Lower Brain Thoughts are Shaytan's whispers.

Hello hello hello you guys. At ILCS I have created a service where I combine  mental health science and religion  and I try to help you guys make it into a daily practice. Today we are going to talk about how the Lower brain and shaytan’s whispers are connected. 

Formula I teach is CTFAR, C is circumstances, T thoughts, F his feelings, a is actions, are is results.  What I am also teaching is that circumstances are out of her control, and each circumstance leads to one or more thoughts and thoughts are of 2 origins: the higher brain or the lower brain. Practicing thoughts of either part of the brain creates results in our life that are in line with that thought. Higher brain thoughts create higher massive results, lower brain thoughts create low and negative results.  

What I am going to elaborate on in this blog, are the lower brain thoughts. And my main message is that lower brain thoughts are a source of whisper of shaytan.  As a side note, what I will refer to as shaytan, is the same as devil, satan, big shaytan is Iblees, all of us have our own smaller shaytans.

So, I am not the 1st one to make a connection of lower brain thoughts being the whispers of shaytan. nafs being the lower self of the humans and being the source shaytan’s misguidance has been a part of Islamic tradition since the beginning. It has actually been a part of every major religion, and even people that don’t identify themselves belonging to any religion acknowledge that sometimes people do things out of pure pleasure, rage or lust and it's like they don’t act like themselves. Idea of carnal desires and nafs is as old as humanity.

But what I AM offering here is EXTENT with which it effects us.  Our religion provides us clear guidance in this regard I will just be explaining it in the CTFAR model. You'll see that shaytan's whispers are more common than you think

Some simple examples, 

circumstance I have a C in math. Thought I am not good at math.  Feeling inadequate.  Action I do not try hard.  Results I stay bad at math.

Circumstance I have 2 children, thought I am not a good parent, feeling guilty, action practice poor parenting result I stay a bad parent

Circumstance I have a job, thought I am not a good employee, feeling deficient in skills, action not practice the skill, result, I stay a bad employee

Thought I am not a good Muslim, feeling incompetent, action not finding concentration in prayer, result I proved to myself am not a good Muslim

All of these formulas are examples of lower brain thoughts. AKA whispers of shaytan.  I am not a good parent, I am not good at math, I am not a good employee, I am not a good Muslim.

We can determine that these are lower brain thoughts because of the results they are getting us. And we can determine a lot by the results we are getting. According to the formula CTFAR, each thought creates a result for you that you are currently living, whether you are aware of it or not. If you are under the impression that you are not thinking any lower brain thoughts, because you are an intelligent person and you’d know when shaytan is trying to sneak in there and feed you thoughts, I mean after all you are a law abiding, tax paying citizen who prays 5 times day and believes in oneness of Allah, shayan is for people who are committing sins, like rape murder, thievery, alcohol and interest. You are clearly not one of them. If you are thinking this then I will ask you consider these 2 concepts ,

1st is, It always starts small right? The person that commits Zina, murder, deals in alcohol or interest wasn’t born like that. He got like that because he didn’t pay attention to his seemingly SMALL lower brain thoughts and over a period of time and with other life experiences, it molded him into the person he is. Everyone has a nafs, desire for pleasure, but shaytan enhances it through his whispers.  and  SECONDLY, and in my opinion, more importantly, that just because you cannot identify your actions coming from waswasa or lower brain, does not mean that is not coming from shaytan. That is his best trick. 

French philosopher Charles Baudelaire in 1860s said

The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn’t Exist

And later Kevin spacey won an Oscar for a movie where this was a famous line, but think about it, how true!

So you thinking you are not under the influence of shaytan’s whispers is his best trick!

As an attempt to absolutely make sure you are not living under the whispers of shaytan, I will ask you this. What results are you currently living? For example, You have a talent in photography or baking but you are too afraid to ask for an appropriate fee for your services because you don’t think you are good enough, or you are thinking what will happen if people say no and you have that fear of rejection. You are creating a result of nothingness. This result is a proof that you are operating from a lower brain thought. AKA whispers of shaytan or WASWASA

You think your mother in law is the source of all your misery, you have a very difficult situation in your marriage because of it. That is a lower brain thought, AKA whispers of shaytan OR WASWASA. 

You are in your 7th year taking college courses and finally give up because you think to yourself who takes this long to finish a bachelor's degree? You stop taking courses, never getting any degree, this result is from a lower brain thought. AKA whispers of shaytan

Being stuck in traffic and stomping the steering wheel saying “why am I the one with this long commute”, lower brain.

Attempting to gain social media following and frustrated its not happening fast enough, lower brain. 

Taking care of elderly parents and sacrificing your self care in the process, lower brain.

If you think about it in this context, there is NO ONE that is free from the whispers of shaytan. Because everyone has some result in their life that they want to change. So telling yourself that you are not under the effect of the lower brain, is the best trick devil pulled on you. 

Every child attending Sunday school could tell you that we are under the influence of shaytan when we commit sins, you are acting on your nafs.  We can easily identify that, but what I am offering you here is that you are actually acting on those whispers in your daily life and you DO NOT KNOW it. Take a second to explore what life you are living right now, in your relationships, in your career, in your religion. If there is something you want and you are not getting there, it is because of your lower brain.

