CHAPTER TEN
O soul: I contemplate your condition and my wonder at it is prolonged. You demonstrate through speech that you are renouncing hardships and sorrows, yet in action, you are desiring them, clinging to them, and competing with their people for them. You demonstrate through speech that you are desiring bliss and joy, yet in action, you are renouncing them both, deviating from them, and feeling estranged from the path leading to them.
This, O soul, is a discordant action; and discordant action only emerges from an agent that is neither solitary nor unified, but rather possesses association and composition.
For a solitary thing only performs a solitary action in which there is no discord, whereas a mixed thing only performs a mixed action. It has now become clear, O soul, that you have not been purified 1 from your dross, nor have you been refined from the evil acquisitions you gained in your past cycles.
There remains within you a mange and a rust which is the cause for the discord appearing in your actions. If this rust within you is a fleeting accident, then hasten to clear and polish it before it becomes entrenched in your essence.