Adnan Rajeh – The Empty Space #01 – Introduction
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of removing the discipline ofigator's presence in Islam and finding full calmness in prayer. They stress the importance of learning and understanding one's spirituality to avoid negative emotions and avoid negative emotions. The speakers also emphasize the importance of surrounding one's deeds and surrounding one's life to achieve success and avoid loneliness. They provide information on the Q booked and encourage the audience to ask questions during the Q&A session.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome to our new series, The Empty Space.
Last year I did a series called Towards
a Modern Awakening and I talked about a
number of different topics that I thought were
important for us to revise as Muslims, for
the benefit of our societies and for our
ummah.
Amongst the topics that I talked about was
the topic of tazkiyah.
And I decided to make this series a
spin-off of that topic and talk a
little bit more about the details regarding what
tazkiyah means and why it's important and what
we can really do to practice it properly
and how that can change our lives.
So today inshallah is the first episode and
it's going to be an introductory episode, it's
going to be an introduction to what inshallah
to expect in the next six episodes inshallah
every day after Asr at 5.30 we
will run this halaqa.
I had a unique experience growing up learning
Islam.
I spent half of my Islamic upbringing in
Saudi Arabia during the 90s and then I
spent the rest of it in Syria in
the early 2000s.
And at the time both countries were practicing
and basically advertising, encouraging a version of Islamic
thought that was very different from the other.
They were almost like two polarisers of Islamic
thought in the world.
Very different from one another.
And being able to actually experience these two
different approaches to Islam and to Islamic thought
was very enriching and very helpful and it
granted me a lot of insights that I
feel helped me understand more of how a
lot of what has occurred today developed over
the centuries.
And when you study what I studied in
Damascus during the early 2000s a lot of
the shuyukh that I learned from and taught
me were ulema tazghiya and sulukh.
There were scholars of tazghiya, of purification and
of behaviors.
And the word that is commonly used to
describe this is called tasawwuf and I'll talk
about that in a moment.
And what you find when you deal with
them or when you learn from them is
they have a very profound understanding of the
intricacies of the human experience on the inside.
They have a very profound understanding of how
the spirit and the soul and the body
all interact and why it is we feel
the way we feel and why it is
we think the way we think and why
it is we behave the way we behave.
And they have ways of adjusting these thoughts
and adjusting these feelings and adjusting these behaviors
and teaching you how to deal with them
in a mature manner and how to actually
get rid of the feelings and thoughts and
behaviors that you don't like and replace them
with something that you do.
And I learned a lot about myself.
And I felt like as I went through
Islamic education academically and non-academically and then
I turned to teaching and dealing with youth
that that element of Islamic upbringing that element
of tarbiyah didn't exist or it had died
off through maybe the last 80 or 90
years.
And the reason that it died off is
that tasawwuf, that word, which is basically what
tazkiyah is, that word became associated with a
lot of practices that were frowned upon, practices
that truly did have a lot of bid
'ah in them, practices that did have a
lot of controversial aspects of behavior and people
who followed tasawwuf started doing and saying things
that did not represent what the Qur'an
and the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ actually
explained and they did exist.
Now the problem was that those who saw
these mistakes, instead of trying to correct the
mistakes themselves, they removed the discipline altogether.
And that movement of removing the whole discipline
has had true and real consequences on the
Muslim ummah and on the upbringing of the
Muslim individual in the Muslim world and outside
the Muslim world.
Just because there are people who made real
mistakes, sometimes the mistakes were quite heavy and
quite significant and they had consequences on people's
thought process and people's behavior, doesn't mean that
you get rid of the whole discipline.
I mean, there's a lot of people who
made up hadith upon the Prophet ﷺ.
You don't get rid of the whole discipline
of hadith, you just purify it.
You get rid of all the stuff that
shouldn't be there, you leave the stuff that
are important.
The same thing goes for the science or
the knowledge or the knowledge discipline of tasawwuf.
You need, there are aspects of the spirituality
that exist in it that we 100%
need, that actually we can't survive as a
ummah without.
So removing them completely or removing the discipline
and starting from scratch today, saying okay we're
going to start all over again and understand
spirituality, completely ignoring 1,400 years of work
that's been put into that discipline is not
going to work.
