~ Hazrat Inayat Khan (via wahiduddin)

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan (via wahiduddin)

“Forgiveness is a stream of love which washes away all impurities wherever it flows. By keeping this spring of love, which is in the heart of man, running, man is able to forgive, however great the fault of his fellow man may seem. One who cannot forgive closes his heart. The sign of spirituality is that there is nothing you cannot forgive, there is no fault you cannot forget.”

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan (via wahiduddin)

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan (via wahiduddin)

“Many seek protection from all hurting influences by building some wall around themselves. But the canopy over the earth is so high that a wall cannot be built high enough, and the only thing one can do is to live in the midst of all inharmonious influences, to strengthen his will power and to bear all things, yet keeping the fineness of character and a nobleness of manner together with an ever-living heart. To become cold with the coldness of the world is weakness, and to become broken by the hardness of the world is feebleness, but to live in the world and yet to keep above the world is like walking on the water. There are two essential duties for the man of wisdom and love; that is to keep the love in our nature ever increasing and expanding and to strengthen the will so that the heart may not be easily broken. Balance is ideal in life; man must be fine and yet strong, man must be loving and yet powerful.”

from  http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/XIII/XIII_14.htm

‘There is One Master, the Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly leads His followers towards the light.’

To the Sufi therefore there is only one Teacher, however differently He may be named at different periods of history, and He comes constantly to awaken humanity from the slumber of this life of illusion, and to guide man onwards towards divine perfection. As the Sufi progresses in this view he recognizes his Master not only in the holy ones, but in the wise, in the foolish, in the saint and in the sinner, and has never allowed the Master who is One alone, and the only One who can be and who ever will be, to disappear from his sight.

from  http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/I/I_I_1.htm

Naturally, we are taught that the Master is everything. However, how much does that actually sink in? Do we treat everyone as if she or he is our Master? Do we take everything we receive from them as a gift from God? Do we try to learn from everything they send our way? Do we give them the reverence and respect that we give the Master? Do we take everything that happens to us in our lives as a spiritual gift?

I think most of us can wholeheartedly say that we don’t.

But we can always start today! Or at least start trying to do so. Each inch forward is an important inch. Each step is an important step. Each moment and action we take as a gift from God is an important one.

Treat everyone as if they are your Master. Take everything you receive as if it is sent directly from Him to you, for it is.

from  http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/VI/VI_8.htm

“If truth is to be attained, it is only when truth itself has begun to speak, which happens in revelation. Truth reveals itself; therefore, the Persian word for both God and truth is Khuda, which means self-revealing, thus uniting God with truth. One cannot explain either of these words. The only help the mystic can give is by indicating how to arrive at this revelation. No one can teach or learn this, one has to learn it oneself. The teacher is only there to guide one towards this revelation. There is only one teacher, and that teacher is God. The great masters of the world were the greatest pupils, and they each knew how to become a pupil.”

from  http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/X/X_7.htm

We tell ourselves that we want peace, we want love, we want happiness. However, we are the ones who go out into the world and create troubles for ourselves. We are the ones who put too much work on ourselves. We are the ones who let things of the world bother us, things that will never change, things that are part of this world and always will be.

We are the ones who go and try to throw dust into the wind and then complain that the wind blew dust in our eyes.

We all have our own ways of throwing dust in our eyes, but one that is almost universal is by focusing on things that simply dont matter. As Hazrat Inayat Khan also said: “To delve into a matter which matters little, is like raising dust from the ground.” We delve into such matters daily, several times a day. If we really want peace, happiness, joy, the weight of the world off our shoulders, we simply must stop bothering with the unimportant matters of the world which we can’t change.

Stop throwing dust in your eyes and see how that goes.

Belief is natural, and disbelief is unnatural, for belief is born in man, and unbelief is acquired. … Every child born on earth is born with a tendency to believe what is told him, but the experience of the individual in this world full of falsehood teaches man to disbelieve. That shows that every soul comes from the world of truth, and opens his eyes in the world of falsehood. Every child comes into the world with that purity of heart whose natural tendency is to believe and later he acquires the tendency to doubt. The Prophet has therefore said: ‘Every child is born a believer, it is afterwards that he becomes an unbeliever.’ … For doubt is earth-born and belief is heaven-born.

~~~ “Religious Gatheka 42, Belief and Disbelief in God”, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)

Very simply, we have three layers to our being. We have our physical self, we have our mental self, and we have our soul. Just as our physical self is born of physical materials and goes back into them once it dies, our mental self is born of “mental materials” and will one day “die.” However, our soul is a piece of God, and God is unchanging.

God is living right within us, inside our body and our mind. God is right here, closer than close, so close that we are unaware of Him.

We are so obsessed with the physical, and with mental issues, that we cannot find our own soul, we cannot find God within ourself.

Going deeper than the body and delving into the mind provides great pleasure. But the mind is not the soul. Many people combine the two, because the deepest thing they know is the mind. However, they are not the same at all, no more than the body is the same as the mind.

The soul is within us, but no matter how many times you read that or think about it, you cannot come to that realization through reading or thinking. You must come to it by going deeper into yourself. You must realize it by throwing off the shackles of the mind and the body.

Use your mind to control your mind, and then let your mind go.