FususAlHikam

1 - At the time of getting a temptation to sin, at the time of getting a forbidden desire, you must show a lot of resilience. Resilience in the sense that you must show you have guts to oppose that sin, that forbidden desire, you need to be gutsy, you gotta have some heart. Resilience also means that if you do happen to lose the fight and give in to temptation, you must not give up on the objective. If you do give in to the temptation you must then learn lessons from your defeat. What went wrong? What could you have done for things to have turned out different? How can this be avoided in the future? You must ask yourself such questions, come up with the answers and get back on the horse, try to reach your objective again.

2 - When feeling difficulty at the time of opposing the sin, the forbidden desire, you must quickly gain composure over yourself. The forbidden desire comes, you show you got heart, you muster up your courage and in a very gutsy way you oppose that forbidden desire - you feel a sudden burden, a difficulty, a heavy feeling that naturally comes when a person opposes forbidden desires. So you feel this natural feeling of difficulty but then quickly get composure over yourself and move forward with whatever task you have on hand at the time.


3 - Sometimes you will meet a very strong forbidden desire and you will end up taking a retreat from the fight against it, this may happen. At such a time of retreating you must quickly come back to the fight. You are faced with a heavy forbidden desire, you cannot fight, so you retreat from the fight - you should not retreat back too long but quickly, very quickly, come back to the fight.


4 - You must ignore the forbidden demands of the nafs as quickly as they come.


5 - You spend time in the company of pious people or you read books on the biography of pious people - both of these things help to build courage.