That's what a lot of people have done
and it hasn't paid off and it will
not pay off.
We need to take from this discipline of
knowledge that which is beneficial for us and
we can leave that which is not, which
needs to be revised and looked at again.
I think that's the proper approach to this
topic, the concept of tazkiyah and the concept
of tasawwuf.
You may ask the question, why are we
talking about this?
There's a lot more, there are many more
problems in the world that are pressing.
I don't think that we are capable as
Muslims or as human beings to change the
world around us if we are not capable
of changing the world inside of us.
I think when we waste a lot of
time looking outside, our eyesight is outwards, looking
for solutions for our problems.
We are actually missing the main point that
the solutions and problems actually lie within.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wasn't cruel to
put our problems and solutions far away from
us where we have to go seeking for
days or weeks or months or years trying
to find something to help us when really
everything we've ever needed, everything that we actually
require to change the world, it lies within.
It always baffled me how we would study
in school for 12-13 years and we
would know the names of mountains and parts
of the earth that we would never visit.
We would know names of war commanders that
died thousands of years ago.
We would know about the civilizations and the
names of the cities that they had.
We would have all this information about things
that, for the most part, wouldn't really affect
us in our lives.
We would forget maybe the next day or
the next year and have very little recollection
of what that was.
Learning about everything but we learned very little
about what lies inside.
We know very little about ourselves, about what
it means to be a human being.
Why is it that we feel the way
we feel?
Why is it that we think the way
we think?
Why is it that we behave the way
we behave?
It's very peculiar to me.
We send our children to get educated but
they don't learn about the things they're going
to be dealing with for the rest of
their lives.
What's the point of going to school for
25 years but never really learning the most
important piece of information that there is?
How to actually live?
Why?
Who you are?
Why you are?
And that's unfortunately, regardless of whether you're religious
or non-religious, not understanding yourself seems to
be a very bad idea.
Knowing everything else but the thing that is
stuck with you every moment of your life
seems to be quite a big waste of
time.
In this series, inshallah, I'm going to be
talking a little bit about these issues.
I'm going to take the knowledge that the
scholars of Islamic law of tazkih and tasawwuf
have put forward.
And I'm going to take information that we
have today from psychology and psychiatry and sociology
to better understand ourselves, to better understand why
it is we are the way we are
and whether the way we are is something
that is constant or is it something that
has the potential to actually change.
Why now?
Why am I talking about this now?
Because throughout the pandemic, I noticed a very
significant increase in the levels of anxiety, depression,
and mental health issues within our societies, especially
for our youth.
I don't claim that what I'm going to
be doing here is going to cure mental
illnesses.
Maazallah, that is 100% not what I'm
doing.
But we do know that the less a
person understands themselves and the less they're capable
of dealing with life as it happens, the
more anxiety and depression they have, and that
predisposes them for more mental illnesses that will
make it more difficult for them to function
in life.
So this, inshallah, understanding this will be helpful.
Will be helpful for us to live a
life of mental health, to actually feel healthy
mentally.
This will help.
This is not a cure.
Those who have mental health issues need to
see a specialist.
They need to go to their psychologist and
to their psychiatrist and take medications and do
whatever therapies and go to the therapies that
they should be going to.
This is only going to be one of
the building bricks.
It's just going to, it's there to help.
And for those who don't have mental health
issues but would like to care for their
mental wellness and well-being, that this is
definitely something that they should start learning about
and start spending some time trying to understand.
And that's why I think it's important for
us to attempt doing that now.
The Prophet ﷺ made it very clear to
us that in order for our deeds and
actions to be accepted by Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, there are conditions.
There are conditions that will allow a deed
to be accepted by Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
And it's not just, it's not enough to
just do the mechanics right.
There has to be an inner part to
that deed that is also correct.
And if that inner part, if the niyyah
is improper, if the motive is improper, if
the thought process during it was improper, then
the action will not be accepted.
And if the action is not accepted, then
you won't really benefit from it in dunya
or in akhira.
And that kind of ends this stream very
abruptly in a way that makes us wonder
what's the point of doing something?
What's the point of praying if your prayer
is not accepted?
What's the point of fasting if fasting is
not accepted?
What is the point of doing really anything
for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala if it's not going to be accepted?
