There is a great scholar by the name of Muhammad al-Mukhtar al-Shinqiti (may Allah be pleased with him) who once made a very profound comment. He said that people had reached a point in their ignorance of Allah that they don't even call out to Him anymore; they don't know how to have a personal conversation with God. If you think about what a personal dua' looks like, the word in Arabic is munajat (intimate conversation), Allah (glorified and exalted is He) doesn't care if it rhymes, or how it sounds, or even in what language you call out to Him. It doesn't matter, what's important is how sincere it is. Imam Ahmad (may Allah be pleased with him) was once asked, what is the distance between us and the throne of God? A pious prayer from a pure heart, was his reply, that's how we connect to Allah (glorified and exalted is He). When we look at the Prophetic prescriptions of prayers, the best prayers and the best supplications are the ones taught to us by the Qur'an, by the Divine revelation and by the Prophet (peace be upon him), who encouraged the people around him to learn to call upon Allah (glorified and exalted is He) in a personal way. If you look at the Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him), they are essentially a generation of yaqin, of certainty; they are a generation of being connected to Allah (glorified and exalted is He) in their own unique ways. This book, Prayers of the Pious, developed out of a series of lessons that I recorded as part of the Yaqeen Institute during Ramadan in 2018.
Each day, I took a prayer from one of our pious predecessors, mostly from the Companions, and taught how to call upon our Creator the same way that they called upon Him. By following this series on a daily basis each month, and by starting to record a personal dua' journal, writing down your own prayers following the same manner that the pious predecessors used, you can hopefully connect to Allah in the same way they connected to Him. So I hope that you will join me on this journey, and share the Prayers of the Pious and your own prayers with everyone that you know, and pleaseremember to also keep us in your prayers.