How To Improve Your Spirituality

Tonight, InshaAllah, we want to delve into this a little bit more from a practical perspective. If I want to live a life where I am not committing haram, not that I am committing haram and I do tawbah, everyone can do that. That's not a difficult thing to do. A life where I slowly remove haram habits from my life, brothers and sisters. From a practical perspective, how am I supposed to go about this? Our scholars, what have they taught us from a practical perspective, if I want to be able to change my lifestyle, if I want to be able to remove haram habits in my life and go towards a life where I don't commit sins?

Not that I commit and then I do tawbah, because every time that I commit a sin, yes, Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala will forgive me. But my faith, the relationship that I have with Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, and by extension, the relationship that I have with Imam Al-Husayn, it takes a big hit. And so we have to be careful in building spirituality is gaged based on our actions. It is not gaged based on our feelings and based on our emotions.

Emotions and feelings, they definitely have a value. They definitely have a place within Islam, there is no doubt about that. At the end of the day, many times someone will commit an action because of a feeling, because of an emotion that they have. When you look at the movement of Imam Al-Husayn, the way we commemorated each and every year, there is a reason why Masa'ib is such an important part of this commemoration. There is a reason why shedding tears is such an important part of this commemoration.

So emotions, feelings, they have value, but their value only lies when you take this emotion and you translate it into action. Otherwise, our spirituality, it is not gaged based on emotions and feelings. It is not gaged based on how I feel. It is gaged based on my actions. My actions tell better than any emotion or feeling of mine, what is going on inside of me, yes? The actions are the best factor that can show you what is going on inside of a human being.

Therefore, in Islam, when we talk about spirituality, we are not talking about the type of spirituality that someone sits in a room and, for example, he likes certain types of herbs and he sits in this room and he just thinks and that's it. That's not the spirituality that we believe in. We believe in a spirituality like the spirituality of Ali Ibn Abi Talib. That he would go into the battlefield, that he would defend Islam in the face of the enemies of Islam, and he would give charity, and he would help the poor, and he would help those who are homeless, and so on and so forth.

Therefore, if I want to build spirituality, I need to have these actions that will help me bring me closer to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. And they will always tell you, if you sit with someone who is older, they will always tell you, that the habits that you have, you have to fix them while you are young. Because fixing them when you get older, though it's possible, it becomes even more and more difficult. That is why if I have a haram habit, I need to start working on it from right now.

I can't sit there and say, inshaAllah, when I get older, inshaAllah, when I settle down, inshaAllah, later on, I will start working on this. Later on, it is going to become more difficult for me to be able to do this. This is why I turn me towards Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. This is a difficult journey. It's not an easy journey.

That's why we read in the verses of the Qur'an, Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala says: "Ya ayyua al-Insan. Innaka kadihun ila Rabbika kad-han famulakih" (84:6). 'You will struggle towards your Lord until you finally meet Him'. Meaning that on this path, it is not an easy path. It is not an easy journey.

They say that one day he received a letter from a young man, and the letter went something like this, that, Oh, Allama Tabataba'i, I have heard so many great things about you, and you write you author books, though Allama Tabataba'i was not as well-known during his life, as he is more so today. He says, you are this great scholar and you are also a scholar of 'Irfan, you are also a scholar of philosophy. I want some guidance from you. I want you to tell me how I can remove these haram habits that I have. I am young, I have desires, and these desires, they are getting the best of me. They are defeating me. And the atmosphere that I live in, it promotes sinning.

And many of our youth can completely relate to this today as well, because you turn on your phone and the sin is there in front of you. Yes? You go and you sit behind your laptop, you spend time with your friends, wherever you go, there is sinning happening all around you. He says, you tell me. And here's the thing that he puts in the letter. He says, Listen, I don't want some type of generic advice. Don't give me this generic advice. No, you are special. You are the one who knows what I really need to do. These other scholars, they give me generic advice, but I want to ask you, because if there is anyone who can answer this question, you will be the one who will be able to answer this question.

They say, Allama Tabataba'i, beautifully, he took the letter on the other side of the same paper in order to save paper. He wrote, he said, bismil-Lah. I received your letter. What you need to do are some simple steps. But what is important in these simple steps, is how consistently you follow up with them. I said, when you wake up in the morning, you make a decision that today you are not going to disobey Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. Throughout the day, you have to continuously watch yourself, step by step. When it comes to nighttime, you would sit there and you will hold yourself accountable. You would take a look at what you did because during the day you might be busy. But at nighttime, before you go to bed, or while you are in bed and before you go to sleep, you'll sit and think for a second, What are the things that I did?

And he says, You look at the things that you did that were wrong. You do tawbah and you make a condition that tomorrow you won't do them. And you look at the things that you did that were good and you thank Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala for them. And then he told them, And you recite certain verses of the Qur'an at night, and that's it. This is the path, brothers and sisters. You would expect from someone like Allama Tabataba'i, to say, No, let me give you this magical dhikr. Let me give you this magical phrase. Let me tell you to do this, or let me tell you to do that. Perform this prayer 20 times a night, for example.

