我們要如何保護自己遠離惡魔和我們的自我，特別是在神聖日子里？

Question: BismillahirRahmanirRahim. On Holy Nights like Mevlid or Ragaib and some other Holy months like Rajab, sometimes I feel like sheytan and nafs is attacking ever more than before. Instead of focusing more on my prayers, I have to fight back to their attacks. How can we protect ourselves from these kind of attacks happening especially on holy times? BismillahirRahmanirRahim. Prepare yourself before these Holy times. Prepare yourself. How many times we have to say, before you plant you have to clear the land first. Prepare yourself for this Holy times. You have no time to prepare yourself? These days people are very busy. You have time to eat, you have time to sleep, you have time to use the facilities, very nice words Americans they use, ‘facilities,’ then you have time to prepare yourself for your Lord. It depends on how important that you think it is. You think it is important but you want everything to be done for you, you want it to be easy, then why you are in Jihadul Akbar if you want it to be easy? People enter into Jihadul Akbar, the bigger struggle which is a struggle against to your ego, but they complain when things get difficult. Allah, Allah. What they say? ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ Ohh, but Tasawwuf and Tarikat these days has become a game. That’s why any heat coming from them, they hate it. ‘I don’t like it! what is this? It’s supposed to be Jannat. This is cutting me here, rubbing me here, putting,’ what is Sheykh Effendi calling that scrub? Brillo, ‘huh putting brillo here. What is this? What kind of Tarikat putting brillo on me? I don’t like it! This is bullying. This is not giving us honor. This is scolding us, this is this…this is that..’ Then where is the Jihadul Akbar? If you have a cancer they make you to go through chemo and everything, you suffer to get rid of that. We have a spiritual cancer. Sometimes a Sheykh makes it necessary, not all the time. Sometime, these days, forget about chemo, forget about brillo, we cannot even touch you. Touch a little bit then you betray everything, you deny everything. Touching a little bit to say that it is not good for you. You want to go and you want to have that kind of a lifestyle, it is not good for you. Don’t. You are saying, ‘I want to come back.’ I say, no, stay there, you are not ready to come back. And before you know it, they have flown away. So it’s right. You are not ready to come back. You are not ready to stay. Then you are doing other things. And now, instead of being busy with yourself, you are attacking people, saying, ‘this is wrong, this is wrong.’ Have you fix yourself? Have you fix yourself that you are right? Have you fix yourself to the point that you are given the authority to speak? Who gives you that authority to speak? But, everyone who has tongue, they speak. Of course. But this tongue will be the reason for so many of us to be punished by hanging by our tongue on the Day of Judgment. So the first wisdom, what is for me, what is not for me. Not to interfere. Lost completely. No shame because people behave like gypsies. You make different choices, eh it’s okay. You keep interfering and interfering. Pull yourself back especially this Holy months. So, Holy days and nights are coming and you feel yourself, your ego, attacking you more? Be more with Saliheen that time. Surround yourself with them. Surround yourself. Be busy with that. Run. That is a jihad. The biggest struggle against to your nafs. Run, and when you are suffering, that time plead to your Lord, ‘Ya Rabbi, I am weak. Help me.’ That prayer, that dua now is very sincere. You mean it a hundred percent. You are not just making a dua, and you are just reciting some dua and your heart is somewhere else, you are thinking about breaking your fast. No. it’s really sincere and you are asking. And our Lord will be happy to the one who is sincere. To protect? Well, you cannot protect yourself when the enemy is already there. How can you protect yourself? When the enemy is coming, crushing you, that is not the time for you to learn how to fight, for you to put up your defenses, for you to have strategies, for you to do nothing. That is the time now, whatever that you are ready, whatever that you have, you just have to fight back. You have nothing, then you fight with nothing. You are going to lose. But you know the enemy is coming and in matters of the nafs, more we are understanding, more we know that, ‘oh it’s a cycle.’ Isn’t it? It’s a wave. This time usually these things happen. Now you are going to be protecting yourself before it happens. Before the tsunami strikes, then you know, indication. Old people they have wisdom. In the old days, in Japan, they have wisdom. Old ones they are saying, ‘the water rise to this level, run. Leave everything, run to the mountains, pass this stones,’ they say, ‘because the water is going to rise to that.’ Because in the old days, they have faith. Even the unbelievers they have faith. At least they have faith that this nature that they did not create, is more powerful than that. Modern man thinks he is the most powerful but he is the weakest. With this technology, what technology? You have no electricity, everything falls. Everything is like a house of cards. It looks very big, but one goes off, everything coming down. It just take one Takbir. One Takbir. So protect ourselves before these nights come. This is when Tafakkur it is important. Holy nights coming, what are you going to do? What is it that is going to attack you? How your ego is going to be? ‘Like this, like this, like this, like this….i’m going to think like this, I’m going to behave like this, I get angry like this. People are going to make me to be upset, to be annoyed.’ Then be prepared. When it’s coming, say, ‘oh, it’s coming.’ They know. Some people, they learn, they learn, they learn how to fight, but the moment comes, they forget everything. Correct? I’m seeing now, they are teaching sisters kick boxing, but if you learn everything and that moment you forget, what is the use? What makes you to forget? This is important. What makes you to forget. You learn everything, what makes you to forget? Kickboxing or fight against your ego, what makes you to forget? If you are not understanding that very important point there, where you have everything and you lose everything, if you don’t understand that point, you learn nothing. You can be reciting Quran 24 hours, you can be listening to Sohbets 24 hours, but that moment comes now and you lost it, you are heedless, you are headless, you become an animal, you see red and you cannot think. You lose all control. And that moment comes, and you don’t understand and try to grab it, that is what Maulana Rumi was saying, what he was saying from last night? ‘The secret lies in acting quickly.’ If you don’t practice that, acting quickly, that time comes, it will overtake you. If you are practicing, if you are rehearsing and say, ‘okay this is coming, I must do this, I must do this, I must do this,’ putting yourself through a what? Through a drill, then that time when it strikes, because there’s no time to think anymore, you are going to act according to instinct. Then you are just going to move according to how you have drilled yourself to be. If you have drilled yourself to be always angry and upset, cursing, these days, cursing; wife cursing, husband cursing, the whole family cursing each other. MashaAllah. Then curses is going to fall. What do you expect? Then you complain to me later. Wrong things happening to you. Why are you surprise? You call curses to yourself, right? You are calling laknat and laknat is going to happen. In the old days, instead of saying, using curse words, they say, ‘you Mubarak!’ correct? In my culture, they say, ‘you Bahlul!’ we understand it now in the ahir zaman, Bahlul means idiot, but of course everyone knows Hz Bahlul Dana he is a Saint. If Harun al-Rashid, he is a righteous Khalifah, he has reached to the level of Sainthood, Bahlul Dana, he is higher than that, definitely. So, taking this curse words, taking the anger, and turning it into a blessing. Then you call blessing, blessing is going to come. You call curses, curses is going to come. What do you expect? Teaching each other how to curse? Then you don’t know, when things come out, how to take them back too, how to save them. You don’t know how to use that, then be careful. Huh! If the Sheykh washes you up, yes, he sees the Divine anger is coming to you, it will be deflected when he washes you up. If he doesn’t, if he turns his head, whatever is coming is going to come to you. So, prepare yourself before. Understand. Then that time when the Holy days and nights are coming, you are going to get a little bit more prepared, at least you have more support coming. And insya’Allah, when you see yourself, time to time to time, things will start changing. You will understand yourself. I know, one of our own brothers are saying, first time he made the ziyaret of the Sakal e-Sharif here at at the Dergah, he says, “suddenly my ego just went crazy. I’ve never thought about all this doubts and it’s just whispering and screaming at me, ‘how do you know…da..da..da..da..’” and he was like, ‘please, out of all the time, now you have to do this? Now you have to do this?’ That’s the time you have to hold on to your Sheykh, you have to act quickly. Don’t run with that, put that aside, learn how to deflect it. Then time to time, time by time, it will get better, it will get stronger, insya’Allah. May Allah make it easy for you. May Allah forgive me and bless you. Fatiha.