I attended the workshop on improving our solat. Little that I expect that the ustaz will talk about self-control. He said that when we find ourselves having difficulty to stay khusyuk in our solat, it means that our heart has lots of layers of hijab. That’s why we can’t see “nur” from Allah. We are not living in the time of the Prophet Muhammad SAW and thus, it is easy to stay astray than to remain steadfast in our belief.
He also advises us to be careful when using the social media and whatsnot. He exemplifies the way we can multiply sins through our fingertips. The best way is to delete any information that could case misleading, chaos, fitnah, disharmony and such even though it might be true about a person or others.
In psychology, researchers have conducted numerous studies about self-control. One of the famous ones was by Walter Mischel on delay gratification. Of course, there are some criticisms about his idea and proposition, but it is worth while to reflect how important self-control in our life. It is not easy to maintain one. I do admit that. But, in the end of the day, it is about our efforts to stay in the right path. There would be four things that could divert our attention to the main goal of this life: 1) worldly matter, 2) people, 3) syaitan and 4) nafs al-ammārah.
إِنَّ النَّفْسَ لَأَمَّارَةٌ بِالسُّوءِ
“Indeed the nafs that overwhelmingly commands a person to do sin.” (12:53)
May Allah continuously bestow His guidance upon us and let’s try our very best to be a better Muslim each day.