Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Q&A Attaining Concentration During Dhikr

As salam o alaikum, Islam, what is up? Please, can you provide some

tips on cleaning the mind during Morocco, I think cleaning the mind

during Morocco, but is something which comes over time. Reason is

that we have to actually learn to focus focus on focusing on

anything is a challenge for I would probably say maybe most

people today, focusing on anything because we're so used to being

distracted. And our brain is actually hardwired now, because of

our habit. It's become kind of hardwired to be distracted,

because the phone is the biggest culprit. In that sense. What

happens is that whenever we're doing anything, because we have

this addiction towards finding out if we've received the new message

on WhatsApp, or anywhere else, then even when we're doing

whatever we'd like to just, let's just check quickly. So our brain

is almost like every few seconds or every minute or something it

wants to check. So maraca requires focus, because maraca is from the

heart. It's not just the movement of the tongue with certain types

of God, it's actually thinking about allowing the heart. So

you're either doing it or you're not. So in order to do that in a

sustained way, 1015 minutes or even five minutes, we need to be

able to focus. So initially, what's going to happen is that you

try to focus mind goes away, you focus again, your mind goes away,

you focus again, there's some ways of helping with that is that if

you do have a,

especially for beginners, if you if you have a one of those alarms,

or beeps, not not a big alarm, but just like something that beeps

lightly on your phone or elsewhere, put all other

notifications of just the beep that beeps like every maybe 30

seconds or every minute, it just just quick beep. So if the mind

has strayed, then that beep reminds us that you should be

focusing. So we come back faster. Otherwise, sometimes our Daydream

that we go into could last for two minutes. And you might be just

sitting down for five minutes or 10 minutes. So that sometimes

helps to just remember that, hey, I'm supposed to be more likeable.

And of course, there's lots of other things beforehand, because

from an Islamic point of view, holistically speaking, there's

many, many other issues. The food that we eat, that helps because

haram food or doubtful food or weird food,

not cooked with baraka and blessing. All of that is obviously

going to eating out too much. These kinds of things, not because

eating out food necessarily is always unhealthy from a physical

perspective, but it's just the fact that who's cooking it, how

they're cooking it, what are they cooking it for? What's the

intention behind it, all of this for Muslims, spiritually speaking,

at least makes a difference. So there's a lot of other things,

things that we've been thinking about in in during the day, the

time of day that we're doing the best probably time of day to do

this is early in the morning when there are no distractions.

So there's so many factors, there are just so many factors then to

sit down and then to get the presence of mind to ask Allah

subhanaw taala For Focus, all of these things, inshallah will be

useful. But again, it has to come over time. It's a practice, it's a

training. And it's an effort, and it has to come over time, and it

won't come just altogether. They say that for some people, it's

like digging a well, they say, digging a well for water, trying

to find water. For some people, they'll find it in 20 meters,

they'll find it some in 30 meter, sometimes they'll just have to dig

deeper and deeper, which means that it's just more sustained. But

we ask Allah for two feet, but one thing we have to remember is that

even if you don't get full concentration, at least the

benefit is that we're getting ourselves accustomed to sitting

for 1015 20 minutes, whatever it is, for thicker, even if with

negligence, that in itself is a bigger benefit than not sitting at

all, because first we have to get used to actually dedicating time.

So if you can't dedicate five or 10 minutes or 15 minutes to Allah,

then how can we expect concentration concentration is a

second level and that's understood. That's why if not Isla

and others, they make it very clear that if you do have a

sustained period of

at least engaging the tongue or engaging yourself a time for the

sake of Allah, then slowly slowly, you will eventually ascend to the

point where you will do it with focus, then you will do it with

Presence of Allah subhanaw taala So may Allah subhanaw taala give

us this dough features like Allah here for the question.