People are the pictures of the reflection of their imaginations; they are as large or as small as they think themselves.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
All works of art and music and poetry come from imagination, for imagination is the free flow of mind, when the mind is allowed to work by itself and bring out the beauty and harmony it contains. But when it is restricted by a certain principle or rule, then it does not work freely… No one has believed in God, no one has loved God, and no one has reached the presence of God who has not been helped by their imagination.
Then there are the people who have imagination which is strengthened by faith. They not only pray to God, but they pray before God, in the presence of God. Once imagination has helped them to bring the presence of God before them, God is awakened in their own heart. Then before they utter a word, it is heard by God. When they are praying in a room, they are not alone. They are there with God. Then to them God is not in the highest heaven but close to them, before them, in them. Then to them heaven is on earth and earth is heaven. No one is then so living, so intelligible as God; and all names and forms disappear before God. Then every word of prayer they utter is a living word. It not only brings blessing to them, but to all those around them.
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When we invoke the names of God, we forget our limitations and impress our souls with the thought of the Unlimited, which brings us to the ideal of limitlessness. This is the secret of Life’s attainment.
People are the pictures or reflections of their imaginations. We are as large as we think themselves, as great as we think themselves, as small as we think themselves to be. If we think we are incapable, we remain incapable; if we think ourselves foolish, we will be foolish and will remain foolish; if we think ourselves wise, we will be wise and become wiser every moment; if we think ourselves mighty, we will be mighty. Those who have proved themselves to be the greatest warriors, where did their might come from? It was from their thought, their feeling; ‘I am mighty.’ The idea of might was impressed on their soul, and the soul became might. The poets had poetry impressed on their souls, and so the souls became poets. Whatever is impressed on our souls, with that our souls become endowed, and that our souls will become. [ This is the principle, the reality, which the spiritual practices of repeating the Divine Names (the Waza’if), and of Zikr and Fikr make use of. The repetition of Mantras in the Yogic and Buddhist lineages embody the same reality — Muiz ]
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume IX – The Unity of Religious Ideals, Part I: Prayer )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
So long as our thought is centered around our concept of a limited self, we are limited by the power of thought; when we rise to the fullness of life in the Cosmic Unity, finding that God Alone is, and is the True Self, we are no longer limited. And what was it that limited us? It was nothing but our own thought. Just as thought can obtain all knowledge of matter, so can spirit gain all knowledge of thought, and so can God-attainment give all knowledge of spirit.