“I want more money and more things and it never stops.”

If this is your sentence tonight, you are not the first to say it — and you are not being told anything is wrong with your iman. The tradition wrote down, in detail, what a person does about exactly this: not the theory of it, the treatment of it. Named masters, named books, numbered steps, and how long each one takes.

Two rules before any practice, and they are the tradition’s rules, not ours. First: one practice at a time, kept for two weeks, before you consider a second — the rush is the problem, not the cure. Second: do the practice and leave the result alone. Do not take your own spiritual temperature afterwards; the checking is itself a turning away.

The practices the book sends you to

• The day you buy nothing One day a week, ongoing
  One fixed day a week of taking nothing new, to loosen the grip of the world. — Section 3 — The Diseases of the Heart
• Give while the hand is still closing Thirty seconds, whenever the pinch comes
  Give at the exact moment the reluctance is sharpest, not after it passes. — Section 3 — The Diseases of the Heart
• One day, held in the hand Five minutes at night, one minute at dawn
  Live inside a single day, on the assumption there may not be another. — Section 3 — The Diseases of the Heart
• The classical use of light hunger No extra time — one moment at one meal
  Eat to the sunnah measure, not to fullness — a discipline of the body used carefully, or not at all. — Section 4 — The Nafs
• Counting blessings before faults 2–3 min
  The gratitude list that comes first, every time. — Section 6 — Muhasaba

Where the first one comes from

Ghazali devotes Book 26 of the Ihya’ to the Condemnation of the World. His argument is not that wealth is forbidden but that attachment is heavy, and a heavy heart cannot rise in prayer. Bukhari records the Prophet, peace be upon him, telling Ibn ‘Umar to be in the world as a stranger, or as one crossing a road. The cure for hubb al-dunya is not poverty — it is repeated small refusals until the hand stops reaching automatically.

Other sentences

• “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.”