And taking care of al-batil, of the
inner part of the deed, rather than just
al-wahil, the apparent part of the deed,
both being quite important.
Mind you, I'm not saying the apparent part
is not important.
All I'm saying is that in this series,
I'm going to focus on the inner part.
You want to know how to pray any
of the movements?
Then you should go and learn that properly.
That is your obligation to do so.
I'm not going to be talking about that
during this series.
I'm going to be talking about the inner
part.
How is it that we come to a
point where you actually find joy in it?
You actually find yourself focused.
Where you actually benefit from the action that
you're doing.
He says ﷺ, إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَنظُرُ إِلَى
صُورِكُمْ وَأَجِسَدِكُمْ وَلَكِن يَنظُرُ إِلَى قُلُوبِكُمْ وَأَعْمَالِكُمْ
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doesn't look at
your appearance.
He doesn't look at your picture or your
body.
What he looks at is at your hearts
and the quality of your deeds.
If you go and you look into the
Qur'an for the concept of tazkiyah, so
you understand why I think this is an
important issue that we should be talking about
and the scholars of Islam historically have taken
great interest in it, is when you look
at Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the
Qur'an, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
talks about sending messengers.
He talks about sending messages in a couple
of places in the Qur'an.
In Surah Al-Imran, in Surah Al-Baqarah,
in Surah Al-Jumu'ah.
And every time he talks about sending messages,
he means the general concept of sending prophets
to humanity.
He uses the same four reasons of why
he sent these messengers.
وَالَّذِي بَعْثَ فِي الْأُمِّيِّينَ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ And then
he said he's the one who sent amongst
the illiterate prophet from amongst them to do
four things.
يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ To tell them the signs
of God.
وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ And to purify them.
وَيُعَلِّمُهُمْ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةِ To teach them the guidance
of the book, meaning what to do, وَالْحِكْمَةِ
And the wisdom of when and how to
do it.
When Ibrahim a.s. asked Allah s.w
.t. to send amongst the people of Mecca
as he was building the Kaaba with his
son Ismail.
He said, وَرَبَّنَا وَبَعَثْ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ يَتْلُو
عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِكَ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمْ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ And
Allah sent amongst them a prophet from them
that will tell them your signs, teach them
the book, teach them wisdom, and purify them.
But then when Allah s.w.t. asked
him, لَقَدْ مَنَّ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعْثَ
فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِ يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِكَ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ
وَيُعَلِّمُهُمْ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ He answered him saying, Yes,
indeed Allah s.w.t. has granted the
believers a bounty when he sent amongst them
a prophet from within them that was going
to tell them his signs and purify them.
And the word يُزَكِّيهِمْ was moved.
Ibrahim a.s., he knew the four reasons
that Allah s.w.t. would send prophets
for, but he didn't have the sequence straight.
So he put يُزَكِّيهِمْ at the end.
Allah s.w.t. when he answered him,
he put it back as a second thing.
The first thing that prophets come and do
is that they tell us who God is,
who Allah s.w.t. is, so that
we know who it is that we are
obeying, who it is that we are worshipping,
who is the one that put us here,
what attributes that one has, so that we
know what we're doing.
Because if the one that put you here
doesn't care for you or is extremely flawed,
then the way you're going to deal with
that one, that deity, is going to be
different.
But the prophet's job is to explain to
us Allah s.w.t. so we actually
understand Allah s.w.t. so we appreciate
who he is and we are ready to
actually listen to what he has to say.
That's the first thing that's going to happen.
The second one, يُزَكِّيهِمْ يُزَكِّيهِمْ and to purify
them.
Teach them how to purify themselves.
Isn't that why Adam a.s. left paradise?
Adam a.s. was new.
It wasn't his fault.
This was all symbolic.
The Qur'an is trying to show us
the problem.
Adam a.s. had everything available to him
but he didn't have enough self-control not
to do something he was told not to
do.
He didn't have that self-control.
He had not obtained that yet.
He was still fresh.
New human being.
Still enjoying all the perks of being a
human being.
All the thought process and the feelings and
the ability to process information and the ability
to draw parallels and to think and to
wonder and to ask questions.
So it was something very new but didn't
have self-control.
Wasn't able to control himself.
So Allah s.w.t. said you need
to go to earth and live.
You need to go live in nature.
