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Tazkiyah

IIBuilding one's thirst

The quest for truth begins with wanting it

The book pauses here for the reader who agrees with everything so far and still cannot get out of the chair. This is not a failure of belief. It is a failure of charge.

If a person is in a state of sinfulness and laziness, then this person needs to charge his battery up, so that he can gain the energy to do good deeds. That is the whole of the diagnosis, and the book treats it mechanically rather than moralistically — you do not shame a flat battery, you charge it.

Building one's thirst: coming out of the state of sinfulness and lazinessp.27

Building one's thirst: coming out of the state of sinfulness and laziness · p.27

A tall battery filling with bands of colour beside a lever of thirst and energy numbered zero to twenty, and a ladder of ten stages from attends and listens at the bottom up to takes step to start at the top, alongside eight things that build thirst

How the charge accumulates

The ten rungs

Notice that the first rung is not decides. It is attends — simply turning up. Motivation is the ninth rung, not the first. You do not need to feel ready in order to begin the sequence that makes you ready.

  1. Attends
  2. Listens
  3. Reflects
  4. Interest develops
  5. Thinks
  6. Weighs his options
  7. Intention to start the path
  8. Makes decisions
  9. Becomes active
  10. Takes the step to start

Eight ways to charge it

The thirst builders

Reflecting on the end

Death, Barzakh, the Day of Judgement, Hell and Paradise. Held in the mind deliberately, not in passing.

The company of scholars and the pious

Proximity to people who already have what you are trying to build.

Gatherings of dhikr and knowledge

The book gives this as its worked example: one leaves a gathering of remembrance already feeling charged, and closer to Allah and His Prophet ﷺ.

The lives of the prophets and the awliyah

Reading the lives of the prophets, the companions and the friends of Allah.

The virtues of good deeds

Learning what a small act is actually worth, which makes it harder to keep postponing.

The reality of the Dunya

Reflecting on what the world really is, and on how the lives of the sinners ended.

An intensive course

A concentrated period of study, rather than a slow trickle that never accumulates.

The greatness of Allah

Learning about the One the journey is towards.

These are some of the things a person can do in order to gain enough energy and strength to begin the journey to the divine pleasure of Allah. By attending a gathering of knowledge and dhikr, one leaves feeling charged up, and feels closer to Allah and His Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. This should give a person the motivation and strength to practise the teaching of Islam.

Attending these gatherings is not the end of the purpose. They are the means.

The book is careful to close this section with that warning. A person can spend years collecting the feeling of being charged and never actually depart. The gathering exists to get you to the runway; it is not the destination, and mistaking one for the other is the first of the many substitutions this book spends its later chapters dismantling.