The Illusion of Knowing

 When certainty fades, we all begin to navigate by assumption.

Yet strangely, we call our own assumptions reason,

while dismissing another’s as error.

Perhaps the ego’s most subtle deception is this:

it convinces us that truth resides with us alone.

(Raast)

اندازہ 

 (راست)

آئینے کے اس پار

(راست)

Beyond the Mirror

(Raast)

The Qur’an repeatedly tells us to seek and follow Hidayah (guidance), and it even teaches us to ask for it in 

Surah Al-Fatihah: Qur’an 1:6

اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ

“Guide us to the Straight Path.”

But what actually is Hidayah?

Hidayah begins with acceptance.

First, a person is shown his real image. Sometimes this happens through a wound; sometimes, while trying to achieve a desire through the wrong means, he suddenly realizes:

“I do this too.”

At first, he denies it. He creates some logic for himself to justify what he has done. But when that logic cannot truly be executed or sustained, he begins to feel that something is wrong within him.

Instead of correcting himself, he conceals it.

It is like hiding garbage underneath a carpet and then pretending the room is clean. Or putting makeup over acne-prone skin and thinking that because the blemishes are no longer visible, the skin has actually become healthy.

Of course not.

For real correction, he has to treat everything from zero—just as a piece of rustic, rusted iron cannot be fixed simply by painting over it.

First, the iron has to be treated.

Its rust has to be removed. It has to be washed, scrubbed, and worked on. Throughout this process, the iron undergoes a great deal of discomfort.

But this entire process is what Hidayah does.

It tells the person:

“This is not right. This needs to be corrected.”

And although this process can be painful, that pain eventually leads to peace, because the guilt within you begins to disappear.

Allah says: Qur’an 5:15–16

قَدْ جَاءَكُم مِّنَ اللَّهِ نُورٌ وَكِتَابٌ مُّبِينٌ 

يَهْدِي بِهِ اللَّهُ مَنِ اتَّبَعَ رِضْوَانَهُ سُبُلَ السَّلَامِ

“There has come to you from Allah a light and a clear Book, by which Allah guides those who seek His pleasure to the ways of peace.”

Perhaps this is one way to understand Hidayah:

  it does not merely show you where to go; it first makes you willing to see what needs to change within you.

This process can also be described as Tazkiyah al-Nafs (purification of the self) or Jihad al-Nafs (striving against the self). But the point from which this process is triggered is what we call Hidayah (guidance), and it is Hidayah that leads this entire process.

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