Adnan Rajeh – The Empty Space #02 – The Definitions
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses the importance of the spirit, body, and nafs in achieving success in life. The nafs are the products of the upper spirit that came from Allah subhanahu wa ta ta, and the spirit is the product of the upper spirit that came from nature, the soul, and the soul is born. The nafs are the products of the upper spirit that came from Allah subhanahu wa ta ta, and the spirit is the product of the upper spirit that came from nature, the soul, and the soul is born. The nafs are the powerful elements that make us unique, and the nafs are the powerful elements that make us unique.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome to our seven episode series, The Empty
Space.
Yesterday was our first episode and I gave
an introduction to what this series is going
to be talking about.
And it's basically a spin-off from the
series Towards a Modern Awakening that I did
last year, where I talked about a number
of different elements or components or articles of
thought that we should revise as Muslims.
And I talked about tazkiyya, or the concept
of purification, which is what this series is
going to address in a bit more detail
and depth, inshallah.
So if you missed the introduction yesterday, you
can listen to it again.
It's on the Facebook page, but you're still
fine to be able to continue with us
even if you didn't.
Today, the episode is called The Definitions.
I'm going to try, I'm going to attempt
to define for you all the different components
of what's inside of us and the nomenclature
that the Qur'an used to describe these
different elements.
Anyone who claims that they understand what's happening
on the inside fully is probably lying.
This is something that is very difficult for
us to know in detail exactly what's happening
on the inside, how everything works, the intricacies
of the intertwined interactions between every element on
the inside of us.
It's impossible to know in detail, but I
will be able, inshallah, to offer you enough
clarity on each of these things so that
you understand at least why we feel the
way we feel, why we behave the way
we behave, and what we're trying to affect,
and what we're trying to change, and where
it's all coming from.
Meaning enough knowledge, the knowledge that we need
in order to actually be productive, to be
functional, and to influence change.
I'll start with the first component.
The human being is made up from al
-ruh, al-jasad, and al-nafs.
To kind of break it down very simplistically,
those are the three main components.
There are other things we're going to talk
about today, but those are the three main
things.
The ruh, the spirit, al-jasad, the body,
and the nafs, the soul.
These are the three main components.
Let's start with the first one, al-ruh.
What is al-ruh?
When the Prophet ﷺ was asked that question,
Allah ﷻ answered himself and said, وَيَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ
الْرُّوحِ قُلِ الْرُّوحُ مِنْ أَمْرِي رَبِّي وَمَا أُوتِيتُمْ
مِنَ الْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًۭ It's a matter of
Allah ﷻ, my Lord, and we've only been
given such a small amount of knowledge.
We'll never truly understand what the spirit is.
When the Qur'an describes it, it says,
وَنَفَخْتُ فِيهِ مِنْ رُوحِ And Allah ﷻ softly
blew into the human being from His own
spirit.
What does that mean?
Is there a literal meaning for that?
No, not really.
There's no way for us to properly explain
it.
Even the translation I offered is flawed.
Because if you attempt to understand it literally
by saying, Oh, there is some blowing going
on.
No, no, that's not.
Because Allah ﷻ is not like us.
And there's no way for us to draw
a parallel.
So what does it actually mean?
All it really means is that there is
a specific, there's a higher specificity for the
spirit being directly from Allah ﷻ.
That's as far as we can go in
terms of explaining what it is.
When it happened throughout the development of the
human beings over millions of years, we don't
know.
What exactly happened, we don't know.
But what we do know is that you
need a very strong functioning brain biologically.
The body has to have a functioning brain
in order for the spirit to function properly.
That's why if someone, Allah ﷻ, has a
horrible accident and there's a brain injury, they
don't function properly as well.
Because the ruh can't do its job there
anymore.
And that's why lower ranked mammals or creations
or living things or animals on the planet,
they have spirits, but they don't function the
way the human being does.
Because in order for the ruh to actually
function properly, it needs a fully developed brain.
Which is why it's a bit complex and
we'll never truly understand exactly what happened that
allowed the ruh to exist the way it
does.
And what does it mean that it came
from Allah ﷻ directly?
We don't understand.
So what do we know?
What we do know is that the ruh
is that higher part of who we are.
That part of us that feels compassion, that
feels empathy.
That part of us that has that selfless
aspect to it.
That part of us that wants to help
people, wants others to be as happy as
we are.
It's that part of us that has those
mirror neurons.
When you see someone getting hit by a
baseball, you cringe, you feel pain even though
it's not hurting you.
