Understanding is based on correct bricks (concepts) which form our mental structure. The accurate and quick connection between concepts (bricks of understanding) is what what's called intelligence. The more accurate, inclusive, logical and quick we link between those concepts the more intelligent we become. Thus, everyone needs to know the correct concepts, like the concept of friendship, love, justice, religion, morality or any other concept. Agreement on concepts leads to amity and mutual understanding among people, people will not have mutual understanding if they have different concepts. 

A person's mind and creativity are formed after knowing the true and natural concepts not before them. The accuracy and strength of concepts is what gives the mind its strength and stability. We can clearly see the skill of a builder, for instance, when we give him good bricks and tools, only then we can see his accuracy and speed in his profession. This is the only way to be genius. Geniality isn't an extraordinary gift as many people say. 

Those immaterial concepts are far more important to humans than material things, a person might sacrifice his/her life for an idea. That's why one must have true and correct concepts and understanding, they are like the map that shows us the way. 








     What we see from others doesn’t express their true reality. The way they look doesn’t necessarily express what's inside them, even most of the ideas they believe in and talk about aren’t originally theirs. There is another map and another world inside people. If you look deep inside them you'll be amazed of the difference between what they seem to be and what they truly are. Also, you'll be amazed when you discover that people basically have the same feelings.

We hear many people say that they are busy and have many things to do, and that might be true, but inside them there is something that has different needs to which they pay no attention. We may hear them say that they don’t care about emotions and that love is a waste of time, but this is not true, because what's inside them is different. When someone treats them with love and gratitude they'll be happy, but they won't admit it. Sometimes they want to cry but they fight their tears to maintain their tough appearance, we all do that. This shows that what people appear to be isn’t truly them.

So, we should deal with others based on this inner map, not on how they seem to be. We can see this map from the tone of their voice, the slips of their tongues, their eyes and the way they move. These are keys to discovering the most voluble thing in people: their inner map.

When we talk to someone and he tells us: people are equal to me and I don’t love or hate anyone, I don’t care about people and how they feel etc. This is not true though. Someone might tell another that he misses them, but he doesn't really miss them he misses something else, he looks for his own interest in them, as all such a person does is for the sake of his own interest. The most misleading way to the truth is self-interest. You can very rarely find the truth through selfish motives. Whenever you are motivated by self-interest you won't find the truth. This is a law which you can find throughout history. 

The person who wants what's true and right doesn’t look for their fleeting personal interest. They look for the truth because it is true, and look for virtues because they are virtues. The person who loves virtues, loves beauty, recognizes that he/she is a part of the universe not the center of the universe, he/she will look for the truth, harmony, and beauty. This is the person who will eventually find their own interest by the will of God.        






    When we talk about regaining self-confidence we should know how we lost it in the first place. What stole away our confidence even though it was stronger when we were children? During our childhood years we enjoyed more confidence in our ourselves, but people started laughing at us, disparaging us, comparing us with who are better than us in certain fields, and so on and so forth. The results of such disparaging actions on us as individuals can also be generalized to a whole nation. For the same reason, a nation can lose its trust in itself, its ideas and ideals.

Whether on a individual or a national level, we certainly have wrong ideas or correct ones which people distorted for us, so we became hesitant and surrounded by doubts. Doubt and hesitation certainly restrict and weaken us. When we were little, ideas didn’t have great effect on us in the same manner when we became adults. We only knew what's inside our small life circle, and we can't go back to that state. Therefore, our childhood confidence can't be retrieved. What should we do then? The only way to regain true confidence is through reexamining our ideas and correcting them. Lack of trust in ourselves doesn’t mean we should trust others and what they say, as there is an inverse proportionality between our trust in ourselves and our trust in others, whether individuals or societies. The more we lose confidence the more we trust others, and that is a problem.

Ideas are what form our confidence. The more we understand the more we become confident. And I specifically mean understanding not just collecting information from the media which one should doubt their credibility as each has its own agenda. I mean personal understanding of all what we learn.

