Tom Facchine – al-Raghib al-Isfahani #52 – Stairs To Virtue

			So we start as a potentiality, right we start as an F, or it could be, or it can be hospital Rogal.
But as for HANA He wants us to understand and we can go one way or the other. We can climb the
stairs, right and go to amazing heights and see amazing views. Or we can descend step by stepping
into something that is lonely and humiliating. And so he he identifies four levels to each four
levels to climb and four levels to descend to. So we'll talk first about the four levels to climb.
He says the first level is the level of repentance, okay? We're now walking the path of trying to be
a better person to become a khalifa to become a laws representative on earth. The first step, the
		

			first level is repentance. It's trying to minimize sin as much as possible, realizing that all of us
sin and that takes awareness and education. First of all, you have to understand what is sin and
what isn't. And like the, the, the Hadith of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam said, the halal and
haram rebellion, that most of what's Halal haram are clear. However, there are gray areas in between
them that most people don't know about. And so Taqwa literal, the literal meaning of Taqwa is taking
precaution and having a precautionary distance between you and what is haram. But it does take
education. That's the main thing that the author wants us to understand educating yourself as to
		

			what is halal and what is haram. And you're not going to be able to figure out everything, but at
least educating yourself as much as possible. That's a prerequisite for stopping sin in the first
place. Maybe somebody they don't think that there's anything wrong with drinking alcohol, they're
drinking alcohol, they're drinking alcohol every day, they say, what's wrong with it? And then
someone's like, Hey, that's a sin. Stop it. And they don't even realize that that's something that
they're incurring sin by doing right. So the first step is to educate yourself what is sin and
what's not. The second is to regret that sort of thing. Okay, you need to have to double you need to
		

			contemplate why that thing is forbidden in the first place. What are the harms of it? And more
importantly, who are you disobeying? Who Are you disobeying? When you decide to do that thing,
right? You're talking about going against Allah Subhana Allah, who you're indebted to for absolutely
everything you have every absolutely every benefit and blessing and positive memory and happy moment
that you've had, right? So now you're going to go against that one who gave you all of that? All of
that stuff? Right? It's not it's not a good idea. So regretting sin and understanding the reality
sin is a huge component. And then finally, you have to resolve to change, okay, so you have to
		

			educate yourself about what's right and wrong. You have to regret doing the sin and then you have to
resolve to change repentance is meaningless if you're just going to keep on doing the same thing.
And we see people like this in our personal lives to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but they
don't change. And not because they're just a bit in a bad habit because they don't reveal any sort
of intention to change, right? Your actions prove how truthful Your words are. So if you're going to
say I want to repent, I feel sorry, Allah forgive me, you need to back that up by action, and that
action is abandoning sin. So all of this was it was in the first level of the kind of stairs to
		

			virtue or the stairs to an elevated status, and the first is repentance.