As a child learning to walk falls a thousand times before it can stand, and after that falls again and again until at last it can walk, so are we as little children before God.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Humans are limited in our thought, in our speech, in our action. Therefore naturally we are liable to follies and errors, and our progress through life can only be made as a little child learns to walk. The child falls a thousand times before it can stand, and so many times it falls again when it begins to walk. We human beings are not more than the child before God. If we take this attitude in life, not considering that if yesterday we failed today we shall fail, and if we always hope that some day we shall walk aright, that hour will come. Imagine if the child thought that as it had fallen so often perhaps it would never walk! That would make a mental impression on its soul, and it would never be able to walk. But there is the natural impulse, with the hope, “Next time I shall walk”, that makes it walk. So with us. Our follies, shortcomings, errors, are natural, but when we defend ourselves, hiding our errors from others and making virtues out of our shortcomings, it is then we make a mistake. It is just like nurturing our errors and wanting to err more. We must always develop the sense of justice, and that sense can never be developed if we judge others. The only way of developing that sense is to judge ourselves continually and see where we are in fault, and then in prayer to ask pardon and to ask for right guidance.
( from Unpublished Papers from the Nekbakht Foundation Archives, Prayer, 8 May 1921 and 15 May 1921 )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Yes, God is ever ready to receive us. One look at our own hearts, one feeling of sympathy for another, one small prayer, and God, the Divine Father and Mother, takes us in His/Her arms.