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.