Real Learning teaches you how to polish your Special Heart and how to be a beloved person in this world. As a beloved person with a clean heart, you can become someone who can take their everyday problems and turn them into opportunities for polishing your Heart, which will help you get to the Next World.

This life you are living now is very short, and you don’t want to waste the precious time you have. It’s like being given a stream with just enough water flowing in it that it will reach the Garden or Heaven. If you waste the water in this stream, you won’t have enough to reach Paradise or the Next World.

Sometimes it can be hard to be happy for other people when they win an award or get a good grade. We might even be secretly happy when another person fails. But would we be happy if that person didn’t reach the Next World or Paradise? No, never! If we would be sad if someone didn’t reach Paradise, why would we be happy when they fail at the smaller goals that they want to accomplish in this world, like passing a test or winning a football game?

Imam al-Ghazali tells us there are truths that are ugly. Can you think of what he might mean by that? If you brag, even if you’re saying something that is true about yourself, it is still showing off and making your heart dirty because you pushing yourself up by pointing out that you are better than others or have more than they do. When you notice you are doing this, just say “No!” to your lower self. When you stop yourself from bragging, you help stop your heart getting dirty. What other truths can you think of that al-Ghazali would say are dirty?