That's what the spirit does.
That spirit gives you all those classy khayr,
those good attributes as a human being.
Because it comes from Allah ﷻ.
What we also know about the spirit is
that there are things that strengthen it and
things that weaken it.
That the ruh is strengthened by love, by
tenderness, by compassion.
In order for the spirit to develop, it
needs to be shown these things at a
young age.
It has to feel love.
It has to feel compassion.
It has to feel tenderness.
It has to be taken care of.
It has to be tended to.
And the spirit is weakened with negligence, with
abuse, with harm, with hatred.
So the ruh can become stronger and become
weaker.
It needs to be nurtured in order for
it to achieve its highest form and its
highest level of strength and existence.
That's what we know about the ruh.
And that's as much as I'll talk about
the spirit throughout this whole series probably.
Maybe a few more words today, but that's
it.
Because we don't really know too much about
it.
We just know what helps it and what
harms it and what it does in our
body, but we don't understand it.
The second element is the body.
The body comes from the soil of the
earth.
The body is the manifestation of nature.
The body doesn't do anything without the spirit.
It's not alive.
Life comes from the existence of the spirit
in this body.
The body is just a product of Mother
Nature.
That's why it contains within it all of
the attributes of nature.
Nature is extremely cruel.
Nature is extremely selfish.
And that's what the body contains within it.
But it doesn't have life, it doesn't function,
it doesn't do anything until the spirit touches
it.
When the spirit meets the body, something is
born.
That thing that is born is called the
soul, a nafs.
A nafs is the product of the upper
spirit that came from Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala, meeting the body that comes from nature,
comes from the earth.
And then the soul is born, the nafs.
We know a lot about a nafs.
Shaytan knows a lot about a nafs.
We're going to leave him out of the
equation for now.
He's not as important as we tend to
think he is.
The soul, we know a lot about it
because the Qur'an explained a lot.
The Prophet ﷺ explained a lot.
Our scholars of Islam have talked about it
in detail.
Modern psychology and psychiatry have studied it.
Studied the nafs, studied the soul.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about the nafs in
great detail.
I'll talk about every aspect of it.
What we need to know is that the
nafs looks out for us.
The nafs is the reason that we survive
as a species.
It's the reason that you survive childhood and
make it to older age.
The nafs wants to get you forward.
It wants to get you on top.
It wants you to be the best.
It wants you to have the most.
That's what it wants.
We are not trying to destroy a nafs.
That's not what this series is about.
The nafs is not all evil.
The nafs needs to be regulated.
It needs to be adjusted.
It needs to be purified.
That's what tizkiyya means, is to purify it.
It's not your enemy.
If anything, it's your greatest ally.
I'll talk about that tomorrow in great detail.
That's what a nafs is.
It's that product.
It's very complex.
We don't fully understand it.
We don't know exactly what it is, but
we understand where it came from and then
we understand what it does.
Its desires are called al-hawa.
So when you find the word al-hawa
in the Quran, those are the desires of
the nafs.
It's what it wants.
It's what it's setting out to get.
It's the urges that you find inside.
Those are al-hawa.
And they're basically just whatever the nafs wants.
So those are the three main components.
Just to kind of simplistically break them down
to something very easy to understand.
Ruh, the spirit, that's coming from Allah.
We don't fully understand what it is.
We have very little information about it.
We know what makes it stronger and weaker,
and we know what it does for us.
It offers us that part of us, that
selfless part of us.
Then the body.
The body is just the box that we
exist within.
It's just the ride that we have.
We have to exist in a certain materialistic
form.
This is what the body is.
It comes from the earth.
It comes from Mother Nature.
It carries with it all the attributes of
Mother Nature.
And then when these two things come together,
the soul or the nafs is born.
And the nafs is extremely important.
It's very complex.
It's very much alive.
And it has a lot of desires.
And it's your strongest ally, but it also
can be your worst enemy if you don't
deal with it properly.
And we don't see it as our enemy.
We're gonna look at it differently.
And that's what the Qur'an, that's what
the Prophet ﷺ taught us to do.
So those are the first three components.
We're gonna move on to a few more
definitions.
In the Qur'an, there's something called الفؤاد.
الفؤاد is consciousness.
It's that space in which we receive everything
that comes through the eyes, the ears, the
nose, and from the mind.
Science, till this moment, does not know how
to define consciousness.
Till this day, all of the neurologists in
the world struggle to define and understand where
consciousness comes from, that cognition, that ability to
finally see things and absorb everything around us
and then process it.
This consciousness is very, very delicate.
