Sufism

Bayazid said he sought God for thirty years and found that God had sought him first

Bayazid's confession inverts the ordinary picture of spiritual effort: decades of striving turn out to have been a response to a search God had already begun.

According to Attar's entry on him, Bayazid Bastami spent thirty years in disciplined search for God before realizing his own seeking was preceded, and made possible, by God's search for him. This teaching relocates the initiative in the mystical relationship: rather than human effort earning divine attention, divine attention is what enables and sustains the human effort in the first place. The saying works as a corrective to spiritual pride - even thirty years of rigorous asceticism are recast as a gift received rather than an achievement earned. It echoes a broader theme in Bayazid's teaching that the ego's activity, however devout, is ultimately dwarfed by God's initiating grace.

Tadhkirat al-Awliya

Written about in

• What Sufism says about love

  Thirty years of disciplined searching end with Bayazid saying the search was not his idea. The order is the whole content of the saying: effort is an answer to something, not the start of it.