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Khan, Hazrat Inayat – The Art of Being and Becoming - On minding your own business
Identifier
013576
Type of Spiritual Experience
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A description of the experience
Hazrat Inayat Khan – The Art of Being and Becoming
It is wonderful that the root of every defect is a right tendency and it is the abuse of the right tendency that turns it into a defect. If we considered how little time we have to live on this earth, we would see that every moment of our life is precious, and that it should be given to something that is really worthwhile. When time is given to inquisitiveness, wanting to know about the affairs of others, one has wasted that time which could have been used for a much better purpose. Life has so many responsibilities and so many duties, and there is so much that one has to correct in oneself, so much that one has to undo in what one has done, and so much to attend to in one’s affairs to make one’s life right that it seems as if a person were intoxicated who leaves all his responsibilities and duties and occupies his mind and engages his ears in inquisitiveness.
Free will is given to enable one to attend to one’s own duties and affairs and to gain one’s own objects, and when that free will is used in trying to find out about others – the weaknesses of others, the lack of others, the faults of others – one certainly abuses free will. Sometimes a person is inquisitive because of his interest in the lives of others, but very often a person is inquisitive because it is his illness. He may have no interest in the matter at all; it is only because he wants to satisfy himself by hearing and knowing about others.
Self knowledge is the ideal of the philosophers, not the knowledge of the lives of others.
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There are many people who are outspoken, always ready to tell the truth in a way that is like hitting another person on the head, and who proudly support their frankness by saying ‘I do not mind if it makes anybody sorry or angry, I only tell the truth’. If the truth is as hard as a hammer may the truth never be spoken, may no one in the world follow truth