A recent post offered two short texts from Hazrat Inayat Khan on the subject of sympathy, a quality that we appreciate in others when it is directed towards us, but which we ourselves do not always show towards our neighbours.  There are so many disagreements and disputes in the world, and when we are not involved in them it is easy to say that everyone should try to be more sympathetic and make the world more harmonious–but sympathy depends upon understanding.  If we lack insight into the reasons for the behaviour of another person, it is difficult to be sympathetic, particularly if we find their actions inconvenient or painful.

That is why Hazrat Inayat speaks of sympathy awakening at a certain stage of development.  In the recent post, he says that when we come to the stage of ‘bewliderment’, “We begin to appreciate things more and sympathize more because so far we had walked on thorns and we did not feel them.” In this context, bewilderment means a very specific kind of confusion, the recognition that things are not as we understood them, that they are all inside out and upside down.  For a person deeply involved in the experiences of the world, for example, name and fame and material acquisition may all seem to be highly desirable, but as spiritual reality begins to dawn, one may see that such things usually cost far more than they are worth.

Much of the world, therefore, is ‘walking on thorns and not feeling them.’  When we begin to wake up and see how the needs of life and our responses to them have, to to speak, left our feet bleeding, it becomes possible to look at those around us and see their situation with compassion.  Indeed, as Hazrat Inayat points out, the wicked deserve still more sympathy, for they not only have to cope with all the same thorns that lie in everyone’s path, but they have to live in the atmosphere of their own wickedness as well.

The student should beware of false compassion, of course, or counterfeited sympathy, but when these feelings spring spontaneously from the heart, it is a precious blessing from Above.