"Bowl of Saki'...

Everyone's Pursuit is according to one's evolution.
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Hazrat Samuel L. Lewis:
This means pursuit of pleasure, pursuit of wealth, pursuit of knowledge, pursuit of God, pursuit of love. What is the basis of pursuit? It is that the soul has an unsatisfied longing; no matter what the path in life, where there is pursuit it shows the soul has an unsatisfied longing.
The sage knows the direction his pursuit should take, the average man does not; so the sage comes to satisfaction and finds peace of mind, heart and soul, which are foreign to the natures of the generality.


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We start our lives trying to be teachers; it is very hard to learn to be a pupil.
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Hazrat Samuel L. Lewis:
Because being a pupil is not a learning, it is a surrender. Until self is surrendered one cannot learn from another. So long as one holds on to self, the door is shut before all other selves, whether it is the nufs of man, animal, plant, rock, thought of anything in the heavens above or in the earth below.
All this is shut out beyond a certain point. When this nufs is restrained, all vibrations convey to the heart all that the heart needs. This is the beginning of being a pupil, yet after years of meditation and prayer, one does not always attain to the heart condition or sustain it. At the same time, pain or love or sorrow can bring it all in an instant.
nufs...
http://www.rosanna.com/sufiwritings/glossary/glossary.htm

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Untill the heart is empty, it cannot receive the knowledge of God
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Hazrat Samuel L. Lewis:
Now the condition of the heart is this, that it carry nothing. It cannot contain two things, but the unity which it holds in love may be simple or complex, very large or greater than all the universe. This is the explanation of the teaching of Upanishad. In the Upanishads, Atman often means the same as heart-essence, and this heart-essence grasps both great and small, but whatever it holds, it holds nothing else. For that reason Sufis practice heart-concentration, first to restore to the heart its faculty of grasping and then to prepare the heart for grasping that which alone does it good; that is to say, to grasp God, to hold God. All Sufi practices have this object in view.