Every person lives in a jungle of thought. Black and white, right and wrong: the mind is filled with all. You have to now sort out everything. Your mind is filled with ideas. No person can save himself from this: you have to live in a jungle of thought. A successful person is one who sorts out white from black and right from wrong. This is referred to in the hadith in this way: Ask guidance from Me, I will guide you.
I believe the age of fitna-e-duhaima, which was to come before the Day of Judgment, has come. (Musnad Ahmad 6168)Today we are in the age of fitna-e-duhaima. Whoever you meet is full of confusion. This is intellectual fog, or black intellectual fog. This is the problem. This is something we have to understand the most. A hadith helps us in understanding the matter: يَا عِبَادِي كُلُّكُمْ ضَالٌّ إِلَّا مَنْ هَدَيْتُهُ، فَاسْتَهْدُونِي أَهْدِكُمْ (Sahih Muslim 2577) God says: O people, all of you are astray except those whom I guide. Ask for guidance from Me, I will guide you. This hadith points toward the confusion we see today. In this world, there are thousands of ideas which we keep receiving. Our God-given mind has the ability to memorize. Scientific research tells us that anything that enters our memory becomes eternal. You cannot remove anything from the memory even if you want. Whatever you hear, see, read -- all gets automatically recorded in the memory.
When you were young, you heard what your parents said, then you heard what was said in your surroundings, society, country, etc. You read in books and hear from stage. All these constitute billions of ideas. All become part of your mind. Even if you don’t want, they will enter your mind. Once you hear, they get recorded in your mind. If it's not part of your conscious mind, it still gets stored in your unconscious mind.
What does this mean? Every person lives in a jungle of thought. Black and white, right and wrong: the mind is filled with all. You have to now sort out everything. Your mind is filled with ideas. No person can save himself from this: you have to live in a jungle of thought. A successful person is one who sorts out white from black and right from wrong. This is referred to in the hadith in this way: Ask guidance from Me, I will guide you.
What does this mean? This means to make efforts according to God's law of guidance or law of nature. This is a matter of sorting out. You have to sort out, according to the law of nature. You will then know what is black and what is white. This is the test of which we all are part. In this age, this test has become very difficult. Because this is an age of fitna-e-duhaima. We are living in an age of black intellectual fog in which nothing can be seen.
