al-Raghib al-Isfahani #26 – The Tools For Decision Making

So if we have this epic struggle between the intellect and the desire going on inside of us, how can we tell? Let's say that an idea comes to you or a course of action comes to you or an opportunity comes to you? How can you tell whether it's the intellect or whether it's the desire that speaking that wants to do this thing or wants to pursue this sort of action about Western hunting gives us some tools? He says, first of all, is this instant gratification or delayed gratification, okay, the intellect will always lean towards delayed gratification, whereas the desire will always lean towards instant gratification. Okay, think about, you're going to the gym, okay? Is getting is going

to the gym or starting a gym membership, like instant gratification. No, it's not, right. It's something that requires work, you're not going to see the results until after you put in work education, right? It's not something that is an instant, instant gratification, you have to put in work and the results are gonna happen down the road, right. So this is something that is from the intellect. That's how that's one of the ways we can tell, as opposed to the desire, the impulse that gravitates to what's pleasing upfront, and it's going to actually lead to problems later, right? Instant gratification. It's like a kid, for example, if you let your child eat for dinner, whatever

they wanted, what would they do, they would eat all the candy and all the cookies and all the popcorn and ice cream and whatever it was, and then they get a stomachache and then get sick later on their choices, being informed by the desire, the impulse, it's not the intellect, your frontloading, your fun, and you've got bad stuff coming your way. Same thing with lust for adults, like you see somebody, okay? And you're just thinking, instant gratification, this person is so beautiful, this person. So this is so this, you're not thinking down the road, you're not thinking well, is this person a good person? Right? Are they, you know, a grateful person? Are they a

potential spouse? For me? Are they someone who is going to be a good mother or father to my children? You're not thinking that far ahead. You're only thinking about the instant gratification, right? So that's from the neffs. That's from the that's from the desire. The second way is pros and cons, weighing pros and cons, how can we tell if something's coming from the intellect or something coming from the desire or from the neffs? If you're able to weigh pros and cons, you're able to say, well, you know, this situation, this is good, this is good, this is good. But there's this drawback that is from the intellect. Whereas the neffs, or the desire can only see the pros, it can't see the

columns, it will only think this is the illusion. This is why it's vanity is old. All right, we say love is blind, you see this thing, you see this person, you see this thing that you want, and said, you can only imagine the good things, you can't anticipate that there could ever be anything wrong, which is why you end up regretting because once you get down the road, and you realize that everything's always a mixed bag, it's like, Ah, I didn't even see this coming. I didn't see this coming because you were led by your desire, not by your intellect. The third way is that what the intellect gravitates towards is going to become stronger with istikhara and St. Shara. So by praying

on it, asking a lot to guide your decision. And by asking other people's opinion, we see sometimes we have friends, we have family where every single person is telling them don't do it. Right. I want to divorce I'm sick of this, this is not working out, don't do it Be patient, his goes to the sister don't do it goes to the Father, don't do it everybody's time DON'T DO IT person stubborn. No zit I want to do it doesn't have to be divorce, it could be staying in a marriage. It could be. It could be anything, right. But the point is that everybody's telling you not to do it. And not just everybody but good people, people who are trustworthy, okay, it's probably a sign that you're being

led by your desire and not by your intellect. And then finally, the last tool, the fourth tool that a lot of us find gives us is proof. He says that if the intellect wants to do something, it will look for proof, right? Even if that proof is just Well, I saw that so and so did this thing. And actually, it turned out really good, right? Whereas the desire doesn't want to see proof. It's not going to make decisions based off of proof. Somebody wants to do a certain thing. And they know 10 People who did the same thing, and it all turned out bad for them, they're not going to care, they're gonna say it's gonna be different for me, it's gonna be different this time that I don't

know their situations, not like mine, right? That's delusion. That's the neffs. That's the design. And so if we're able to use these, these tools are able to use these four tools that are wrong with us for how he tells us that we're going to be able to distinguish and differentiate between those things that our intellect want us to do and the things that the desire and the impulse and the urge are begging us to do.