al-Raghib al-Isfahani #16 – Restraint

So the first tool that we have to apply to ourselves to develop ourselves and reach our potential is education and that education has to result in wisdom. The second one that are all of us for Hani mentions is restraint. And what restraint is supposed to lead to, it's supposed to generate the capacity to be generous, right? Because if you don't have any restraint in the things that you consume, or the things that you enjoy from this world, you're going to find it very, very hard to be generous. There's actually a funny story, a kind of embarrassing one, when I was in Medina, I had somebody visit me and somebody and their father, and so we were students, we were very,

I don't wanna say poor, but like, finances were always very, very tight. And so we were used to eating like for very, very cheap, like, you know, some of our meals we would have at the profit machine, and then other things we would use, like one or two results. And so, because I had guests, I was like, Okay, I'm going to take them out to a nicer place, like like I'm not, I can't just, you know, serve them the tummies and food that I eat every day, like, I'm gonna take them to a nicer place. So I took them to a nicer place. And that whole day, like, I kind of justified it in my head, because it's like, okay, I'll just skip eating, right, so I'll save some money and whatever. And

then this will be like my meal for the day, and I'll be good. So when a time comes, and we get, we're at this, this restaurant, we get all this food, and I'm so hungry, that I just start going in.

And I don't even realize that my guests and specifically the father of my guests was kind of like he would have liked, it would have been better to share everything that we had and to take our time and things like that. And he kind of just made a comment, like off the cuff. It's like, it's like, well, like you must have like, been really hungry or something like that. And I felt so embarrassed, I was so ashamed of myself, because I had let my kind of I had let my lower neffs when basically I had let kind of the hunger and the appetite and the desire for food kind of take over in that moment. And I lost my restraint. And because I didn't have restraint, I was unable to be generous, right? If you

have an attachment to something or you desire something too much, you're not going to be able to give it freely right which is why you know, the Chinese trying to drive this home is that if you're able to exercise restraint, eat little sleep, little talk little, then you're much more able to freely give from those things to other people. And there's a beautiful Hadith of the profit on a satsang that summarizes this, he says is had been dunya you had book Allah was had female and the nurse you have brokenness is that if you restrain yourself, or you exercise restraint in this world, or the things of this world, Allah is going to love you. And if you exercise restraint from that

which belongs to other people, then they're going to love you too, right? It's just a natural thing. So training yourself upon restraint is supposed to develop the capacity to give you look at other people, and you look at for example sorts of hacer on the Quran. And many of many people know the story of sorts of Hashem in the Quran, where there's some companions. And they, I mean, there's many stories and sorts of hassle, but one of them is there's companions, that they invite somebody to their home, and they have nothing to eat, or they have like one little tiny bit of food to eat, and instead of giving it to their kids that kind of trick their kids into falling asleep, and they give

it to their guests, and they go hungry that night. And the Prophet alayhi salatu salam is very, very happy by this action. What makes someone able to do that, right. It's a capacity to be developed. It's not just that someone's born that way. It's a capacity. If you consistently exercise restraint, you're going to find yourself in a position to be a lot more generous. And generosity is essential for being a leader. You can't be a leader and be looking out for yourself first. If you're a leader, you have to be served last you have to take care of everybody else versus what the Prophet alayhi salatu salam did when it came to the hedgerows and other things. He was the last elite, right? He

made sure everybody else was okay. First, if you want to be a Khalifa, you want to be a leader. You want to be a role model or an example. You can't be accustomed to just operating on your desires. Well, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm thirsty. I want to do this. I want to do that. No, you have to exercise restraint. You have to exercise restraint and train yourself upon it. So that becomes second nature. And then you have the capacity to be generous with other people and put other people first that's what makes you eligible to be one of the the whole effect