It's very important.
And consciousness can increase in breadth, in width,
in depth.
And it can decrease as well.
So it's something that has the ability to
get stronger and bigger.
That's why children have lower levels of consciousness.
And the older you get, your consciousness expands
and gets bigger and bigger.
If, Allah forbid, you get people who are
mentally delayed, they have limited consciousness.
But that's what الفؤاد.
إِنَّ السَّمْعَ وَالبَصَرَ وَالفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُولَٰئِكَ كَانَ عَنْهُ
مَسْئُولًا Indeed, your ability to hear and to
see and your consciousness, all that you're going
to be asked about يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَ Consciousness is
what we use is that space where all
the input, all the input from the five
senses in our mind come together to exist.
Another word the Qur'an uses quite often
that needs to be defined العقل العقل العقل
is the mind.
Or maybe it's executive functioning.
Or it's hard to translate العقل properly.
But what's really important about العقل is what
it does.
See, العقل is the part that makes the
decision.
It's a very delicate mix from the spirit,
the soul, and the body.
All three make العقل.
How it exactly works, we don't know.
We know that the brain is a strong
part of it from the جسد, from the
body.
But how it all...
We don't know.
But we just know what they do.
What they're called, what they do, and how
we can benefit from them and how we
can use them for our advantage to become
better people.
العقل, the mind, is the thing that makes
the decision.
See, without the spirit, there is no mind.
There's no عقل.
Without consciousness, there is no mind.
There's no عقل.
Without عقل, there's no decision making.
We don't have the capacity to make decisions.
Without the capacity to make decisions, there's no
تكليف, there's no accountability.
That's important to understand.
Without the spirit, without consciousness, we don't have
the عقل.
We need both.
We need all these elements.
You have to have a functioning spirit.
You have to have a functioning body.
You have to have consciousness.
You have to have a soul.
All that has to be working properly in
order for there to be an عقل, a
mind.
And the mind will make decisions.
And decisions is what Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala judges us based on يوم القيامة.
So if any of these things are taken
out, accountability becomes...
There won't be accountability.
It's important to understand that properly.
See, the عقل, the mind, is that lone
soldier standing in the face of all of
the desires and whims that the human being
has.
All the desires of greed and selfishness.
And it's like tsunamis, tsunami waves of human
greed and selfishness and desires and eagerness to
control and to take everything.
And you have the mind, that lone soldier
standing.
That's the only savior in this world.
The only savior in this world is the
عقل, is the mind.
Because the mind is capable of making decisions.
We strengthen our minds and weaken our minds
throughout our lives.
You strengthen the mind, you strengthen the عقل
with knowledge, with seeking knowledge, with reading, with
surrounding yourself with people of experience, who have
wisdom, of حكمة.
By going through the experiences of life, by
learning from those who are surrounding you, by
being able to observe and take lessons from
everything that has happened historically to others and
to you.
This is what strengthens the عقل.
And what weakens the عقل is a lack
of all of that.
The عقل can become extremely weak and non
-functional if it's not used.
It's like any other muscle.
Because a part of it is biological.
If it's not used, if it's not continuously
challenged to observe, to contemplate, to reflect, to
look in depth, to wonder, to ask questions.
If it's not trained to do that, it
will become weaker and weaker and weaker.
And thus will have weaker decision-making capacities
and abilities.
And we won't be able to make important
decisions when needed, which is the point here.
So when you look at the concept of
decision-making in life, the mind, the عقل,
and that's what it means in Arabic, العقل,
to be able to control something, to change
it, العقال, you pull something back and forth,
you limit it, you hold it down.
The عقل has the ability to do that.
That's why it's important for children to learn.
That's why the more you know, that's why
knowledge is power.
It's not money that gives you power.
It's not social status.
It's knowledge.
The more you know, the more powerful you
are and the more you can do in
life because your عقل is growing and you
make better decisions and you can help others
do the same.
Another definition that we need to understand clearly
is the conscience.
So consciousness is فؤاد, الوعي, الادراك.
Conscience is الضمير.
The Quran calls it النفس اللوامة.
So it's not like you have two souls
inside.
No, no.
It's all the same.
It's one soul.
You don't have multiple ones.
But there's a part of it that is
called the blaming soul which is basically equal
to the conscience which is equal in Arabic
to الضمير.
That voice inside of you that reminds you
that what you're doing right now is wrong.
That voice that is painful.
It's painful.
The نفس hates it.
The soul hates this.
It does not like it.
Where does it come from?
It's the effect.
