There is a hadith that the Prophet (PBUH) was sitting in his mosque and an Arab was praying. After the Arab finished, he stood up to walk away and the Prophet saw him and said “You did it wrong. Go back and do it again.” So he went back and did it again, and after he was finished he got up to walk out and the Prophet (SAW) said to him, “You did it wrong, Go back and do it again.” And he did, and he got up and the same thing happened again. So the man asked “What did I do wrong? I recited everything the way I have been instructed. It appeared to me that I have done everything the way it is supposed to be done.” And he was told “It’s not what you did on the outside, it’s what happened on the inside. When you stand in prayer, you have to stand until you find peace. When you bow in prayer, you have to bow until you find peace. When you prostrate in prayer, you have to prostrate until you find peace, and when you sit, you have to sit until you find peace.”
Well, there’s an interesting lesson there. You’re not necessarily doing the prayer for Allah. You’re doing the prayer to change your state so that you can be closer to Allah and the only way to be close to Allah is to be in a state of peace and a state where you don’t have the world’s anxieties with you. Where thay have somehow stopped and your attention can be focused on your Lord and your relationship with your Lord.
This goes on through our daily life. What the prayer does is, if you can do it appropriately and do it correctly, it is spaced repetition throughout the day when you drop whatever you are doing to enter into a different dimension; to enter into a different state; to enter into a place where peace exists and the world doesn’t exist.
Have you ever been in a space or in a situation where you felt and you knew you did need to be anywhere else, where you had no desire to go anywhere else, when there was complete satisfaction internally as to where you were at that moment in time, and there was nowhere else to go. In other words, you were at peace. You were no longer driven by all the pushes and pulls of the word.
Can we find that point in existence where peace exists?
