It’s A Worthy Fight To Pursue
It felt like a monstrous foreign invader was living inside my body. I have been trying to fight this beast inside me, who pulls me towards darkness.
It’s intense. Somedays, I feel like I am drowning in oceans of depression.
I started to question whether I was being possessed by a demon who couldn’t seem to see me live my full potential.
With loads of prayers to God pleading for my breakthrough, I finally figure the puzzle of this madness.
Finding My Answers
I read the verses above a while ago, but I didn’t quietly understand what it meant. Thanks to my wonderful teacher Nouman Ali Khan, who was giving a lecture on the internal struggle that most of us go through. He brought these verses up, and his deep-dive into explaining these beautiful verses had me mind-blown.
To put into summery of what I learned from listening to his lecture was this:
God has put a light inside all of us. And that light is the innate feeling of guidance to doing the right thing. For instance, let’s say someone dealt with you with hatred for no reason other than by your skin color. You could respond with anger and more hate towards them, or you could choose love and forgiveness.
You can’t drive hate out with hate — only love can do that.
What happens, though, when you do the opposite of dealing with people with kindness, and you choose ill-treatment? The light inside you gets invaded. You suddenly start to feel uneasiness, lack of peace, restless nights, and all that comes with paying the price of choosing the other side of your universe that lives inside you — darkness.
You see, God created everything in a perfect balance. Sun and moon. Night and day. Earth and sky, so are you. There’s a universe inside you. You’ll have darkness (the night) and light (the day) in constant battle within you.
Your desires — the wrong ones, sometimes, will pull you towards a destructive path if you don’t overcome to control it. If you let those desires run out of control, you will wind up paying the price of regret, pain, and suffering.
You Are Your Greatest Enemy
How could you say that, Zahra? Chill champ.
“Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.” — Jeremy Taylor
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had this burning desire to strive for greatness. To seek a life of fulfillment, a life of abundance to serve others for selfless reasons, makes my heart swim in an ecstasy of heavenly feeling because deep inside, I know the root of that leads to God’s happiness.
But I slip because I am perfectly imperfect. My desires call me out with statements like common Zahra, you have been too hard on yourself take a day off or sometimes my 8 kids drive me nuts and my anger gets in the way where I don’t tight the beast with patience.
Our ego, lack of focus, jealousy, procrastination, knowledge gaps, self-doubt, fear, excuses, and the inability to believe we deserve more are our number one greatest enemy, whether we like it or not.
If you let loose on one of the above, let’s say procrastination or excuses to get hold of you and let that be the driving force of your existence, you can predict with confidence you’ll head to a path of a nightmare. Get hooked too long — it becomes like a drug. Lack of action towards unplugging from that enemy will lead you to a life of no purpose.
Bad habits pile up one after the other, creating more connection in your neural pathway in your brain — And those bad habits becomes like a monster. The worst part is it keeps getting stronger. Then, it suddenly hits you hard. You are faced with an enemy not far from you; the monstrous invader has become you.
Fight The Other Side
“My Nafs (self) screams out for what it desires. But my will to be free screams louder.” Yasmin Mogahed.
Your willpower to fight, my friend, is one of the greatest gifts from God. When the darkness of the universe inside you (your ego, excuses, procrastination, self-doubt, fear, lack of focus, playing the victimization game, lack of unaccountability, etc. ) comes to take over, don’t let it stay too long; you got to rise up, fight and let the light envelope it.
You’ll have tough days. You’ll have days where you’ll be down on your knees. You will have days where you wish you were gone because the darkness is so heavy and haunting, but ONE DECISION can change everything.
The choice to fight the other side is in your power.
Choose light, choose to seek what brings your heart alive, choose progress over living purposeless. Choose clarity over lack of focus. Get real with yourself and have an honest conversation about what garbage needs to be unloaded, and what needs to get reloaded so that you are propelled forward to achieve an extraordinary life.
Decide to fight to become the best version of you, and you’ll find tranquility amidst the struggles. Choose your low desires, and you’ll feel gratified for a fleeting moment, but misery and unfulfilled life will make its way to you.
You are destined for greatness. The moment you entered this world, you were a masterpiece creation and still are. If you feel like you have been captive of the darkness inside you, all you got to do is: wakeup and get in the driver’s seat of your life, make the U-turn, and have your yet, best comeback ever!
Sometimes we hit rock bottom, a blessing in disguise; just like the ball when it hits the ground, it bounces back up higher — higher, remarkable places are waiting for you.
Remember what counts is not flawed beginnings but a beautiful ending, be kind to yourself and give your self a breathtaking end.
I say fight with your heart and soul, for the price is worth gold.
Stay brave and bold.
Your light is fierce to melt the cold.
I want to see you glow.
In every direction, you flow.
May floods of blessings find their way to you to cast out every darkness that’s got to go!
It’s a worthy fight to punch in the face.
May you be blessed with an insane amount of courage to drive out the darkness by God’s grace!