Brothers and sisters, this approach that we have, that you can snap your finger and all of a sudden you purify your soul. We don't have such a thing. Our greatest scholars have not taught us of these types of acts of worship that you do, for example, and all of a sudden, the tests and the obstacles, they go away.

I wish it was like that! The reality is that this path is a path that you have to struggle on. And of course, some will pass on this path very quickly. They would purify themselves very quickly. Because Imam Khomeini, may Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala bless his soul, he talks about this in his famous book, 40 Ahadith. He says if someone is wayfaring towards Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, he is on his path and on his journey towards Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, and he wants to come close to Him, there are three steps that he needs to take on a daily basis.

He says the first of them is known as Musharata. He does a 'shart' upon himself, he makes a condition with himself that today I am not going to sin. Today I am making the decision that I will not disobey Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. And what this requires, brothers and sisters, is that you make Islam and practicing the religion of Islam your number one priority every single day. And this is not a simple thing to do. It's not an easy thing to do.

You see the path of coming closer to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, it is a lengthy path. So throughout this whole time, you have to make sure that coming closer to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, purifying yourself is constantly your number one priority. And that is difficult living to purify himself. When you look at Surat Ash-Shams, Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala swears multiple times at the beginning of Surat Ash-Shams, and when you count it, you find he swears 11 times: "Wa ash-shamsi wa duhaha" (91:1), "Wa al-qamari idha talaha" (91:2), "Wa al-layli idha yaghshaha" (91:4), and so on and so forth. Eleven times He swears.

All of this is to say what? "Qad aflaha man zakkaha" (91:9). Whoever purifies himself in this world, he is going to be successful, he will reach salvation. "Wa qad khaba man dassaha" (91:10). And whoever fails his soul, he will fail as a human being. Yes? Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is making it clear: don't get busy with all the distractions that you find around yourself.

This, al- Khomeini is saying is that every day when you wake up, you have to make the practicing of religion your first priority. This is very, very critical. This is the first step. He says: then when you do this in the morning and you have made it a condition upon yourself to obey Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala in this day, it comes to the second step.

The second step is known as Muraqaba. Muraqaba means to watch something. It means to observe something carefully. What this means is that throughout the day, I have to constantly ask myself before I engage in an activity, Is this allowed for me? Is this not allowed for me? Is this something I am allowed to do? Is this something Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is pleased with? This is a constant process that has to happen. Then, Imam Khomeini says this. He says, When you come across something that is haram, and Shaytan tells you, why don't you just go ahead and do this? He says you reply to him. You tell him that I have made it a condition upon myself that just today I am not going to sin. Just today.

That is all you ask of yourself in the initial steps. Just today I am going to stay away from this sin. And you continue like this. It is interesting to you as you live in this world. It's not worth it to disobey Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. This is such a profound statement. We would have to think and ponder upon it, brothers and sisters. The 60 or 70 years that we live, is it worth disobeying Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala for an eternity? An effect that will have on us in eternity? So, Imam Al-Khomeini says the second step is Muraqaba. You have to watch yourself every moment of the day.

It comes to the third step. The third step is the step of Muhasaba. This third step of Muhasaba is a step in which at the end of the night, I sit back, and I start to look at those things that I did throughout this day, and I start counting. This one I did was fine. This one I did, it was a problem. I need to work on this habit. It is a sense of holding yourself accountable, it is a sense also of essentially self-awareness. Being aware of who you are, what are those aspects of your life that you need to work on, and what areas are there that you are lacking, what areas are there that you are stronger in.

If someone does this Muhasaba properly, brothers and sisters, the self-awareness is extremely powerful. This person, one thing that will happen is that he will walk around, he will not judge others. Because when you do Muhasaba and you see how many mistakes you do yourself, you no longer hold other people in contempt. You never look at other people and judge them anymore, because you know you yourself have done so many wrong things, and you have done tawba from them, al-hamdu lil-Lah.

Therefore, when you commit sins here and there, even if they are small, you don't murder people. You don't steal from people's wealth necessarily, right? You might have backbited, you might have lied, na'udhu bil-Lah, these are the sins that we, unfortunately, are prone to. He said, When you commit these sins, do Istaghfar immediately, and don't go back to them. Because these small sins, if you don't do tawba from them, if you don't repent from them on the day of judgment, when they are all gathered, they turn into a full pile. And this is what we're taught by the Prophet, salawatu Allahi wa as-salamu alayh.

That if someone wants to spiritually purify himself, if he really wants to be the type of individual who comes closer to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, and builds a connection with Him. Not just plays math so that he can get out of Hellfire, he wants to build faith with Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. This individual, he has to constantly live a life where he doesn't commit sins and then do tawbah. Anyone can do that. He lives a life where he.