It is the sincere devotees who know best how to humble themselves before God.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
There are many different feelings which have an influence upon us, and which give a feeling of joy, of exaltation, but there is no sentiment greater or more effective than the feeling of bringing one’s faults and weaknesses before God to ask for pardon. To become conscious of one’s shortcomings, to be sorry for them, to repent of them, and to ask God’s forgiveness in all humility, no ethics, no philosophy can give a greater joy than this. It is the sincere devotee of God who knows best what feeling it is to humble oneself before God. The proud one, ignorant of the greatness of God, of God’s All-Sufficient power, does not know what is this exaltation that raises the soul from earth to heaven. To be really sorry for one’s errors is like opening the gates of heaven.
( from Unpublished papers from the Nekbakht Foundation Archives: Prayer )
The customs existing in all parts of the world of bowing and bending and prostrating are all devoted to the One Being, who alone deserves it, and no one else. There is beauty in these customs. Humans are the most egoistic beings in creation. We keep ourselves veiled from God, the perfect Self within, by the veils of our imperfect selves, which have formed our false egos. But by the extreme humility with which we stand before God and bow and bend and prostrate ourselves before the Almighty Being, we make the highest point of our presumed being, the head, touch the earth where our feet are, and thus in time we wash off the black stains of our false ego, and the Light of Perfection gradually manifests. Only then do we stand face to face with our God, the idealized Deity, and when the ego is absolutely crushed, then God remains within and without, in both planes, and none else exists.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume IX – The Unity of Religious Ideals, Part I: Religion )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Sincerity is spiritual humility. No one can say, “I am humble,” for any expression “I am” precludes humility. Humility says, “Thou art,” and it does not qualify or posit anything. It loses itself by itself.