If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

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.

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.

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.