Every wave of the sea, as it rises, seems to be stretching its hands upwards, as if to say, “Take me up higher and higher.”
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
However disappointed people may be at not being in a particular profession or in a particular calling or rank in life, they develop enthusiasm and energy as soon as they see some scope for progress. Their disappointment is only there when they see no more scope. Even if they were in the depths of the earth, it would not matter as long as they could think that they would some day rise to some height.
Another wonderful thing we see, which supports this philosophy, is the tendency of everything in nature to rise. The tendency of earth is to rise as mountains and hills. When we see the mountains and hills, and how high they are, our hearts also seem uplifted. When we climb them then our heart becomes uplifted. As we look up to them from below, it seems as if the earth itself is desiring to rise and go upward.
Then when we look upon the perfection of water, of the ocean, we see that it also rises as waves. And every wave, as it rises up, seems to be stretching its hands upward as if saying, ‘Take me up, take me up, higher and higher.’ It is the same desire that is behind all nature, making it strive to rise upward and to reach something higher.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter 31 – The Presence of God )
The whole striving of mystics is to raise the consciousness as high as possible. What this raising of the consciousness means, and how it is raised, can be better understood by the one who has begun to practice it. The best means of raising the consciousness is by the God-Ideal. Therefore, however much one has studied metaphysics or philosophy intellectually and found some truth about one’s being, it does not suffice for the purpose of life; for the culmination of life lies in the raising of the consciousness.
We can see this tendency in the rising of the waves, always trying to reach high and higher still. When they cannot go any farther they fall, but again they rise. … Those who climb a steep mountain are always apt to slip. But if this slipping, which is natural, induces them to go down again they will never climb anymore. If they slip and then try to go on they will become more sure-footed, and will learn how to avoid slipping. Perhaps they will slip a thousand times, but a thousand times they will go forward again. It is nothing to be surprised at if a person slips. It is natural. The mountain is steep. It is natural that one should slip. The best thing one can do is to go on after every such slip, without losing courage, without allowing one’s consciousness to be impressed by it; to think that it is natural and to continue the ascent.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The waves of the sea are partly caused by the tides, which are the result of gravitation, which in turn is an activity of Ishk in the physical sphere. This movement upward of the water, whether as wave or as vapor, is caused by the law that to find liberation one must become other than what one has been. So the water becomes the vapor and the vapor the cloud. Yet the nufs of water is such that the emancipation does not make water non-water.
So human emancipation does not make one other than human; one can become neither animal nor angel, though one behave worse than animal or better than angel. There is a ceaseless striving in every form, and the seeking of liberation is the seeking of God.