longer.blue

What if the purpose of spirituality isn't to find God somewhere outside ourselves but to recognize the divine presence both within us and all around us? Hazrat Inayat Khan offers a profound reflection on moving beyond separation toward a deeper connection with God, ourselves, and all of life. Perhaps true worship begins when we realize we were never truly separate. This is something many people never realize, and it creates so many issues in the world. -Tim Commentary by Hazrat Inayat Khan: When man is separated from God in his thought, his belief is of no use, his worship is of little use. God and man are like the two ends of one line. When a believer in God conceives of God as a separate entity and of man as a being separate from Him, he makes himself an exile, an exile from the kingdom of God. He holds fast to the form of God created by himself, and he does not reach the Spirit of God. However good and virtuous he has been in life, however religious in his actions, he has not fulfilled the purpose of his life. ... Those who think that God is not outside but only within are as wrong as those who believe that God is not within but only outside. In fact God is both inside and outside, but it is very necessary to begin by believing in that God outside. From our childhood we have learned everything outside. We learn what the eye is by looking at the eyes of others; everything we see in ourselves we have always learned from outside. So even in order to learn to see God we must begin by seeing God outside: as the Creator, the Judge, the Knower of all things, the forgiver; and when we have understood Him better, the next step is that the God that we have always seen outside we now also find within, and that completes our worship. If we have only found Him outside then we are His worshippers, but we remain separate from him and there is no communion, which is the purpose of life.