Life is a misery for people absorbed in themselves.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The more living the heart, the more sensitive it is; but that which causes sensitiveness is the Love-element in the heart, and Love is God. People whose hearts are not sensitive are without feeling; their heart is not living, it is dead. In that case the Divine Spirit is buried in their hearts. People who are always concerned with their own feelings are so absorbed in themselves that they have no time to think of another. Their whole attention is taken up with their own feelings. They pity themselves, they worry about their own pain, and are never open to sympathize with others. They who take notice of the feelings of another person with whom they come in contact, practice the first essential moral of Sufism.
A person who, alone, has seen something beautiful, who has heard something harmonious, who has tasted something delicious, who has smelt something fragrant, may have enjoyed it, but not completely. The complete joy is in sharing one’s joy with others. For the selfish who enjoy themselves and do not care for others, whether they enjoy things of the earth or things of heaven, their enjoyment is not complete.
When people are absorbed in themselves, they have no time for character-building, because they have no time to think of others: then there is no other. But when they forget themselves, they have time to look here and there, to collect what is good and beautiful, and to add it naturally to their character. So the character is built. One need not make an effort to build it, one has only to forget oneself.
Every step in evolution makes life more valuable. The more evolved you are, the more priceless is every moment; it becomes an opportunity for you to do good to others, to serve others, to give love to others, to be gentle to others, to give your sympathy to souls who are longing and hungering for it. Life is miserable when people are absorbed in themselves; as soon as they forget themselves they are happy. The more they think of themselves, their own affairs, work and interests, the less they know the meaning of life. People look at others they cannot at the same time look at themselves. Illness, disappointments and hardships matter very little when one can look at them from a higher standpoint.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The one who is absorbed in self makes a load of every experience by relating it to the ego. The world has moved and will move without this ego, and events will take place, and no personality is ever so powerful that, without Divine help, it can cause the world to change its course.
We only feel pain when we think of self; we feel no pain when we think of God, especially when we praise God. Praise of God leads to bliss, and when there is bliss there is no pain. There is a spiritual anesthetic in praise which can cure all suffering. There is nobody who will appear harmonious before everyone. When one possesses the thoughts and feelings another has toward their person, one grasps these disharmonies, and these impressions cause all manner of disease within the mind and within the body. But one does not have to possess those feelings; one does not have to accept all those thought vibrations others are sending out. One may refuse to accept them, whereupon the karmic effect goes back upon the cause, whether for good or ill.
Spiritual travelers therefore endeavor to remove the ego, so that there can be no collation of such vibrations, and so no opportunity for disease or suffering of any kind.