Waking up for Fajr has little if anything at all to do with the physical body. It’s a spiritual struggle. Like it is with standing in the night prayer.
I’ve struggled with keeping up with the night prayer and how many times have I failed miserably. It’s not encouraging so, at a point I just stopped trying. I told myself it was okay. The night prayer wasn’t Fard anyway, I didn’t need to beat myself up. I made excuses for myself. I would always come home from school feeling beat up and i needed at least eight hours of sleep to rejuvenate. I needed to pray isha’ at around 8pm. Do some studying, sorting, dinner and whatever needed to be done in prep for the next morning. I would sleep at at about 10pm and Fajr was at about 5am to about 5:50am depending on the season. That’s 7hours of sleep out of 24hours and that’s all the sleep I got giving that I neither sleep in the morning nor do I nap in the afternoon. Struggle.
I also told myself my body had rights over me. Lol. That one tho. It was not until recently that I started to understand that this is a spiritual battle not a physical one. A metaphysical one if I may borrow the term. Because I had survived on barely 5 hours of sleep during exam season. I survived. I had seen people stand long hours in the night, and run on barely 4hours of sleep.
No, this was not a physical weakness (as I had concluded) it was a spiritual defect. Standing in the night prayer is not Fard, yes. But it doesn’t have to be. It is the extent to which you have nourished your spiritual self that will manifest in this struggle. See it as a measure of where you are at on a spiritual scale. So much so that your physical needs or demands are negligible.
Take fasting for instance. Our body has rights over us and at least once a day we should nourish it. When we fast, we nourish our spiritual self so much so that the demand for food, water and intimacy becomes negligible. We are so engrossed in the remembrance of Allah, in the Quran, in Salah and connecting with Allah that we become oblivious to our physical needs.
So perhaps, if I’m struggling with the night prayer, or waking up for Fajr or fasting it is because my spiritual self needs more nourishing and not the demands of my physical self. But that’s a hypothesis. Allahumma a’inni ala dhikrika, wa shukrika, wa husni ibādatik.
Written by Umm Yunus
I’ve struggled with keeping up with the night prayer and how many times have I failed miserably. It’s not encouraging so, at a point I just stopped trying. I told myself it was okay. The night prayer wasn’t Fard anyway, I didn’t need to beat myself up. I made excuses for myself. I would always come home from school feeling beat up and i needed at least eight hours of sleep to rejuvenate. I needed to pray isha’ at around 8pm. Do some studying, sorting, dinner and whatever needed to be done in prep for the next morning. I would sleep at at about 10pm and Fajr was at about 5am to about 5:50am depending on the season. That’s 7hours of sleep out of 24hours and that’s all the sleep I got giving that I neither sleep in the morning nor do I nap in the afternoon. Struggle.
I also told myself my body had rights over me. Lol. That one tho. It was not until recently that I started to understand that this is a spiritual battle not a physical one. A metaphysical one if I may borrow the term. Because I had survived on barely 5 hours of sleep during exam season. I survived. I had seen people stand long hours in the night, and run on barely 4hours of sleep.
No, this was not a physical weakness (as I had concluded) it was a spiritual defect. Standing in the night prayer is not Fard, yes. But it doesn’t have to be. It is the extent to which you have nourished your spiritual self that will manifest in this struggle. See it as a measure of where you are at on a spiritual scale. So much so that your physical needs or demands are negligible.
Take fasting for instance. Our body has rights over us and at least once a day we should nourish it. When we fast, we nourish our spiritual self so much so that the demand for food, water and intimacy becomes negligible. We are so engrossed in the remembrance of Allah, in the Quran, in Salah and connecting with Allah that we become oblivious to our physical needs.
So perhaps, if I’m struggling with the night prayer, or waking up for Fajr or fasting it is because my spiritual self needs more nourishing and not the demands of my physical self. But that’s a hypothesis. Allahumma a’inni ala dhikrika, wa shukrika, wa husni ibādatik.
Written by Umm Yunus