Many spend a lifetime trying to remake the world, only to realise that the sole transformation within our power was ourselves all along. Sufi mystic Bayazid’s candid reflection delivers a poignant warning against delaying self-examination until time has run out.
“Bayazid, a Sufi mystic, has written in his autobiography, “When I was young, I thought and I said to God, and in all my prayers this was the base: ‘Give me energy so that I can change the whole world.’ Everybody thought I was weird. I was a revolutionary and I wanted to change the face of the earth.
“When I became a little more mature, I started praying: ‘This seems to be too much. Life is going out of my hands – almost half of my life is gone and I have not changed a single person, and the whole world is too much.’ So I said to God, ‘My family will be enough. Let me change my family.
“And when I became old,” says Bayazid, “I realised that even the family is too much, and who am I to change them? Then I realised that if I can change myself that will be enough, more than enough. I prayed to God, ‘Now I have come to the right point. At least allow me to do this: I would like to change myself.”
“God replied, ‘Now there is no time left. You should have asked for this in the beginning. Then there was a possibility.’”
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Bayazid Bastami (804 – 874 CE) was a Persian Sufi mystic born in Bastam in northern Iran. He had great influence on Sufi mysticism and is considered to be one of the important early teachers of Sufi Islam. Bayazid is celebrated for his radical devotion, humility and intense pursuit of spiritual truth. Known for his paradoxical sayings and uncompromising inner journey, he emphasised direct experience of the Divine over mere intellectual knowledge. In stories about him, Bayazid often appears as a sharp observer of human nature, using simple encounters and striking insights to reveal deeper truths about listening, ego, and awakening.