Does your mind lose its concentration when your stand for Salah? Does your mind run to the shop, walk to the kitchen, think about your work and forget the pot you kept on the stove?
Oh yeah! My mind runs a tour of all the forgotten things once I stand for prayer…if that’s your answer then it’s your turn to ponder on why that’s happening. Why do you lose concentration when your mind should be focused…What’s the reason behind this? These are certain questions which have to be analyzed and a solution to be found out immediately and put that into practice.
Let me ask you..Do you lose concentration when you talk to your friend, teacher or somebody? You are attentive and interested, aren’t you? Then why do you lose interest when you converse with Allah Ta’ala who is the Lord of the worlds and after all the one who loves you and cares for you more than anyone? Won’t Allah expect you to show interest in him, focus and pray while you offer Salah? After all you are talking to Allah while praying, that is what it means. He gave you everything and he expects you to only worship him.
So can’t you spare a little time focusing your minds in Salah and show your gratitude for all what he has done for you? How can we focus our minds? Is there a solution?
There is a solution for each and every aspect in our lives and only thing is we have to strive for it. Certain things can be accomplished without any hard work whereas for certain aspects in life we have to apply extra effort. If you are ready to walk that extra mile, then the solution which lies behind this instability can be put into practice.
Ask yourselves this question. Have I ever skipped learning and working on things that interested me? Or else there might have been certain streams where we were in a situation to definitely learn that whether we liked it or not. We had to learn and sometimes we had to show perfection in order to get through or pass that.
Such is the case with Salah. There is no option like am going to learn or am not going to learn. We have to learn to concentrate and establish our prayer in order to attain a higher status. If we don’t learn on how to do it, then our Salah would not be perfect. We would be just doing the rukooh and sujood and the other positions and finally nothing would be left for us except that we gave our time for nothing.
Deeds to be added to our account will be doubtful or else only part of the marks would be given to us. Why? Because, we didn’t fulfill the requirements of Salah properly. We didn’t concentrate and we failed to establish Salah. What an unfortunate thing to happen.
” To establish regular prayers and to fear Allah, for it is to Him we shall be gathered together “ (6:72) This verse stress on establishing prayers. Establishing prayers is what will earn us merits and not just rushing through our Salah.
For a person to establish prayer he have to have done ablution properly, the positions to be performed correctly and after all his mind be focused in the prayer and his Almighty.
Now for the mind to come to a concentrated state, he should be aware of what he’s saying or reciting in prayer. For example, if you are a person who is not well versed in a language but you can only read that, but cannot understand properly, will you stay focused, interested and won’t your mind tend to wander?
Such is the situation with Salah. We can’t concentrate if we don’t realize what is being recited. For years, we have been reciting the same Surah Fatiha, the very short recitations to be recited in rukooh, sujood etc but our situation is that we still do not know what is being recited, the meanings behind that and we recite solely for the sake of reciting and finish off the prayer. Phew! Am done with subah, luhar etc as if though we have finished a big burden, but we should be ashamed of ourselves for not being able to fulfill the rights of Salah and after all for not being able to satisfy Allah Ta’ala who did so much for us even though we didn’t ask for those blessings. They were free of charge for us. So do you think, such a prayer would earn you merits? Or are we to regret once we face Allah?
Concentration, fear of Allah and the love for Allah in Salah will definitely help us offer Salah in excellence.
This is a test we are undergoing. Dunya is our exam centre. So we are not able to know whether our deeds were accepted or not and only in the Day of Judgment will we be able to know about that.
So, if the Salah we performed without any excellence ends up with nothing earned, then we are the most unfortunate people. We are praying for our own benefit and Allah is not going to benefit. We are in need and not our Lord.
So, it is our responsibility to learn the meanings of what we recite in Salah in order to establish excellence. There are many resources out there which will provide us what we are looking for. It is not a matter of time, it is whether we are interested in learning the Deen to attain perfection in our deeds to attain the higher status in Allah’s sight. May Allah help us to establish our prayers and accept our deeds which we do for his sake alone.
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