Nafs and Sunnah

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem

As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,
Just a reminder. This something I've been thinking about lately, so I thought I'd make others think about it too. Imam 'Abdallah ibn 'Alawi al Haddad rahimahullah once said:

Discipine the ego with constant isolation
silence, sleeplessness and hunger.

So most of us aren't awliyaa of Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala, so doing such a thing seems rather impossible. But if you're among those who yearn to purify their hearts, then just try it for a few days... I'd say, just take one of those four and work on it. Maybe focus on one each month. No, one every forty days. Write it on your calendar. Mark off the next forty days and tell yourself that you're going to be strict on your food and drink intake. Be strict with yourself, and whenever you feel yourself lax, remind yourself that the majority of the time RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam, the Beloved of Allah, who we yearn to be like and ache to be with, used to be hungry most of the time. So think about how sweet it is that you're fulfilling a sunnah when you feel that hunger.

At the time of RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam, there was a sahaba radiAllahu 'anh and he was African. He knew that RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam's blessed hair would sometimes fall and create a part down the center of his perfect head. Now this sahaba's hair radiAllah 'anh was like any African's hair, so it wasn't the kind that could part. This pained him so much... he would look with sad yearning at the hair of his beloved master salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam and would lament deeply that he could not be like him... that he could not do what Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala had shown was beloved to Him through His Habib salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam. One day, he couldn't take it any longer- he grabbed hold of the thin, metal stick used to cook meat over a fire, pulled it out of the burning fire, red hot, placed it down the center of his scalp, and burned away a line of hair, creating a part. The other sahaba radiAllahu 'anhum, upon seeing the blood and burning skin on his head, cried, "what are you doing!! Doesn't it hurt?!" to which he replied, "I swear that the pain I felt upon knowing that I could not fulfill this one sunnah was more intolerable than the pain of the burning of my scalp."

May Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala grant us a taste, a small piece, of the kind of love and devotion to the beloved of Allah salAllahu 'alayhi wsallam that the sahaba radiAllahu 'anhum had. May He grant us the ability control our nafs and thus to experience at least a part of the hunger and sleeplessness that he salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam experienced, purely out of our love for him, and out of yearning to purify our hearts, so that we are not entirely shamed and disgraced when we stand before our Beloved subhaanahu wa ta 'aala on that Fateful Day. Ameen.