awareness

Invoking the letters of God's Name without presence of mind is invocation of the tongue; invoking with presence of mind is invocation of the heart; and invoking with an absence of self-awareness because of absorption in the Invoked is the invocation of the Self - this is the hidden invocation!

Encompass with your mercy and compassion all animals and creatures. Do not say, "this is inanimate and has no awareness." Indeed, it does; it is you yourself who have no awareness! So let existence be as it is, and be merciful towards it with the mercifulness of the Creator in the midst of His creation.

All those among the Sufis who had no visible murshid (guide), that is, an earthly man like themselves and a contemporary, called themselves Uwaysis. One of the most famous was abu'l-Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1034), an Iranian Sufi, who left us the following saying: I am amazed at those disciples who declare that they require this or that master. You are perfectly well aware that I have never been taught by any man. God was my guide, though I have the greatest respect for all the masters.

God epiphanizes Himself to the soul according to the essence of that soul, which is at once physical and spiritual. Then the soul becomes aware that it sees God, but through Him, not through itself; it loves only Him, not through itself, but in such a way that it is He who loves Himself; it is not the soul which loves Him; it contemplates God in every being, but thanks to a gaze which is the divine gaze itself. It becomes aware that He loves no other than Himself; He is the Lover and the Beloved, He who seeks and He who is sought.

The Lord to his devotee: Love me, love me alone. Love yourself in me, in me alone. Attach yourself to me, No one is more inward than I. Others love you for their own sakes, I love you for yourself. And you, you flee from me. Dearly beloved! ... if you approach me, It is because I have approached you. I am nearer to you than yourself, Than your soul, than your breath. Who among creatures Would treat you as I do? I am jealous of you over you, I want you to belong to no other, Not even to yourself. Be mine, be for me as you are in me, Though you are not even aware of it.

Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.

It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live.

One watches people starting out in life quite adequately, handling life with active vigor, as they run, one after another, into experiences where something deeper than vigor is needed. Serious failure, for example. Some night in his lifetime everyone comes home to find a new guest there-disappointment. What he had set his heart on has gone. . . . If one is to come through difficult experiences unembittered, unspoiled, still a real person, one needs deep resources. . . . Not alone in such experiences as sorrow and failure does this need arise but in man's search for the indispensable spiritual requirements of a satisfying life - inner peace, for example, some serenity in the soul to come home to at night and to out from in the morning. Who does not need that? But no one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it. Peace is a margin of power around our daily need. Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves, so that our power is not so much in us as through us.

Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.