You have to go figure yourself out.
You have to go learn to get self
-control.
You need to learn to appreciate what you
have.
Not take it for granted.
Not to feel entitled.
There are certain lessons you have to go
learn.
All of these lessons, by the way, that
Adam was supposed to go learn are lessons
of the heart.
Are lessons of the soul and the spirit
and the inner self.
Rather than the mechanics of what's going to
happen on the outside.
Actually everything you do mechanically is supposed to
serve you internally.
Just to make this even more important so
that you really understand what it is.
Everything that you're doing is supposed to be
benefiting you internally so that your heart, the
status of your heart and your spirit and
your soul start to elevate closer to Allah
s.w.t. Without that happening, it's completely
useless.
Ilm without huda is useless.
If you have knowledge but you don't have
huda, it doesn't help you.
Without guidance, it doesn't help at all.
Scholars who don't take what they learn and
apply it to themselves so they become closer
to Allah s.w.t. And closeness to
Allah s.w.t. is not literal.
It's figurative, obviously.
And that figurative aspect of it is something
that happens on the inside.
Then that knowledge is completely useless.
So really everything that we're doing, its goal
is to draw us closer to Allah s
.w.t. I think that's an issue of
internal functionality.
And that's why tazkiyah is extremely important.
But what's the point?
Isn't that what Ramadan is?
Ramadan comes and takes away all the materialistic
aspects of your existence.
No food and drink or sexual drive.
Move that all away.
None of that is accessible to you anymore.
So what's left?
You are forced to focus on your inner
self.
That's the goal of Ramadan.
It's there every single year.
We don't skip a year.
8% of our lives to focus on
that aspect.
He says subhanahu wa ta'ala in a
surah where he makes 11 oaths in a
row.
So he took it both by the sun,
by the shams, and by buha.
I mean the moment when the sun is
in the middle of the sky and it's
shining as bright as it ever will.
And he took an oath by the moon,
took an oath by the day, took an
oath by the night, took an oath by
the sky, took an oath by the matter
that went into making the sky what it
is, meaning the cosmos and everything in it.
He took an oath by the earth.
He took an oath by everything that went
into the earth, into making it the way
it is.
He took an oath by nafs, by the
soul.
And he took an oath, the 11th oath.
Everything that went into making the nafs what
it is.
11 oaths in a row.
Nowhere else in the Quran.
Never.
The highest is maybe five.
11 in a row where he takes an
oath subhanahu wa ta'ala by everything that
we witness around us, that we are aware
of.
The cosmos and everything in it, the earth,
everything on it.
And so everything.
To say, Those who purify themselves will find
success.
And those who fail to purify themselves, those
who don't do it, will be extremely disappointed.
If only that first ayah was there, then
maybe this series wouldn't be as necessary.
But the second ayah is there.
I mean, if you do the first ayah,
if you purify, you'll be extremely successful.
And if that was the end of it,
if I don't purify, it doesn't say necessarily
that I won't.
He's just saying that if I do, I
will.
But the second ayah makes it very clear.
If you don't purify yourself, then you will
be disappointed.
And disappointment is disappointment.
It's very accurate wording.
Why?
Why is that?
Why is it disappointment?
Because when you come expecting your deeds to
be accepted, you may be disappointed.
Too many problems there.
Too much hasid, too much sharia, too much
vanity, too much arrogance, too much oblivious, too
much laziness, too much lust, too much lust,
too many problems surrounded these deeds.
Too much self-interest in these deeds.
There's lack of sincerity.
And then you end up getting a fraction
of what you were hoping to be rewarded
for, and it's a disappointment because you hadn't
made those calculations.
And that's the very important part.
He says, In
the famous surah al-a'la that is
recited almost every Jum'ah during prayer, he
says subhanahu wa ta'ala, indeed the ones
who purify will find extreme success.
Those who remember their Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala, their Lord subhanahu wa ta'ala and
establish their prayer.
But the problem is that you love this
life too much.
Even though al-akhirah is going to last
longer, it's better.
It's better it lasts longer, but we're just
like, we're attached to this life too much.
Indeed, this piece of wisdom existed in the
early surah, in the early books, the books
of Ibrahim and Musa.
And this goes as far as prophecy goes.
Because every prophet was sent to do the
exact same thing, to teach the exact same
concept.
But we need to perform tizkiyah in order
for that, in order for us to actually
be able to function.
I always like to imagine what's happening inside
similar to what's happening outside.
When you look at the universe, it's huge,
the cosmos, millions of galaxies.
And there are these black holes in the
galaxy that are so dense, they will basically
gravitate, everything will gravitate to them and they
just swallow everything.
They swallow complete solar systems.
Inside our hearts, inside of us, there are
black holes as well.
That feeling of emptiness, that feeling of loneliness,
that feeling of aimlessness that occurs and overcomes
us at certain points in our lives when
we're tired or we're stressed or we're finding
difficulty or you don't have companionship.
And for those moments when you just feel
so empty on the inside, that empty space
is always going to be there.
It's like a black hole.
Nothing you put in it is going to
fill it up.
You can throw everything you have on it.
You can throw vacations, you can throw money,
you can throw cars and games and possessions,
you can throw relationships, you can throw drinking
and drugs, you can throw anything you want
and it'll just get bigger and bigger and
bigger.
It'll just swallow more and more and more
and that emptiness inside is just going to
get bigger and bigger and bigger.
The only thing that will close it is
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's the only thing that will close that
black hole inside of us is Allah, is
knowing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, is loving
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That will close it.
Anything else and the human being has been
in pursuit of trying to close that gap,
trying to silence that scary sound of whistling
emptiness that he finds inside of him since
he existed.
And that's why we have, for example, we've
come to the point today where we're never
alone because you always have your phone and
you're always talking to someone and you're always
communicating with some living thing.
No point are we fully alone, even people
go to the, you can't go to the
bathroom alone anymore.
We're so scared of being alone, of being
disconnected.
If you want to get your kids to
come and sit in the living room, just
take out the Wi-Fi and you'll discover
people living in your house that you didn't
even know were living there.
It's the truth of how we are now.
We're so scared of being alone that we've
developed systems that will never allow us to
be alone.
But nothing changes.
That emptiness is still sitting there.
Always has and always will.
It's not going to go away.
That feeling is never going to go away.
You can ignore it as much as you
like.
Some people ignore it till the day they
die.
It doesn't mean it goes away.
It's still there.
And the effect of it on you is
going to be there.
And the consequence of it, if you're leaving
it, it's going to be there Yawm al
-Qiyamah as well.
Until you deal with it.
Until you look at it.
Stare at it and actually find a way
to.
Because it doesn't have to be like that.
That's what we know from studying the Prophet
ﷺ's life.
He says ﷺ, ذَا قَطَعْمَ الْإِيمَانِ مَنْ رَضِيَ
بِاللَّهِ رَبَّهُ بِالإِسْلَامِ دِينَهُ وَلْمُحَمَّدٍ نَبِيًّا وَرَسُولَهُ ﷺ
ذَا قَطَعْمَ الْإِيمَانِ You'll find the sweet nectar
of belief if you have, if you're truly,
truly content with Allah as your Lord and
Islam as your faith and the Prophet ﷺ
as your guide.
He uses ﷺ these these wordings in his
hadith that refer to the fact that وَجُرِدَتْ
قُرَّةْ عَيْنِي فِي الصَّلَاةِ I find the cool
of my eye within prayer.
قُرَّةْ عَيْنِي Cool of my eye.
That's the literal translation.
What he means is I find full calmness.
I find true happiness when I'm in prayer.
And when we listen to that, it sounds
nice but how many people have actually experienced
that?
How many of us have actually found what
that know?
How many of us actually know what that
means?
And if not, then when?
And is there a plan to get there?
Are there steps being taken?
Or are you waiting for it to happen?
Or does it not matter to you whether
it happens or not?
What do we benefit?
How does this help us?
How does learning these things actually help us?
All right.
Number one.
It gives you a proper understanding of who
you are.
If we can understand ourselves properly, understand why
it is that when someone said that, I
felt that way.
Why it is that when this happened, this
was my response.
These were my thoughts.
Why it is that I acted the way
I acted.
This is an asset and extremely valuable.
If you possess this ability to properly understand
yourself, then you are capable of taking steps
to be better.
Instead of continuously living a life where we're
reacting to everything around us in a very
primitive manner, we start understanding, okay, yeah, this
is natural to think like this, but that
shouldn't be how it is forever.
