From Time To Time Ponder

Enemies Are Often Former Or Potential Friends Who Have Been Denied - Or Think That They Have Been Denied - Something.

The Main Problem Is That Most Commentators Are Accustomed To Thinking Of Spiritual Schools As 'systems', Which Are More Or Less Alike, And Which Depend Upon Dogma And Ritual: And Especially Upon Repetition And The Application Of Continual And Standardised Pressures Upon Their Followers.the Sufi Way, Except In Degenerate Forms Which Are Not To Be Classified As Sufic, Is Entirely Different From This.

One Can Give Or Withhold In A Manner Far More Effective, Sophisticated, Useful, Which Is Quite Invisible To People Who Think That Giving Or Withholding Is Done By External Assessment. If You Seek Some Mark Of Favour Or 'promotion', Know That You Are Not Ready For It. Progress Comes Through Capacity To Learn, And Is Irresistible. Nobody Can Stand Between You And Knowledge If You Are Fit For It.

When The Lion Had Eaten Its Fill, And The Jackals Had Taken Their Share, The Ants Came Along And Finished Up The Meat From The Bones Of The Haughty Stag.

Scholars Of The East And West Have Heroically Consecrated Their Whole Working Lives To Making Available, By Means Of Their Own Disciplines, Sufi Literary And Philosophical Material To The World At Large. In Many Cases They Have Faithfully Recorded The Sufis' Own Reiteration That The Way Of The Sufis Cannot Be Understood By Means Of The Intellect Or By Ordinary Book Learning.