“I have no time. I work twelve hours.”

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

• Setting the minimum floor The prayers you already pray, plus ~90 seconds
  One absolute minimum you do not go below, for as many years as it takes. — Section 13 — When Nothing Works
• The dhikr of the drive 10 min of a commute
  Turning the emptiest reliable time in a working man’s week. — Section 2 — Dhikr
• Dhikr in the hands during work No extra time — inside a shift
  A phrase running underneath work your hands already know how to do. — Section 2 — Dhikr
• Retreat inside a working life Twenty to forty minutes a day
  Retreat assembled out of the gaps your job and your house already leave. — Section 7 — Silence and Khalwa
• The one-question method Under 1 min
  One question, the same one, every night for a month. — Section 6 — Muhasaba
• Fixing the gaze at the place of sujood No extra time at all
  Keeping the eyes on one spot on the floor for the whole prayer. — Section 1 — Prayer

Where the first one comes from

Bukhari and Muslim narrate that a man came asking what Allah had obliged him to do. He was told the five prayers, and he asked whether anything more was required; he was told no, unless he volunteered. The same for the fast of Ramadan and the zakat. He left saying he would not add to it or take from it, and the Prophet said that he would succeed if he was truthful. Bukhari also narrates the hadith qudsi that no servant draws near to Allah with anything more beloved to Him than what He has made obligatory.

Other sentences

• “I cannot wake for tahajjud.”
• “I read Qur’an and nothing happens.”
• “The dhikr moves my mouth and nothing else.”