One day a man named Amr went to the great imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and asked him, “What causes the hearts to become tender?” The imam looked around at his companions, then he bowed his head down for a very long time, thinking. Then he raised his head and said, “My son, it is by eating halal.”

Amr then went to the famous Sufi Bishr al-Hafi and asked him the same question. Bishr replied, “Do not the hearts find assurance in the dhikr of Allah“. So Amr said, I just came from Abu AbdAllah (Ahmad ibn Hanbal), and Bishr said, ‘What did Abu AbdAllah tell you?”, so Amr replied, “He said: By eating halal“. So Bishr said to him, “He gave you the true cause, the true origin!”

So Amr continued to another person, Abd al-Wahhab bin Abil Hasan, and repeated the question once more. “Do not the hearts find assurance in the dhikr of Allah” came the answer. “I’ve just come from Abu AbdAllah” said Amr. Abd al-Wahhab’s face went red from excitement and said, “What did Abu AbdAllah tell you?” So Amr replied, “He said: By eating halal.” So Abd al-Wahhab replied, “He has given you the essence of the matter! The true origin is as he said. The true origin is as he said!”

Source: Muhammad Abu Zahra’s Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

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The famous ascetic Ibrahim ibn Adham used to always say: “Make sure that what you eat is tayyib, and then don’t worry if you don’t spend your nights in worship and your days in fasting.” Meaning: it is enough for you.

Ibrahim once said to the other great ascetic of their age, Shaqiq al-Balkhi: “I have not been able to enjoy life except in Bilad al-Sham. From mountain to mountain, I used to escape with my religion. Oh Shaqiq: He is not noble in our eyes who is ennobled by a lot of Hajj or Jihad. He is noble in our eyes who knows exactly what he puts into his mouth.” Meaning, whether it is 100% halal or not.

Source: Muhammad Khalid Thabit’s Madaaris al-Hubb, Masaani’ ar-Rijal.

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Ibrahim was told of an ecstatic youth who had extraordinary experiences and disciplined himself severely.

“Bring me to him so that I may see him,” he said.

They took him to the youth.

“By my guest for three days,” the youth invited him.

Ibrahim stayed there and observed the youth’s state attentively. It surpassed even what his friends had said. All night he was sleepless and restless, not reposing or slumbering for a single moment. Ibrahim felt a certain jealousy.

“I am so frigid, and he is sleepless and unresting the whole night through. Come, let us investigate his case,” he said to himself. “Let us discover if anything from Shaytan has invaded his state, or whether it is wholly pure and in all respects as it should be. I must examine the foundation of the matter. The foundation and root of the matter is what a man eats.“

So he investigated what the youth was eating, and discovered that it came from haram sources. “Allahu Akbar! It is Satanic!” Ibrahim exclaimed (without revealing it to the youth).

“I have been your guest for three days,” he said to the youth. “Now you come and be my guest for forty days.”

The youth accepted. Now the food Ibrahim ate was earned by the labor of his own hands. He took the youth to his home and gave him of his own food. Immediately the ecstasy vanished. All his ardor and passion disappeared. That restlessness and sleeplessness and weeping of his departed.

“What have you done to me?” he cried.

“Your food was haram,” Ibrahim answered. “Shaytan was all the time going and coming in you. As soon as you swallowed lawful food, the manifestations he had been contriving in you became revealed for what they were, the Devil’s work!”

Source: Copied (with some changes) from A.J. Arberry’s Muslim Saints and Mystics, which is a translation of al-Attar’s Tadhkirat al-Awliya.

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So remember: the root and foundation of your entire spiritual state is in what you eat. “Make sure that what you eat is tayyib, and then don’t worry if you don’t spend your nights in worship and your days in fasting.”

أطب مطعمك ولا عليك أن لا تقوم بالليل وتصوم بالنهار

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Note 1: You could say that it is misleading to say that the secret is in eating halal. Rather, it’s in not eating haram. Now the true secret of the matter is unknown to me, and these great men have not spelled it out. But one might venture a guess and say that the food you eat carries with it either a quality of light or of darkness. If it comes from halal money, then it is light. And if it comes from haram money (or in the case of meat, is prepared in a haram way), then it carries in it a darkness. And this food that you eat, becomes part of you. You are what you eat. So the flesh, the bones, the cells of your body that are made by that food carry within them that quality of darkness. The Messenger of Allah, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said that the flesh of man that has grown from haram food belongs more in the Fire than it does in Paradise. And perhaps this darkness also covers your heart, and prevents it from remembrance of Allah, or from benefiting from that remembrance. And Allah is the one who truly knows the reason.

Note 2:

Safiyy al-Din Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Dajani al-Qushashi says in as-Simt al-Majid, in the section about dhikr:

Al-Jurayri said, “One of our companions was a man who would constantly say ‘Allah, Allah.’ One day a tree branch fell on his head, causing a skull fracture, and he bled, so the blood formed the words ‘Allah, Allah’ on the floor” . For dhikr is a fire that leaves nothing and spares nothing (Qur’an 74:28), if it enters a house it says “Me, and nothing else!” which is one of the meanings of “La Ilaha Illa Allah“; so if it finds in it wood it burns it, making it fire, and if what’s there is darkness it would be light and illuminate it, and if what’s there is light it would be light upon light (Q 24:35). And dhikr removes from the body all the malignant or harmful excesses that result from overeating and from eating food that is haram; as for all that comes from halal food it does not touch it. And if all the malignant parts are burned and only the pure are left, you would hear dhikr from every part of your body, as if it were a trumpet blow. (pg 11-12)