al-Raghib al-Isfahani #03 – How To Motivate Ourselves

If our problem in our faith or our religiosity is not one of information, but it's one of motivation, what do we do? Right? What are the things that we need to kind of learn? Or ponder upon or synthesize? Right? Maybe it's not about just information. Maybe it's just about synthesizing maybe it's about feeling. Maybe it's about inspiration. What do we have to do? Where do we go?

And a lot what's funny, he mentions that

we have to increase our awareness in a couple of arenas. First of all, we need to increase our awareness of Allah subhanaw taala. Right. Somebody will never ever want to adhere to Allah's guidance, if they don't know who Allah is. That's just plain facts. Right? That they don't know that Allah is the Most Merciful. Well, then how are they going to trust that Allah's rules are fair? They don't know that a lot is the most wise, how are they going to trust in Allah's guidance? They don't know that a law is able to

reward beyond comprehension, and forgive beyond comprehension. How is this person going to trust the system? Right, if a law is just an abstraction, a theory, an idea, without sort of a tangible,

felt reality, and I mean, that in the sense that like a person feels,

feels that a law exists, you know, then who's going to want to listen to this rule or that rule. So the first thing is increasing your knowledge about who Allah subhanaw taala is, and not just knowledge in the sense of information, but real embodied knowledge, feeling it, understanding it, all of your senses involved. And then after that, we also have to understand who we are. That's probably the other big point.

And that's what I'll go outside. He mentioned the author, he says, First understand the law and then understand yourself what is what are we, as human beings? What's our nature? What's our potential? What's our capacity? If you think that we're all just damned to go to hell, from the first day we come into this world, or that we have some sort of Original Sin hanging over us, then it's going to be really hard to get that motivation up? Why would you want to if, if getting into paradise is only about Allah's grace and forgiveness, and has nothing to do at all with what we do in the world that why we even try? Right, we act as if differences in theology are just like differences in culture,

and they're not they actually result in different ways of being in the world. They result in different perspectives, and thus different actions or capacities for action. Somebody believes in Original Sin is not like somebody who doesn't believe in original sin in Islam, we don't have original sin. So we don't have that hanging over us. Right? We were more of a clean slate. Like Allah says, In the Quran, you came into this world, knowing nothing, we're more of a clean slate. And so that's, that's a much more encouraging starting point. Right? Then the starting point of, well, you have this original sin and you're hell bound unless you get baptized or accept Jesus or

whatever it is. Right? So we have to know who we are. What's what is the nature of a human being? Right? What are the different things that are common to all of us that go inside of all of us that the urges, the motivations, the delusions, the potential, the potential for good and the potential for evil? Like, what are all those things that make us up essentially, and the last piece of the puzzle about us? So two main things, knowing a lot and knowing ourselves? What's the purpose? What's the point? Why are we here? Okay.

I'm here, you're here, we have this urge, and that motivation and this delusion and that ability and that potentiality for this capacity, why? What's it all for? And so if somebody can figure out those two things, or at least develop themselves in those two ways, their understanding of who Allah is, and their understanding of who a human being is, then we can then we can go somewhere, right, then we can do the work that builds the faith strengthens the heart, to the point where somebody is actually seeking out Allah's guidance, ready, willing to submit and to obey to whatever a law says.