Self-pity is the cause of all life’s grievances.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
If one studies one’s surroundings one finds that those who are happy are so because they have less thought of self. If they are unhappy it is because they think of themselves too much. People are more bearable when they think less of themselves. And people are unbearable when they are always thinking of themselves. There are many miseries in life, but the greatest misery is self-pity.
Self-pity is the worst poverty. When we say, ‘I am…’ with pity, before we have said anything more we have diminished ourselves to half of what we are; and what is said further, diminishes us totally; nothing more of us is left afterwards. There is so much in the world that we can pity and which it would be right for us to take pity upon, but if we have no time free from our own self we cannot give our mind to others in the world. Life is one long journey, and the further behind we have left our self, the further we have progressed toward the goal. Verily when the false self is lost the true self is discovered.
The heart becomes wide by forgetting self, but narrow by thinking of the self and pitying one’s self. To gain a wide and broad heart you must have something before you to look upon, and to rest your intelligence upon — and that something is the God-Ideal.
( from The Supplementary Papers: Chapter 10 – Mysticism V, Mastery [ unpublished ] )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
To relate life to the ego is to destroy the value of life without enhancing the value of ego. Once the process of self-pity is begun, it leads away from beauty and happiness. In beauty there is no extension of self, there is forgetfulness of self and sooner or later surrender of self.