Self-pity is the worst poverty; it overwhelms one until nothing is seen but illness, trouble and pain.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
If one studies one’s surroundings one finds that those who are happy are so because they have less thought of self. If they are unhappy it is because they think of themselves too much. A person is more bearable when thinking less of self. And a person is unbearable when always thinking of self. There are many miseries in life, but the greatest misery is self-pity.
Humanity is mostly selfish, and what interests us is that which concerns our own lives. Not knowing the troubles of the lives of others we feel the burden of our own life even more than the burden of the whole world. If only we in our poverty could think that there are others who are poorer than we are, in our illness that there are others whose sufferings are perhaps greater than ours, in our troubles that there are others whose difficulties are perhaps greater than ours! Self-pity is the worst poverty. It overwhelms one and one sees nothing but one’s own troubles and pains, and it seems that one is the most unhappy person in the world, more so than anyone else.
A great thinker of Persia, Sa’adi, writes in an account of his life, ‘Once I had no shoes, I had to walk barefoot in the hot sand, and how miserable I was. Then I met a man who was lame, for whom walking was very difficult. I bowed down to heaven at once and offered thanks that I was much better off than he who had not even feet to walk upon.’ This shows that it is not a person’s situation in life, but the attitude towards life that makes one happy or unhappy. …
When Jesus Christ said, ‘Seek ye first the realm of God,’ this teaching was an answer to the cry of humanity: some crying, ‘I have no wealth,’ others crying, ‘I have no rest,’ others crying, ‘My situation in life is difficult,’ My friends are troubling me,’ or, ‘I want a position, wealth.’ The answer to them all is, ‘Seek ye first the realm of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.’
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
This is a concentration upon nufs, the cause of all disharmony. When one concentrates upon God, nothing but Love will be found, but when the attention is centered around the thought of self, all ugliness, pain and illness will rise. Of course in a certain sense they were always there, but this concentration gives them more life. It deprives the body and mind of the usual life which is naturally bestowed upon them by the Grace of God. It feeds the elementals who derive their potency from the excrescences of humanity, and these elementals in turn increase one’s trouble. Concentration upon darkness does not increase the darkness, but it does impede the opportunity for light and health to reach the place of sickness.