Sleep is comfortable, but awakening is interesting.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There are some who are content with a belief taught at home or in church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. They are contented, and they may just as well rest in that stage of realization where they are contented until another impulse is born in their hearts to rise higher. The Sufis do not force their beliefs or their thoughts upon such souls. In the East, there is a saying that it is a great sin to awaken anyone who is fast asleep. This saying can be symbolically understood. There are many in this world who work and do things and are yet asleep; they seem awake externally, but inwardly, they are asleep. The Sufis consider it a crime to awaken them, for some sleep is good for their health. The work of the Sufis is to give a helping hand to those who have had sufficient sleep and who now begin to stir in their sleep, to turn over. And it is that kind of help which is the real initiation.
The Message is a call to those whose hour has come to awake, and it is a lullaby to those who are still meant to sleep.
The awakened souls see all of the doings of adults as the doings of the children of one Parent. They look upon them as the Parent would look upon all human beings on the earth, without thinking that they are German or English or French. They are all equally dear to the Sufis. They look upon all full of forgiveness, not only upon those who deserve it, but also upon the others, for they understand the reason behind it all. By seeing good in everybody and in everything, they begins to develop that Divine Light that expands itself, illuminating the greater part of life and revealing it as a scene of Divine Sublimity.
The mystics develop a wider outlook on life, and this wider outlook changes their actions. They develop a point of view that may be called a Divine point of view. Then they rise to the state in which they feel that all that is done to them comes from God, and when they themselves do right or wrong, they feel that they do right or wrong to God. To arrive at such a stage is true religion. There can be no better religion than this, the true religion of God on earth. This is the point of view that makes a people God-like and Divine. They are resigned when badly treated, but for their own shortcomings, they will take themselves to task, for all their actions are directed towards God.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume X – Sufi Mysticism: Sufi Mysticism – Action )
People whose souls have awakened become awake to everything they see and hear. Compared to those, everyone else seems to be with open eyes and yet not to see, to be with open ears and yet not to hear. There are many with open ears, but there is rarely one who hears, and there are many with open eyes, but there is hardly one who sees. … The moment the soul has awakened, music makes an appeal to it, poetry touches it, words move it, art has an influence upon it. It no longer is a sleeping soul, it is awake and it begins to enjoy life to a fuller extent. It is this awakening of the soul which is mentioned in the Bible, ‘Unless the soul is born again it will not enter the realm of heaven’. Being born again means that the soul is awakened after having come on earth, and entering the realm of heaven means that this world, the same realm in which we are standing just now, turns into heaven as soon as the point of view has changed.
Is it not interesting and most wonderful to think that the same earth we walk on is earth to one person and heaven to another? And it is still more interesting to notice that it is we who change it; we change it from earth into heaven, or we change it otherwise. This change comes not by study, nor by anything else, but only by the changing of our point of view.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
This is true for the body. It is also true for the mind, which becomes tired, but even when we go to bed it sometimes is enticed by its thoughts. It is also true for the heart, which finds its peace and joy in loving one — be it person or God — yet keeps up so many interests that it may lose faith. Loss of faith is often accompanied by a humanitarian solicitude, but this solicitude, although well-meaning, is not founded upon principle and so may degenerate into sentimentalism.
Finally the soul itself sleeps and awakens, but its true condition is where these are united. In this world, the soul is as asleep except for momentary flashes. In the inner life, these flashes increase and finally there is the awakening. But this continual sleeping and awakening, states of contraction and expansion, or nearness and farness, belong to those on the path to God, not to the travelers who have arrived.