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Self scrutiny

The Importance of Self-Awareness​

  • Awareness of One's Faults: Recognizing personal flaws is a favor from Allah, as it is the first step toward self-improvement. Awareness of one's shortcomings allows for their remedy, while ignorance of them sustains negative behaviors and hinders spiritual growth.
  • Self-Scrutiny Before Correcting Others: Attempting to guide others without addressing one's flaws is ineffective. To help others, one must cleanse oneself of negative traits like greed, jealousy, ostentation, and vanity.

Steps to Discover Personal Faults​

  • Learning About Spiritual Diseases: Understanding spiritual diseases of the heart, such as pride, envy, and hypocrisy, helps one identify and address these traits within oneself. You can deepen this understanding by reviewing processes that address these challenges.
  • Reflecting on Others' Actions: Observing others' behaviors can reveal similar tendencies in oneself. Noting negative traits in others serves as a mirror to examine one's conduct.
  • Seeking Feedback from a Sincere Friend: Feedback from a truthful friend provides an external perspective on one's character, helping identify areas for improvement that may be hard to see alone.
  • Inspiration from Pious Lives: Reading the biographies of spiritually accomplished individuals can provide motivation and guidance. Their journeys reveal the paths they followed and the obstacles they overcame on their way to excellence.

Accountability After Worship​

When falling short in sincerity, devotion, or adherence to principles, it is helpful to hold oneself accountable, similar to how one might correct a child. In this context, accountability could mean increasing voluntary worship, like additional fasting or charity.

However, accountability should be respectful and focused. Rather than criticizing the whole self, focus on specific behaviors that need correction. This prevents self-criticism from becoming harmful and helps maintain self-respect and dignity.

Here is an example of a reprimanding speech:

"When life ends, commerce is cut off, and despair occurs. This day is new; through it, Allāh has given me time. If He were to cause me to die, I would desire that He return me to the world so that I might do righteous deeds.

"O self! Regard yourself as having died and come back to the world for one more day. Strive on this one day and look at yourself, for if you are not given time for tomorrow, then you will have exhausted the profit of this day and will not regret it. If you are given time, then start again tomorrow, just as before. Do not trick yourself with empty hopes of forgiveness, for that belief is a liar, and regret is useless.

"Then, suppose that you were forgiven. Have you still not squandered the reward of the righteous—which is enough to cause regret and remorse?"

Then you say: "Suppose that you were sick for a period in your life (and your lifetime is a period in which you seek protection), and a doctor whom you believe to be truthful has informed you that the pleasures of food harm you and bad-tasting medicines benefit you. Due to the doctor's statement, would you not be patient with the bitterness of medicine out of your desire for healing? Would you not be patient with the difficulties of long travel out of your desire for rest in your home? You are a traveler, and your home is the afterlife. The traveler does not rest but bears the difficulties; if he stops for rest, he will be stopped on the path and destroyed."

Also say: "O self! What is it that you seek from the world? If you seek wealth and find it (and beware!), then there could be a group of Jews who are wealthier than you. If you seek status and attain it (and beware!), then there are uncouth Turks and fools from among the Kurds who will conquer you, and their status will be greater than your status.

"If you do not comprehend the ills of the world and the severity of their punishment and tribulation in the afterlife, will you not rise above them because of the lowliness of those who partake in them?

Do you not know that if you turned away from the world and turned to the afterlife, you would be one in a million for which no peer in the countries of the world exists?

"If you seek the world, then Jews and fools have beaten you to it—so to hell with a world that you were beaten to by an ass! Think deeply, O self! Examine yourself, for no one else will examine you."