Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn: If You Have No Shame, Do What You Wish

A great prerequisite to traveling the spiritual path of any hope for arrival at the destination, is taking care of those basic human needs that God has created in most, if not all of His slaves.

One of the differences between those things that bring you genuine happiness versus those that are drugs or drug-like, is that the latter just sends you for a dopamine spin without solving your problems, whereas working out a solution to the former will allow your mind, body, and spirit to free up and focus its attentions and concentrations on fulfillment, development, and ultimately finding peace and enlightenment.

One of the most typical, but devastating ploys of the devil, is to distract you daily, again and again, from doing anything to better your situation and take care of your needs, until it's too late. At that point Iblīs, may God's curse be upon him, whisper to you that you are a failure because of your belief, and because of your submission. If Islām had any benefit in it, you would not be in the situation. This is a very potent insinuation because no one wants to blame themselves, but, the reality is that God gave each person every chance to do better and many didn't take it.

The safer and superior track in dealing with this evil strategem is solve your problems rather than having to face this test at the end.

Many of the topics of tonight's lesson come back to avoiding that moment of despair in which the spirit of a believer is the most vulnerable to dæmonic attack.