Tom Facchine – How Do I Measure My Sincerity
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Sincerity. One real quick easy test for
your sincerity is, do you want good for
others? Okay. And we used to come across
this problem sometime in Medina where some people,
they would be stingy. Right? Certain certain shake
is teaching a lesson. Oh, man. It's this
big shake, and he's got this exclusive,
kind of circle and crew and only a
few students are allowed, and people would wanna
conceal it. They wanna keep it all to
themselves. Right? If somebody else would ask about
it, they'd be, well, I don't know what
you're talking about. Right? They wanna keep it
to themselves. What does that say about their
sincerity? Do they want other people to be
guided like them or are they looking at
it from a rivalry sort of perspective? Are
they looking at it as competition? Are they
looking to come out ahead of their fellow
student or their fellow Muslim? No. We want
to be Nasur. We want to have this
sort of intention towards other people, the sincerity
where we want for them what we want
for us. That's the old hadith of the
prophet alaihis salatu wasalam, that you aren't a
true believer until you love for your brother
what you want for yourself. Is there anything
we want for ourselves more than guidance,
than,
having our sins covered, than being approached in
a beautiful way, a beautiful way that's beyond
just the bare minimum of what's, you know,
Sharia compliant. Right? So do we want good
for others? Do we want good do we
want other people to be guided? Because sometimes
we approach other people in a way that
demonstrates that we don't really want them to
be guided. We we really just want to
prove our point or we want to win
the debate or we want to score 1
over on them or show them up. This
is, a poor intention. This is indicative of
a flaw and a fault in your sincerity,
and it's going to make it impossible to
act ethically. It's going to make it impossible
to develop your nobility. Okay? So we're not
in competition with others and we're also not
about just putting ourselves above of everybody. It's
like, oh, I was the student of this.
Okay. You were one student. There were 70
other students, you know. It's like we were,
you know, like, for Sheikh Shanghiti's
lessons in Medina, there were a 100 people
there every single day. Right? Some people were
workers. Some people were young. Some people were
old. It wasn't like we have to resist
this sort of thing. Like, I was, you
know, the the main student of the sheikh,
and I, you know, carried his water to
him. And that's good. That's Khitma. You know,
like, I'm not belittling. I actually have a
very, very, very good friend of mine who
used to used to carry the water for
him, and that's great. But to put yourself
up above others
and to imagine that you have some sort
of special status because, you know, you used
to wipe the Sheikh's forehead when he got
sweaty. Right? This is something that indicates that
there's something wrong with your intention. There's something
wrong with your sincerity. You shouldn't be putting
yourself above other people. Right? This is something
that you should be putting yourself above other
people. Right? This is something that you should
be doing out of the love of your
heart, and you should realize that you're just
as poor and mesquite as everybody else. So
when it comes to our intention to attain
nobility, we have to make it our goal,
the cultivation of good manners. We're not just
passing our days
in a rafal or in a raflah, right,
in sort of unthinking, uncritical,
the opposite of awareness, right, That we want
every single action that we engage in, sitting
and shooting a video for YouTube or having
coffee or making coffee for your spouse or
every single act, whether it's a worldly goal
or a spiritual goal, it needs to be
beautified
and it needs to be perfected. Right? And
spiritual acts, even more so. Right? So, all
of our actions are eligible for this type
of beautification and this type of perfection, but
even more so, of course, the spiritual acts
such as prayer, such as dhikr, and things
like that. And we want to be absolutely
sure that we're not doing these things for
favors in the dunya, and we're not doing
these things transactionally.
And this is why we have hadith of
the prophet
where he said, for example,
that
giving to the person who is looking to
deprive you. Right? Is that it's easy when
it's give some, get some. Right? It's like,
oh, I compliment you, you help me. I
scratch your back, you scratch mine. Quid pro
quo. Right? That's not the sincerity that we're
after. Right? We're after,
can you give someone charity and have them
spit in your face? Can you give someone
in charity and they say to you, that's
it? And you smile and you say, I'm
sorry. Forgive me, but this is all I
right? Like, that's actual sincerity because you're not
doing it for the approval of the person
that you're giving it to. You're not doing
it to be praised, oh, I'm such a
good humble Muslim. Thank you. Yeah. Got the
award at the end of the year, you
know. No. You're doing it because it's sincere.
You're doing it to purify yourself regardless of
what sort of circumstances or consequences happen, happen
because of it. So these are all the
things. This is the second main prerequisite to
obtaining nobility that Aragwa al Suhani draws our
attention to. The first was docility, and the
second is our intention. We have to be
really, really careful and aware about all these
issues related to our intention. We should not
expect anything, anything. Sheikh Abdullah used to tell
us, when you go into a room and
people don't stand up for you, you should
be happy. You should be happy because that
shows that you have a pure self. If
you go into a room and, you know,
you you just arrived to the party, everybody
stands up, and you feel that little,
yeah. That's right. You feel a little proud,
a little happy. Oh, you're getting this recognition.
That's when you should start to doubt yourself
and doubt your sincerity.