Knowledge is an inaccurate word, the more precise one is "realization" or "awareness", which is the "clear vision" the Quran talked about. Knowledge can only make an educated person, a collector and carrier for what people say whether good or bad, and he/she might collect contradictory information and ideas without knowing so. I encourage learning and reading, but we shouldn’t be satisfied with that alone. In order for our minds to be in harmony with our hearts, we should project all what we take from others to our reason and to our hearts to discern the wheat from the chaffs, or at least to doubt what we take from others. I encourage awareness, not reception.

As a matter of fact, having a shaky confidence is a natural reaction, it's not a problem by itself. It's natural for a driver to hesitate or stop when they don’t know the right way, this is not a illness or a disorder, it's a sign of rationality. The problem lies in not looking for the right way. Foolish people are always described with overconfidence and recklessness. A rational person doesn’t walk confidently except on a firm and stable ground, which can be found on God's straight path, the path of understanding and clear vision, as said in the Quran: "Is he who walks grovelling upon his face better guided, or he who walks upright upon a straight path?" This is true confidence which is based on reason and understanding, while who blindly trust themselves are nothing but foolish.

People always encourage self-confidence in general, without elaborating whether it's based on truth or falsehood, on understanding or ignorance, just be confident! This is a call for recklessness and insanity. What does it mean to be self-confident? It means to trust your ideas since yourself is formed by your ideas, and yourself will change when your ideas are changed. Hence, people's ideas aren’t alike and aren’t all true, so how can we encourage everyone to be self-confident regardless whether they are right or wrong?! This will cause problems and clashes among those confident people!

I can certainly say to every rational person, don’t be confident, be shy, hesitate, and stop at times, but search and don't stop searching. And after that, I won't say to him/her: go for it! Because they will naturally "go for it" without knowing that they did. Don’t envy the ignorantly confident people as most of them are reckless and foolish. It's said that prophet Mohammed saw someone instructing his brother not to be shy, and the prophet said to him: "leave him alone, shyness brings nothing but good."

It's important for people who adopt the Western Materialistic philosophies to call for self-confidence in general regardless of its basis. This helps eliminate the voice of the heart which will make people expose their fallacies. It will also turn people into an irresponsible adventurous consumption force for the capitalist to exploit, whether in pushing them into wars or making them have economical adventures and burden them with debts for more luxurious life. It will also help make people more daring to accept their extreme ideas.

A con man is always happy to find an enthusiastic reckless person. That's why they try to make people this way through their media and movies. A rational person is cautious, always confirming the ground before stepping his foot, and that certainly doesn’t help who want to deceive people. The West isn’t free as we think it is, it's owned by the capitalists who drive it towards serving their interests, and that includes the politicians. All quarrels and clashes are caused by those who ignorantly confident, they are the ones who cause problems and accidents and commit crimes everywhere. Even car accidents are mostly due to overconfidence. Sadly enough, materialists encourage this blind overconfidence and call it: the adventurous spirit!

Moreover, how can we separate overconfidence from arrogance? According to that view, a dictator who commands people to worship him –as in the story of the Pharaoh who claimed to be god- is a confident person, because no matter what signs he sees he doesn’t waver and never changes his idea that he's the one and true god!

It should be noted that those capitalists never like risky adventures for themselves, they meticulously study every step they're going to make, even opining a new branch for their bank or factory goes through thorough studies. However, they like to encourage others to take risks and be adventurous, and that's understandable since a fisherman doesn’t like cautious fish. That's why Capitalism likes wars and cheers for reckless people because they operate its weaponry and supply factories. A merchant likes the adventurous costumer more that the cautious and careful one. Most of the Western culture and values are formed by capitalists in Wall Street and other such places.







    We should distinguish mind from logic. The mind is more general than logic, as you might do something that is unacceptable in the mind of a certain society but the mind of another society sees nothing wrong with it. Logic, however, is detached from the changing reality. For instance, when you say that "up" is the opposite of "down, or the "whole" is bigger than the "part", those are unchanging facts because they are constituents of logic. But if a Muslim says: we should eat using right hand only, this is part of the Muslim mind not the general logic, even though it doesn't oppose it in this example. 