This should change.
I should be able to change this.
I don't want to think like that anymore.
I don't want to feel like that anymore.
The second thing to build on that first
benefit is control and becoming in control.
Instead of you living based on the feelings
that are basically generated from what's happening around
you, instead of behaving in ways that you
don't necessarily would have wanted to behave if
you look back at it later, you become
in control.
You're the one who dictates what's going to
happen, what's not going to happen.
You dictate whether you're going to act like
that or not, whether you're going to feel
like that or not, whether you're going to
respond like that or not, whether you're going
to say these things or not.
You even become in control of your own
emotions and feelings and direct them.
This control is extremely bad.
How do we change the world if we
can't change those things?
How do we control anything?
As human beings, again, to kind of draw
a parallel so that this is clear and
you can understand it, we love to be
in control.
We love to control everything around us as
much as we can.
The more control, the better.
That hunger for control is one of the
ugliest things that exists within human nature, but
it's real.
It's real.
It drives so many changes in the world
on a global level.
That hunger for control, that people want to
control other people's behaviors, control their destinies, control
what they can and cannot say, can and
cannot do.
Even in households, you love to control.
You want to control everyone there.
You want them to do what you want,
say what you want, behave the way you
want.
It's this urge to control everybody.
And really, the only thing you're supposed to
control is yourself.
The only thing you were supposed to control
is that urge to want to control.
That's what you should have controlled.
Say, no, no, we're not doing that.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala controls.
He is the king subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And he gave people full freedom to say
and do what they want.
So maybe you need to reconsider that.
Our job is not to control.
Our job is to serve, but our job
is not to control others.
Our job is to control ourselves.
Be content with being able to control your
own emotions, your own feelings, your own thoughts.
And you'll see the difference.
You'll see, O Allah, you'll be much happier
if you're moving.
Which takes me to the third benefit.
Al-tumannina.
You'll come to a point of calmness.
You'll calm down.
And you'll see life for the reality of
what it is.
And you'll start to be able to value
in life what is truly valuable.
And discard the things that are not.
Because you're no longer ruled or runned or
controlled by other things.
Isn't that what Ramadan does?
It tells you you're not a slave to
food.
Food does not control you.
Food does not own you.
You're hungry?
Yeah, well, tough it up.
Don't eat for 17, 18 hours.
Prove that you're not owned by your urge
to eat.
You don't eat.
You don't live so you can eat.
You eat so you can live.
This calmness comes from understanding these things.
Being in control.
Because once you're in control, you have the
proper perspective.
It's like your head is focused downwards.
And then when you start controlling yourself, you're
able to lift your head.
And now you can see the landscape.
Now you can see the bigger picture.
So you calm down.
And you find that life is different than
the way most people understand it or see
it or feel it or experience it.
Number four, compassion.
This will make you more compassionate.
Because once you understand why it is you
feel the way you feel, you start understanding
why it is others feel the way they
feel and why others behave the way they
behave.
You become more compassionate.
You see someone behaving this way.
You see someone who's extremely upset and yelling.
And instead of feeling offended, understand this is
a person who's probably going through a lot.
And this is their response.
This is their psychological response to all the
stress that they're under.
You stop hating.
You stop judging.
And you start feeling compassionate because you understand
how this works.
Because you have, the nifus are pretty much
the same, almost identical.
We all have almost the same set of
inner, of internal elements.
We have the same organs on the inside.
It only makes sense for us to have
the same internal spiritual elements as well.
Very, very little differences exist on the inside.
And I'll talk about that inshallah more as
we go along.
Another benefit from doing this is sabr.
What I mean by sabr is perseverance regarding
life.
Once you become in control, once you have
that calmness of understanding the world properly, once
you understand yourself, you're able to deal with
life in a much better way.
The way that you react to failure, the
way that you react to loss, the way
that you react to disappointment, the way that
you react to stress and anxiety changes because
you understand things on a much deeper scale
now.
It allows you to become a much more
perseverant individual.
Understanding and connecting with who you are on
the inside.
That empty space that exists, children know it's
there from the moment they are capable of
communication.
That's why they never want to be alone.
They always want to be with someone.
Send your kids to play in their room
by themselves.
