49. The God-Ideal, Part 8
Religious Gatheka
By Hazrat Inayat Khan
The reason why the soul seeks for the God-Ideal is that it is dissatisfied with all that momentarily satisfies it. All beauty and goodness and greatness which man attributes to God are something he admires and seeks through life. He admires these things in others and strives to attain them for himself; and when, at the end of examination, he finds that all that he touches as good, great or beautiful falls short of that perfection which is his soul’s seeking, he than raises his eyes towards the sky and seeks the One Who has beauty, goodness and greatness, and that is God.
The one who does not seek for God, he has, at the end of his journey of illusion, a disappointment. For through the whole journey he did not find the perfection of beauty, goodness and greatness on the earth and he neither believed nor expected to meet such an ideal in Heaven. All disappointments, which are the natural outcome of this life of illusion, disappear when a person has touched the God-Ideal, for what one seeks after in life one finds in God.
Now the question is: all beauty, goodness and greatness, however small and limited, can be found on the earth, but where can the same be found in the perfection called God? This may be answered so that what is first necessary is the belief that there is such a Being as God, in Who goodness, beauty and greatness is perfect. In the beginning it will seem nothing but a belief, but in time, if the belief is kept in sincerity and faith, that belief will become like the egg of the phoenix, out of which the magic bird is born. It is the birth of God, which is the birth of the soul. Every soul seeks for happiness and after running after all objects which, for the moment seem to give happiness, finds out that nowhere is there perfect happiness except in God. This happiness cannot come by merely believing in God. Believing is a process. By this process the God within is awakened and made living.
It is the living of God, which gives happiness. When one sees the injustice, the falsehood, the unfriendliness of human nature and to what degree this nature develops and that it culminates in tyranny of which individuals and the multitude become victims, there seems to be only one Source and that is the center of the whole life, which is God, in whom there is the place of safety from it all and the source of peace, which is the longing of every soul.
Daily Reflections on the following points in Religious Gatheka 49
Point One: “The one who does not seek for God, he has, at the end of his journey of illusion, a disappointment.”
Contemplation: It is our seeking/yearning that makes God a Reality.
Point Two: “All disappointments, which are the natural outcome of this life of illusion, disappear when a person has touched the God-Ideal, for what one seeks after in life one finds in God.”
Contemplation: Do we understand this level of love displayed outwardly through indifference, or do our own expectations lead to disappointment?
Point Three: “It is the living of God, which gives happiness. – This happiness cannot come by merely believing in God. Believing is a process. By this process the God within is awakened and made living.”
Contemplation: (From the Gayan, Hazrat Inayat Khan) “True spirituality is not a fixed faith or belief; it is the ennobling of the soul by rising above the barriers of material life.”
Learn More
