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The Purification of the Soul- Symptoms Of the Heart's Sickness & Signs of Its Health
Four-Symptoms
Of the Heart's Sickness & Signs of Its Health
The
Signs of a Sick Heart
A servant's heart may be ill, and seriously deteriorating, while he remains
oblivious of its condition. It may even die without him realising it. The symptoms
of its sickness, or the signs of its death, are that its owner is not aware
of the harm that results from the damage caused by wrong actions, and is unperturbed
by his ignorance of the truth or by his false beliefs.
Since the living heart experiences pain as a result of any ugliness that it encounters and through its recognising its ignorance of the truth (to a degree that corresponds to its level of awareness), it is capable of recognising the onset of decay-and the increase in the severity of the remedy that will be needed to stop it-but then sometimes it prefers to put up with the pain rather than undergo the arduous trial of the cure!
Some of
the many signs of the heart's sickness if its turning away from good foods to
harmful ones, from good remedies to shameful sickness. The healthy heart prefers
what
is beneficial and healing to what is harmful and damaging; the sick heart prefers
the opposite. The most beneficial sustenance for the heart is faith and the
best medicine is the Qur'an.
The Signs of a Healthy Heart
For the heart to be heality it should depart from this life and arrive in the
next, and then settle there as if it were one of its people; it only came to
this life as a passer-by, taking whatever provisions it needed and then returning
home. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to Abdullah
ibn Umar, "Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a passer-by."1
The More diseased the heart is, the more it desires this world; it dwells in
it until it becomes like one of its people. The healthy heart continues to trouble
its owner until
he returns to Allah, and is at peace with Him, and joins Him, like a lover driven
by compulsion who finally reaches his beloved. Besides his love for Him he needs
no other, and after
invoking Him no other invocations are needed. Serving Him precludes the need
to serve any other.
If this heart misses its share of reciting the Qur'an and invoking Allah, or completing one of the prescribed acts of worship, then its owner suffers more distress than a cautious man who suffers because of the loss of money or a missed opportunity to make it. It longs to serve, just as a famished person longs for food and drink.
Yahya
ibn Mu'adh said: "Whoever is pleased with serving Allah, everything will
be pleased to serve him; and whoever finds pleasure in contemplating Allah,
all the people
will find pleasure in contemplating him." This heart has only one concern:
that all its actions, and its inner thoughts and utterances, are obedient to
Allah. It is more careful with its time than the meanest people are with their
money, so that it will not be spent wastefully. When it enters into the prayer,
all its worldly worries and anxieties vanish and it finds its comfort and bliss
in adoring its Lord. It does not cease to mention Allah, nor tire of serving
Him, and it finds intimate company with no-one save a person who guides it to
Allah and reminds it to Him.
Its attention to the correctness of its action is greater than its attention to the action itself. It is scrupulous in making sure that the intentions behind its actions are sincere and pure and that they result in good deeds.
As well as and in spite of all this, it not only testifies to the generosity of Allah in giving it the opportunity to carry out such actions, but also testifies to its own imperfection and shortcomings in executing them.
The Causes of Sickness of the Heart
The temptations to which the heart is exposed are what cause its sickness. These
are the temptations of desires and fancies. The former cause intentions and
the will to be corrupted, and the latter cause knowledge and belief to falter.
Hudhayfa
ibn al-Yamani, may Allah be pleased with him, said: "The Messenger of Allah
*saaws* said, "Temptations are presented to the heart, one by one. Any
heart that accepts
them will be left with a black stain, but any heart that rejects them will be
left with a mark of purity, so that hearts are of two types: a dark heart that
has turned away and becom like an
overturned vessel, and a pure heart that will never be harmed by temptation
for as long as the earth and the heavens exist. The dark heart only recognises
good and denounces evil when this suits its desires and whims." 2
He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, placed hearts, when exposed to temptation, into two categories:::
First, a heart which, when it is exposed to temptation, absorbs it like a sponge that soaks up water, leaving a black stain in it. It continues to absorb each temptation that is offered to it until it is darkened and corrupted, which is what he meant by "like an overturned vessel". When this happens, two dangerous sicknesses take hold of it and plunge it into ruin:
The first is that of its confusing good with evil, to such an extent that it does not recognise the former and does not denounce the latter. This sickness may even gain hold of it to such an extent that it believes good to be evil and vice-versa, the sunnah to be bida' and vice-versa, the truth to be false and falsity to be the truth.
The second is that of its setting up its desires as its judge, over and above
what the Prophet *saaws* taught, so that it is enslaved and led by its whims
and fancies.
Second,
a pure heart which the light of faith is bright and from which its radiance
shines. When temptation is presented to pure hearts such this, they oppose it
and reject it, and so
their light and illumination only increase.*
Notes: 1. Al-Bukhari, Kitab ar-Riqaq, 11/233. 2. Muslim, Kitab al-Iman,
2/170