Faith is the A-B-C of the realization of God. This faith begins by prayer.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Someone once said to a Brahmin, ‘O ignorant one, you have worshiped this idol for years. Do you think it can ever answer you?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Brahmin, ‘even from this idol of stone the answer will come if your faith is real. But if you have no real faith, you will get no answer even from the God in heaven.’ … The first necessity is the belief that there is such a Being as God, in whom goodness, beauty, and greatness are Perfect. In the beginning it will seem nothing but a belief; but in time, if kept in sincerity and faith, that belief will become like the egg of the Phoenix, out of which the magic bird is born. The birth of God is the birth of the soul. Every soul seeks for happiness, and after pursuing all the objects which for the moment seem to give happiness, it finds out that nowhere is there perfect happiness except in God.
Once imagination has helped us to bring the Presence of God before us, God is awakened in our own hearts. Then before we utter a word, it is heard by God. When we are praying in a room, we are not alone. We are there with God. Then to us God is not in the highest heaven but close to us, before us, in us. Then to us 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 we utter is a living word. It not only brings blessing to us, but to all those around us.
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Not only belief, but faith too is necessary. Belief is a thing, but faith is a living being. We rise by treading the path of faith. Some day we shall realize what God is, but that only comes after the first lesson has been learned. Faith is the A-B-C of the revelation of God, and the way to faith is begun by prayer.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Faith brings knowledge without intellection, without use of any limited personal mind. The heart knows because it knows, without any special explanation for this knowledge. In such prayer the object is to free us from the sway of self; God can give us this freedom and it is to this end humanity should pray. When one prays for conditions or things, one limits prayer, limits oneself, and deprives God from displaying God’s Wisdom and Magnanimity toward humanity.