While people blame another for causing them harm, the wise first take themselves to task.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The worldly struggle is outward struggle. The struggle on the spiritual path is inward struggle. No sooner does one take the spiritual direction than the first enemy one meets is one’s own self. What does the self do? It is most mischievous. When one says one wants to fight it, it says, ‘I am yourself. Do you want to fight me?’ And when it brings failure, it is clever enough to put the blame on someone else. Do all those who have failed in life accuse themselves? No, they always accuse another person. When they have gained something they say, ‘I have done it.’ When they have lost something they say, ‘This person got in my way’. With little and big things, it is all the same. The self does not admit faults; it always puts the blame on others. Its vanity, its pride, its smallness, and its egotistical tendency which is continually active, keep one blind.
By a study of Life the Sufis learn and practice the nature of its harmony. They establish harmony with the self, with others, with the universe and with the infinite. They identify themselves with another, they see themselves, so to speak, in every other being. They care for neither blame nor praise, considering both as coming from themselves. If a person were to drop a heavy weight and in so doing hurt their own foot, they would not blame their hand for having dropped it, realizing themselves in both the hand and the foot. In like manner the Sufis are tolerant when harmed by another, thinking that the harm has come from themselves alone. … They overlook the faults of others, considering that they know no better. They hide the faults of others, and suppress any facts that would cause disharmony. Their constant fight is with the Nafs (the self-centered ego), the root of all disharmony and the only enemy of humanity.
The mystics develop a wider outlook on life, and this wider outlook changes their actions. They develop a point of view that may be called a divine point of view. Then they rise to the state in which they feel that all that is done to them comes from God, and when they themselves do right or wrong, they feel that they do right or wrong to God. To arrive at such a stage is true religion. There can be no better religion than this, the true religion of God on earth. This is the point of view that makes people God-like and divine. They are resigned when badly treated, but for their own shortcomings, they will take themselves to task, for all their actions are directed towards God.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume X – Sufi Mysticism, Part I: Sufi Mysticism, Chapter VIII – Action )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
For the harmony of the wise can control even the world. To be a Nabi, one must relate every activity of the world to oneself and by one’s control over oneself regulate or control the whole earth outside oneself. This is quite possible when those with heart surrendered to God undertake to serve humanity without thought of self, refusing ever to discriminate between self and another, between self and non-self.