Here's the definition of what the conscience is
and the ضمير is.
It's the effect of the goodness of the
soul, of the goodness of the spirit on
the soul.
I'll say that again.
تأثير خيرية الروح على النفس It's the effect
of the goodness of the spirit.
As I said, the spirit can be strengthened.
The spirit can be filled with goodness.
The more love and affection and tenderness and
kindness that it sees, the better ethics and
values that it deals within.
It becomes stronger and stronger and the goodness
within it increases.
That goodness affects the soul.
How does it affect the soul?
ضمير, the conscience.
That is the effect.
It's called the conscience.
So if you think about it, if you
have a strong spirit, then you're going to
have a strong conscience and it's going to
nag on the soul more.
It's going to make it difficult for the
soul to make all the mistakes, to be
as selfish as it wants to be.
Because ضمير is right there, reminding that's wrong.
تلومها, it's blaming it.
You shouldn't have done that.
Why are you thinking like that?
Why are you acting like that?
How do you strengthen the conscience?
You have to strengthen the soul.
How do you do that?
Going back to the same, you have to
allow the spirit to elevate.
The spirit elevates when it grows up in
a household that teaches it good values, that
shows it proper ethics, that is filled with
love and tenderness and kindness and affection.
When it's surrounded by people who behave in
ways that are positive, that adhere to the
values of love, of honesty, of truthfulness, of
امان, of trustworthiness.
This allows the spirit to elevate and the
higher the spirit elevates, and the more خير
that is filled in that spirit, the more
خير that that spirit contains, the stronger this
voice of the conscience.
And the more effects the conscience is going
to have on the soul.
The ضمير is extremely important.
نفس اللوامة You want that to be strong.
That's why the opposite is a problem.
The opposite is a big problem.
People who grew up in broken homes, who
were abused in their childhood, who grew up
with a lack of ethics, lack of values,
they don't have structure.
They didn't get the affection and love and
compassion that they needed growing up.
Their spirits are weak and their conscience is
weak.
And that's why his conscience is dead.
That's a phrase we use sometimes.
A dead conscience.
Where do you think that comes from?
No one is born with a dead conscience.
We cause that to occur in people when
we deprive them from the nourishment of their
spirits, from their روح.
It needs to be nourished.
It needs to be taken care of.
It needs to be nurtured.
It needs to be loved and taken care
of and given examples.
It needs to see خير around it so
it can absorb that خير.
It absorbs all these beautiful values and ethics
and emotions and affection.
And then it uses it to control, to
nag on that soul so it doesn't make
a mistake.
You see, when you come to take something
that's not yours, you're gonna put your hand
to the حرام.
There has to be that voice inside of
you that's saying, no, no, that's not yours.
You can't take that.
It's not right.
That voice is either really, really loud or
it's very, very, very, very soft or it
could be nonexistent at all.
That's how...
You know what death is?
Death is when the spirit leaves the body
completely.
But a dead conscience is evidence of a
dead spirit.
Not literally dead, but it's so weak that
it's barely functioning.
It's barely there.
It's like people who...
children who grow up like that.
They grow up with no conscience.
That's what happens in places of war.
When there's war and there's poverty and there
is abuse and there is racism and there
is hatred.
When you fill a society with all these
values, you're killing the conscience of the youth
that are growing up.
You're killing their spirits.
You're killing their conscience.
And then the نفس is free to do
whatever the نفس wants and all the desires
of greed and hatred.
We'll talk about the details of the نفس
once.
They surface and they become the only thing
that's occurring.
So how do you put this all together?
The روح meets the body and the soul
is born.
The stronger we make the روح, the stronger
the effect it has on the soul and
the stronger the conscience is going to be.
The consciousness, الفؤاد, absorbs all of that.
Absorbs what the روح is doing to the
نفس and absorbs everything.
The eye sees, the ear hears, the nose
smells, the skin feels, the mind thinks.
And then the mind takes all of that
and it makes decisions of what it's going
to do.
Is it going to follow the desires of
the نفس?
Is it not going to follow the desires
of the نفس?
And that's how this whole thing...
Does it sound complicated?
It really isn't.
It really is not complicated.
Once we talk about solutions, you'll see it's
not that complicated.
I just want you to be able to
understand.
Because once you understand, you won't be surprised
why it is this is happening, why it
is that's happening, why it is that I
feel this way and why did that thought
come to me and why did I do
that?
It's very simple.
It's not that difficult if you understand what's
going on.