Logic doesn't change, and we can't think without it. Logic is a list of constant facts. Error occurs, if it does, in the process of inferring from the building blocks of logic, as an inference can be logical or erroneous. Inference is part of thinking which might neglect some areas and focus on others and then falls into error. However, logic itself doesn’t err, and who uses logic in thinking is similar to who conducts a scientific experiment. The possibility of error lies in the application of logic, not in logic itself. This is similar to conducting an experiment of a scientifically proven fact, if there was an error it won't be because of the scientifically proven information, but it might be in the timing, sequence of steps, or a neglected element of the experiment etc… .





  
Nothing is constant around us, people change and so are their ideas. Many things were regarded as important and then became trivial. One person might give you a thousand images of one thing. There is no reference, that's why Einstein found that everything is moving in nature, which made him relate everything to the speed of light as the most constant thing he found.

In the world of the human self nothing is invariable except your feeling, it's the constant and reference you seek. By the feeling I mean the pure and natural feeling within you, from which you evaluate everything and to which you resort. When you listen to people's opinion and observe their actions you'll see that they are constantly changing, so is your mind. Your feeling, however, has never changed since you were a little child.

Look within you for the things you took from you feeling, has any of them changed? When people say that someone has changed, don’t believe that they have totally changed, only their ideas were changed but their feeling is still the same. If someone was generous and changed to be cheap, or was nice and became evil, such person had their ideas changed but not their feeling. The basis of generosity, for instance, is still within them, but they might have encountered people who didn’t appreciate their generosity or even took advantage of it so they turned to be cheap to adapt to their reality, but the natural basis of virtue is still within them and hasn’t changed, and if you ask them they might tell you: I haven’t found people who deserve to be treated generously! 

You feel that this constant within you wasn’t given to you by others, it's there inside you and it's a self-regenerating energy like the Sun. All it needs from us is to pay more attention to it, clarify it, and interpret it. The Quran pointed out to this fact when it said : "Remind, you are only a reminder" that is to remind them of what it's already inside them. God didn’t say: teach them, He said: remind them. The Quran is only a means to remembrance, as it says: "Remind; the reminder will benefit the believers" and says: " you are not a dictator over them. So remind by the Quran whoever fears My warning". He said remind by the Quran because it's a means to remembrance. Thus, the constant basis isn’t the Quran, it's your feeling through which you understand it.

You shouldn’t mentally follow the Quran as you won't understand it, you'll understand it through your own feeling and you'll find that it's in harmony with it, for who created us and sent down the Quran is One. The Quran is a means to remembrance and a remedy to our hearts.

You understand everything through your own feeling, it's your constant and your reference. Einstein couldn’t find a constant, but it's their within the human self. Einstein said that everything in nature is constantly moving. The ship, for instance, seems constant to its passengers even though it's actually moving. If we say that the sea seems constant we'll find that it's also moving, the planet is orbiting around itself and around the Sun, and the Sun is also moving! Where is the constant then?

Einstein related everything to the speed of light because it's constant. However, to what Einstein related the speed of light? Everything must be related to something. He related it to the constant within him because he couldn’t find a constant thing in the Universe. He related the speed of light to something bigger and more constant.  

     






     Preference for a particular race leads to an indirect racism, while viewing all races equally without selectively defending a specific race is what it means to respect all races. Whether we liked it or not, favoring one race only and boasting about it means belittling the rest. Hence, who offends the Jewish race, for instance, is a racist, and who specifically glorifies the Jewish race is also a racist! Because he/she sees only this race as worthy of praise and attention, as if the other races are worthless. And when this particular race is criticized it is a crime, while criticizing other races is not

Who glorifies and defends one race only is a racist. A non-racist is one who defends all races and respects them as a result of respecting all peoples, and consequently every human being. Therefore, the anti-Semitism agencies are racist ones, because they only choose to worry about one race among all races, and don’t worry about what's being done to other races that might suffer more, but they don’t care. I'd like to call this type of racism a positive racism, which is to favor one race over all others. Hence, the negative racism is to directly humiliate a certain race. Both of them are bad and lead to the same results.

Such forums and committees of anti-Semitism should have chosen their name to be anti-racism not only anti-Semitism, because this name is racist. If they do so they'll be respected by all races not only the Jewish people.

