Al-Shibli said: So I knew that he was of the elite (al-Khawass), the masters of sincerity. I said to him: "O my beloved, what is the reality of love?" He replied: "O Shibli, love is a grain (habbah) sown in the soil of hearts and watered with the water of repentance, so it brought forth the ears of love; in every ear is a hundred grains, and if a single grain of it were placed before the birds of hearts, they would wander enraptured in the passion of the Beloved."

And someone else said: I entered upon al-Shibli while he was plucking the hairs from his eyebrows with tweezers. I said to him: "O my master, you are doing this to yourself and its pain returns to you!" He replied: "Woe to you! The Reality has manifested to me and I cannot endure it, so I inflict pain upon myself that I might feel it, so that the Reality might be veiled from me. Yet I found no pain, nor was it veiled from me, and I have no strength to bear it."

And Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd said: I used to hear al-Sari al-Saqati say: "The servant may reach a limit such that if his face were struck with a sword, he would not feel it."