Understand how the روح is filled with خير
and it's affecting the soul and it's affecting
that soul with its consciousness and that consciousness
is affecting it.
And the consciousness is absorbing all of the
information and the mind is taking all of
that and then making decisions.
And those decisions are what we're going to
be held accountable for.
Everything else happening inside we're not necessarily accountable
for all of it but we are accountable
for some of it which is why this
series inshallah is going to be of benefit
to you.
Let's move on to another definition.
There's something that I made up.
This is completely mine.
I'm not aware of it existing anywhere else.
It's a terminology that I came up with
and it may sound a bit corny or
silly but I think it'll help us to
understand.
There's something I call the cycle of life
because if you're alive you're under the influence
of this cycle.
If you're alive just by the merit of
being alive then this cycle is affecting you
every moment of every day.
The cycle is like this.
Feelings affect thoughts affect behaviors and behaviors affect
feelings again.
The cycle goes the opposite direction.
So feelings that affect thoughts can also affect
behaviors and behaviors can affect thoughts and thoughts
can affect feelings.
Three things.
Thoughts, feelings, behaviors.
Each one affects the other and is affected
by the other.
That's the cycle.
This cycle can go in either direction and
it goes in either direction.
You have a positive.
It's a virtuous or vicious cycle by the
way.
If you've studied a little bit of biology
or chemistry there are cycles that are virtuous
or vicious meaning that once the cycle begins
it self-strengthens itself.
Meaning the cycle needs an external component to
stop it or change its direction.
Because once you start it, it just keeps
on going.
I'll explain what I mean.
If you have a positive feeling that positive
feeling will lead to a positive thought.
That positive thought will lead to a positive
behavior.
The consequence of that positive behavior will lead
to strengthening the initial positive feeling.
Now this initial positive feeling that has been
strengthened will produce stronger positive thoughts.
That will produce stronger positive behaviors and it
just keeps on going.
Now that sounds really nice unless you say
negative thoughts or negative feeling.
You can start anywhere.
The cycle is interchangeable.
It goes in every direction.
So let's start with thoughts.
You have a negative thought.
That negative thought...
You don't like someone.
Negative thought.
That person isn't good.
It causes a negative feeling.
You don't like that person.
That causes negative behavior.
You don't treat them properly.
That negative behavior it influences and strengthens the
initial negative thought.
See?
I knew he wasn't a good person.
That negative thought becomes stronger.
And that affects the negative feeling.
Makes the negative feeling stronger.
And it just keeps on going.
It never stops.
And it goes in both ways.
So the negative thought can affect negative behavior
immediately.
Everything is affected.
And it's a vicious cycle.
Meaning it doesn't stop.
Unless something from the outside comes and stops
it.
Unless some external component can come and affect
the cycle and change it.
And that negative thought can be replaced by
something different.
It's very dangerous.
It's why human beings go extreme.
Why do we become extreme?
Because if there's nothing that's going to come
from the outside to break this cycle, this
cycle will just get stronger and stronger and
stronger and just keep on getting bigger and
bigger and bigger.
And that's why the world today is polarized.
People who are to the extreme left or
to the extreme right or the extreme...
Because of this cycle.
Because of the effect of this cycle.
And the importance of this cycle.
It's silly really.
You're like, we know that.
But it has within it the answers to
a lot of our questions.
A lot of our questions are answered just
by understanding this little cycle.
And how to deal with it.
What affects it?
A lot of things affect it.
Life experiences affect it heavily.
But I'm not going to talk about that
during the series.
But I will note that life experiences have
a very important effect on the cycle.
But I'm not going to really touch on
that for the majority of the series.
I'll touch on it towards the end briefly.
But let's look at the definitions that I
gave you earlier and what effect they have.
So, the conscience affects thoughts.
Your conscience affects the thoughts.
It regulates thoughts.
It can control thoughts.
I'm not talking about contemplation here.
Or reflection.
I'm not talking about you sitting down and
you're really thinking about something.
I'm talking about thoughts.
Random, spontaneous thoughts.
They happen all the time.
Hundreds of thousands of them occur every single
day in your brain.
We're used to dealing with them.
Some of them we get rid of.
Some of them we hold on to.
Some of them are nagging to keep on
happening.
Some of them...
Mental illnesses have...
There are people who have the same thoughts
and just keep on...
It's very annoying.
It's very difficult.
They require proper treatment and therapy to help
them get rid of these thoughts.
It's not easy.
But the average human being has these thoughts.
The conscience is capable of controlling these thoughts.
Behavior is controlled by the mind.
The decision maker.
