shaitan's trap - focusing on the smaller deeds

"devil is in the details"

one of shaitan's traps is to cause you to focus on the deeds of lesser value.

shaitan causes you to focus on the smaller things sometimes. obsessiveness.

excellence vs extravagance

excellence vs extravagance

for those who are obsessive, you may have seen some companies that have an obsessive" focus on details.

you have to decide whether the "obsessive" attention to detail is being excessive, or whether its actually helping you be excellent in the product.

the end goal

does obsession help you with the end goal?

think about the end goal. whats your end goal? if your end goal is to be strong enough in maths, is the little obsessive step - get every little thing right - going to help you in the end goal, or will you get to the end goal anyways if youre not as obsessive about every little step?

youll find that the obsessive little steps won't matter and you'll reach the end goal anyways.

Excellence vs Extravagance

The following entry was written by Sister Maria I. from New York:

Ihsan is the idea of "perfecting" things for the sake of Allah without becoming excessive.

1. Allah loves those who pursue excellence, and beautify things for his sake.
2. Allah loves moderation - not doing too little (negligence), and not doing too much (extravagance and excessiveness)

In my opinion, I think the key things we have to differentiate are:

1. Aiming for moderation in our affairs (eating, sleeping, exercising, etc), but NOT aiming for mediocrity in our efforts

In today's day and age, if someone tries to "perfect" something for the sake of Allah - to aim for excellence and beautify it - people might stamp the "OCD" label.

I think it's really important for us to differentiate between excellence and extravagance. I feel that excellence is the aim for beautification, whereas extravagance is transgressing the limits for a particular task. As humans, we can intuitively tell with our gut feeling when we have transgressed the bounds on something. It's just inner intuition.

Because if we just think that "aiming for excellence" = "OCD", then we'll continuously fall down the path of mediocrity.

And of course, we are humans. We fall back down, get back up. Sometimes we're just not able to do the excellence we intended - Qadr'Allah - there is a next time, insha'Allah.

is ocd a blessing in disguise?

is anxiety disorder a blessing in disguise?

my experience with ocd is that it instilled in me a lot of taqwa, fear of Allah. ocd is an axniety disorder, a fear driven disorder.

however in ocd fear is composed of many elements:

fear = fear of germs cleanliness <excessive fear
fear of being imperfect
fear of displeasing Allah < a "good" type of fear


there are fears and irrational fears that satan instills in us. he causes us to go extremes in cleanliness etc. and there are fears from our own nafs .



but then there is a 'good type of fear as well and that is the fear of Allah. but we have to remember to have a good balanced opinion of Allah, the believer has two wings, wings of fear, and wings of hope in Allah's mercy.


----
so in curing ocd, the bad types of fear need to be improved through mindfulness-cbt approaches.

if you find that the mindfulness-cbt approach completely removes all fears, start building up the good fear, the fear of Allah.

be careful...

ocd is an axiety driven disorder. people with ocd tend to have a lot of fear of something, and tend to have their thoughts accentuated towards negativity.

its this same negativity that can make people develop a bad and evil opinion of Allah especially if they misinterpret the following hadith:

there's a hadith qudsi about how Allah will not like those people who did actions for fame/show, actions that were not for his sake. i don't have the exact hadith on me, but the point is that people with ocd may misinterpret this hadith and unfortunately disregard Allah's mercy and hence develop a bad opinion of Allah. they need to remember to do their best, and have hope in Allah's mercy that they did their best to purify their intentions free of insincerity. essentially, ocd people (who by the way are fairly intelligent) will do so so much to purify their intentions, they might go into despair, from the excessive ocd fear and not have a balanced opinion of fear/hope in Allah's mercy.

also....as for ghusl....ghusl "every hair on the body must be wet" - while its true that you need everything on your body to be wet for ghusl, ocd people may take this literally and go to extremes, thereby taking long times in the shower. the key thing is not whether you actuually wet every hair on the body, but whether you think you got everything wet. having said that, it's extremely difficult and unrealistic to wet every millimeter of your body. Allah just wants you to do your best. when its said"every hair on the body must be wet" they're giving a guideline to cover everything, but they're still saying ghusl needs to be easy and not difficult.

the inner desire to do more

with ocd u can have a strong drive to go above and beyond. you dont mind going the distance.

its this very essence that i believe the shaitan can detect.

with this same urge can come a desire to cross boundaries. the solution is to be respectful of people and their boundaries, and not cross them.


so does that mean you're turning "off" your inner drive?

no, it means that you're channelling it appropriately.

for endeavours in which the inner drive to go the distance will be beneficial - and is morally and legally OK , and you are able to do it - then go ahead!