Yesterday, I mentioned how cutting people out is generally anti-Islamic in most circumstances – especially when the ‘people’ are direct family members, like your mother or people you’re connected to through your mother.
However, there are a lot of people in the world who can cause you a lot of grief, who you’re not directly related to. And there are some distant relatives (in laws come to mind), who seem to do their best to make your life a living hell. Plus, sometimes people you thought were your friends betray you, stab you in the back and need to be firmly removed from your inner-circle.
But how in the world can we do this, when we’re aiming to become more like the most gentle, loving, forgiving and kind human being who ever walked the face of the earth (peace & blessings be upon him)?
There are two prophetically-inspired methods, which I learned from 2 great sheikhs.
The context of this is that we’re aiming to become serious students of the Islamic spiritual path. That means, we require plenty of time to focus on Allah, the Quran & the Prophetic teachings… and we want to remove all forms of negativity, like back-biting, gossip, harsh words and bad-vibes from our lives.
I’m going to share one of the methods with you right now. But the other is more nuanced, more subtle, and may lead to questions and coaching, which I’ll be available for during the upcoming Nafs Mastery Training (details below).
I discovered the first method during a seminar on Islamic Spirituality during the ‘Rihla’ program (Zaytuna Institute), lead by Shaykh Faraz Khan. The whole session was about the importance of ‘suhba’.
Essentially ‘suhba’, meaning good company in this context, is the biggest short-cut to achieving all of the aims of Islamic spirituality. If you want to increase your consciousness, presence, and live by Prophetic values, then keeping excellent company is the key.
“But…” a student asked him, “what do you do with your friends and family members who are NOT good suhba? How do you cut them out?”
The answer was simple, brilliant and hilarious, like many of Shaykh Faraz’s completely serious quips. He responded:
“Be Boring”.
The idea is that the trouble-causers in your life who can’t stop talking about who did what to who, the ones who bring all the gossip and backbiting, are addicted to…
DRAMA.
And if you’re boring and don’t respond and give them nothing ‘juicy’ about your personal life to chew on, they soon start checking out of your life and give their attention to someone more ‘exciting’ than you.
The best part about this is that you didn’t really do anything to ‘cut’ them out.
You simply acknowledge what they’re saying but don’t engage in it.
It’s like the ‘juicy’ stories are all lost on you, because you don’t respond in the way that the story-teller is hoping.
If you have friends, colleagues or family members who are more interested in negative gossip than prophetic teachings, try this out with them and see what happens.
Ultimately the aim of all spirituality is that you won’t need such techniques in the future, because your level of consciousness will have increased to the point where you don’t attract the drama-creators in the first place and they naturally self-select themselves out of your life.
If you want that to happen for you, then you can join some very un-dramatic and spiritually inspiring people in the Nafs Mastery program.
The next topic we’re covering is:
“The Prophetic Approach To Dealing With Negative People”
If you want to take part in it, join the Nafs Mastery Program TODAY, before 11:59pm.
After that, you won’t get access to this training and you’ll be stuck, surrounded by negative, gossiping, backbiting, uninspiring people… not knowing the beautifully elegant Prophetic ways to deal with them.
As always, the choice is yours:
