Question:
Salaam
I have 2 qns:
1: It is advised that we have to be nothing. May I know what it means to be nothing and what should one do to be nothing. Furthermore, we are being taught to have self-confidence such as thinking that we are something so that we can fight our everyday anxieties. How do we juggle between being nothing and being something.
2: It is advised to know oneself. There is also a saying that by knowing oneself one will know the Lord. How can one know himself/herself. Is it by knowing one’s character such as one’s likes and dislikes. I do not have any clue to who I am.
May God bless all of you for all the hard work that you have done to help those in need. May God bless you all with the company of the Prophets and Saints. Amin.
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
1) Do not ask anything and submit. Not to ask and to submit is a struggle that is never going to end. Your good side wants to be nothing and the other side wants to be something. It is better to be nothing, then you are something in Allah’ s Eyes. To be something is to be nothing in Allah’s Eyes. So it is a struggle between good and evil. Try your best.
2) To know yourself is to count all bad characteristics that you have and try to eliminate them one by one. Try to count all the good manners that you have and try to increase them as much as you can. Try to avoid sin, one after one, and eliminate them from your life. Make a record of that daily. After one month, make an analysis of that record or all these records and write a summary of what was stronger than the other. Were sins more or the good side more? The next month do the same and check if you improved or not. Like a computer, you giv it the information and they give you an analysis of your personality. That is psychology which wroks on dunya issues but this is working on akhira issues.
Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
