O soul: Until when, and for how long, will you wander in the world of generation—entering and exiting, going and returning? You take companions and friends, leaving one and accompanying another. No companion do you accompany who treats you harshly in one aspect but that he softens in another, while secretly harboring treachery and betrayal toward you—even as you believe him to be faithful and helpful. He falls ill and you tend to his health; he becomes defiled and you purify him.

He constantly meets you with what is in his essence and nature, while you constantly meet him with what is in your essence and nature; yet, after all of this, he rewards you with total severance.

And [he rewards you with] a definitive separation, without any crime you committed, nor any sin you earned, nor any evil you wrought. Thus, at every moment, you are swallowing the agonies of parting, yet you [continue to] seek out intimacy and companions despite their treachery toward you and your loyalty to them, and their injustice toward you and your fairness toward them. Neither are you deterred from the "former" (this world) by the "latter" (the hereafter), nor do you take heed or learn from the length of your experience and testing of them. So until when, and for how long, will you accompany the oppressive wicked and the treacherous betrayers? Is this ignorance and blindness on your part, or a feigned ignorance and a turning of a blind eye to the right path?