Islam has prohibited boasting of a specific kin or race, i.e. it prohibited positive racism not only negative racism. Thus we see the great moral level Islam is calling for which is higher than what humanity have reached in this field, that allows for favoring one race without demeaning other races. Islam has even prohibited this preference of a particular race even if one belongs to it. This is a very elevated moral level humanity haven’t reached even at the height of its civilization. And certainly I'm not talking about Muslims and their adherence to this principle, for Islam is a religion for all humanity not only the so called Muslims. Islam is one thing and Muslims are another.


       






     Focusing on changing morality for the better is one of our most important duties. That is to focus on changing our morals and the morals of those around us through focusing on the truth. Man isn’t suppose to change ideas, as they automatically change when morality is changed. Also, changing ideas through discussions and arguments causes conflict with others and pointless arguing. Even if you defeated others with your ideas you still didn’t change a thing in them. However, if you defeat them with a noble moral behavior they would stand confused, like responding to their bad deed with a good deed, here they'll feel that you are bigger than them and thus you sow in them a seed which will gradually change their ideas.

This remind us of the novel "Les Miserables" in which unfairness and oppression turned Jean Valjean into a violent man. He started to transgress, beat others and steal from them, until he met the noble bishop who welcomed him, fed him and allowed him to sleep in his warm house, after he was shunned by all the villagers who locked their doors fearing him. In the morning, Jean Valjean stole the valuable silvers from the bishop's house and ran away. It was only a matter of hours till the police captured him, accusing him of robbery, and brought him to the bishop who surprised Jean Valjean by saying: he didn’t steal it from me, I gave it to him!

Out of this incident, Jean Valjean's life totally changed. This would never have happened with giving him advices and arguing with him. It happened because of morality.

Such moral acts also make it difficult for others to doubt your intentions, because you are sacrificing your money for the sake of your principles.   


      






How happy a child would be if you give them beneficial tools that suit their level as a gift. Like a small and simple sewing machine for a little girl, or digging tools and sand carriers, or a simple collection of pliers and screw drivers which suit their age. Such gifts will be better than the games and toys which neither benefit them nor others.  




The devil tries to make us occupied with questions about God, like: how is He like? How does He do what He does? What does He look like? Why does He do this? etc…, more than he tries to get us occupied with ourselves and our flaws. Many thoughts occur to us about these issues, and sometimes violently. Logically, however, does the created have the right to design their Creator and determine what He should and shouldn't be, even though they're created and not creators? Like why did He create this and why didn't He create that? We don't even know the meaning of "create", because creation is from the world of the Unseen (ghaib). Do we have to know the history of God in order to believe in Him? Even though He's the one who taught us the meaning of the word "history"! This is an application of the human logic on the non-human realms.

God created logic and created the mind, which means that there is logic and mind different from ours. Let's meditate on this point, it was enough for me to burn all my questions and doubts, and made me stop interfering with my mind with the matters of the realm of divinity, {do not occupy yourself with what you have no knowledge of} the Quran. For a simple reason: our reason was created on Earth in the realm of the Seen (shahadah), and the realms of the Unseen (ghaib) can't be reached by our reason to judge their logicality and morality, God said in the Quran: {of knowledge, you (mankind) have been given only a little}.

When asking such questions about God we are viewing God as a human, and we judge Him by the standards, logic, and ethics of humans. And here the mind has trespassed into a field which doesn’t belong to it. 

We should view God from the area through which He reveals Himself to us, that is our relationship with Him, and start asking questions like: Is He being unfair to us? Of course not, because he gave freedom of choice, one doesn't act unjustly towards you when one gives your freedom. Thus, God isn't unfair. Yes he created us without consulting us, but then he gave us a choice. If He were to ask us whether we want to be created or not we would already be alive then, and we won't say no because that would mean our death! And no living being wants to die! 

This is how the mind should deal with the understanding of God, through our relationship with Him, and not through pulling Him down to the human realm and judge Him as a human, this is a mental trespassing that made us use our minds in a realm of which we have no knowledge.  

