The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan

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Now coming to the first mystery mentioned above, namely that man's journey towards spiritual ideal can be pictured as a cross: in the first place man's ego, man's self is his enemy and stands as a hindrance to his progress. Feelings such as pride, conceit, selfishness, jealousy, envy and contempt are all feelings which hurt others and which destroy one's own life making it full of the misery which springs from that selfish personal feeling, that ego of man. The more egoistic, the more conceited he is, the more miserable a life he has in the world, the more he makes the lives of others miserable. It seems that this ego, which in Sufi terms is called nafs, is a natural development in man's life or heart. The more he knows of the world, the more egoistic he becomes; the more he understands and experiences the world, the more avaricious he becomes.


 
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