Concentration in Prayer:

I find that nowadays people’s formal prayer consists of nothing but a few physical movements. They do not have even as much fervor and pleasure in their formal prayer as they seem to have in the supplications they make with raised hands after the end of the formal prayer. Only if they made their supplications in the very course of the formal prayer! In that case, they might have achieved concentration of mind and also enjoyed bliss in prayer.

So, for the time being, I command you not to supplicate at all immediately after the formal prayer. Try to have the desired delight and concentration in the very course of the prescribed formal prayer, by offering all your supplications during the formal prayer itself. I do not mean thereby that it is forbidden to supplicate immediately after the formal prayer, but what I mean is that, till the time you find sufficient concentration in the formal prayer, refrain from making supplication immediately after the prayer, so that you may not be deprived of the ecstasy of prayer. Of course, when you have attained the desired concentration in formal prayer, there is no harm in offering supplications immediately after the formal prayer.

It is better that you offer your supplications in your own language in the very course of the formal prayer. The ardour and fervor that is produced in supplications made in one’s own language can never be produced in supplications made in any other language. During formal prayer, in addition to offering the Quranic and other prescribed supplications, present your needs before God in the form of supplications in your own tongue, so that you may gradually have bliss and pleasure in your prayer.

The best supplication is to supplicate to win the pleasure of God and to have deliverance from sin because sin hardens the heart and makes man a worshipper of the world. So, we should make petition to God that He may remove from us the sins that harden our hearts, and that He may show us the path of His pleasure.