"By Your might, Your majesty, and Your greatness, if I were to worship You from the beginning of my creation, from the dawn of time, for the duration of the eternity of Your Lordship, with every hair [on my body] in every blink of an eye, forever and ever, with the praise and thanks of all creation, I would still be deficient in achieving the performance of the thanks for the hidden right of one of Your blessings upon me. If I were to excavate the iron mines of the world with my teeth, till its land with the edges of my eyelids, and weep out of fear of You like the seas of the heavens and the earths, with blood and pus, that would still be little compared to the abundant right You have over me. If You, my God, were to punish me after that with the punishment of all creation, magnify my creation and body for the Fire, fill [hell and its layers] the levels of Hell with me, so that there would be no one punished in the Fire but me, and no fuel for Hell but me, that would still be little compared to the abundance of what I deserve of Your punishment according to Your justice toward me. So, what have my hands committed, and what have my insides brought forth?"1
So, what you see, O believer, of weeping, self-flagellation, and self-punishment among the Negligent is nothing but an expiation for their sins and a seeking of forgiveness for their major sins. When they complete the accounting and the punishment, they will rise to the station of the people of intellect and correctness.
Our Master Al-Riḍā (may his glory be exalted) said: "For the likes of Al-Ḥusayn, let the weepers weep, for weeping over him obliterates the great sins."2
It obliterates the great sins... What sin is greater than negligence in knowing Allah, which is negligence in knowing Muḥammad and the Family of Muḥammad, degrading their status, and entertaining negative thoughts about them? However, if the weeping and other rituals are with a sincere and correct intention, they will remove your sins and raise you to the next stage after you have paid your debts of negligence. The subtle point in the tradition is that he says: "For the likes of Al-Ḥusayn" and not "For Al-Ḥusayn." So, who is the like of Al-Ḥusayn? Ponder, may Allah have mercy on you.