They're not happy.
They want to play with you watching.
It's that emptiness that starts developing the moment
you start thinking and comprehending and understanding.
And it never truly goes away unless we're
able to take the time and actually address
it.
It takes bravery and it takes strength and
it takes a determination that unfortunately not everybody
necessarily has.
But if we're able to shed light on
these topics and on these issues and explain
what's actually going on inside, what do we
have on the inside?
What does the Qur'an say about these
things?
What nomenclature does the Qur'an use in
describing the inter-workings of the human being?
If we're able to come up with a
few strategies that the Qur'an itself explains
and the Prophet ﷺ actually took the time
to practice and teach the Sahaba, then we
can start tackling these problems one after the
other.
Then we can start taking on the diseases
of the heart as they're called, the marad
al-qulub.
Taking on these internal struggles that exist inside
the heart and mind of every human being
and breaking them down to why they're there.
What caused them to be there?
What brought them there?
What put them there?
And then are they something that can change?
Do we need to completely get rid of
them?
Do we need to adjust them?
Do we need to learn to deal with
them in a more mature way or not?
And that is just, I mean, that is
something I believe that what I'm going to
be talking about, inshallah, is something that should
exist in curriculums for children.
But how do you teach a child something
that you have not mastered yourself?
They say, someone who does not possess something,
they cannot get it.
I don't claim that what I'll be saying
here today is the full and ultimate and
only truth.
I don't claim to have a full grasp
on my own self.
But I believe that there's enough information and
knowledge that exists that are available that if
I put them together for you, hopefully I
can at least draw a basic road map
to where we should be going and maybe
make you feel how important this aspect, this
spirituality aspect is for us as Muslims.
And that without it, we really can't function.
Ramadan reminds us of something in an indirect
way that I've always thought was extremely interesting.
It reminds us that, you know, your body
really does need food and water.
Not just that you don't need to eat
all day long and you're not here only
to eat.
But it also kind of reminds in an
indirect way that you do need a certain
amount of nourishment to survive.
Without that nourishment, the body cannot survive.
What about the spirit then?
What about the soul?
Do they not need nourishment as well?
What is their nourishment?
And if you deprive them from their nourishment,
how long is it before they die?
Figuratively speaking.
Death is the removal of the soul spirit
from the body.
But what if it dies earlier than that?
What if it stops functioning?
It's not there anymore.
Many people complain of not, of losing their
emotions and losing their feelings towards everything and
anything.
They feel that nothing is satisfying.
Nothing puts them in a good mood.
They're not happy about anything.
They're not excited about anything.
They're not passionate about anything.
The reason is simple.
Ramadan teaches us that.
Imagine your body has to be nourished every
day.
Why do you think we pray five times
a day?
You eat.
I mean, three times a day, but you
pray five.
Apparently, what's on the insides, actually, you need
a more frequent nourishment than this clay, soil
-based box that we exist in.
And I think that's something that we should
take time to contemplate upon.
That was the introduction to this series, inshallah.
Tomorrow, by the will of Allah, we'll start
by talking about definitions.
I'll start defining for you, inshallah, a lot
of the concepts that exist in the Qur
'an about the nafs.
And inshallah, we will use whatever knowledge or
information we're capable of utilizing from psychology and
psychiatry and sociology.
Because today, there's a lot of information that
we can benefit from out there.
And we should be putting it all together.
We should be trying to build a better
understanding of who we are, what we are,
and where we are going.
So I'll see you, inshallah, tomorrow at 5
.30. Please feel free to put any questions
you like on the video itself.
If you watch it later, just put the
questions.
We're going to have a Q&A session,
inshallah, at the end when I'm done.
And if you put the question now, if
it's fresh, and you have the question, put
it.
I'll try and address it throughout the talks
if I can.
If not, recite it, read the question during
the Q&A session, and I'll address it
at that time as well.
So feel free to do that.
And share this with whoever you think would
be interested in the topic itself and what
it may entail upon them.
Barakallahu feekum.
Jazakumullah khair.
Subhanakallah wa bihamdik.
Shukran la ilaha illa Anta.
Astaghfirullah wa atubu ilayk.
Wasallallahu wa sallim wa barak ala nabiyyina Muhammadin
wa ala abiyi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.