The Book of Assistance with Imam Khalid Latif | Session 4

Introduction and Recap

بِسْمِ اللهِ وَالْحَمْدُ لِلهِ وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَمَنْ وَالَاهُ

All praise is due to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We thank him. We praise him. We glorify him. We beseech him to send his choicest salutations upon his most beloved sallallahu ta'ala alayhi wa sallam, and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day.

I believe we're now reaching our last session, alhamdulillah. And we've been looking at a text called The Book of Assistance by a sheikh named Imam al-Haddad, rahimahullah. In the first class we talked overall just about what spirituality means from the standpoint of Islam as a faith tradition, and how within our understanding in Islam there's not a separation between religion and spirituality, but the two actually go hand-in-hand together — that the way that a body that has no soul to it is likened to a corpse, ritual that has no inner dimension to it also is similarly just as a corpse would be: it has no life, no vitality. It needs that inward component.

We then talked about the first chapter, which was on yaqeen — certitude. And then we looked last week at the second chapter, which was on niyyah — intention. And we're now moving into the third chapter, which is on vigilance, or muraqabah. This idea that you look over your heart so that in turn your heart looks over you. That you have an engagement with that most precious part of your being — that the Prophet sallallahu ta'ala alayhi wa sallam himself has said: if it is good, then everything will be good. And if it is not good, then everything will not be good. Indeed, it is the heart.

"Verily, in the body there is a piece of flesh; if it is sound, the whole body is sound, and if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. Verily, it is the heart." (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 52; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1599)

The Third Chapter: Vigilance (Muraqabah)

We're going to be looking at the third chapter, which is on vigilance — muraqabah. And so Imam al-Haddad begins by saying:

"You must, oh my brothers, be mindful of God in all of your movements and times of stillness. At every moment, with every blink of the eye, with every thought, wish, or any other state — feel his nearness to you. Know that he looks and is aware of you, that nothing that you conceal is hidden from him."

"Nothing that weighs so much as an atom is hidden from your Lord, whether on earth or in heaven. When you speak aloud, he knows your secret thought and that which is even more hidden. He is with you wherever you are — with his knowledge, awareness, and power. If you are of the righteous, he will guide, assist, and protect you."

"Have modesty before your Lord as you should. Make sure that he never sees you in a situation which he has forbidden you, and never misses you where he has commanded you to be. Worship him as if you saw him, for even if you do not see him, he sees you."

The Station of Ihsan

"Wherever you notice in your soul any laziness in his worship or inclination to disobedience, remind it that God hears and sees you and knows your secrets and secret conversation. If this reminding does not benefit it because of the inadequacy of its knowledge of the majesty of God, remind it of the two noble angels who record good and evil deeds, and recite to it:"

"When the two receivers receive, sitting on the right and on the left — he utters no word but there is with him a watcher ready."

"If this reminding does not influence it, remind it of the proximity of death — that it is the nearest of all hidden and awaited things. Frighten it of its sudden pouncing, whereby if it does come when it is in an unsatisfactory state, it will end up in endless perdition. If this threat is of no use, remind it of the immense reward which God has promised those who obey him and the painful torment with which he has threatened those who disobey him."

"Say to it: Oh soul, after death there will be no opportunity to repent, and there will be after this life only the garden or the fire. Choose — if you will — obedience, the consequence of which is triumph, contentment, immortality, and vast gardens, and looking at the face of God, the generous, the beneficent; or else disobedience, the consequence of which is degradation, humiliation, mockery, deprivation, and imprisonment between layers of fire."

"Endeavor to cure your soul with such reminders when it neglects obedience and inclines to rebellion, for they are useful medicines for the heart's disease."

"If you find emerging in your heart, when you call to mind the fact that God observes you, a shyness that prevents you from disobeying him and drives you to exert yourself in obeying him — you are in the possession of something of the realities of vigilance, muraqabah."

"Know that vigilance is one of the most noble stations, high positions, and lofty degrees. It is the station of excellence — ihsan — indicated in the Prophet's saying, sallallahu alayhi wasallam:"

"Ihsan is to worship God as if you saw him, for if you do not see him, he sees you." (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 50; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 8 — Hadith of Jibril)

"Each believer has faith — and nothing on earth or in heaven is concealed from God, and that God is with him wherever he is, and that none of his movements or times of stillness are concealed from him. But the important thing is that this awareness be permanent, and that its results appear. The least of which is that he does nothing when alone with God that he would be ashamed of should a man of virtue see him. This is rare, and it eventually leads to that which is rarer still, whereby the servant is totally immersed in God, annihilated in him, and thus rendered unaware of all else — absent from creation through his contemplation of the true King, having arrived at a secure seat in the presence of an able sovereign."

Understanding Muraqabah as a Journey

Here, what Imam al-Haddad is giving us indication of is a need to recognize how our relationship with Allah interacts with — or what the actual basis of our relationship with Allah is. That we are not simply a body that worships God, but we are an entire entity, an entire being that has different facets to us, that engages in a relationship with Allah.

