Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
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Ep. 6: How to Wake Up for Tahajjud | Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Let's pretend or let's say for the moment that, yeah, I want to get up and pray to Hajjud. I want to do this. You know what? I really want to implement this in my life. So how do you do it? How do I? What are some practical tips to make it happen and make it happen easily? Let's look at the day first. We want to use the day to help the night. And then we use the night to help the day. So how do we use our day to help our night? First of all, we want to not overeat, especially at night. So we don't want to have, you know, SubhanAllah, the heavy, heavy dinners of nighttime that are actually quite common in many different countries that I've been in, are not helpful for praying to Hajjud. The habit of eating lightly at night or not overeating at night is much better. Going to sleep with an empty stomach is much, it makes it much easier to wake up at night. And we all know, those of you, and I'm sure it's most of you, because this is the way of the world today, most of us have been on a diet. And one of the first things they tell you when you're going on your diet, don't eat at night, don't eat at night, don't eat at night. It's not only something that isn't good for us physically, also spiritually, it can take away from our ability to wake up at night. So that's one thing. Secondly, if you can take a nap in the day, especially if the nights are short, try to take a nap in the day, a power nap, like a 10-minute nap, a 20-minute nap. This will also really help you to wake up at night. In fact, that in itself was a piece of advice from Rasulullah ﷺ himself, where he advises us to seek help in eating at night, suhoor, for fasting, and to seek help with a little nap in the day for Tahajjud. So now we have two things. We have eat less in the day, or at least eat less at night,
and we have to take a nap in the day. Now, the prayer at night is something, just like anything, when you want to get it done, when you want to start a new habit, you need to be thinking a lot at first and less later. So in the beginning, start out by choosing where you're going to pray, set it up before you go to sleep, set out your prayer clothes. So if you don't know where your prayer clothes are, set them out, have them folded, maybe iron them, lay them out nicely, have that prayer carpet laid out already, maybe have the mushaf open to the place you want to recite, have some lighting out, put a candle there with the thing. Don't run around the house at 3 in the morning looking for something to light the candle with. You're not going to light it. Have it there and ready. Have everything set up. So when you get up in the morning, all you're doing is making wudu and praying. And it's a comfortable, beautiful feeling and setting. Now, there are a couple of things I want to, I guess, warn you about, to pay attention to because these are things that will get in the way of developing this new habit. One of them is bitterness. A heart that is full of bitterness, a heart that is full of grudges, is a heavy heart. And that heavy heart is very difficult to pull out of the bed at night. So try during the day to be aware of what your heart is saying, what your heart is feeling, and avoid the bitter, angry, ugly heart that is doing ghibah. Ghibah of the heart is when you're talking about people in your heart. Namimah of the heart is when you're slandering people in your heart. Bitterness of the heart is when you can't stop. You keep on repeating it, repeating it, repeating it. Why do they do this? Why do they do this? Why do they do this? All of this stuff. Try your best to become a person who is calm on the inside,
who doesn't have all of this ugly talk about individuals or groups of people on the inside. Basically, become the person we're supposed to be. Become a person who follows in the footsteps of Rasulullah ﷺ. Become one of our early community, one of those who stood out in front of the rest of the world as people who were of the best, who called for what is good and pushed back against what is ugly. We are the ummah to be this. We are called to be the ummah that brings forth beauty, that brings forth positivity, pushes back on all that is ugly and harmful. A heart full of bitterness is harmful. And let me tell you something. It doesn't harm the person you're bitter towards. Sometimes we think if I'm, you know, my inner anger, oh, they'll see. They don't care. It doesn't hurt them. It only hurts you. And it does hurt in helping to wake up for tahajjud. So that's one thing to work on in the day to make sure that the heart is a heart that is clear of ugliness. A second important tip for the, of how to sort of, a spiritual tip I'll say, is to note the actions of the day. Note the actions of the day. Do your best to have a day of goodness. The more your day is full of goodness and kindness, the easier it becomes to wake up at night. The more good deeds you have in the day, the more your intention is in a good place. The more the day is filled with beautiful work, actually, like the work that we're doing to help others, to care for others, caring for ourselves, the more this is going to give us the strength and ability to wake up at night. Now, the prayer at night is a sensitive thing. But in the beginning, when I say it's sensitive, what do I mean? I mean the prayer at night is something that, because it fills us with gas, fills us with fuel, gives us the strength that we need
to do the work that needs to be done, it's sensitive to a day of ghafla, a day of heedlessness. So, it's a beautiful thing because it becomes not a vicious circle, but a beautiful circle. The sensitive night of prayer fills our day with the strength that we need to do the deeds that we need to do. And then doing those deeds gives us the himmah, the strength to get up at night and pray. Now, if you miss it, what are you going to do if you miss it? If you miss it, just start again. Just keep going. You missed it one day, no problem, keep going. If you're sick and you can't get up for a few days, subhanAllah, if you're praying before your illness, it's as though you're praying during those days. This is the generosity and the effect of tahajjud on our spiritual lives. So, set up your space, create that habit, make a day that helps your night, and know for sure that your night will help your day. Becoming a person of tahajjud begins with you, begins with me individually. But pretty soon, the family can become a family of tahajjud. And all of a sudden now, we have this beautiful home where in every corner there is recitation of Quran. There are angels descending to listen to one, two, three, four members of the family, five, six, however many members of the family there are. And it becomes a home of beauty and worship. If you are saying to yourself, oh, that will never happen, don't get stuck there. You're not praying tahajjud to make other people pray. You're praying tahajjud because this is the worship of the believer. This is the worship of the nawafil. This is the worship of the nafila. This is the worship that makes us of those whom Allah loves. This is the strength that we need.
But also look to the beauty of the possibility of that spreading in the home. What happens then begins to spread to the community. We as a community, as an ummah change. We begin to grow in strength and beauty. We begin to become as the people of the early generation. It is time for us to shed, to shed the shackles of this dunya, to shed the shackles of what holds us back in hardship and in difficulty. And know that the cure for us is in tahajjud. Seek it, grab it, grab it as the most wonderful, amazing gift. Make it a habit. Make it the thing that gives you energy and know that as you do that, it will be giving energy to people around us. Our masajid will grow because the boards of the masajid, the people in the masjid are going to grow. Our non-profits will grow in goodness and in health because the people of the non-profits, the workers, everyone is growing. Our communities will grow because as we have spiritual strength, we will begin to reach out to the places around us with that spiritual strength and bring goodness. We will follow truly, truly in the sunnah of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. We will truly walk in the footsteps of the words of the Quran calling out to us to be of the Ibadur Rahman, calling out to us to be of the worshippers, calling out to us to be of those who pray tahajjud, calling out for us to be of those who qoom al-layl, who stand at night. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la make all of us of those who stand at night, of those who benefit from the nightly prayer, of those who soak it in. And in that soaking are able to spread it like glitter mercy wherever we go, spread it like droplets of beauty wherever we go.
And let it be of that thing that grows us individually, as families, as communities, as an Ummah, to be at maqam al-mahmoudah, at that praised and blessed state that brings us personal joy, communal joy, global joy. InshaAllah Ta'ala, inshaAllah all of us will be of those who pray tahajjud and be thinking of one another at night and praying for one another. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Allahumma Salli wa Sallam wa Baraka ala Sayyidina wa Nabiyina Muhammad.
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