al-Raghib al-Isfahani #24 – The Battle of Two Advisors

At this point out also honey, he's talked about virtue, he's talked about vise, how he conceptualizes it, how we need to develop it, the tools, we're going to use the things that we need to restrain and discipline. And the next thing that he wants us to be aware of is another obstacle that stands in our way. And he kind of pitches it with a parable he's talking about. He says that there's a struggle, there's almost like an epic, eternal struggle between these kind of two forces that are inside of ourselves. One of them is the intellect to the opposite. And the other one is that is desire is wanting to just do what one wants. And he gives a parable. And you know, for those

of us who have maybe watched Eric's role it reminded me of in the first season of erythritol, when they're in

there in Sham, and you have the ruler, and the ruler has two advisors, okay, and you've got one advisor who wants well, and he's a good advisor, and he's honest, and He's righteous. That's the uncle, right of the Emir. And then you have the other guy, Nasir, I think his name is and in the series, and he's the evil advisor, he's the one who has an agenda he's trying to undermine and ruin everything. So a lot of us for how he actually gives a very, very similar parable for the interaction between the intellect and desire within the human soul. So he says, The soul of the body is like the leader of a territory. He's like the emir, or the Aziz, he's the king. And the intellect

is like your wise adviser, not wise uncle who's trying to look out for you and tell you the right thing to do and steer you in the right direction. Whereas the desire that you have is like that treacherous advisor, like NASA, he's the guy who's trying to undermine everything that you're doing, plotting, trying to outmaneuver. And so the two advisors are actually trying to outmaneuver each other, they're both vying and jockeying for influence over the leader, right, who's gonna win out. And so it all go elsewhere, he says that if the good advisor if the intellect falls asleep for a minute, or for an hour, if he forgets for a second, he loses his awareness that he's in this epic

struggle against this other guy who's trying to ruin everything, think about how much corruption is going to happen, think about all the beautiful things that are going to get ruined. And so just like that, as individuals, we need to be constantly aware and constantly check ourselves that we have this desire that's trying to lead us astray, that's trying to influence us in a bad way. And we have this amazing power that's there that can help check that but we need to engage it, we can't turn it off, we can't switch it off, we need to be constantly developing it and using it. And all of us has a certain amount of kind of motivation and energy. And a lot of us for honey he gives, He says that

the energy that you have, and the motivation that you have the zeal that you have is almost like a policeman, right. So you can either have the policeman working for this advisor or working for the other one, if you put the policeman under the command of the good advisor, he's going to get out the bad guy, and he's going to lock them up, and everything's going to be peace in the kingdom. But if you let the police officer answer to the bed vizier or the bad advisor, what's going to happen, he's going to lock up the intellect, he's going to lock up your good adviser, and everything's just going to be craziness and corruption. And so that's why we need to be very, very careful that the point

that Australia is trying to make is that we can't fall asleep for a second, we have to realize the game. This is the game right? We can't imagine that and there's Hadith about this, the prophet slaves and I'm saying, you know, the man's alone with a woman and the devil is the third one, right? And all these sorts of things that and all these other Hadith about the dangers of being by yourself, right, separating yourself from the GEMA right? You think that you're alone, you're not you always have these two kinds of influences over you. And the second that you forget about this guy you forget about the bad influence, that's when he's the most dangerous and he has the most

potential to wreak havoc.