It is false love that does not uproot our claim of “I”; the first and last lesson of love is “I am not”.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
It is not Love, but the pretense of love, that imposes the claim of the self. The first and last lesson in love is, ‘I am not — Thou art’ and unless we are moved to that selflessness, we do not know Justice, Right or Truth. Our self stands above or between us and God.
There is no greater teacher of morals than Love itself, for the first lesson that we learn from love is, ‘I am not, you are.’ This is self-denial, self-abnegation, without which we cannot take the first step on Love’s path. We may claim to be a great lover, to be a great admirer, to be very affectionate, but it all means nothing as long as the thought of self is there, for there is no Love. But when the thought of self is removed, then every action, every deed that we perform in life, becomes a virtue.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume X – Sufi Mysticism: Mysticism )
If we say, “I love you but only so much, I love you and give you six-pence but I keep six-pence for myself, I love you but I stand at a distance and never come closer, we are separate beings” — our love is with our selves. As long as that exists, Love has not done its full work. Love accomplishes its work when it spreads its wings and veils our selves from our own eyes. That is the time when Love is fulfilled, and so it is in the life of the holy ones who have not only loved God by professing or showing it, but who have loved God to the extent that they forgot themselves.
We are here on earth for this one purpose, that we may bring forth that spirit of God in us and thus discover our own Perfection. The three stages towards this perfection are the following. The first stage is to make God as great and as perfect as our imagination can. ….
The second stage is the work of the heart… The first lesson that Love teaches us is: ‘I am not. Thou art.’ The first thing to think of is to erase ourselves from our minds and to think of the one we love. As long as we do not arrive at this idea, the word love remains only in the dictionary. Many speak about love but very few know it. Is love a pastime, an amusement, a drama; is it a performance? The first lesson of Love is sacrifice, service, self-effacement. … To close the eyes for prayer is one thing, and to produce the Love of God is another thing. That is the second stage in spiritual realization, where, in the thought of God, one begins to lose oneself in the same way that the lover loses the thought of self in the thought of the Beloved.
And the third stage is different again. In the third stage the Beloved becomes the Self, and the self is there no more. For then the self, as we think it to be, no longer remains. The self becomes what it really is. It is that realization which is called Self-Realization.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
There is difficulty of expression for Love is above all expression. The nature of Love is light, expansiveness, brightness, beauty, life itself [ love – Ishq، light – Ya Nur, expansiveness – Ya Bāsit, brightness – Ya Munawwir, beauty – Ya Jamāl, life – Ya Hayy — Muiz ]. Thoughts, words, descriptions of any kind, arising from activity below the mind-mesh, can in no way describe the illimitable. The thought of self, any expression of selfhood, arises from name and form which are the shadows of reality. These names and forms can only be expressed by the marks they make, and their essence remains hidden. True love expresses itself in life, in atmosphere, in feeling, in heart qualities, in unselfishness; these are its characteristics which are removed from both affirmation and negation. It is Life that lives, and Love is Life itself.