RECTIFYING UNDESIRABLE INTERNAL ATTRIBUTES: 11 (talk by Mufti Taqi Usmani DB)

 AIM OF ‘ATTENUATING’ SPIRITUAL ILLS

 

Explaining this, Hazrat Thanvi (may Allah Ta’ala bless him) further said;

 

“The aim of attenuating undesirable mental attributes is to weaken them to an extent that they come under the person’s control. ‘Weakening’ means that after Mujahidah (sustained effort) it becomes easier to oppose those impulses.”

 

It means that these spiritual ills cannot be removed or extinguished completely from one’s inner-self. However, they can become a lot weaker so that it takes much less effort to oppose them and not act on what they are driving us to do. The same is true of everything we do in this world whether we do it for Dunya (material world) or Deen. Sustained effort makes it easier for us to start doing something on a regular basis. For example, when a person previously was not in the habit of praying Salah regularly, it seemed very difficult to him to go to the Masjid five times a day and pray Salah there, and took a mammoth effort. However, if he keeps doing this for a period of time and develops a habit of praying Salah in Masjid five times a day, then it takes him much less effort to do the same. It is rare that he will get to a stage where it takes no effort at all, he will need to continue to make some effort, keep opposing his Nafs (inner-self) which will try to convince him from time to time to take it easy today and just pray at home, but because he has developed a habit the effort it will take to go to the Masjid will be much less than he needed to make when he started doing it. The reward we get for praying Salah is actually a reward for that effort, for opposing our Nafs, if we did not have to make any effort, what would we get the reward for? That is why we do need to continue to make some effort to pray Salah regularly throughout our life.