<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span><div>Spirituality is something we’ve always kept reserved for our personal practice in the leisure hours after our mid-lives. We tilted towards empiricism and the mechanical attitude of the “how the world works / why not question what’s given?” as European Renaissance gained momentum. But as time goes by, mankind has always tried to find the soul of things. Holistic fitness and the need for Europeans to find enlightenment in India is one. The brain alone can’t produce emotions, but only with the help of the heart and modern science has already proven it. Dr. David paterson, a Ph.D from Oxford University has proved that the heart also contains decision-making neurons - they tell us what to do in situations. This is different from the fight-or-flight response of our brain’s amygdala. As Mike Tyson’s opponent was pressing on his weakness, his amygdala fired and he ended up biting the ear. It cost him his career. But what if we do the opposite, only use the brain’s reasoning and ignore the heart’s faith? We become very limited, the heart sends out positive and negative energies and attracts likewise. Napoleon Hill gave us a piece of wisdom from the richest person on earth once - Andrew Carnegie - to use autosuggestion to reach to our subconscious minds. This would allow our souls to give instructions to the brain and do whatever necessary to become successful in life. So now that it’s clear that if we fight with ourselves and temper the heart we automatically will readjust our actions / thoughts / attitudes to relate better with people and achieve tangible results, how to do it?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><b>The need to cleanse the soul:</b></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><i>“By the Soul, and the proportion and order given to it; and its enlightenment as to its wrong and its right; truly he succeeds that purifies it, and he fails that corrupts it!” (Al-Shams 91:7-10).</i></div><div><br>Since the heart of the soul emanates positive and negative energies by its thoughts, cleansing my own soul will give me material benefits in this world in the other dimensions of life - professional and relational. It is essential for everyone to purify their souls and not use the daily prayer system as an “escape”.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>We empower ourselves to cultivate strong exchange relationships with others, when we temper our own attitudes, thoughts, and emotions. God has created the human soul with a heart (Qalb) with opposing tendencies - the “Ruh” which has an ounce of God himself in it and the “Nafs” through which Satan is able to whisper to us. According to the philosopher Imam Al-Ghazali, all of our harmful and negative actions are rooted in two basic tendencies of the Nafs - anger (ghadab) and desire (hawa). This is what happens when anger is left unchecked: it gives birth to other qualities such as arrogance, antagonism, rage, vanity, conceit, lying. If we’re able to tame anger, we reward ourselves with the qualities of humbleness, honour, courage, affection, contentment, gentleness. On the other hand, keeping desires unchecked leads to covetousness, avarice, cowardice, back-biting, baseness, expectation. If we’re able to tame our desires, we get compassion, respect, patience, modesty, love. As already said above, like attracts like. Perhaps one of the reasons why God has declared man as the greatest creation is that he’s allowed each and every human being with the power to create his / her own reality. We’ll redefine reality soon, but before that, let’s learn about the soul first.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Structure of the heart of the soul - Qalb:</b></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>The heart of the soul has 5 senses just like are material bodies have. Thus, when we exercise the good through our actions in the material world and when our actions are in synchronisation with what we truly want, we sharpen our Qalb’s senses. When we sharpen our Qalb’s sense, we become able to penetrate into the planes after the material world and hear, see, smell, taste, and touch in the astral plane - where souls reside after death.</div><div>Just like we as human beings grow up with a biological body that matures and ages as time passes by, our souls go through different stages of its life in phases. The phases are outlined below:</div><div><br></div><div><br><b>Physical plane:</b> the world where you are living right now.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Afterlife /astral plane: </b>the soul retains quite a few of its worldly properties after the biological body dies and the soul stays in this world.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Mental plane</b>: the soul transfers thoughts simply by thinking therefore there’s no need for speaking here.</div><div><br></div><div>Thus as time goes by the soul “graduates” from one plane to the next. Refer to the quoted verse from the Koran, it is my spiritual goal to purify my soul as a continuing personal project.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>How we harm ourselves if we don’t temper our heart’s emotional reasoning and the mind’s logic:</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>As we ignore introspection and time for self-analysis in life, we ignore emotional reasoning in consequence. The teacher who loves to help students stays away from teaching and take a bank job, then he becomes really financially successful but his emotional health deteriorates. The salesperson who has been the company’s star performer for months gives way to arrogance, ego and literally “invites” his downfall. But it also works the other way if we don’t use reason and only try to follow the heart. The artist who becomes hell-bent on only following the heart and ignore reasoning ends up believing only his/her reality of being defeated in life is true and ignores the gift that is standing right in-front. This is because in the real world not everyone would be benevolent enough and would rather try to take advantage.</div><div><br></div><div>How to cleanse the soul - Jihad Al-Nafs and how I do it:</div><div><br></div><div>-&gt; Pray at least 3 times a week</div><div>-&gt; Combine my prayers with practices to sharpen the senses of the heart.<br>-&gt; Use techniques such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), NAC (Neuro-Associative Conditioning) to eliminate my negative qualities and enhance my positive qualities in everyday life. <br> -&gt; Find out partners who’s as much interested in cleansing the soul as myself.<br>-&gt; I aim to engage in spiritual practices to cleanse my soul and exercise the results in the material world. In this way, my spiritual endeavours won’t be limited only inside of myself but my day-to-day actions will reflect my learning and improvement.</div><div>-&gt; My yearly spiritual goals in the personal dimension would include spirituality, but not religious observations, as religious rituals are about social interests whereas spirituality is about the cleanliness of the soul.<br>-&gt; Observing thoughts and keeping a quality notebook: this one is in bold, obviously it’s the most important one. If we observe our thoughts for some moments each day, you’ll see that many of our thoughts are “coloured” - as the oldest and most learned mind Yoga teachers would put it. We lose our clarity of mind and allow our negative attributes such as envy, hatred, ego get in the way. We as human beings are actually bio-computers. We pick up many attitudes, beliefs, learned behaviours as we grow up and we keep on replicating them again and again - much to the hurt and detriment of our own selves and others. Over-doing the good on the other hand, such as becoming a caretaker instead of a caregiver in a relationship, doing good to “everyone” , and then holding others in the same high standard we hold ourselves in, doing what’s good for others without considering it that would humiliate the beneficiaries, can all lead to emotional intelligence blunders and give negative results.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>As we grow up in the life of this world, we change constantly. If we always follow "only" our hearts, we risk ourselves into getting to projects that are outside of our capacities, spending decisions that are naive and based on feelings and impulses, and will tax our important relationships. For this reason, we need to listen to our mind’s reasoning to achieve a balance between the mind and the heart. </div></span></div><br>

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