When I decided to get my spiritual routine on track more than two years ago, I did it in 40 days.
Drawing from the example of an acquaintance
who was following a Sufi-inspired programme for attaining consistency in
prayers, I decided that I wouldn’t miss any of the five daily prayers ordained
by Islam for 40 days, or about six weeks. I wrote the start date on my
BlackBerry’s digital calendar, and kept virtual track of my progress each day.
Under the challenge described to me by this
individual, if you miss a prayer –because, for instance, you slept through the
alarm and missed the pre-dawn prayer known as fajr, or the mid-afternoon asr
prayer passed you by because of a long drawn-out business meeting – you have to
start back at zero.
I was determined not to let that happen
since, to my surprise, the prayers weren’t as tedious as I’d always imagined
them to be. They were, rather, a much-welcomed, regularly timed respite from
whatever pressures the day had in store for me. I was told that once one
completed the 40 days, with the right intention, s/he would never willingly
miss a prayer again.
Whoever devised that programme was
perfectly right because, give or take a few days of sleeping through my alarm,
I haven’t allowed a prayer to pass me by since June 2010, when I started the
40-day spiritual drill.
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| Courtesy Flickr |
It’s difficult to describe just how, but
reaching the milestone elevated me to a higher stage of spiritual understanding
of my obligations toward our Creator. Life began to revolve around my prayer
schedule, rather than a previous strategy of squeezing them in here and there
when possible. I am now able to detach from even the most hectic of schedules
for quiet prayers like clockwork every day.
During the 40-day prayer course, I read the
Quran for the first time and recall being struck when I came upon a passage
that described how Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, received the 10
commandments during a 40-day retreat on Mount Sinai.
That sparked my curiosity about the significance
of 40-day spiritual workouts in the history of our faith. Prophet Jesus, peace
be upon him, too fasted for forty days and nights in the Judean Desert. The
Last Prophet, Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, spent
the same amount of time meditating in a cave on Mount Hira when he received, at
the age of 40, his first Quranic revelation.
