"You are not alone repeating the wazifa. You are participating in a cosmic act whereby God - or the universe - is discovering Him/Herself in your discovery of God - or the universe - in yourself. So, without that connection to God the wazifa is just an auto-suggestion.

"You can always imagine a quality larger, more wonderful than the qualities you have imagined so far. Compassion, for example, or truth, or whatever. But these qualities are ascribed to God and not to us. They are borrowed by us, let us say. So it is discovering God predicated by a quality and then another quality, and consequently awakening the quality in oneself."—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
96V3-23 Tape 05

"The Sufis say the universe is discovering itself by actuating itself as me. Further, there is the act whereby I discover the universe in me. So you see there's an interaction.

"What this being is revealing to you is now the qualities of His/Her being. It could be compassion. It could be splendor. It could be truthfulness. It could be joy. It could be peace. It could be all the qualities that you can imagine: greatness, subtlety, the judge, all those qualities.

"He/She is really revealing Him/Herself to you by you, but not by your form. Think of that then do the wazaif. As you repeat the wazaif and before you start repeating the wazaif try to get clear in your mind that is what is happening. You are not developing a quality, a quality is being revealed to you."—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
97V08-17 Tape 10


About the calligraphic heart and wings:
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Each of the different Sufi orders have an emblematic calligraphy called a "tughra" formed out of the name of their founding patron saint and often done up in the shape of something with which they identify. The words in a tughra follow the formula Ya Hazrat-i, the saint's name, and the eulogistic phrase Qadusa Allah Sirrahu.

The winged heart is an old Sufi symbol from India and was chosen by Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan as the seal of the Sufi Order of the West at its founding in 1910. This winged heart tughra features "Ya Hazrat-i Inayat" in the wings in mirror image (right-side-out is on the left) and "Qadusa Allah Sirrahu" making up the heart.

Hazrat ("The Presence") is an honorific referring to the still-living Presence of great saints who have passed from the Earth. Qadusa Allah Sirrahu means "God sanctify his Secret." There is a tradition within the Sufi way that a teacher's barakat does not become fully available until after they have become unburdened of their physical bodies. We could say that the whole phrase might be poetically translated: "Behold: the Presence of Inayat. May his message be spread."