All the realm of the unseen is hidden from us. Where is God? Why did he create the universe? Why did He make it so big? Why did He create all those different kinds of insects? Why did He create us and test us? What does He look like? What do angels and jinn look like? How can He collect us from dirt and resurrect us after we die? The mind doesn't know the answer to such questions, questions about the Unseen realm in which there is no use asking them, because the mind has zero information about it. And here comes the role of faith more than the mind in the matters of the Unseen, God said; {who believe in the unseen}, that's before they realize it with their senses and minds, He didn't say: who thinks about the Unseen. We should know that those ideas are whispers of our enemy Satan who wants to shake our courage to believe in our conscious faith. 

We should say our opinion to ourselves about those questions, then take refuge with God from the devil whenever he tries to bring them back, and we'll find them fading away little by little. Attempting to have full knowledge of God and to know His characteristics like whether He has a foot or a hand etc…, is an attempt to have a mental understanding of the realm of the Unseen. It's an error in the process of thinking, because sound reason is built on basic information, while we haven’t got any information about the Unseen. Thus, our thinking of God will be to imagine Him as a human to compensate for our shortage of information, and we tend to forget that He's a God! I have discovered this error in my thinking and in the thinking of those who raise such doubts, and I have known that they're waste of time and we get nothing from them but worries. They are whispers of the devil to deviate us from sound reason to insanity.    

How can we know God then? Knowing that {nothing is like him} as He said in the Quran? Well, we can ask ourselves this question and say: how do we know humans? Is it because they have hands and feet they became known to us? Of course not, because we fear the mad person even though we see they have hands and feet, and if the closest person to us suddenly went mad we would be scared of them even though we claim to know them very well! Knowledge that comes through the senses constitutes only a small portion of knowledge, the senses are not our only means of knowledge.

We know others with things we can't see nor fully know, which are their minds and morality. Therefore, we have God's words, let's know Him from His own words, or to put it more accurately: from His morals. We love mercy and we know the merciful person, and God is the Most Merciful as He said about Himself, and thus we know Him from His moral qualities. We know people from their moral characteristics, and all the "Finest Names" and elevated moral characteristics belong to God. Therefore, our feeling knows God more than anyone.

This what the Quran meant by the terms "The Known and the Unknown" "Almaarof wa almonkar", God ordered us to encourage The Known, which are the truth, good and beauty, which are all we can know, whether with our reason and feeling combined as in scientific facts, or with our feeling before our minds as in good and beauty. 

Atheists and doubters even if they see God they will not know Him, because their means of knowledge are insufficient, which are the mind and the senses. Sometimes someone comes to our lives and gets to know who we are probably better and faster than our own fathers and mothers, what did he/she use to understand us like that? Even though he/she doesn't know our full names and didn't see how we look like! We can know God clearly if we use our feeling, He will reveal Himself to us if we sought him with love, God said: {We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in their own selves until it becomes clear to them that He is the Truth}.    

The absence of God or His blurry existence in our lives makes our vision blurry, because we are then distant from our feeling which is the means for knowledge. The mind or reason isn't the means for knowledge, reason is only a tool that our feeling employs. Whoever loses the light of his feeling loses the knowledge of God, { Do not be like those who forget God, so He makes them forget themselves}, i.e. they forget their feeling through which they can distinguish between things. Come closer to yourself and you'll come closer to God, come closer to God and you'll come closer to yourself.   

We suffer when we cram reason in immaterial fields. Our reason works at its best in material matters, and our feeling works at its best in immaterial and moral fields. The problem is when the mind controls the feeling and suppresses it. We must let our feeling flow, and make our mind rest a little by putting it in its natural position which is behind the feeling not in front of it. The natural job of the mind is to be a servant to the feeling, not vice versa. No one believes through one's mind, we believe through our hearts, and no one crosses the road with their heart alone, they do so with their mind and their senses. 

Who complains of being hesitant, it's because they only use one instrument which is the mind in immaterial matters. If we fairly treat our feeling we'll find that we're becoming more decisive and affirmative, and we all know how that makes us at ease. God said: {they are in grave doubt about it}, i.e. they aren’t at ease. 

