“Like a Stream Running Into the Ocean”

My exploration of – and walking on – the mystical path of love known as the Sufi Way continues with my sharing this evening of a second excerpt from The Inner Life (1997), a collection of three essential writings by the great Sufi musician and teacher Inayat Khan (1882-1927). This excerpt is from the writing entitled “Sufi Mysticism.”

NOTE: For Part 1, click here.

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There is one God and one truth, one religion and one mysticism; call it Sufism or Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, whatever you wish. As God cannot be divided, so mysticism cannot be divided.

. . . The God of the mystic is to be found in his own heart; the truth of the mystic is beyond words. People argue and debate about things of little importance, but mysticism is not to be discussed. People want to talk in order to know, and then they forget it all. Very often it is not the one who knows who talks so much, but the one who wants to know. The one who knows but does not discuss is the mystic. She knows that happiness is in her own heart; but to put this into words is like putting the ocean into a drop of water.

. . . People strive for many different things in this world and last of all they seek the spiritual path. And there are some indifferent ones who say, “There is a long life before us and when the time comes that I must awake I shall wake up.”

But the mystic knows that the spiritual path [the inner life] is the one thing he must attend to, that all other things come after that. It is of the greatest importance in his life.

Should he, by working for realization of God, neglect his duties in the world? It is not necessary. There is nothing that a mystic need renounce in order to have the realization of life. She only needs to attach the greatest importance to what is most important in life.

The life of a mystic is meditative, but to him meditation is like the winding of a clock. It is wound for a moment, and all day long it goes by itself. He does not have to think about it all day long. He does not trouble about it. . . . The moments of meditation set the whole mechanism in running order, like a stream running into the ocean. They do not in the least keep the mystic from her duty; they only bless every word she speaks with the thought of God.

In all the mystic thinks and does there is the perfume of God, which becomes a healing and a blessing. And if one asks how a mystic, who has become so kind and helpful, gets on among the crowd in everyday life, since the rough edges of everyday life rubbing against him must necessarily make him heartsore, the answer is that they certainly do, and the heart of the mystic is even more sore than that of anybody else. Where there is only kindness and patience all the thorns will come. But just as the diamond by being cut becomes brilliant, so does the heart; and when the heart has been sufficiently cut it becomes a flame which illuminates not only the life of the mystic, but also that of others.

– Inayat Khan
From The Inner Life
Shambhala, 1997
pp. 65-69

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

INAYAT KHAN
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Sufi Message
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan on Mysticism
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan and the Fountain of Happiness Within
• Inayat Khan and the Alchemy of Happiness
• A Light That Will Always Shine
• A Living Light
• A Perpetual Fire Within
• One Wisdom
• Awakening and Turning


THE SUFI PATH
• A Precise Metaphysical Claim
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• The Gorgeous One
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan and the Winged Heart
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrender
• The Journey Home


MEDITATION
• Meditation and the Life of Nonviolence
• Marianne Williamson on Cultivating Stillness
• Diarmuid O’Murchú on the Human Capacity to Meditate
• A Season of Listening
• Eckhart Tolle on Silence and Stillness
• Eckhart Tolle on Going Beyond the Thinking Mind
• Eckhart Tolle on Being “Conscious Without Thought”
• To Be Still
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Today I Will Be Still
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• Time to Go Inwards
• Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
• I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
• A Sacred Pause
• Aligning with the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• Keeping the Spark Alive
• Seven Principles for Living with Deep Intention
• Thoughts on Christian Meditation – Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
• Happy Birthday, Mum! (includes Thích Nhất Hạnh’s thoughts on walking meditation)