By our thoughts we have prepared for ourselves the happiness or unhappiness we experience.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Fighting with another makes war, but struggling with one’s self brings peace.
All our possessions, all that we collect in life, all these things which we shall have to leave one day are transitory; but that which we have created in our thought, in our mind, that lives. A person thinks, ‘Some day I should like to build a factory.’ At this time they have no money, no knowledge, no capability; but a thought came, ‘Some day I should like to build a factory.’ Then they think of something else. Perhaps years pass, but that thought has been working constantly through a thousand minds, and a thousand sources prepare for them that which they once desired. If we could look back to all we have thought of at different times, we would find that the line of fate or destiny, Kismet as it is called in the East, is formed by our thought. Thoughts have prepared for us that happiness or unhappiness which we experience. The whole of mysticism is founded on this.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter 17 – Mental Creation )
Joy, sorrow, love, all depend on our thought, on the activity of our mind. If we are depressed, if we are in despair, it is still the work of our mind; our mind has prepared that for us. If we are joyful and happy, and all things are pleasant, that also has been prepared for us by our mind. It is only when our mind works without control that unhappiness, sorrow, trouble, pain, or whatever we experience comes without our intention. No one could wish to create hell for themselves; all would create heaven for themselves if they could; and yet how many allow their minds to create these things for them, regardless of their own intention.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden, 16 – Stilling the Mind )
‘The present is the reflection of the past, and the future is the re-echo of the present.’ Destiny is not what is already made. Destiny is what we are making. Very often fatalists think that we are in the hands of destiny, driven in whatever direction in life destiny wills; but in point of fact we are the masters of our destiny, especially from the moment we begin to realize this fact. … We are responsible for our success and failure, for our rise and fall. And it is we who bring these about either knowingly or unknowingly.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
When there is no attachment to things or thoughts, happiness is the natural condition. Mind may begin by selecting conditions under which there is a greater relative amount of happiness, and as soon as it does this, the other conditions have a lesser amount of happiness. This creates pain, suffering, and longing, and this longing is never satisfied until the heart is open.
Heaven and hell are one and the same, but the reactions to the experiences are different. Artist, scientist, artisan, and musician all are agents of good in the world, but if each had to work in the place of the other, instead of finding beauty they would find misery. This shows that mind is the root-seat of these various conditions of happiness or unhappiness.