Here is another excerpt from Hazrat Inayat Khan’s examination of the law of beneficence in all our relationships. The most recent post, dealing with beneficence toward our enemies, is available here. We tend to think that our relationship with God is a one-way street; The Divine gives us all that we have, and when we have nothing of our own, what could we possibly give in return? And yet, as Hazrat Inayat explains here, giving our love to God expands the heart and is most healing and purifying to us.
God is the ideal that raises mankind to the utmost reach of perfection. As man considers and judges his dealings with man in his conscience, so the real worshipper of God considers his dealings with God. If he has helped anybody, if he has been kind to anybody, if he has made sacrifices for anybody, he does not look for appreciation or return for his doing so to the people to whom he has done good; for he considers that he has done it for God, and therefore, his account is with God, not with those with whom he has dealt. He does not care even if, instead of praising, they blame him; for in any case he has done it for God, who is the best judge and the knower of all things.
There is no ideal that can raise the moral standard higher than the God-ideal, although love is the root of all and God is the fruit of this. Love’s expansion and love’s culmination and love’s progress all depend upon the God-ideal. How much a man fears his friend, his neighbor, when he does something that might offend him whom he loves, whom he respects; and yet how narrow is his goodness when it is only for one person or for certain people! Imagine if he had the same consideration for God, then he would be considerate everywhere and in dealing with all people; as in a verse of a Sufi which says, “Everywhere I go I find Thy sacred dwelling-place; and whichever side I look I see Thy beautiful face, my Beloved.”
Love for God is the expansion of the heart, and all actions that come from the lover of God are virtues; they cannot be otherwise. There is a different outlook on life when the love of God has filled a man’s heart. The lover of God will not hate anyone; for he knows that by doing so he will hate the Creator by hating His creation. He cannot be insincere, he cannot be unfaithful; for he will think that to be faithful and sincere to mankind is to be faithful and sincere to God. You can always trust the lover of God, however impractical or however lacking in cleverness he may appear to be, for simply to hold strongly in mind the thought of God purifies the soul of all bitterness, and gives man a virtue that he could obtain nowhere else and by no other means.