A pure heart: what is it like?
When we talk about the heart, we often mean not only a physical organ, but also a certain spiritual centre of a person - the source of his feelings, desires and aspirations.
From a religious point of view, the heart is a special spiritual organ, with the help of which a person can perceive the light from the Almighty, distinguish between lies and truth and between good and evil.
This spiritual organ is even more important than the heart in the physical sense, because it is the heart that is the source of our actions: when a person strives for goodness and truth, then his actions will correspond, and if his heart attracts sin and lies, then he will commit sins and bad deeds.
In this sense, we can also talk about a healthy and a sick heart. Only by health here we mean an open heart, receptive to the truth, clean from various kinds of bad thoughts and desires, and, conversely, a sick heart is a heart in which various kinds of bad aspirations and desires live.
Scholars, the beloved of Allah ﷻ (awliya), have emphasized for centuries the importance of purifying the heart, since a person’s fate in the Hereafter will depend on the state of his heart – on the desires and actions that come from it.
The Prophet ﷺ said, “Verily, Allah ﷻ does not look at your appearance or your wealth but He looks at your hearts and your deeds.” (Narrated by Muslim).
Another saying of the Messenger of God ﷺ is, “Verily, there is a piece of flesh in a person’s body which, if it is good, makes the whole body good, and if it is bad, it makes the whole body bad, and verily, this piece is the heart.” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari, Muslim).
Therefore, every believer should strive to cleanse the heart of everything sinful in time and be wary of appearing before the Lord with a sick and callous heart.
How to determine the condition of the heart, whether it is sick or not?
There are also many signs to determine the health of the spiritual heart, by which we can understand whether our heart is healthy or various mental illnesses are already developing in it.
In particular, the signs which we give below will help us examine and determine the condition of our heart.
A person with a healthy heart thinks a lot about good deeds and strives more for the future life than for the affairs of this material world. It is not for nothing that the hadith says that a believer is a wanderer in this world. Such a person, without a doubt, can and should be engaged in the affairs of this world but none of them should capture his heart in such a way that he forgets the Lord. As wise people say, he holds the material world in his hands - but not in his heart.
A person should consider each sin committed as the main trouble in life - after all, as we have already said, each sin committed affects the condition of the heart, and the more sins, the sicker our heart becomes. In this sense, the Prophet ﷺ said: “If a person commits a sin, a black spot appears on his heart. Forsaking the sin, repenting for what he has done and asking the Lord for forgiveness removes this spot from him. But if a person repeats the same sin again and again, then the spot increases to such an extent that it covers the entire heart (with a dark shell).” (Narrated by Ahmad).
Therefore, a person striving for a healthy heart tries to atone for his misdeed as soon as possible with sincere repentance and doing good deeds.
Only worship of the Almighty brings such a person real pleasure - more than any other pleasure in the world, such as food or drink or marital intimacy.
His true concern is how to please the Creator, and he makes every effort to do so.
A person is very concerned about how not to waste his time in vain. He cares about this more than a greedy and stingy person worries about how not to waste even a little of his property.
After all, time, unlike money or property, is an irreplaceable resource that can never be returned. Time is one of the key moments used to serve the Lord. Unfortunately, many, forgetting about this gift of the Lord, do not know how to spend it usefully, so they simply “kill” it.
The Prophet ﷺ said, “The feet of a slave will not move on the Day of Judgment until he is asked about four things: about his life - how he spent it, about his youth - what he spent it on, about knowledge - where and how he used it, about property - how he acquired it and what he spent it on.” (Narrated by At-Tirmidhi).
Another hadith says, “There are two gifts from the Lord that many people do not value fairly – health and free time.” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari).
It is important not just to be busy with something all day long, but to remember whether I am doing something necessary, whether it is forbidden, whether it is doubtful, whether it is a waste of time. Pay attention to the sincerity of intention when doing good deeds: why are we doing this, for the sake of pleasing the Almighty or do we want to show off, to appear generous in front of people? All this is of great importance for a believer.
What should we do if we discover that our heart is not all right and needs treatment?
We have already said above that the heart hardens from bad thoughts, words and actions. This means that a person who is worried about the purity of the heart should seek a spiritual “healer”, a teacher who will help him get rid of these heart diseases. These teachers are spiritual mentors, sheikhs of tariqah (tasawwuf) - the science of sincerity before the Almighty, cleansing the spiritual heart of diseases such as hypocrisy, envy, stinginess, hatred and malice, complacency and ostentation and many others. May the Almighty grant everyone sincerity in worship and help find true spiritual mentors on this path. Amen.
Source: “Tanbih ul-Gafilin”, “Anwar ul-Muhammadiya”