Shaytan being so ubiquitous in our thoughts is a scary proposition, but it is actually very good news because as always we have agency over this entity because of our thoughts. I am offering you a way to recognize your inner shaytan’s voice.

Quran Suraf Aaraf 7:16-17 translation

shaytan said “because you have put me in error I will surely sit and wait for them and on your straight path, then I  will come to them from before them and from behind them and on their right and on their left and you will not find most of them grateful to you"

We find evidence from a hadith where Prophet PBUH says that shaytan runs in the bloodstream of a human

And have have so much more evidence in Quran and sunnah about how close shaytan is to a human. 

Dr. Sheikh Asim Yusuf is a traditionally trained Sheikh and a practicing psychiatrist in Britain, states that one trick of shaytan is that “ your negative automatic thought hides behind the 1st person” 

In other words shaytan speaks to you in 1st person. I am not a good wife, I hate math, I eat too much. And then not only he is coming at us from all different directions, he is talking to us as if it is our own thoughts. Shaytan will never say you are not a good person, he will say “I am not a good person”. For an average person, this make difficult to dissociate from your negative thoughts because it is being told to you in the 1st person. Someone outside of us might tell us, o but you are just thinking that, you are really not a bad person, or you are really not a bad Muslim and you say to them, ya I know you believe that but I am all of that because I have all these thoughts. So it becomes nearly impossible to dissociate from these negative thoughts, and WHAT a gift that Islam has given us in a concept that these thoughts are actually whispers of shaytan, there is an outside 3rd party at play. When your parents told you you are good person, inside you are thinking good thing they don’t know my thoughts because I if they really knew they’d know I am not a good person. Or your therapist told you you have nothing to feel guilty about, and you say yes to their face but deep down inside you are thinking, if they could only see my thoughts they would know I AM guilty, your spouse or your friends tell you that you are capable of great things and you don’t believe them telling yourself, I have all the evidence that I cannot do anything because of these thoughts. Islam gives you a gift of being able to dissociate yourself from your negative cognitions. So if you chose to do the slightest amount of work in this directions, you will recognize that you are not your negative thoughts, it is actually shaytan. And just that dissociation gives you so much agency. 

If you forget everything in this blog post, I hope you remember this, YOU ARE NOT YOUR NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. It is Saytan’s whispers. Allah SWT put this design in place for us so we can work towards recognizing this design and overcome it and truly attain His blessings and a place in Jannah. Every human has a higher self and lower self. Shaytan perpetuates the lower self so that we actually act on it. If we take shaytan out of the picture, lower self becomes powerless. Because Allah SWT created us with a strong higher brain. 

Allah SWT asked the Angels, to bow down to Adam AS. Same Adam AS that when went to Jannah committed a sin of eating from the forbidden tree. And he did that acting under the whisper of shaytan, where Iblees told Adam AS that eating from this tree will make you immortal. Angels bowed to that Adam AS. your ancestor. Don’t you think when Allah created Adam AS he knew what he was capable of? Making mistakes and committing sins. And angles even asked Allah, you want us to prostrate to ADAM AS when he will create mischief in the world, and we are created so perfectly we carry out all of your commands and are in your constant worship, you want US to prostrate to a human who will be making mistakes?? And the answer was YES. Adam AS with all of his humanness, all of his ability of making mistakes and repent and ask for forgiveness was bowed down to by the perfect creation that are the angels. 

Allah SWT knew what struggle that would represent for the humankind, and he had angels bow down to Adam AS who embodied that struggle. ALLAH az zawjal knew that a human’s struggle will be this constant battle of good and bad, staying on the straight path and slipping away from it. But He also knew that we can always come back to the straight path by following His guidance, and being our higher selves and practicing our higher brain thoughts. If you take your lower brain thoughts out of the way, it is in human instinct to follow a higher path. And that is the true path to ALLAH SWT 

We are ALL but guaranteed that we will make mistakes, starting from Adam AS to the last human. Yet we act surprised and aloof when it happens to us. we avoid, we try not to look under the surface because we might not like what we see. YOU ARE GUARANTEED to make mistakes, it’s a part of your programing, if you are a human you will act on shaytans whispers, but the only way to try and get out of this trap is to actually recognize the origin of your thoughts. THAT my friend is how I follow this religion. By recognizing that we will always be challenged with these negative thoughts that shaytan presents to us as being our own and that we use your consciousness, our taqwa to overcome these thoughts. We HAVE ALWAYS had a choice, because if we didn’t the the concept of heaven and hell doesn't make sense.

I pray that Allah protects us from the effect of shaytan, and help us recognize IF we are acting on his whisperings. Auzibillah I seek refuge in thoughts that are seemingly mine but are actually shaytan’s whispers where he hides behind the first person. I thank Allah in helping us recognize this dichotomy that He has created us with, because it is only through struggles that we can find our highest believing selves.

Will see you in the next blog post

..............