Our nafs (self or soul) is the greatest gift from Allah to us, and at the same time our deadliest enemy. Rather it is an amanah that Allah has entrusted us with, so we must honor and appreciate it, but also fight and subdue that aspect of it, which will cause our ruin, if we...

As human beings we have two modalities that we operate in. The one is the modality of witnessing, of observation, of seeing. The second is a modality of acting. These normally oscillate.

Shaykh Ebrahim explores one of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib's qasidas - Fana Fillah (Annihilation in Allah). This is the qasida that has been closest to his heart from Shaykh ibn Al-Habib's diwan of poetry.

As human beings we inhabit structures. We inhabit walls. We put ourselves inside confinements and boxes. These confinements and boxes are in two senses. The walls inside ourselves are carried by our internal dialogue, the self-talk that goes on, on an ongoing basis that leeches attention out of the moment that confronts you. The external...

Should I… or shouldn’t I? How many times have we asked ourselves this question, or put it to someone of sound judgment, when we set out to do something we were unsure of?

We have two basic modalities that we exist in as human beings. The one modality which is the predominant modality for most people is that they function under the assumption that they exist separately from and somehow contra-distinct to the world. The other modality is that you recognize that you are not separate from the...

The odds of annihilation are far more probable than the odds of continuity, of going-on. If one took into account all of the things that could conceivably go wrong, that could kill you, right now, you're very quickly presented with an almost incalculably vast range of possibilities.

Everything has a courtesy to it and you can define the courtesy as the rules that are concerned with the quality of what you are doing rather than the outcome of what you are trying to achieve. So it’s the rule whereby you give attention to the process rather than the outcome, what you are...

The immediate benefit of hadra is twofold. The one is the silencing of internal dialogue and the second is the shifting of attention or if you like the assemblage point of attention from behind your eyeballs to behind your solar plexus. These are the two immediate physiological attributes of a good hadra. That's what hadra...

Whatever they do to you: they can imprison you, break your legs, hang you upside down by your toenails. They can torture you for a hundred years until you die. One freedom they can never take away from you is your right to define the character of the world around you. And that’s all that...