All knowledge that come from the feeling is decisive, final, and has no room for probabilities, that's why I recommend it. When you are afraid you never doubt at all that you feel fear, and when you feel hungry you never doubt that you are hungry. The same as when your feeling tells you that this person is good, it'll be a definite and decisive knowledge that can't be doubted, unless we ignore the feeling and resort to the mind, which will start operating its slow machines and ask its endless questions: what proves that this person is good? Is what they have done enough to call them good? Will they act the same way if they were in a different situation? What guarantees that they'll continue to be good? etc…, therefore I can't be sure that they are good and I'll remain in doubt! The feeling, however, has already judged them and got over with it so quickly!

Shoving the mind into immaterial/moral fields without regarding the feeling leads to dullness, doubt, hesitation and difficulty in decision making, because the mind is asked to perform a profession outside its specialty, and was preferred over the professional. We can quickly feel the beauty of a garden, while the mind can't exactly pinpoint why is it beautiful. The absence of the feeling from our life makes it turn into a robotlike, rational, slow, weak and materialistic life.   
  
The good mind is the mind that serves the feeling, remembers it, and tries to prove it. This is the mind that helps us to be happy and serene, because happiness emanates from within. Undoubtedly, our feeling knows that God exists, the mind can't provide a convincing alternative for that, although it can doubt it as it always does. However, what is better and more courageous and beautiful: who follows their feeling with their mind, or who follow their mind regardless of their feeling?    
  
Imagine a friend who spotted you with their feeling and quickly knew that you are a nice person and in need of someone to talk and safely open your heart to, then their mind responded to their feeling about you, won't you say that this a wonderful and smart person? Why were they like that? Because they were believers, they believed in their feeling about you, and their mind followed and served their feeling. However, if they doubted their feeling and said: how can I be sure that this person isn't arrogant? Or that they are in need for a friend? What guarantees for me that they won't repel me when I approach them? etc..., thus they'll continue to be hesitant. You won't describe such person as wonderful, smart or nice. This is the difference between the believer and the doubter. Faith is speed, wit, good and beauty, while responding to doubts causes slowness, dullness, lack of beauty and loss of opportunities. 

We must be brave, for bravery is more beautiful that cowardice, God said : {when you have decided upon a course of action, place your trust in God} that is without hesitation. Doubts are endless, listening to them will make our life miserable, coward, lacking beauty and full of grave, fearful and exhausting doubts that deprive us of happiness. Your feeling says that God is fair, good and beautiful, and your mind agrees to that, start from here without hesitation and love good, truth and beauty. Love God and He shall love you, even if you don’t see Him with hands and feet, because we now know that vision isn't sufficient knowledge.      

I wish we meditate on that. We meditate when our feelings work followed by our minds. We don’t meditate on those ideas by reading them with the mind alone, because it will say: those are emotional words lacking the material evidence that I want! 

God is beautiful, great and in the realm of the Unseen, this is how we should view Him. God is virtuous and doesn't act unfairly towards anyone. As for why He created us even though He knows we'll commit sin, that doesn't make Him any less virtuous since He didn't force us to commit evil actions and He warned us against them. As for why he created us at all, this is a question on the matter of the Unseen, like asking: where did God come from? Or like: why did He create all those planets even though they're empty? These are silly human questions coming from the crisis of housing humans suffer from. The world of the Unseen is a different world, this is how we should view it.
     
Since reason told us that God exists, that He's fair, good, loving, rewarding the good people and punishing the bad ones, all-knowing, and nothing happens without His permission, that suffices the mind and now it should turn to us and to our flaws, they are more worthy of our attention. 

I'd like to point out that materialistic philosophers and atheists aren't as rational as they'd like to be. I personally have discovered their superficiality and laughed at their minds. I'm actually shocked by how shallow their minds are -even though they have famous names-, because, poor them, they only rely on materialistic ideas and neglect the human inside them, all that to indulge in happiness as they view it, while Satan is leading them to trouble and depression. 
   
The first step of Satan is materialism, because it's unfairness to ourselves for we're not only matter, that's why God called the truth deniers: "unfair to themselves", because they oppress the human inside them for the sake of their physical being as if it's the only thing that exists, they { try to deceive God but He, in fact, deceives them}the Quran. Undoubtedly, the way of Satan is the way of stupidity and insanity. Satan makes them lose their reason, and who has lost their reason has lost their mind. Reason can only be found in belief in God.