How to preserve Ikhlas – a few practical points

Mar 16, '13 1:16 PM for everyone

If you have done some good actions solely to please God, helped someone or are performing obligatory or supererogatory acts of worship then know that  you can never be secure from the evil of Satan and your lowly self (nafs alammarah) until the end of your life. 

 

You must exercise vigilance, as your low self may prompt you to make a  verbal mention of it in front of your friends or acquaintances, or to express it  in the way of a subtle hint without directly mentioning it. For instance, if you  are regularly observing night prayers, your low self may prompt you to pass  a hint by speaking about the good or bad weather conditions at daybreak or  about supplications or the call for  fajr prayers, thus polluting your act of  worship with riya. You must, thus resist all such tendencies.

 

You must keep a watch over yourself, like a kind physician or nurse, and not  let the rebellious self get out of control; for a moment of neglect may give it  the opportunity to break its reins and lead your sincere actions into ruin.

Purification of intention from all levels of duality (shirk)  and showing-off

(riya), constant vigilance over it, and its perseverance in purity makes up a  difficult task. 

 

Try to remind yourself of your duties and judge your intention and actions in  the light of following verse of the Holy Qur’an: Say: "Truly my prayer and  my service of sacrifice, my life and my death are (all) for Allah, the Lord of  the Worlds. (6:162). 

 

And as long as you have egoism and self-seeking, love of office and position,  even if you take a step for the acquisition of divine knowledge or spiritual  excellence, these will be ultimately sought for selfish ends. God-seeking and  self-seeking cannot go together. Rather, if God is sought for the sake of the  self, the ultimate goal is the self and the ego. [Al-Khumayni,  Forty Hadith,

chapter 20, p.8]

Conclusion: 

The first step in the journey towards God is abandonment of self-love and  crushing the head of egoism under one's foot. To the extent that one succeeds in purging his or her heart of self-love, the love of God shall enter it to the same  extent and it shall also be purified of latent shirk (egoism).   

Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “The person who devotes himself sincerely to God for forty days, streams of wisdom will flow from his heart to his  tongue.”

 

[Al-Suyuti, al-Durr al-Manthur, vol.2, p. 237]