And if you remember, we said that what Imam al-Haddad is doing, rahimahullah, is giving us a roadmap, an outline through which we essentially will reach a goal — a destination of drawing closer to our conviction and certitude, our yaqeen, in all matters related to what this deen calls us towards.

And so if we were to now start thinking about how this applies to where we're at in this moment — we had said that if our starting points were all distinct, meaning that we all have different points that we start from, even though we have an end point that we said was a common end in certitude, yaqeen — that this is where people want to end up. Regardless of whether you start from here or here or here — individuals are trying to get to this destination. And of chapter one, what we said was that in the beginning, regardless of what the steps are that you're taking, the second chapter on niyyah — intention — was what we wanted to have with us in the frame of our taking steps in our pathway forward.

And so now, this next part on muraqabah, on vigilance over our hearts, is important because where we get to be now in a space — we want to understand how it relates to this movement that we have going forward to get from intention to yaqeen.

What Imam al-Haddad is saying is that at every juncture, you want to engage in muraqabah. You want to be in a place where, in these various components of steps that you are now individually taking, you understand these to be moments where you continue to assess and look at what is happening in your heart. That you're not leaving it behind, but you're engaged in a constant, consistent mode of recognition — well, what's going on in here? What is happening in here? With every movement there is an assessment, there is a debrief, to look at the process and see if it's actually bringing me towards what it is that I want it to bring me towards — or is it putting things in me that are not good for me? Or is it putting things in me that are really great for me?

But the vigilance is such that it has this relationship — the heart is what will watch over you, but in order for it to watch over you, you have to watch over it. There's a reciprocity to the relationship. And if you are not watching over it, then it is not going to watch over you. It will be in a sphere where the other elements that come into play — of the nafs, the ego, that will dictate how you make your decisions; the dunya, the materialistic world; hawa, desire and lusts; and then we have waswasah, shaytan's whispers. May Allah protect us from these things. These will be the elements, the things that will come into a place of taking our attentiveness.

And so the heart becomes a critical component — being in a sphere where you watch over it so that it in turn watches over you.

Movement and Stillness

And Imam al-Haddad is giving us this insight from the very onset of the chapter where he says right from line one: "You must, oh my brothers, be mindful of God in all of your movements and times of stillness. At every moment, with every blink of the eye, with every thought, wish, or any other state — feel his nearness to you. Know that he looks and is aware of you, that nothing you conceal is hidden from him. Nothing that weighs so much as an atom is hidden from your Lord, whether on earth or in heaven. When you speak aloud, he knows your secret thought and that which is even more hidden. He is with you wherever you are, with his knowledge, awareness, and power. If you are of the righteous, he will guide, assist, and protect you."

Now here there's an opportunity to think about who that God is that you are connecting to — that you want to be mindful of Allah in all of your moments and in times of stillness. And this assumes something that is very important to reflect upon, because it's giving us a process through which we relate to the heart, and it's telling us now of two broader categories that have to be implemented: that you have both movement and you have stillness.

Moments of stillness are critical in the development of internal and inward understandings. With modernity there is so much growth, and we've talked about this a little bit over the last few weeks — as to how we can be interconnected, as to how we can be in spheres where all of us are in different places. That connectivity and interconnectivity utilizing technology as a basis of us being together even when we're physically separate is remarkable, and modernity brings that to us as a technological advancement. But so too with modernity, there becomes a diminishing of spaces of stillness.

And now this is key to understand as we are trying to understand what this thing of muraqabah is — because we don't want it to be something that is rooted purely in what is just on the tongue, but we want it to actually be in the heart.

Principles to Reflect On

And so if we were to start writing out now principles that we can look at — one: movement and stillness. That you have to aspire towards having the recognition of Allah, that consciousness of Allah, when you're in motion and when you're also still. And so in motion — like when you're moving, you're going in a certain direction, you are taking steps, you are acting, you are being, you are doing — you want to in your being and your doing still have consciousness and awareness.

This is where the chapters connect to each other — because when you affirm a niyyah before you move, you now can tell yourself whether you are doing this for God's sake or for something else, or if you engage within it in the framework of multiple intentions. Did anybody take a look at the book that I had recommended last time — the book of intentions — that we talked about, this concept of having multiple intentions embedded within an action?

You get to a place where in motion, when you start going, it can be pretty hard to regather your thoughts — you know, why am I doing this? What's the point of this? Am I achieving what it was that I intended? To go now in a place that it's not just raw instinct, or just devoid of presence of one's mind and of one's heart, but to have it be there. And so in movement to have consciousness; and in stillness — now this second part of stillness is imperative to think out in the way that you build out your routine.

And it would have been great if we had more time — we got to a chapter that you should look at that's on daily litanies, what we call the awrad: a regular collection of adhkar, remembrance, Quranic recitations, other things that you would engage in. But the entire chapter revolves itself around a premise of time management — how you build into your schedule and routine things.

I want you to take for a moment now an idea of where you build purposefully stillness into your routine. Where and how do you deliberately acquire moments where you are at peace with just silence and stillness? There's not movement, there's not motion, there's not "let me go and grab an electronic apparatus to see who is calling me or reaching out to me with messages and texts and social media."