Life is an opportunity given to satisfy the hunger and thirst of the soul.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
And what is life? Life is an opportunity. To the optimistic the opportunity is a promise, and for the pessimistic this opportunity is lost. It is not that the Creator makes the pessimistic lose it, but they withdraw themselves from the possibility of seizing the opportunity.
If there is something that can be accomplished today, we need not wait for it to be accomplished tomorrow. For life is an opportunity, and desire has the greatest power, and perfection is the promise of the soul. We seek perfection, because perfection is the ultimate aim and the goal of creation. The source of all things is perfect. Our source is perfect, our goal is perfect. And therefore every atom of the universe is working towards perfection, and sooner or later it must arrive at perfection consciously. If it were not so, you would not have read in the Bible, ‘Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.’
Kabir, the great poet of India says, ‘Life is a field and you are born to cultivate it. And if you know how to cultivate this field you can produce anything you like. All the need of your life can be produced in this field. All that your soul yearns after and all you need is to be got from the field, if you know how to cultivate it and how to reap the fruit.’ But if this opportunity is only studied in order to make the best of life by taking all that one can take and by being more comfortable, that is not satisfying. We must enrich ourselves with thought, with that happiness which is spiritual happiness, with that peace which belongs to our soul, with that liberty, that freedom, for which our soul longs; and attain to that higher knowledge which breaks all the fetters of life and raises our consciousness to look at life from a different point of view. Once we have realized this opportunity we have fulfilled the purpose of Life.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VI – The Alchemy of Happiness: Life, An Opportunity )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
If the soul continued to exist only in the highest state, it would never experience hunger and thirst. This comes through the separation, its departure from its home, whence it passes through the phases of hunger and thirst. This is the theme of the opening of the “Masnavi” [ by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi ], the allegory of the flute. After the soul has suffered thoroughly in the pain of separation, it recovers step by step its lost province. As it throws off the deceiving desires, as it abandons the fruits of action, as it surrenders all the thoughts and attachments of incarnate and disincarnate experience, it comes again to the full satisfaction of love and the end of hunger and thirst in its reunion with God. This reunion, however, is only apparent; it has always existed but the soul has not realized it during its journey away from home.