Believe in God with childlike faith; for simplicity with intelligence is the sign of the Holy Ones.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The question arises: what is the manner of opening the heart? The way to it is a natural life, the life of the child, smiling with the smiling one, praying with the praying one, ready to learn from everyone, ready to love. The child has enmity against no one, has no hatred, no malice, its heart is open. It is in the child that you can see the smiles of angels; the child can see through life.
When the grown-up person is made ready, and has acquired the attributes of the child, then is created heaven within oneself, one understands. The child with its innocence does not understand, but when a person with understanding develops the childlike loving tendency, the purity of heart of the child with the desire to be friendly to all — that is the opening of the heart, and it is by that blessing that one can receive all the privileges of human life.
… truth is simple. The more simple you are and the more you seek for simplicity, the nearer you come to truth.
I remember the blessing my spiritual teacher, my murshid, used to give me every time I parted from him. And that blessing was, ‘May your Iman [ faith ] be strengthened.’ At that time I had not thought about the word Iman. On the contrary I thought as a young man, is my faith so weak that my teacher requires it to be stronger? I would have preferred it if he had said, may you become illuminated, or may your powers be great, or may your influence spread, or may you rise higher and higher, or become perfect. But this simple thing, may your faith be strengthened, what did it mean? I did not criticize but I pondered and pondered upon the subject. And in the end I came to realize that no blessing is more valuable and important than this. For every blessing is attached to a conviction. Where there is no conviction there is nothing. The secret of healing, the mystery of evolving, the power of all attainments, and the way to spiritual realization, all come from the strengthening of that belief which is a conviction, so that nothing can ever change it.
We read in the Vadan, ‘Simplicity is the living beauty.’ People today have made life so complex that whatever one seeks after, one wants to find [it] in complexity. All things in life which have importance, beauty and value are simple; and simplest of all things is the Divine Truth.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Simplicity and Complexity )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Complexity is born of humankind, humankind loves complexities. This is due to the activity of the mind-mesh which splits truth into fragments, the shadows of which appear as facts. Not all the facts combined will present the Truth, nor can all facts be combined until the essence of Truth is discernible.
It is this perception of Unity, very simple in itself, very intelligible, yet quite unanalyzable, which is the natural aspect of the heart, characteristic of children and angels and possible in all souls who have escaped the network of the mind-mesh.