Maqāmāt & aḥwāl · stations and states

A station is earned and kept — repentance, abstinence, patience, trust, contentment, each secured before the next is attempted. A state is given, unearned, and cannot be held onto: it arrives and it goes.

One of the most useful distinctions on the whole bench, and Judaism draws it too — the difference between the middot a person works on over years and the mochin that are granted. The warning is shared: mistaking a state for a station is how people get hurt.