For background on the 9th c. CE Persian mystic Junaid Baghdadi, see this post.

For ten years I had to protect my heart from straying away and kept watch on it. Thereafter for the next ten years my heart took care of me. Now my condition is such that the heart does not know me and I do not mind it.

For the last twenty years the Lord is speaking through me. I am not in-between, although the world is not acquainted with it.

I am narrating only formal Sufism for the last twenty years. I am warned against uttering the mysteries in public.

I lose my senses when the fear of God overpowers me but recover when I am reminded of His mercy.

Translation Bankey Behari