Life has been kicking my butt these last few days and my anxiety has gone so bad that I have reached my breaking point.
Do you believe God is Almighty? Do you believe that God Handles ALL affairs (including how you feel or who can do what to you...including yourself)? Do you believe God Handles all affairs
Perfectly? By Perfectly I mean whatever happens to you or someone else, is absolutely perfect/fair/just/beautiful/glorious.
If you
sincerely believe yes to the above questions, then I don't understand how you can have anxiety. Anxiety is rooted in a fear of imperfection happening or occurring. Like you're afraid someone or something will have something happen to them that they didn't FULLY deserve. But this is impossible because God Controls Everything. If you trust in God, you have nothing to fear, nor anything to grieve because God is wholly innocent of evil, and God Handles ALL affairs. And none can be as good to you as God, not even yourself. It is only when your sincerity or trust in God is lacking that fear and grieving become at all possible.
The fact that now I cannot even pray properly and have this constant nagging that Allah is not hearing me and my duas are going unheard is literally making me go crazy.
But God Knows what you reveal and what you hide. The idea that Allah is not hearing you is absurd/paradoxical/false. You are not responsible for what happens to you. God is Responsible for what happens to you and everyone else. All you are responsible for is what you choose to be (good or evil, sincere to God or insincere to God), you are only responsible for what you choose. Nothing else. The consequences of your choices, are all God's and God's responsibility alone. Neither you nor anyone else possesses an atom's weight in comparison to God. God Tells you that if you choose to be evil in an unrepentant manner, then it's good/perfection that you be punished. God is Responsible for your punishment. God is responsible for perfection. Not you. All good/perfection is from God, all evil is from ourselves. Our decision to view God as not truly Perfect, is unfair to God. This rightfully causes us suffering. So do your best view/treat God as truly Perfect. Because that is the truth. This constant nagging that Allah is not hearing your dua, is a consequence of how you view God. You are not viewing God as Perfect. God is much higher than what we view It. But at least let's do our best to view it as Perfect as we can.
So members of FMO, how many of you decided to stick with traditional prayers and how many of you are still stuck with it ? Any advice on how you observed the prayer while keeping it in line with Quran ?
I upheld ablution like the Quran said and tried to uphold 'Salat' twice a day. One at the beginning of my day and one at the end of it. Salat for me would be sitting down and remembering God with verses and things that I came across in life that injected me with the reverence of God. It also consists of me recalling some of the things I say to myself to never do again and thing that I should try to improve on. Recently I stopped even this. I find that sometimes I wake up and really don't need to do my Salat because my reverence is potent. I've seen multiple times that when I try to Salat with a potent reverent state, I harm myself and even my reverence. I still feel a genuine need to uphold at least once a day or even twice. But my understanding of Salat is completely different at the moment. God Willing, I will start a new thread to discuss how the verses outlining ablution are actually describing mental preparation for going about your day seeking to respond and race towards God. This seeking to respond and race towards God is Salat in my opinion. For example, if I try and understand more about the nature of Existence on all levels (from overall things to things that pertain to my current situation in life and what sort of goals I should set to pursue in relation to improving my situation to the point of Heaven), and exercise reason in trying to do this, I think this is Salat.
I really don't think traditional salat has any benefit other than that it shows that you are willing to be humble and disciplined. Past a certain point, if you persist with it, I think you are willing to show laziness in Salat, in that you are being called to progress and change, but you do not take the step towards this. If you are not called to this, then you are not lazy at all. If someone genuinely finds potent benefit in traditional salat, such that to them it is truly as important as the Quran makes it out to be, then they should continue with it. They should make sure though that they are not lying to themselves in the name of religion or God.
Having said that, fasting would seem pointless at first glance, maybe even ridiculous. Don't eat, it's virtuous/sawab. But with the studies coming through on intermittent fasting, it would it is madness to not fast in my opinion. Traditional salat is completely useless to me. I'm very confident on this. The Salat I upheld, was clearly beneficial to me, but the idea of doing it twice a day, was showing signs of harming reverence such that either I changed the content of my Salat, or I uphold less frequently. This is still something striving in terms of trying to form a better understanding.
Now coming to the main dilemma, wudu and ghusl. Performing them is east peasy. Knowing what breaks wudu and what makes ghusl mandatory has been a pain in my backside. At least wudu is still somewhat not that much of a big deal because most of the time water is available and I can renew it. But what about ghusl? The sectarians have spread out a list but now it's pretty sus to me.
Now I did a quick research that ghusl becomes mandatory when :
-you have sex ( I think we find this in the Quran too ) but they say even if a person didn't have any sex, discharge of sexual fluids through masturbation/wet dreams or any other factor makes ghusl mandatory. So does the Quran actually speaks about sexual intercourse or just sexual fluids ?
- Menstruation of course. But I have heard that we can still pray during our menses ( heeeellllllllppppppl )
- Post partum bleeding ( huh ? )
Can It be possible that ghusl and salah are not even related ? Like ghusl is just Ghusl ( bath ) and even if you haven't yet had a shower after menstruation/sex you can still pray ?
I really don't think we need to to physical ablution. I will hopefully start a new thread to discuss this more. Just do what you think God would want you to do whilst viewing God as truly Perfect. Ask yourself all the time, am I viewing my Lord as Perfect? Am I sincere in my view of God Being Perfect? Or do I just believe God is God without really thinking about Godliness/Perfectness of God?