Alizul: PRE-RAMADAN: CONTROLLING OUR INNER SELF PART II

Thursday, 19 July 2012

PRE-RAMADAN: CONTROLLING OUR INNER SELF PART II

Controlling Our Inner Self Before Ramadan
By Yasmin Mogahed, On Islam – Part 3, Part 4, June-July 2012.

Liberate Yourself in Ramadan: Fasting is a chance to liberate yourself from worldly attachments.

When we focus on what is eternal, the inner self (nafs) doesn’t get used to being in a state of focus on material things, the mundane and the worldly things.

If you think about a situation when you never took a break, you were just involved in your life, you are in your job or dealing with people, or whatever it is you are doing, and you never take a break to just stop and look inward. What happens if you do that?

What happens is that my whole world is going to become about what is happening outside my self. That starts to define my whole world. So whatever is happening in my life outside of me defines me. And so what ends up happening then is that I go up and down with the ups and downs in my environment.

Anyone who’s lived in this life for longer than three minutes realizes that life is nothing but ups and downs, nothing but change and inconstancy. So, if I am all about what is happening outside of myself in life, it's external, then what will happen is that internally I will never have peace, constancy, stillness because all of my focus is on what is happening outside of myself, in the mundane, in my dunya (worldly life). But if I stop five times a day, following the prescription God is giving us, then what I am doing, when I break away five times a day praying properly with focus of heart and mind, then what I'm doing is that I'm pulling myself away from the external focus, and refocusing internally.

Then I am looking at the things that are not seen; the things which I wouldn’t otherwise notice if I didn’t stop to take that break. So Allah (SWT) gives us, out of His mercy, this prescription for how to be successful while still living in the dunya, but not letting the nafs take over, not letting the dunya take over.

What Fasting Really Stands For

It’s kind of like I am starving my body but feeding my soul when I fast.

In the case of siyam (fasting), I’m disconnecting from the physical world. Hunger is a physical need, and eating is a physical satiation. So what I do is I cut off the physical satiation, and instead I fill myself with what is spiritual. I'm feeding my soul. It’s kind of like I am starving my body but feeding my soul when I fast.

This is how God put us in this world, but He didn’t leave us. God, exalted is He, gave us exactly the prescription of how to be successful in this life. And fasting is a huge part of that. When I don’t break away from the physical needs of dunya, what ends up happening internally is that my heart starts to die, because all of my attachments are material; because all my attachments are to the dunya which is constantly changing and fading way. And so my heart starts to die and I start to develop more inner illness, more diseases in my heart.

Siyam is an opportunity to liberate myself from these attachments, and, therefore, the addiction to what is not lasting, to what is not ultimate. If you look at the society that we live in, all of the focus is on the physical being. All of the focus is on physical pleasure and material things, things that I can feel and touch. But here is the thing: no one can argue that I am not just a physical being, right?

There’s more to me than just my physical self. And the reason why I know that is because, for example, we feel pain and it may have nothing to do with our body. Our body may be completely well, and there is nothing hurting it, yet we still feel pain. What is it that’s feeling that pain?

It is something other than the physical being. There’s another non-physical part of me. I also feel joy, and again it’s not something I feel in my physical body. So how can you possibly follow a philosophy of life that’s just about the physical - eating, sleeping, drinking and being married in the physical sense?! This is denying a very important component of my being, which is the non-physical component.

Then the question is how do I feed that non-physical component? How do I feed my soul?

Guess what: chances are you are not going to see that on commercials on TV. The commercials on TV don’t talk about feeding your soul, about being more honest, more sincere or connecting to God. They are just about the physical world, as I was just a physical creature.

When Ramadan comes, fasting liberates me from all of that. I begin to know that there really is life beyond the physical realm, and there is joy beyond material joy. One of the consequences of this is that I start to feel more kindness and compassion towards the people who don’t have what I have. So when I'm fasting, I am voluntarily keeping myself from food and water and any other kind of drink. But there are people who involuntarily have to keep themselves from food and drink, and that’s because they don’t have the means to buy food and drink. So by doing this, I’m also able to feel more compassion towards the poor and towards those who don’t have a home to come back to for Iftar, and these large large extravagant dinners that we have to break our fast, which really misses the point of what Ramadan and what Siyam is really supposed to do.

