A Light That Will Always Shine

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Lenten series continues with a third excerpt from The Awakening of the Human Spirit by Inayat Khan. (For the first installment of this series and an explanation for why I chose this book, click here.)

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Ripening is a desirable result, and it is the aim of every object in life to ripen and to develop; therefore in the awakening of the soul one may recognize the fulfillment of life’s purpose. . . . The moment the soul has awakened, music makes an appeal to it, poetry touches it, words move it, art has an influence upon it. It no longer is a sleeping soul; it is awake and it begins to enjoy life to a fuller extent.

It is this awakening of the soul that is mentioned in the Bible: unless the soul is born again, it will not enter the kingdom of heaven. For the soul to be born again means that it is awakened after having come on earth; and entering the kingdom of heaven means entering this world in which we are now standing, the same kingdom that turns into heaven as soon as the point of view has changed. Is it not interesting and most wonderful to think that the same earth that we walk on is earth to one person and heaven to another? And it is still more interesting to notice that it is we who change it from earth to heaven. This change comes not by study or by anything else but the changing of our point of view. I have known people who seek after truth, study books about it, even write many books about philosophy and theology themselves, and in the end they were standing in the same place as before. That shows that all our outer efforts are excuses; there is only one thing that brings one face to face with reality, and that is the awakening of the soul. . . . It is not for the outer world to help us understand life better, it is we ourselves who should help ourselves.

Then there is a further awakening, a continuation of what I have called the awakening of the soul. And the sign of this awakening is that the awakened person throws a light, the light of the soul, upon every creature and every object, and sees that object, person, condition in this light. It is their own soul that becomes a torch in their hand; it is their own light that illuminates their path. It is just like directing a searchlight into dark corners that one could not see before, and the corners become clear and illuminated; it is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand before, like seeing through people with x-rays when they were a riddle before.

As soon as life becomes clear to the awakened soul, it shows another phase of manifestation, and this is that every aspect of life communicates with this person. Life is communicative, the soul is communicative, but they do not communicate until the soul is awakened. Once a soul is awakened, it begins to communicate with life.

. . . Those who are awakened become guiding lights not only for themselves but also for others. And by their light, often unknowingly, their presence itself helps to make the most difficult problems easy. This makes us realize the fact that [each one of us] is light, as the scriptures have said, a light whose origin, whose source, is divine. And when this light is kindled, then life becomes quite different. . . . [Awakened ones speak] a universal language, a language of vibrations, a language of feeling, a language that touches the innermost sense. . . . [They are] able to communicate with the innermost being of another person [because they know] how to communicate with themselves, their awakened selves.

The personality of an awakened soul becomes different from every other personality. It becomes more magnetic, for it is the living person who has magnetism; a corpse has no magnetism. It is the living who bring joy, and therefore it is the awakened soul who is joyous.

And never for one moment think, as many do, that a spiritual person is a sorrowful, dried up, long-faced person. Spirit is joy, spirit is life; and when that spirit has awakened, all the joy and pleasure that exist are there. As the sun takes away all darkness, so spiritual light removes all worries, anxieties, and doubts. If a spiritual awakening were not so precious, then what would be the use of seeking it in life?

A treasure that nobody can take away from us, a light that will always shine and will never be extinguished – that is spiritual awakening, and it is the fulfillment of life’s purpose.

– Inayat Khan
Excerpted from The Awakening of the Human Spirit
Omega Press, 1982
pp. 118-122

NEXT:
A Living Light


NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “Echoes of the Divine” from the YouTube channel Blueberry Meditation. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.






See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

AWAKENING
• For Acclaimed Songwriter, Activist and Humanitarian Buffy Sainte-Marie, the World is Always Ripening
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Peng Roden Her
• Awakening
• An Extraordinary, Precious Opportunity
• The Task at Hand
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Shining On . . . Into the New Year

THE SUFI PATH
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• The Sufi Way
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• Bismillah
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

INAYAT KHAN
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness

THE MYSTIC JESUS
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Jesus and the Art of Letting Go
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Called to the Field of Compassion to Be Both Prophet and Mystic
• Mysticism and Revolution

THE DIVINE PRESENCE
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III

THE LENTEN JOURNEY
• Blessing the Dust
• “This Beloved Quickened Dust”
• Ash Wednesday Reflections
• The Ashes of Our Martyrs
• Lent: A Season Set Apart
• A Lenten Resolution
• Lent: A Time to Fast and Feast
• “Here I Am!” – The Lenten Response
• Let Today Be the Day
• Pope Francis on Lenten Fasting
• “The Turn”: A Lenten Meditation by Lionel Basney
• Lent: A Summons to Live Anew
• Now Is the Acceptable Time
• Lent With Henri
• Waking Dagobert
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 1)
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 2)
• Move Us, Loving God

Recommended Off-site Link:
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024).

Opening image: Artist unknown.
Image 2: A portrait of Inayat Khan (circa. 1914).