Tom Facchine – al-Raghib al-Isfahani #49 – The Necessary Tools For Guidance

			So there's a couple of things as low as for Hani kind of draws this section of the first main
chapter of the book to a conclusion about guidance, there's several things that help one on the path
to guidance. And he wants to draw our attention to them and kind of summarize them. So one of the
things and probably the first thing is having a humble heart, right, having a humble heart is the
most important probably, or at least the first sequentially, ingredient to being able to receive and
accept Allah's guidance. If you think you already have it figured out, you're not going to change or
you're not going to accept any sort of guidance from outside or any sort of correction from outside
		

			or any sort of, you know, even further insight, you know, you think you're good. So having a humble
heart and realizing that you don't have a figured out and realizing that you actually do depend on
sort of guidance from the last bounce oughta tofi success, all these sorts of things. That's the
first stage or the first sort of tool, I guess you could say, on your tool belt. The second is
intense listening, right? Being an intense listener, right, hearing what people have to say,
actually hearing it. Now we see in social media, sometimes people just talking past each other,
right, the person comes to the conversation, and they already have in their mind what they want to
		

			say. And so it doesn't even matter the person that they're talking to is just like a wall, you know,
and no matter what they say, they've got their thing prepared, the other person has their thing
prepared, and they just shout past each other. And this is the opposite. If we want to be guided, if
we really want to be guided, then that's the exact opposite thing that we should be doing. You know,
if we want guidance, we need to listen carefully to what the other person means what the other
person understands. Maybe they have a different understanding of a certain concept. We're using the
same words, we're using the same concepts, but we have a different understanding of how that
		

			happens. Maybe we both love Allah and love His Messenger, and we love the Koran and we love the
Sunnah. But we have a different understanding as to what's the best way to proceed, or what's the
what takes priority first or what has to be done first, right. So really intent listening is an
extremely important thing when if somebody wants to be guided again, they don't want to just live in
their silo in their echo chamber and just keep on believing the same, the same. Um, the next one is
having penetrating insight, right to be able to have understanding and insight this is something
that it requires you to develop your intellect, you're only going to go so far as to the things that
		

			you're able to understand. And so if somebody is dropping gems on you and you know, left and right,
you need to be able to have developed your intellect to the point where at least you can benefit
from those things. So those are the first three the first three has to do with having a humble heart
intent, listening and developing your intellect so that you can actually have penetrating insight
and understanding