When Doing The Opposite

There’s a deeper joy, a deeper and real fulfilment than just eating, sleeping and drinking.

There is statistics that shows that in fact people spend more money in Ramadan on food and deserts than they do outside of Ramadan. So Ramadan came in order to take the focus off food, and put the focus on the non physical world. A lot of us Muslims do the opposite. We put more focus on eating. We just can’t wait for Iftar to do it.

So we find that there’s such an emphasis on this idea of having extravagant Iftars, and on what we are going to eat. We put so much money into having very fancy food and deserts. But this again completely misses the point. The whole point of Ramadan is not just for us to be hungry and thirsty. The whole point of siyam is to show the nafs, the individual, that there’s more to life than the physical world. There’s more to life than the material pleasure and joy, that there’s a deeper joy, a deeper and real fulfilment than just eating, sleeping and drinking.

So we have to have the correct focus on why it is that Allah (SWT) told us to fast. When Allah talks about fasting in the Quran, He gives a reason why fasting was prescribed. And so when we fast all day and indulge in food at the end of the day, now we feel drowsy and our mind is almost asleep. When we go to the Salah (prayer) after the fast, we feel almost unable to focus on Salah. We feel as if the mind is sluggish. What we’ve done now is that because we’ve eaten so much, our minds become clouded and extremely tired.

If we look at the Sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him, he used to break his fast with dates and water and then go to Salah; to just break his fast on something small, pray Maghreb and then come back and eat. But what filling the stomach does is, it numbs the mind. And that's one of the reasons why when someone is feeling depressed, down or anxious, they do seek food, because, Subhanallah, there’s something about food that when you go to food and you feed yourself, there’s a sort of numbness that happens. It’s a sort of anaesthesia. This is something that food can do when you over-indulge in it. So keep in mind that the focus of Ramadan is not what we are going to eat for Iftar, not how many different dishes we are going to serve or eat.

The focus is exactly the opposite...

During Ramadan the entire universe is closer to the Mercy of God, exalted is He. This is a gesture from God
in order to bring us back to Him.

Now, what does God say about fasting in the Qur’an?

O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint. (Surah Al-Baqarah 2; 183)

So the purpose of fasting for me is to attain taqwa.

So what is taqwa?

Taqwa drives from the Arabic word ‘waqa’, ‘waqi’, which literally means to protect or to shield. It also comes from the word ‘itaqa’ which means to protect oneself. So, taqwa is a noun derived from this meaning and what it means is to shield or protect oneself.

The question is what are we shielding or protecting ourselves from through fasting?

Through fasting we are protecting ourselves from a lot of things. First and foremost, we are protecting ourselves from the displeasure and the Wrath of God; we are protecting ourselves from the distance of Allah. We also are protecting ourselves from excessively indulging of the nafs (inner self), and we are protecting ourselves from Satan.

A Shield of Mercy

Through fasting I’m building my spiritual and moral strength in order to be able to take on my nafs.

So fasting is almost like a shield, an invisible shield surrounding me. When I’m fasting, I’m now focusing on the spiritual. Now the focus is on you; the spiritual and moral energies instead of your physical energies. As a result of that, now I’m building my spiritual and moral strength in order to be able to take on my nafs, in order to be able to oppose and train my nafs. So, to summarize, by fasting and by shielding myself from the displeasure of God and from what the nafs wants, that physical association which includes food, I’m strengthening my spiritual and moral strength.

You can have a heavy weight champion but this person is unable to fight their own nafs. So they have all physical strength but they have no inner strength. What fasting does is using moral and spiritual strength so that you’ll have the ability to fight your nafs. It makes your path to doing good easier for you. You may have experienced this, when you are fasting you feel it’s easier to do more worship, be more strict in your prayer, easier to read more Quran, to go the masjid. When you are fasting you are starving your body, and you are feeding your soul. You disengage your focus from the physical world in order to engage your focus on the inner spiritual one.

