Glimpses: The Appropriate Time

Although Hazrat Inayat Khan devoted his life to helping people onward on the inner path, he also made it clear that very little can be said about one’s spiritual experience; the deeper the insight, the less it can be imprisoned in words.  Indeed, elsewhere he speaks of his perplexity when some westerners asked him intrusive and unanswerable questions, such as ‘Are you illuminated? Are you a Master?’  Nevertheless, in this small anecdote he gives a glimpse into his own journey, and offers us hope, as well, that all comes in its own time. In the often quoted saying, “God’s delay is not His denial.”

Once I put to music a verse of an inspired poet of Persia, and I sang it with great joy, for the words had a beautiful meaning. Yet at the same time I always felt that the verse had a meaning beyond the apparent one that I did not understand.  I had a distinct feeling that something was sealed and hidden there.

And after fifteen years it happened, when my mind was searching for a simile for a certain revelation, that a voice came, bringing it to my mind. There was no end to my joy in opening the seal which had been closed for fifteen years!

For everything there is an appointed time; and when that time comes it is revealed. That is why, although on one hand we may be eager to attain to a certain revelation, yet on the other hand  we must have patience to wait for the moment of its coming.

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