Yea, if you are patient and fear, and they come against you … to the end of the verse: to endure with patience the hardship of struggle and to expend the soul in obedience of God and to bear discomfort in pursuit of God's satisfaction can only take place when there is God-consciousness with the support of the Truth and illumination by the light of certainty and its sureness, and by the sending down of the divine peace and reassurance upon that person. But to be conscious of God while contravening the command of the Truth and inclining to profit and gain, fearing the ruination of the soul can only come about when the soul is broken by the subjugating authority of the heart and the spirit. For constancy and dignity are the attributes of the spirit, while inconstancy and restlessness are the attributes of the soul. Once the authority of the spirit has acquired mastery over the heart and takes its seat [there], it protects that [heart] from falling under the mastery of the attributes of the soul and the [soul's] hosts, such that the heart becomes enamoured of it [the spirit] and feels at peace with it because of its luminosity the pleasures of which are beloved. It is able to fortify itself with it [the spirit] against the soul and its faculties, defeating it, breaking it, thwarting its [potential] overpowering and [repelling] its darkness from itself, rendering it instead meek, obedient and reassured so that it is no longer agitated and it [the soul] becomes illumined by its [the heart's] light. Thereupon mercy comes down and the heart corresponds to the heavenly spiritual realm with respect to its [the soul's] luminosity, its capacity to vanquish what is below it and its love and yearning for what is above it. Thus by that correspondence it [the heart] becomes joined to it [the illumined soul] and is able to draw on its [this soul's] faculties and [draw] its attributes into its [the heart's] acts especially when it [the heart] is stirred and spurns the lower aspect and severs itself in exclusive devotion to the higher aspect by the power of certainty and the trust. It is then able to draw upon the faculties of its [the illumined soul's] capacity to vanquish against the one with whom it [the heart] is angry: this is [the moment of] the coming down of the angels. But when it [the heart] is anxious and alarmed, changes and becomes fearful or inclines to this world, it is overpowered by the soul and subjugated by it and ac quires mastery over it, veiling it by the darkness of its attributes from the light, such that that correspondence is no longer there, the reinforcement [from the spiritual realm] is severed and the angels do not come down.
