In the beginning it is like your consciousness is expanding until it embraces the whole world, yet you are still standing on the shore. If you truly want to dive into the ocean, you must become less.
Fawzia Al-Rawi

Sufism can be described as a philosophy of the heart, as the path of love which enables us human beings to connect our 'small, personal world' with Unity. Sufism is neither from the East nor from the West, rather it is a human path which leads to freedom through understanding what we call the ego (in Sufism nafs – I, self).

The nafs is that which prevents us from using the opportunities we are given. At the same time, the nafs is also the key which enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves in the first place. On this path of ever-deepening knowledge and understanding, our major tool is love and, even more importantly, the practice of love – loving oneself, loving others and the world, loving all of creation and all the beings it carries.

In order to embed our small world into the big world, it is important for us to come closer to our own truth and eventually see ourselves as threads in one and the same carpet. For only after we have become a thread in the great carpet does the full meaning of each of our qualities become disclosed to us. The diverseness of the qualities of the threads and their various vibrations are all essential for the carpet.
It is vital for Sufis to develop this 'trust [...] that they are embedded in something greater than them, of which they are a part, and yet that this greater something lies in them too.'