If the world of humans can be thought of as a single body, there are many places where it aches; redness and painful swelling are so common, it is difficult these days to find healthy tissue. The world is throbbing with a sort of auto-immune illness in which organs and cells, instead of cooperating, fight and try to destroy each other. In this condition, a word that frequently arises is ‘respect,’ as in: “How could they do that? Have they no respect?”

The sentence suggests that we commonly become conscious of respect by its absence. Indeed, it is easy to observe that people walking on a crowded street may be unaware if someone politely gives way to them, but may react with annoyance when someone heedlessly blocks their path. For the average person, perceived lack of respect is a predictable kindling point for conflict.

Naturally, it is not important to a Sufi if others fail to show respect, but to learn to offer respect to all who come our way is an ideal that may take a lifetime to realise. Almost inevitably, when the subject of respect arises in spiritual conversation, there is some uneasiness; we can see well enough that respect is due to ‘good’ people, the ones with whom we feel some affinity, even when we disagree with them, but what about the ‘bad’ ones? How can we be expected to respect someone who — (here name your own version of diabolical conduct)? The list of disrespectful behaviours is as long as time, but at the top of the list, it seems, is failing to show us sufficient respect.

Rather than struggle one by one with the infinite obstacles to respecting others, though, it is more useful to ask: from where does respect arise? And the answer is: from self-awareness. In the Gayan, there are two revealing phrases about respect. One, in Chalas, says:
Believe in your own ideal first
if you wish others to believe in it;
unless you respect your ideal yourself,
others will not respect it.
And in Gayan, Suras, we find:
If you wish people to obey you, you must learn to obey yourself;
if you wish people to believe you, you must learn to believe yourself;
if you wish people to respect you, you must learn to respect yourself;
if you wish people to trust you, you must learn to trust yourself.

This tells us that if we have difficulty in respecting another, it may not be because of the limitations of that person, but because we have not yet truly learned with it means to respect ourself. Every person in the world has limitations; therefore respect cannot be dependent upon being free from defects. Rather, it comes from something deeper–and when we have begun to glimpse that depth in our own being, then we may see it in others as well. And that is the only balm that can heal the world of its wounds.