The other aspect about Ramadan, which is extremely important, is that Ramadan is about mercy. Allah’s mercy always encompasses everything. He says: …and My mercy embraces all things, (Al-‘A’raf 7; 156). Yet there are certain times that God is nearer to us than in other times. One of those times is in sajdah (prostration). In sajdah we are closer to Allah. Similarly, when we are near to the Ka`bah, God has made that we get closer to Him in that physical state. God has also done that with Ramadan.

During Ramadan the entire universe is closer to the Mercy of God, exalted is He. This is a gesture from God in order to bring us back to Him, in order for us to take advantage of His mercy and to really change ourselves; to really go through Ramadan and come out changed. We do not need Ramadan to be just about fasting, or to be only about hunger or thirst. Through realizing the purpose of fasting, the very purpose that I have to stop worrying about my physical needs, and worry, instead, about the spiritual needs of my heart, of my soul, this is number one need.

There’s only one thing that feeds the heart and that is God. There’s nothing else that is going to feed your heart. So where I am able to empty out all the other focus, now I can focus on what really is going to feed me. This is what fasting and Ramadan is all about. So we have to make sure that we do not let Ramadan and fasting just be about leaving food and drink, about just being hungry and thirsty, and that we see the inner purpose of Ramadan, and go through Ramadan and come out different.

Ramadan is a purifier of our nafs, because in Ramadan you will encounter your nafs, because in Ramadan the satans are chained; it is just you and your own self. During Ramadan this mercy is optimized, there’s a change in the universe when this mercy is so close to us. Allah (SWT) is the owner of mercy. The Prophet, peace be upon him, tells us: "Ramadan is a month whose beginning is Mercy, whose middle is Forgiveness and whose end is freedom from the fire."

So God gives us this month in order to lift us up and in order to bring us back to His forgiveness and to liberate us from Jahannam (the Hell Fire).

Begin Now

Make this Ramadan about inner transformation, about inner purification, about building my connection
with God.

So as the Prophet said: "The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended" (Al-Bukhari). Our deep intention now should be not to make this Ramadan just about being hungry and thirsty, and, instead, make this Ramadan about inner transformation, about inner purification, about building my connection with God and seeking His mercy, because God’s mercy is so close to us in Ramadan.

The Prophet tells us: "Whoever established prayers on the night of Qadr out of sincere faith and hoping for a reward from Allah, then all his previous sins will be forgiven; and whoever fasts in the month of Ramadan out of sincere faith, and hoping for a reward from Allah, then all his previous sins will be forgiven."

So you and I have the opportunity to have our sins forgiven. Imagine that?

We have the opportunity, but what we really need to do is to realize why we are fasting, going to Ramadan with the proper focus and the proper intention and ask Allah (SWT) to make it easy on us and to allow us to come out of Ramadan completely purified and changed.

We really need to know the fact that after Ramadan is over, you are still changed. See if we are going to Ramadan and if we change things about ourselves and as soon as Ramadan is over, we go back to the way we were before, then we really haven’t changed. Ramadan then didn’t fulfil its purpose, which is to purify, change and elevate us. That change has to be lasting. So what we want to do is to take Ramadan as a fuel to bring us back to God. So let’s take the intention to continue our good habits even after Ramadan is over. We hope InshaaAllah that Ramadan allows us to rise above ourselves and our nafs. This is the only path to peace.

Another practical tip that is really going to help us be able to fulfil the purpose of Ramadan is qiyam, the Salah that is right before fajr (dawn). When we talked earlier about the nearness to God, one of these times is this time of qiyam. Allah tells us that during this time He descends to the nearest heaven, in the time just before fajr, and He asks us who is calling on Me to answer their call, who is seeking my forgiveness so I can forgive them.

So if we really want to benefit from Ramadan, we should be very careful not to lose this opportunity at this blessed time asking God for His forgiveness, making tawbah (repentance) and making du’a. This is the very time to make du’a and to connect to God, exalted is He.

Video Part 3