Mastery lies not merely in stilling the mind, but in directing it towards whatever point you desire.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The mind of an average person may be pictured as an unruly horse that jumps and kicks and throws anyone that tries to ride it. Masters of the world are those who have mastered themselves, and mastery lies in the control of the mind. If the mind became your obedient servant, the whole world is at your service.
( from Githa, Series II: Part 2 – Amaliyyat 1 (Psychology), Paper 1 – To Develop Psychic Power,
Concentration to Increase Power [ unpublished ] )
Those who do not direct their own minds lack mastery. … If there is any self of which one can say, ‘This is humanity’, it is the mind. The three Sanskrit words Mana, Manu, Manusha show that “man” or wo”man” or hu”man”ity is the mind, is the product of the mind, and is also the controller of the activity of mind. If we do not control our minds, we are not masters but slaves. It lies with our own mind whether we shall be masters, or whether we shall be slaves. We are slaves when we neglect to be masters; we are masters if we care to be masters.
Mastery lies not merely in stilling the mind, but in directing it towards whatever point we desire, in allowing it to be active as far as we wish, in using it to fulfill our purpose, in causing it to be still when we want to still it. Those who have come to this have created their heaven within themselves; they have no need to wait for a heaven in the hereafter, for they have produced it within their own minds now.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Stilling the Mind )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The first process is to free the mind from influence from outside forces, and the next is to free the will from control by the mind. This is accomplished in meditation. At that point the mind is asleep and needs to be awakened. This is done by the growth of the heart faculties.
What is meant when Hazrat Inayat Khan says “towards whatever point you desire” is that ideal which can be persistently pursued. For this purpose, the Sufis practice concentration. But this deep desire is of the heart and is possible when the will and the heart direct the activities of mind.
We can see these stages in Zikr, the first part of which declares, “La Ilaha” — the meaning of which is that there is no divinity in things, in created objects. This part of Zikr frees mind from illusion and stills it. The next part of Zikr, “El Allahu” — is the positive portion which points directly to God. By it one directs the mind toward the supreme desire and so toward any other beneficial desire.