The one who has failed self has failed all; the one who has conquered self has won all.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There is no reason for anyone to feel discouraged by one’s weaknesses or deficiencies, or by one’s actions that have dissatisfied oneself, or by anything in life that has failed. One should forget the past that has failed one, and begin to construct and mold one’s future as one would wish it to be. Considering as a branch is not separate from the bough, and the bough is not separate from the stem, so with all our limitations we are not separate from the will of the Unlimited One.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Will, Human and Divine )
I remember a Persian verse made by my murshid which relates to the self: ‘When I feel that now I can make peace with my self, it finds time to prepare another attack.’ That is our condition. We think that our little faults, since they are small, are of no consequence; or we do not even think of them at all. But every little fault is a flag for the little self, for its own dominion. In this way battling makes one the sovereign of the realm of God. Very few can realize the great power in battling with and conquering the self.
But what do people generally do? We say, ‘My poor self, it has to withstand the conflicts of this world; should I also battle with this self?’ So we surrender our dominion to our little selves, depriving ourselves of the Divine Power that is in our hearts. There is in us a false self and a real self. The real self contains the eternal; the false self contains the mortal. The real self has wisdom; the false self ignorance. The real self can rise to perfection; the false self ends in limitation. The real self has all good, the false self is productive of all evil. One can see both in oneself: God and the other one. By conquering the other one, one realizes God. This other power has been called Satan; but is it a power? In reality it is not. It is and it is not. It is a shadow. We see shadow and yet it is nothing. We should realize that this false self has no existence of its own. As soon as the soul has risen above the false self, it begins to realize its nobility.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VI – The Alchemy of Happiness: The Struggle of Life, Part 2 )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Failure is due to the domination of the false self. It alone puts out the thought of failure, of weakness, of limitation. It is not capable of sustaining concentration or effort. When one has controlled this self and its passions, and especially when one has performed the spiritual practices which link one to God, the True Self, one has conquered this false lower self. This is the great victory of life. All other victories are unimportant in comparison with it and not essential to mundane existence. Once the nufs is mastered, the key to every success is at hand. This is conveyed in the allegory of The Thief of Baghdad.
[ The ‘Thief of Baghdad’ allegory was popularized in the USA and other parts of the western world, via a 1924 novel of the same name, by Achmed Abdullah. His book was derived from elements in the centuries older collection of Islamic and Sufi folklore and stories compiled during Islamic Golden Age (the 8th through the 14th centuries, CE), called the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ (aka the ‘Arabian Nights’). It was first translated and published in English circa 1706–1721 CE. Abullah’s novel was turned into a film starring Douglas Fairbanks, in 1924, and was remade with the same title six more times over the following decades, most recently in 1978.
Of possible interest to us from the perspective of our wazifa practice is what didn’t make it into English through the various translations of the original source stories … the use of the Divine Names as words of power or protection, throughout the stories. For example, Ali Baba’s magical phrase ‘Open Sesame’ is a literal translation from the Arabic of ‘al-Fattah ya samsam’ (Opener of All Things, oh sesame). — Muiz ]