Things are worthwhile when we seek them; only then do we know their value.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Very often people ask, ‘How long has one to go on the spiritual path?’ There is no limit to the length of this path, and yet if one is ready, it does not need a long time. It is a moment and one is there. How true it is, what the wise of past ages said to their followers, ‘Do not go directly into the temple; first walk around it fifty times!’ The meaning was, first get tired and then enter. Then you value it. One values something for which one makes an effort.
The adepts value their object of attaining the inner life more than anything else in life. As long as they do not really value it, so long they remain unable to attain it. That is the first condition: that we should value the inner life more than anything else in the world, more than wealth, power, position, rank, or anything else. It does not mean that in this world we should not pursue the things we need. It means we should value most something which is really worthwhile.
The next thing is that when we begin to value something, we think it is worthwhile giving time to it. For in the modern world it is said that time is money, and money today means the most valuable thing. So if we give our precious time to what we consider most worthwhile, more so than anything else in the world, then that is certainly the next step towards the Inner Life.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VI – The Alchemy of Happiness: The Inner Life )
There are really two journeys. There is the journey from the goal to the life in the world, and there is the journey from the life in the world to the goal. And both journeys are natural. As it is natural to go forth from the eternal goal, so it is natural to go from the changing life to the life which is unchangeable.
Which is the most desirable thing in life, to seek for the goal or to dwell in this changing life? The answer is that our every desire is according to our evolution. That for which we are ready is desirable for us. Milk is a desirable food for the infant, other foods for the grown-up person. Every stage in life has its own appropriate and desirable things. The desire to attain to a goal must be there before reaching it; when we do not feel the desire, it is not necessary for us to seek it. All things are worthwhile when we seek after them; then only do we appreciate their value; then only are we happy to have them.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden, The Journey to the Goal )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
But the real value is in the search, not in the things. In the story of “Sir Launfal” by the poet Lowell, the cup of Christ was as a cup of pure running water. It was not magical, but the search and the suffering brought the awakening. Actually no thing has great spiritual value, but to cease to search — to be unwilling to attain, not to look or strive — all these prevent God from manifesting and prevent us from returning to God’s Source.