Ramadan Reflections #1: Who’s Holding the Steering Wheel?

📝 Ramadan Reflections is a series of short essays where reading turns into practice, and ideas get tested against the heart.

Ramadan has a quiet way of doing this.

It takes ideas we already agree with—and asks a sharper question: do we actually live like this?

One image keeps returning to me every year: the heart as the steering wheel of the whole person.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

A good start is not a guarantee

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

You can begin something “for Allah”… and still end up somewhere else.

Not because the beginning was fake. But because the heart can be re-steered while you’re in motion.

A little ego.
A little showing off.
A little impatience.
A little “I deserve this.”

And suddenly, the thing that started as worship becomes a project of the nafs.

That’s why the Prophet ﷺ warned that actions rise and fall by intention—not just at the start, but as the inner state shifts.

Who is actually driving?

The inner map is simple—but not simplistic:

• There is the soul and there is the ego (nafs).

• There are angelic inspirations that pull upward, and satanic temptations that pull downward.

• And the battlefield where it shows up in real time is the heart.

Then comes the part that explains why this becomes a “habit” and not just a moment:

The brain is described as an archive—a storage department. What you repeat gets stored. What gets stored becomes easier to repeat.

So it isn’t only “do one good deed.”
It’s: train yourself toward good until good becomes your default.

Ramadan is a habit-reset, not only a hunger test

Allah tells us fasting is prescribed so that we may attain taqwa (2:183).
Meaning: Ramadan is not only about resisting food—it’s about noticing what’s steering you.

This month weakens some of the usual noise, reduces some of the usual impulses, and gives the heart a clearer chance to turn.

Not perfectly. But more easily than the rest of the year.

Repentance is how you take the wheel back

One of the most common spiritual traps is this feeling:

“I drifted—so it’s ruined.”

But Islam teaches the opposite: the day isn’t sealed until it ends.

Repentance is not a dramatic emergency button.
It’s the quiet act of returning to Allah as soon as you notice you left.

That’s how you take the steering wheel back.

Allah says: “Do not despair of Allah’s mercy…” (39:53)

A small Ramadan experiment

Here are three practices worth trying—not as a grand reinvention, but as a gentle retraining:

• Renew intention during the deed, not only before it.

• Watch the small mood shift, because that’s often where the heart gets hijacked.

• Keep one consistent act of worship, even if it’s small—so the inner “default” starts changing.

If the heart is the steering wheel, then consistency is how you stop swerving.

If you want a fuller map of this inner landscape (heart, soul, ego, inspirations, temptations), I’ve written it up separately in “The Spiritual Anatomy of a Human.”

Closing

Ramadan is not only about resisting hunger.

It’s about noticing what is steering you—and learning to return.

May Allah make our hearts easy to turn back to Him, again and again. Ameen.

Series: Ramadan Reflections
Reading reference: Chapter 1 (Introduction), Knowing Oneself, Knowing God