How do you receive a visitor in your home? The answer depends very much on your relationship with the person – a family member, near or distant, a friend, a colleague or a stranger. In any case, you will probably feel a duty of hospitality, and put some effort into making the guest feel welcome. You might offer refreshment – anything from a glass of water to a sumptuous meal – and you will probably try to hide the most obvious traces of self-indulgence and neglect that we comfortably overlook when we are alone.

In one of the Aphorisms, Hazrat Inayat Khan says, Many seem wide awake to the life without, but asleep to the life within; and although the chamber of the heart is continually visited by the hosts of heaven, they do not know their heart, for they are not there. In the Gayan Boulas, we also find this saying : The human heart is the home of the soul, and upon this home the comfort and power of the soul depend. The image, then, is of the hosts of heaven, meaning, we may suppose, great numbers of angels or other heavenly beings of light, continually entering our home, while we are too absorbed in the material world around us to notice their arrival.

This contradicts the usual assumption that our ‘inner space’ is private. We think we are able to conceal our thoughts and feelings, but it is not so. The walls are imaginary; we go about surrounded by a cloud of our own making, communicating moods and matters of which we ourselves are often unaware, a cloud that spreads much further than we suppose. Our ignorance leaves us unhappy, though – how could we ever be at peace if we do not even know where we live? The ‘life without’ of which Pir-o-Murshid Inayat speaks provokes interest but it can never satisfy us; we can never really feel at home there.

To take up residence in our home, we have to find the door and unlock it (many will remember the story of Nasruddin looking for the key under the lamp-post instead of near his house) and the surest way to open the heart is through the unavoidable pain of love; gentler treatment only lulls us to slumber, whereas the sharp and restless aches of longing and disappointment make sleep impossible.

And once we find our way inside, we could consider that we have a responsibility to make our home fit for company. Just as we decorate our outer home with colours, images and objects, we could make an effort to beautify the home of the soul. But how?

One form of contemplation is to say, “This is not my heart; this is the altar of God.” In different traditions, it is common to place an offering on an altar. The most appropriate offering is whatever we value, and since in this instance the altar is a living one, we could ask the heart itself what would please it most. Without doubt the heart will reply : Beauty! Therefore we should endeavour to keep away all that is unpleasant, and guard in the chamber of the heart only beauty that uplifts us; then we will be happy to share our home with honoured guests.