Once you have given up your limited self willingly to the Unlimited, you will rejoice so much in that consciousness that you will not care to be small again.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
If you ask people to say where they are, they will point at their arm, their hand, their body. They know little beyond that. There are many who if asked, ‘But where do you think you are in your body?’ will say, ‘In my brain.’ They limit themselves to that small physical region which is called body, thus making themselves much smaller than they really are. The truth is that we are one individual with two aspects, just like one line with two ends. If you look at the ends, it is two. If you look at the line, it is one. One end of the line is limited, the other end of the line is unlimited. One end is human, the other end is God. People forget that end, and know only the end of which they are conscious. And it is the consciousness of limitation which makes them more limited. Otherwise they would have far greater means of approaching the Unlimited which is within themselves, which is only the other end of the same line, the line which they call, or which they consider to be, themselves. And when a mystic speaks of self-knowledge this does not mean knowing how old one is or how good one is or how bad, or how right or how wrong. It means knowing the other part of one’s being, that deeper, subtler aspect. It is upon the knowledge of that being that the fulfillment of life depends.
When people have ragged coats they say, ‘I am poor’. In reality the coats are poor, not they. What this capacity or accommodation contains is that which becomes their knowledge, their realization, and it is that which limits them. It forms that limitation which is the tragedy of every soul. Now, this capacity may be filled with self, or it may be filled with God. There is only room for one. Either we live with our limitation, or we let God reign there in Unlimited Being.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
When this is understood, really understood, all smallness will disappear; there will be no war nor pain nor suffering. It is the idea of self ‐ any idea that we attach to our mind — which stabs the very essence of mind and begins that process from which all sorrow arises. Voluntary surrender of self does not destroy mind, does not harm body, and does not annihilate self. Rather it annihilates that thought of self which is given erroneously the name of self.
No one can pretend to the cosmic state. Thought of Sufism or of being a Sufi — even of submitting to the disciplines and practices — does not make one a Sufi. Attainment and only attainment makes one a Sufi. It is wrong ever to call oneself a Sufi, but there are such souls who have lost all consciousness and feeling of distinction and separation, and through them the Spirit of Guidance pours blessings upon the world.