First Point: It is about breaking off the relationship with ephemeral beloved ones and abandoning them.

FIRST POINT

The first time The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One! is recited, like a surgical operation, it severs and isolates the heart from everything other than Allah. It is as follows:

In respect of the comprehensiveness of his nature, man is connected with almost all beings, and in addition, a boundless capacity to love has been included in his nature. For these reasons man nurtures love towards all beings. As he loves the huge world as though it was a house, so he loves eternal Paradise as though it was a garden. However, the beings he loves do not stop, they depart, and he constantly suffers the pain of separation. That boundless love of his becomes the means of boundless torment.

The fault in suffering such torment is his, for his heart’s boundless capacity to love was given so that he might direct it toward One possessing an infinite undying beauty. By misusing it and spending it on transitory beings, he has done wrong and suffers the punishment for his fault through the pain of separation.

And so, the first time he utters: “The Enduring One! He is the Enduring One!”, it severs his attachment to transitory beings; he leaves those objects of love before they leave him and he is thus cleared of his fault. It declares that love is restricted to the Enduring Beloved, and expresses this meaning: “The only Truly Enduring One is You! Everything other than You is transient. One that is transient certainly cannot be the object of attachment for my heart which was created for everlasting love, for ardour lasting from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Since those innumerable beloveds are transitory and they leave me and depart, before they do so, declaring, The Enduring One, You are the Enduring One!, I shall leave them. Only You are immortal, and I know and believe that beings can only be immortal by Your making them so. In which case, they should be loved with Your love. They are not otherwise worthy of the heart’s attachment.”

When in this state, man’s heart gives up innumerable objects of love; seeing the stamp of transitoriness on their beauty and loveliness, it severs its attachment to them. If it does not sever it, it suffers wounds to the number of its beloveds. The second The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One! is both a salve and an antidote for those wounds. That is, “O Enduring One! Since You are Enduring, that is sufficient, You take the place of everything. Since You exist, everything exists.”

Yes, the beauty, bounty, and perfection in beings, which are the cause of love, are generally signs of the Truly Enduring One’s beauty and bounty and perfections, and passing through many veils, are pale shadows of them; indeed, they are the shadows of the shadows of the manifestations of His Most Beautiful Names.