The pain of life is the price paid for the quickening of the heart.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There is a phrase in the Bible, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. The Message of God is an answer to the cry of humanity. Now, as to the instrument of the message — in reality the whole universe is an instrument, and every object and every being in it is an instrument; through whichever instrument God chooses, God gives the Message. One sees in one’s life, and especially at times when one is deep down in depression and sorrow, some answer coming to the difficulty of that situation. It may come from a friend, from a sibling from parents, from a beloved; even from one’s enemy one may get what was necessary at the moment.
But you will say, “Why should a message come in the life of an individual in the time of pain, or after a great sorrow? Why should not a message come every day for one’s guidance?” And there are two reasons for it: One reason is that there is constantly a guidance from above [ or from within … they’re really the same place — Muiz ], but people, so absorbed in their life’s activities, do not open their heart to listen to that message and to see where it comes from. And the other reason is that the deeper the sorrow the higher the voice of the heart rises, until it reaches the throne of God; and that is the time when the answer comes, when a person is drowned deep in the sorrow and grief. … Plainly speaking, our real being is our heart, and in pain the heart becomes living and without pain we seem to be living on the surface. You will often see in life that people with an intolerable nature and manner, after having gone through the agony of pain in life, develop in them a finer nature.
( from Religious Gatheka 45: The Message (1) [ unpublished ] )
Those who have avoided love in life from fear of its pain have lost more than the lovers, who by losing themselves gain all. The loveless first lose all, until at last their self is also snatched away from their hands. The warmth of the lovers’ atmosphere, the piercing effect of their voice, the appeal of their words, all come from the pain of their heart. The heart is not living until it has experienced pain. People have not lived if they have lived and worked with their body and mind without heart. The soul is all light, but all darkness is caused by the death of the heart. Pain makes it alive. The same heart that was once full of bitterness, when purified by love becomes the source of all goodness. All deeds of kindness spring from it.
There is not the slightest doubt that when we have had enough pain in our life we rise to this great consciousness. But it is not necessary that only pain should be the means. It is the readiness on our part to efface our part of consciousness and to efface our own personality, which lifts the veil that hides the spirit of God from our view.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
Heart expands and contracts. The nafs tends to keep the heart in contraction and brings about its hardness. This arises from the illusion of life, for really nafs has no control on heart, yet heart becomes intoxicated in the midst of life and blindly follows. This brings about control of will by mind and creates an unending trouble for everyone.
To open the heart there is a constant pull, and this pull does bring pain. The pain is not necessary, the pull is. But if one has kept the heart closed, has not voluntarily searched for God, then the very purpose and nature of life will cause this pull and accompany it with pain. Even the law of Karma serves not to draw people into the abyss but to bring them to a realization of a higher purpose in life.
[ MUIZ COMMENTARY: This control of will by the mind is so pervasive that in the common understanding and common usage, Will is believed to be a purely mental quality or power. When someone is told the solution to their problem or situation is to apply their Willpower, or that they “just need to apply more Willpower”, what is usually meant and understood is that some kind of greater focused, mental, thinking effort is required.
In reality, Will or Willpower is a heart quality, a heart activity, a “heartpower” rather than a “mindpower” or “thoughtpower”. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says in various places in the Sufi Message volumes, that the mind is the surface of the heart, and the heart is the depth of the mind. (see these search results, beginning with result #3) From this perspective, looking at Will and Willpower from the outside, so to speak, our Will arises from the depth of our heart, from the depth of our being. When it reaches the surface, our mind can focus it in one direction or another, towards an activity or a goal, and we have the motive power to move, to act, to accomplish. Our Will actually arises from the One and Only Being at the Center of Everything, and is projected along the Ray of our Soul (which is an activity of that Only Being), into our Heart sphere which covers the Soul, like the glass ‘chimney’ that surrounds an oil lamp — but that’s another topic.
While that is the ideal description, since so many people in the industrialized world are generally out of touch with their hearts, since their hearts are still dead, to echo Pir-o-Murshid’s metaphor in today’s Bowl of Saki, their nafs (personality consciousness, ego) believes that mind and thought are primary. The tiny amount of actual Willpower/Heartpower that does make it to the surface, is appropriated by the nafs, believing it to be its own power, “mindpower”, “nafspower”. Limited and deprived of the full Heartpower in this way, not energized from the depth of Being as it should be, it also lacks the clear Guidance that should come with it with from Awakened Heart. Without being energized from the depth, without clear Guidance from within, this “nafspower” masquerading as Willpower is often unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal towards which it is directed, or worse it gets used inappropriately to implement the personal likes and dislikes of the nafs without regard to the consequences.
As Pir-o-Murshid and Mushid SAM teach, in the lessons on Muraqabah (Concentration), maintaining a mental concentration, a mental visualization, attempting to accomplish something with mental focus alone, even if we energize it with “nafspower”, is quite difficult. The mind wanders, gets distracted, gets bored, because the focus, the concentration, the visualization isn’t connected to Heart, to the devotional/love quality. When the Heart leads, and Mind follows, it becomes easy to keep a mental focus, a concentration, a visualization steady and one-pointed, because then the concentration is using true Willpower, guided by Heart, guided by Soul, guided by the Only Being.
This is the effacement of “our part of consciousness” and the effacement of “our own personality, which lifts the veil that hides the spirit of God from our view”, which Pir-o-Murshid mentioned above, in his last paragraph. ]