al-Raghib al-Isfahani #34 – Can We Fake It Until We Make It

At this point, as for Hani, he poses a question, is there any tres to the idea? Or is there any merit to the idea of faking it till we make because this is a common doubt, especially in our time that people have say, Well, you know, I know on the inside, I'm not a good person, and I want to live authentically, I don't want to practice above my level of my internal belief, right? I'm going to wait until I'm ready, or I'm going to wait until I've truly believe it. And then I'm going to do it, right, as opposed to the opposite sort of way of thinking, is that, okay, I'm going to fake it until I make it I'm going to put on the external, whatever. And then I hope that my in my internal

self comes along for the ride and actually develops this. So you know, the 1000 years ago, so he actually takes this on, and it's very, very relative or relevant to today, he says that it's neither necessarily good or bad. It depends upon your intention, there's a way that this can happen, that's good. And then there's a way that can happen, that this is bad. The way that it is potentially praiseworthy and good is that somebody is using the external kind of trappings in order to train their inner self, we would compare it to maybe a scaffolding, right, let's take the prayer, okay, by the logic of I shouldn't practice a certain degree until I feel motivated or driven to do it from

the inside, then we would be just like the Christians and only pray when we're ready, and we feel like and how often would that really be right? I want everybody to think if they've ever thought themselves like, well, I'm only going to pray when I feel the love of Allah to pray, are motivated to pray, how often would you really pray? You would Oh, my God, like once a week, you know, once a month, a couple times a month? That's just the honest reality. So Allah said, No, I said, No, you're gonna pray, whether you feel motivated or not. And the person who prays feeling love and motivation, that's a better prayer than the person who doesn't, but you're gonna pray anyway. Why? Because we're

assuming, and we're hoping that the outer shell, that the outer scaffolding is going to become the building the capacity for the inner self to develop, right, like one of the famous scholars of old said, I prayed night prayers for 20. I struggled to pray night prayers for 20 years. And then the following 20 years, I actually enjoyed it right as like, should if he just operated on the logic of Well, I don't feel motivated, and I'm not going to do it until I'm motivated or overflowing with the love of Allah, that's when I'm going to start praying nightmares you would have ever started in the first place, write some things, sometimes you need to just throw yourself into it, and then wait for

your inner self to come along for the ride. However, our our boss for honey is sensitive enough to realize that there are certain situations where that doesn't work, and this thing can actually backfire. And so he mentioned one situation where this is sort of blameworthy is when that doing that outer work is giving you some sort of benefit or some sort of praise, right? And that develops hypocrisy, right? So if you're putting on a, let's say, you're not a scholar, okay, well, you're gonna dress like the scholars. And I come out here with my, you know, Chris White, though, and my turban and I have a big following. I got my entourage and stuff like that, you know, okay, I dress

up for Joomla, because that's about the station of Joomla in respect of Joomla. But if I'm going to dress like, you know, the grand shake of this institution, or that institution isn't a true that it's going to change the way that people treat me. Okay, so now I have a conflict of interest. So now, it might not be necessarily that I'm trying to inhabit within myself develop that internal capacity to reach up to the level that my external self has kind of put on, it might actually be the opposite, where I have this sort of hypocrisy going on, actually, my internal self is actually going down, because now I'm doing it for bad reasons and bad motivations and bad intentions. I'm doing it

to show off I'm doing it to accrue some sort of benefit. I'm doing it to be treated or praised in a certain way. That's, that's really Yeah, right. That's, that's the definition of what the Prophet alayhi salatu salam said was this sort of showing off towards other people so that that's bad. So we need to be careful. Like, there are situations there's a time for this and a time for that there are times the two different tools and a tool belt, right? There are times when you need to just shut up and force yourself to do it right and not worry about how you're feeling on the inside. Because if you keep on working at it, eventually you're going to get to the point where it's going to become

natural, and you might even start to love it. And then you will have developed yourself on the inside. And there's other situations where maybe going ahead of where your internal self is at might be a recipe for disaster either because you're going to start showing off or maybe you're going to develop some sort of type of resentment against the thing that you're doing. So two different tools in the toolbox to be used in two different situations. And our August for honey says to take account of yourself and your internal self and to try to figure out which one is going on.