Twenty First Word First Station Weariness İn Prayer And Address To The Nafs

The Twenty-First Word

[This Word consists of two stations.]

First Station

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّح۪يمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

اِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ كَانَتْ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِن۪ينَ كِتَابًا مَوْقُوتًا

For such Prayers are enjoined on believers at stated times. (4:103)

One time, a man great in age, physique, and rank said to me: "The prayers are fine, but to perform them every single day five times is excessive. Since they never end, it becomes wearying."

A long time after the man said these words, I listened to my nafs and I heard it say exactly the same things. I looked at it and saw that with the ear of laziness, it was receiving the same lesson from Satan. Then I understood that those words were as though said in the name of all evil-commanding souls, or else they had been prompted. So I said: "My nafs commands to evil and the person who does not reform his own nafs cannot reform others. In which case, I shall begin with my own nafs."

I said: O nafs! Listen to five warnings in response to those words which you uttered in compounded ignorance, on the couch of idleness, in the slumber of heedlessness.