In the Aphorisms, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says, “Man is always journeying toward the truth. He is seeking, seeking, for in his heart is the love of that which is real.” It is a constant search that along the way brings us many disappointments, for like eager children we seize first one novelty and then another, thinking each time that we have finally found the real, the reliable. Sooner or later, though, we discover the other side of what we have grasped, an experience like seeing stage scenery, so magical in the evening performance, in the revealing, unflattering light of day. By trial and error we find that all names and forms are transient and limited, and that they can never fulfil our desire.

Therefore, an essential part of every seeker’s journey it to learn to put aside our infatuations, or at least to relegate them to the background, where they do not dominate the way we see the world. But the longer one treads the path, the more one will come to recognize that the worst obstacle to the light of truth, and the hardest to put aside, is our own self. We see our self in every picture, or as if in a mirror we see ourselves looking at every picture. In other words our presence intrudes on whatever we observe.

Some students, on recognising this, become stuck in a spiral of guilt. Our heart is seeking for the truth, and although we long to see it, wherever we look it is we ourselves who obscure the view. Therefore we may adopt various disciplines to try to reduce our profile, such as the virtues of modesty, humility, silence, abstinence, serving and caring for others, and so on. These fine qualities all allow some space for beauty to shine, but they can not fully erase the sense of ‘me’ – and when we discover this, the feeling of guilt increases, with the result that the seeker spends ever more time thinking about ‘self.’ We begin to feel too contaminated to approach the truth – although perhaps we hope to get there some day if we could only wash away the stains of ‘myself.’.

The remedy, easier to say than to accomplish, is to put all our attention on our ideal. If we completely focus our awareness there, then without realising it we will forget about the one who is looking. Instead of staring constantly and unhappily at the shadows, we could turn toward the sun and let its beauty wash our sight. To put it another way, instead of searching for a way to make our self disappear, we could turn to our Ideal and surrender at the feet of God. That is, after all, the virtue of making our ideal real. As it says in Gayan Alapas, “Make God a reality, and God will make you the truth.”