“I cannot wake for tahajjud.”

If this is your sentence tonight, you are not the first to say it — and you are not being told anything is wrong with your iman. The tradition wrote down, in detail, what a person does about exactly this: not the theory of it, the treatment of it. Named masters, named books, numbered steps, and how long each one takes.

Two rules before any practice, and they are the tradition’s rules, not ours. First: one practice at a time, kept for two weeks, before you consider a second — the rush is the problem, not the cure. Second: do the practice and leave the result alone. Do not take your own spiritual temperature afterwards; the checking is itself a turning away.

The practices the book sends you to

• Two rakats is enough 7–12 min
  A complete night prayer — and why attempting eight will end your practice by week two. — Section 5 — The Night
• The last third 5 min, fortnightly
  Working out, from your own timetable, exactly when the night’s last third begins. — Section 5 — The Night
• Waking without an alarm 2 min
  Training the body to rise — and using an alarm without shame until it does. — Section 5 — The Night
• What to do on the nights you cannot wake 10 sec + 5 min
  The sunnah’s own provision for the one who intended and slept. — Section 5 — The Night
• Witr as the anchor 3–5 min
  The prayer that survives on every night you do not wake. — Section 5 — The Night
• Sleeping in wudu 4 min
  Ending the day in the state you would want to be found in. — Section 5 — The Night

Where the first one comes from

‘A’isha reported that the Prophet did not exceed eleven rakats at night, in Ramadan or outside it (Bukhari and Muslim), and also that the deeds most beloved to Allah are the most constant, even if they are few. The same collections report the incident of the rope strung across the mosque for a woman to hold when she tired, and the instruction to take on only what you can bear. Ibn al-Jawzi returns to the same warning throughout Sayd al-Khatir: bursts of zeal collapse; steady small effort does not.

Other sentences

• “I read Qur’an and nothing happens.”
• “The dhikr moves my mouth and nothing else.”
• “I have been asking Allah for the same thing for nine years.”