanctity beyond the reach of others. I claim that my conscience is unsullied, that my heart is sound, that my mind is guided to the straight path; yet when I look with honesty, I find that none of this is true.
I used to speak of purity with the assurance of one entirely at ease, and to walk among people as though I had been spared the necessity of self-reckoning, as though the faults of mankind had been folded away from me, and a measure of infallibility granted to me alone. I did not perceive that this very ease was the root of the malady, nor that such contentment with oneself is the first gate of darkness.
But when I withdrew into a solitude untainted by ostentation and undisturbed by the murmur of praise, there was revealed to me a truth from which I was almost inclined to flee. I saw in my heart a hardness disguised as purity; in my intellect, an arrogance attired as the pursuit of truth; and in my spirit, a subtle longing to be commended, even at the expense of sincerity. Then I understood that my darkness had not sprung from an open sin, but from a purity I had presumed to claim, and that the shadow cast upon my inner sight had been born of this imagined clarity.
My purity was but a delicate form of self-admiration, and my supposed clarity a veil that stood between me and the sight of my own defects. I fled from the sins of others only to fall into a subtler and graver fault: to deem myself better than they, and to absolve myself of what I condemned in them. Thus my purity became the cause of my darkness, and my self-conceit the origin of my deviation.
I learned, at last, that the beginning of purity lies in the honest accusation of the self, and the beginning of light in the acknowledgement of darkness. A heart that rests secure in its own cleanness is already corrupted, while a heart that fears for itself may yet be safe. Would that I had not been self-admiring; would that I had not been deceived by myself. For when the soul admires itself, it is blinded; and when it is deluded, it is undone. None is delivered from it save he who knows its true measure, breaks its pride, and binds it to the path of humility and trembling vigilance.

(by: Dr Mohammed Akram Nadwi, Oxford, 11 Ramadan 1447)