There is a tendency which growingly manifests in a person advancing spiritually, and that tendency is overlooking*. At times the same tendency might appear as negligence, but in reality negligence is not overlooking; negligence is not looking. Overlooking in other words may be called rising above things. One has to rise in order to overlook; the one who stands beneath life, he cannot overlook, even if he wants to. Overlooking is a manner of graciousness, it is looking and at the same time not looking; it is to see and not take notice of seeing; it is to be hurt or harmed or disturbed by something, and yet not mind it. It is an attribute of nobleness of nature. It is a sign of souls who are tuned to a higher key.

One who troubles about small things is small;
the soul who thinks of great things is great.

One may ask, is it practical? I may not always be able to say it is practical, but I mean it all the same, for the one who overlooks will also realise the practicality of it. It may be that he will realise that in the long run, after he has met with a great many disadvantages of it. Nevertheless, that is well which ends well. Very often, by overlooking it costs less than by taking notice of something that could well be overlooked. In life there are things which matter and there are things which do not matter, and as one advances through life one finds there are many things that do not matter; one could just as well overlook them. The one who will take notice of everything that comes his way, he will waste his time on a journey which will take all his life to accomplish. While climbing the mountain of life, the purpose of which is to reach its top, if a person will trouble about everything that comes along, he will perhaps never be able to reach the top; he will always be troubling about everything at the bottom of it.

No soul, after realising that life is only four days on this earth, will trouble about little things. He will trouble about things which really matter. In the strife of little things a person loses the opportunity of accomplishing great things in life. One who troubles about small things is small; the soul who thinks of great things is great.

Overlooking is the first lesson of forgiveness. This tendency comes out of love and sympathy, for when one hates, one takes notice of every little fault, but when one loves another, one naturally overlooks the faults, and very often tries to turn the faults of the loved one into merits. Life has endless things which suggest beauty, and numberless things which suggest ugliness; there is no end of merits and no end of faults, and according to one’s evolution in life so is one’s outlook on life. The higher one has risen, the wider the horizon before his sight. 

It is the tendency to sympathize which brings a person the desire to overlook, and it is the analytical tendency which weighs and measures and takes notice of everything. “Judge ye not,” said Christ, “lest ye be judged.” The more one thinks of this lesson, the deeper it goes in his heart, and one learns from it to try to overlook all that does not fit in with his own ideas as to how things ought to be in life, until he comes to the stage of realisation where the whole life seems to him one sublime vision of the immanence of God.

*Among the many good qualities that a student can develop, the Sufis include ‘overlooking’, often referred to by the Persian word ‘darguza.’.