The heart that is controlled by its imaginations and its thoughts, then it is far away from success and it is a heart that is tormented, and it is busy with that which will not benefit it. That is why people spend so much time entertaining themselves because as soon as they leave off over-stimulating themselves through their sensory perception, through their audiovisual receptors, through their eyes and their ears, as soon as they turn it off, they are miserable. It is like a sugar pill, it is a placebo. They just want to busy their hearts, busy their minds, busy their desires, with something to remove or numb the pain or distress inside of their hearts.
So, they spend so much time entertaining themselves, inebriating themselves (drinking and getting high so on and so forth) destroying their minds, just to numb the pain. It is artificial happiness.
Ibn al-Qayyim said you find that this person (his heart) is tormented and he is busy with what will not benefit them.
What are we going to say to Allah as regards our negligence of our children, our negligence of our Salah (Prayer), our negligence in so many affairs? People may act like they don't have the ability to stop and pray but they have three and a half hours to be on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. They have hour after hour after hour to spend with their eyes glued to a book, with their eyes watching movies and reading magazines, with eyes watching shows, grown men watching soap operas and these sorts of things.
Get yourself under control, Imam Ibnul-Qayyim said, it is known that these thoughts (his imagination) that it is an ocean without shores, that if he lets his heart go off into his thoughts, then he will drown and he will be lost in the darkness, and he will look for a way out, and may not find a way out.
Imam Ibnul Qayyim (رحمه الله) said in his book Tariq al-Hijratayn
Al-Istiqamaah ( hat a person correcting their hearts, correcting their statements, correcting their actions) consist of two things
1] First thing is safeguarding their mind (safeguarding their thoughts).
2] Second is having a genuine drive and preparing for the hereafter.
And the second is a result of the first when the person understands with the correct understanding about Allâh tabarakahu ta'ala and the reason that Allâh has created Him, and without a doubt, he's going to prepare for the hereafter.
Ibnul Qayyim (رحمه الله تعالى ) he said: As for the first of these things, then it is to safeguarding and protecting his thoughts and that he is at the highest level of cautiousness of neglecting his mentality and his thoughts and letting himself get carried away with his imagination. He said for verily the root of every corruption comes from the direction of the thoughts for verily it is the seed that is planted by the Shayṭān in the nafs on the soil on the earth of the heart. He said and when the shaytan in his nafs is able to plant destructive ideologies and destructive thoughts within the mind and the heart of the person then the shaytan pour water and nourish that seed that he has planted he'll come back over and over again until the ideas of a person and the thoughts of a person they become intentions, then he'll keep watering it with his filth until they become determinations and then he will not stop until those determinations turn into actions and then when a person does something over and over again it becomes a habit once a thing is a habit it is nearly impossible for a person to leave. And all started with neglecting his mentality, neglecting what he was thinking not being afraid of Allâh tabarakahu ta'ala as regards what he was thinking. He said, and there is no doubt that fighting against your thoughts is easier than fighting against your desires and determinations and the person will find himself incapable or nearly incapable of warding off these ideologies and these thoughts once they have become a strong determination within him and he was the one who was negligent, to begin with, when he did not fight against them while they were just a weak thought in his mind. He said like a person who saw a spark fall upon some dry grass or some dry straw and he said it was just a spark and this is how the thought was, it was like a spark in his mind.
It has been digitally remastered to remove a lot of the background noise and bring up its overall quality, walhamdulillah.
Abu Hurairah (رضي الله عنه) narrated that The Prophet ﷺ said: "Whoever invites to guidance will be rewarded like those who follow him in the guidance are rewarded, and that will not decrease the reward of those who have followed him." [Collected by Imām Muslim]
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