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# Life, an Opportunity: Inayat Khan's Uplifting Teaching
- URL: https://sufimohamed.com/life-an-opportunity/
- Published: 2026-02-10T11:22:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-02-10T11:22:17.000Z
- Description: We have spoiled ourselves. We want more and more, yet we make it so difficult to get what we want, that in the end we cannot get it at all.
- Author: Sufi Mohamed
- Tags: Spirituality

*This piece presents teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), the Indian musician and Sufi teacher who brought Sufism to the West. His lectures on this theme are collected in* The Alchemy of Happiness*, volume 6 of* The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan *(Inayat Khan, 2015).*

## Life, an opportunity

Domestic life seems to be declining every day. Life is becoming more and more a hotel life, or are even capable of appreciating it, for they do not know it.

When we go to the theatre we find the plays more and more limited in scope; there is no depth, no height, no ideal.

Whenever a person brings something higher he is told that it is not wanted. It seems that education, higher ideals, everything is become, is becoming commercialised.

If life were not so complex there would have been no need of war and of such difficulties we have today.

> We have spoiled ourselves. We want more and more, yet we make it so difficult to get what we want, that in the end we cannot get it at all.

The amount of study with which a youth is loaded is the greatest wrong done to him today.

Today there seems to be a kind of uniformity in all youths.

Because of this uniform education the hchild does not get the nourishment its soul which it needs to become that for which it was born.

> Those who understand these ideas realise that youth is the greatest opportunity that comes in life, it never comes again.

There is a constant yearning of the soul to experience happiness, and instead of that it becomes connected with what one calls pleasure.

Pleasure belongs to sensation and happiness to exhaltation

> Pleasure is only a suggestion; happiness is reality

The soul cannot be satisfied by the knowledge one gathers from books by learning, or by the study of outside things.

Knowledge of outside things does not last.

**Middle Age** is the time when one has:

1. Gathered knowledge
2. Experienced Life
3. Gone through joy and sorrow
4. Learnt lessons from one's profession
5. Learnt from one's occupation
6. Learnt from one's home

\-- From every side of life.

**Old age** is the time when man is the cord of his whole life; whether he has been sympathetic, kind, or whether he has been. One can read it in his face, in his features, in his atmosphere.

He has a greater opportunity to inspire, to bless, and to serve those who want his service or who want to be directed. He can show them a better way of looking at life.

> If man knew the power of feeling, and realised that the power of feeling can reach anywhere and penetrate anything, he could achieve whatever he might wish.

Man is as poor as he is limited, as troubled as he is; yet there is nothing in this world which could not be accomplished by man if he only knew what thought can do.

## References

Inayat Khan, H. (2015). *The Sufi message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: Vol. 6\. The alchemy of happiness*. Motilal Banarsidass.

## Related reading

- [Man, the Master of His Destiny: Hazrat Inayat Khan](https://sufimohamed.com/man-the-master-of-his-destiny/)
- [Life, a Continual Battle: Inayat Khan's Powerful Lesson](https://sufimohamed.com/life-a-continual-battle/)
- [Meaning of Life: Inayat Khan's Remarkable Teaching](https://sufimohamed.com/meaning-of-life/)

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