Lesson 5 of 6 · What keeps it going
One. The layer you add afterwards
The gap is the first thing. The contempt you pour on top of it is the second thing, and it is the one that keeps the loop turning.
It sounds like this. I am pathetic for caring about this. I am twenty nine and I am jealous of a kitchen. Somebody with proper iman would not be sitting here feeling this.
None of that is information. All of it is unpleasant enough that you will want it to stop, and the fastest available way to make it stop is to pick the phone back up.
Take the last of those sentences seriously enough to check it, because it is the one doing the most damage. Al-Ghazali, in the Ihya, writes ولا حرج على من يكره تخلف نفسه ونقصانها في المباحات نعم ذلك ينقص من الفضائل ويناقض الزهد والتوكل والرضا ويحجب عن المقامات الرفيعة ولكنه لا يوجب العصيان, our rendering, there is no blame on one who dislikes his own falling behind and his own shortfall in permissible things. Yes, that detracts from the virtues, and it runs against zuhd and tawakkul and rida, and it veils a person from the high stations, but it does not entail sin.
Read the whole of it, including the middle clause, because that is what makes it worth having. He is not telling you the feeling is fine. He concedes the cost. What he refuses is the word you have been using on yourself, which is disobedience.
And Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, quoted on islamqa in fatwa 12205 from Fatawa Nur ala ad-Darb, holds that a person will not be brought to account for whatever crosses his mind, but will be brought to account for what he says and does. Notice where that puts the accountability. Not on the arrival of the feeling.