Faraz Rabbani – Weekly Q&A Does Struggling to Focus on Prayer Mean One Is Failing in Their Prayer
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of striving for presence of heart and prayer in order to achieve their potential. They emphasize the need to be mindful of one's actions and to focus on their gratitude and facilitation. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of positive self criticism to identify and remove negative outcomes.
AI: Summary ©
The struggling to focus in prayer mean that
one is failing
in prayer?
Should one be self critical for it? No.
If you are striving, you you have responsible
you're responsible for 2 things, to seek and
to strive. That's it.
To seek and strive.
If you commit a sin or fall short,
you repent and rectify.
These are the four duties of the believer.
S s r r,
seek
and strive.
If you
repent and rectify,
and then return. Right? Seek,
strive. And one of the most hope inducing
verses in the Quran,
Allah tells us
in the Quran,
and that each person
shall only have
what they strived for.
That is both a warning that you can't
just sit back and chill out,
but also it's
absolute hope in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And that each person shall have
whatsoever
they strive for.
And their striving
will then
be beheld.
And so you don't have to achieve quote,
unquote success.
You don't have to have
presence of heart and prayer.
You have to strive for presence of heart
and prayer. That's why even the term sincerity.
What is
it is striving
to be sincere.
You're not responsible
for attaining sincerity.
You are responsible
for striving.
That's mercy. Even the term for sincerity comes
from
this notion of striving.
And the very fact that you feel bad
for it means that
you should have gratitude. The believer is between
hope and fear in Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
If we struggle but then we we take
the means. Okay. What do I we don't
should look back and say, oh I'm a
loser,
I'm failing. No. How do I improve?
If you only have 21 percent
presence of heart let's say, you can't quantify
that.
The point have first begin with gratitude.
I have
21%.
Right?
Presence of heart.
For the blessing of prayer.
For the blessing
of this concern I find within me to
do better.
And ask Allah for increase. But then also
that the
it's not about being self critical.
The the positive
self criticism
is to see what do I need to
rectify going forward. So you say, you know
what? I was sitting watching a whole bunch
of TikTok reels and then I prayed
and my mind was ticking and talking about
all kinds of things besides
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So so okay.
Now for for Asad prayer, I'm not gonna
do that. I'm gonna
focus a little bit. Then you find you
watch some TikTok reels before tahajjud and your
mind was all over the place. Say, you
know what? Maybe I should reduce some of
these distractions. That is positive self criticism, which
looks at
what
causes led to the undesired effects
and you
remove
or diminish
those
harmful causes.
The smart person, said the prophet is the
one who takes themselves to account.
Positive self accounting is not criticism and putting
yourself down, but rather say, okay, what
there
are negative outcomes
that
arose that, you know,
effects
have causes. So you identify what did I
do wrong?
So I rectify it going forward. You say
I seek Allah's forgiveness and repent to him.
You ask Allah for facilitation. Allah
assist me in the good and then you
commit to it.