54. Reclaim Your Heart - Yasmin Mogahed (📖)

Reading Notes:

Don’t let your definition of success, failure, or self-worth be anything other than your position with Him (Qur’an, 49:13). And if you do this, you become unbreakable, because your hand-hold is unbreakable. You become unconquerable, because your supporter can never be conquered. And you will never become empty, because your source of fulfillment is unending and never diminishes.

Prophet (PBUH) has said, “You will never give up a thing for the sake of Allah (swt), but that Allah will replace it for you with something that is better for you than it.”

What if everything was about seeing Him?

All this beauty was created as a sign – but one that can only be understood by a select group: those who reflect (think, understand, use their intellect) and remember God in every human condition (standing, sitting, lying down).

The tragedy of our choice is that we chain our necks with attachments, and then ask why we choke.

God is the only End. Every other thing is the means. We will suffer the moment we take our eyes off the End and get lost in the means.

The worldly life, the dunya, is just like an ocean. And our hearts are the ships. We can use the ocean for our needs and as a means to get to our final destination. But the ocean is only that: a means.

What happens when the dunya enters our hearts? That is when the boat sinks. That is when the heart is taken hostage and becomes a slave.

As Ali (ra) expressed beautifully, “Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”

This world cannot break you – unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys – unless you give it your heart.

Every time you run after, seek, or petition something week or feeble (which by definition, is everything other than Allah), you become weak or feeble.

When what you hold on is strong, you too become string, and with that strength comes the truest freedom.

We are either slaves to Allah, or slaves to our hawa. It cannot be both.

The image of human love you seek is an illusion in the desert of life. So if that is what you seek, you’ll keep chasing. But no matter how close you get to a mirage, you never touch it. You don’t own an image. You can’t hold a creation of your own mind.

If we could see the Real thing, we could get over our deep love for the lesser, fake model.

Ibn Attaillah al-Sakandari said it beautifully: “Nothing is difficult if you seek it through your Lord, and nothing is easy if you seek it through yourself.”

The ability to readily forgive should be driven by an awareness of our own flaws and mistakes towards others. But most of all, our humility should be driven by the fact that we wrong Allah every single day of our lives, when we sin. Who are we compared to Allah? and yet, Allah, Master of the universe, forgives by day and night. Who are we to withhold forgiveness? If we hope to be forgiven by Allah, how can we not forgive others? It is for this reason that the Prophet (PBUH) teaches us: Those who show no mercy to others will have no mercy shown to them by Allah.”

It may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows, you know not.” (Qur’an 2:216)

The worldly body is a prison for a believer, not because this life is miserable for the believing soul, but because that soul yearns to be somwhere greater.

a man came to the Prophet (PBUH) and said: “O Messenger of Allah, direct me to an act, which if I do, God will love me and people will love me.” He (PBUH) said: “Detach yourself from the world, and God will love you. Detach yourself from what is with the people, and people will love you.” [Ibn Majah]

Ironically, the less we chase after the approval and love of the people, the more we gain it. The less needy we are of others, the more people are drawn to us and seek our company.