The Best Self-Care
I’ve seen so many personal development ‘fads’ and ‘buzzwords’ over the years, that I’ve lost count. But the one that resonates really strong with a lot of people is:
“Self-Care”
It seems to be the ultimate antidote to ‘burn out’ and stress.
To a lot of people ‘self-care’ means doing things like getting a massage, or taking a long warm bath, but to me, without a shadow of doubt…
The best self care is prayer.
A lot of times Muslims think of prayer as an ‘obligation’ or something we have to get done so that we can relax. However, to the Prophet, peace & blessings upon him, it was the opposite.
He wanted to get everything out of the way so he could just relax into prayer. In his words: “In the prayer has been placed the coolness of my eyes”. This is an ancient Arabic expression that means he really loved it – as if there’s nothing he would rather do with his eyes than be in prayer.
A couple of years ago I was at a retreat in Rosales, in the south of Spain, where Dr Samer Dejani commented on this Prophetic saying that it may be a spiritual allusion to the Prophet, peace & blessings upon him, literally ‘seeing’ Allah as he prayed. Later in that same retreat the head scholar and spiritual teacher, Sheikh Babikir mentioned that ‘jihad an-nafs’ or the struggle against the lower self, is all about carefully, intelligently, weening your ‘self’ off it’s desires, so your mind, body and soul want nothing more than a deep level of divine love and devotion…
…and then he very subtly took the micky out of us for being at a spiritual retreat where we could get massages and rest and rejuvenate our bodies, when the spiritual seekers and masters of the past would go out of their way to fast, sleep as little as possible, oftentimes on the floor, and ultimately aim to deny the body it’s desires.
If it sounds like a cool idea to have the formal Islamic prayer (salah) to be your favourite part of the day, but you find yourself in the position where it’s just another thing to ‘get done’, then you might be ready for a major life upgrade.
In The Ocean you get instant access to a program called, “Instant Ihsan”, which gives you a deep dive into how the mind works, and how this shift in our understanding can be absolutely transformative for prayer and all forms of devotion.
If you want to take the next step in your journey of personal transformation, and take really great care of your whole self: mind, body and soul… then let yourself bathe in The Ocean.
The water is warm: