Feel Your Prayer Again

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Khushu, concentration, and the empty salah. Read until one of these is the question you actually have.

What is khushu

The heart standing before Allah, named by the scholars, not sold as a feeling.

How to have khushu in salah

Presence is prepared before takbir. Cut the causes of distraction first.

how to have khushu in salah

How to concentrate in namaz

The mind follows the tongue when the words are given time to be words.

how to concentrate in namaz

Why your mind wanders during prayer

Distraction is usually packed before you stand, not invented on the mat.

mind wanders during prayer

When salah feels empty

Feeling nothing is a known station. It is not a verdict that you should stop.

salah feels empty

How to prepare for salah

The prayer starts cold when the day is poured straight into the takbir.

how to prepare for salah

Why rushing salah leaves you empty

Speed can leave only a fraction of the prayer written. Slow is a treatment.

praying too fast

Presence in sujood

The closest a servant is to his Lord is in sujood. Stay there long enough to notice.

khushu in sujood

The phone and the prayer mat

The last thing you looked at often becomes the first thing you remember in salah.

phone before salah

Understand what you recite in salah

Ghazali ties presence of heart to knowing what you are saying.

understand what you recite

Khushu after years of habit

When prayer became locking the door, the heart needs to be emptied again.

prayer became habit

Arrive before the adhan

A man waiting for the prayer is counted as being in prayer. Come early.

arriving early for salah

Find your sentence

Forty sentences from the book's Index by Problem. Read them until one of them is yours.

“I do not know where to start.” “I feel nothing when I pray, and I have not for years.” “I cannot concentrate in salah.” “I pray five times and it is just a thing I do, like locking the door.” “My heart feels like stone.” “I keep going back to the same sin.” “I have no time. I work twelve hours.” “I cannot wake for tahajjud.” “I read Qur'an and nothing happens.” “The dhikr moves my mouth and nothing else.” “I have been asking Allah for the same thing for nine years.” “I am angry with Allah.” “I am religious in public and hard to live with at home.” “I lose my temper, and the house goes quiet when I come in.” “I stopped everything a month ago and I am ashamed to start again.” “I am on my phone more than I am anywhere else.” “I cannot stop looking at things I should not look at.” “I have a sin I have quietly decided is just how I am.” “The adhan goes and everything in me refuses.” “I have no one to teach me and I do not know how to find anyone.” “I have found a man who says he is a shaykh, and something is wrong.” “I am jealous of a man I have to see every week.” “There is a man I cannot stand and I cannot get away from him.” “I talk about people. I know I am doing it and I do it anyway.” “I like being thought of as religious, and I have started to notice it.” “I look down on other people, and I know I do.” “I want more money and more things and it never stops.” “I go through whole days and remember none of them.” “I cannot face looking at my own day.” “I cannot be alone with myself for ten minutes.” “Something has gone wrong this year and I cannot bear it.” “I am ill and I cannot keep any of my practice.” “My wife is suffering and I cannot fix it.” “What happened to me has become who I am, and I cannot put it down.” “I am afraid of dying and I push the thought away.” “I have things unpaid and things unsaid, and I do not want to think about them.” “I think I have left it too late.” “It has been six years of nothing and I have stopped expecting it to end.” “I felt something once, years ago, and I have been chasing it ever since.” “I want to stop entirely.”