Selection from Fusus al Hikam

By Ibn Arabi

and when the real ( ) had brought into being the world entire
as a shaped form
without spirit 

the world was like an unpolished mirror 

       for divine providence never shapes a form
       unless it receives divine spirit
      which is called
      the "inspiriting" 

       which is the activation
      of the potential of that shaped image to receive the overflowing,
      the eternal manifestation
      that always was and always will be 
       outside of which there is only the vessel 

       which itself exists
      from its most holy overflowing
      for the entire order is from him 
       beginning and end
      "and to him returns the order entire" 
       as from him it began- 

what was required
was the polishing of the mirror 
that is the world 

and Adam was that very polishing 
of that mirror 

and the spirit of that form.

By Ibn Arabi, translated by Michael Sells in Mystical languages of Unsaying (U of Chicago Press, 1994)