The mind decides whether we're going to do
something or not.
So the mind controls behavior.
So the definition is we have the mind
controlling behavior.
We have the conscience controlling thoughts.
And then we have the heart controlling the
feelings or generating the feelings.
Which leads me to our next definition.
القلب What is the heart?
The heart is the subconscious.
The subconscious.
Everything pours into the heart.
It's like...
It's this big mixing pot.
That's what the heart is.
Everything you see.
You hear.
You think.
Everything...
Every experience that occurs.
Every contemplation or reflection from the mind.
Everything that the consciousness brings in.
Every خير that the spirit has in it.
Every selfishness or bad attribute that the soul
has in it.
All of that is pouring like rivers.
Just like rivers that are running and pouring
into this big mixing pot that is just
being stirred around all day long.
And that's what the heart is.
The heart is extremely powerful.
It's the most powerful component in all of
this.
That's why I left it to the end.
We talked about the روح.
We talked about the spirit.
We talked about the نفس.
The soul.
We talked about the body.
We talked about the consciousness.
الفؤاد.
We talked about the mind.
العقل.
We talked about the conscience.
الضمير.
النفس اللوامة.
I talked about the cycle.
But all of that...
It's the قلب.
Because the قلب takes it all.
Everything comes to it.
That subconscious part.
The subconsciousness.
That's why the Prophet ﷺ would say أَلَا
إِنَّ فِي الْجَسَدِ مُضْغَةٌ إِذَا صَلَحَتْ صَلُحَ الْجَسَدُ
كُلُّهُ إِذَا فَسَدَتْ فَسَدَ الْجَسَدُ كُلُّهُ Indeed, there's
a part of you that if it's functioning
properly, then everything about you will be working
well.
And if it's corrupt, then everything will be
corrupt.
أَلَا وَهِى الْقَلْبِ Indeed, it's the heart.
Not the physical heart.
Even though that's where we think it is
spiritually.
Figuratively.
It's probably in the same place.
There's probably some connection or association between the
subconsciousness and the قلب from a religious-spiritual
perspective and the actual قلب that we study.
The pumping.
That beautiful and amazing pump that keeps us
alive.
That never gets tired.
That keeps on going until the day we
pass away.
The effect the قلب has is astronomical.
On everything.
It generates your feelings.
So, pour into it what you will.
Pour into that heart whatever you want.
If you look at حرام, listen to حرام,
think about حرام.
If your consciousness is receiving حرام, then what
do you think is going to be produced
from that heart?
In what direction do you think the feelings
are going to go?
When someone tells me, Oh, but I feel
this.
I know you feel it.
No one is denying that you feel this.
The question is, why do you think you
feel that way?
Do you think that that just magically occurs?
No.
Your feelings don't magically occur.
Your feelings are the manifestation of everything that
you have looked at, listened to, thought about,
touched, smelled, wanted, desired.
All of that, when you put it together,
it produces that feeling.
And that feeling, the heart is where it
comes from, basically.
And then it goes to that cycle, and
it strengthens itself.
If nothing comes out from, if no component
from the outside comes and stops, that breaks
the cycle.
Because once you have a feeling, if you
think about the feeling, because the feeling is
the cause of thoughts, and you allow that
thought to continue to behave, and that behavior
to continue, and it keeps on going, then,
of course, the feeling is going to be.
That's why people, sometimes they lose control.
Which is the worst thing, which is the
whole point of this series.
You have to be in control.
You can't allow anything to take control over
your own life.
You can't be controlled by your feelings.
Yes, they can become strong to the point
where you're weak in front of them.
You can't control them.
You have weakened the mind.
The mind can't control them anymore.
But you have influence over them.
So you are accountable, to a certain degree,
for how you feel.
Not initially, but later on.
Because the way you deal with your feelings
is going to dictate whether those feelings get
stronger, whether the thoughts and the behaviors reinforce
the feelings, or whether you change your thoughts
because you can control them with your conscience,
whether you can change behaviors, you can control
that with your mind, make decisions of what
you're going to do and what you're not
going to do.
I get this discussion.
I have to have a lot with our
younger brothers and sisters, especially when they talk
to me about falling in love with someone
at an age where they're not ready for
marriage at all.
It's not the right time to be falling
madly in love with someone where you can't
Islamically, you can't be with them the way
that you would like to be with them.
You're not ready for it and you're definitely
not developed as a human being yet to
actually take on the responsibilities of marriage or
of being in a committed relationship.
But then the argument is, but I can't
stop thinking.
You can stop thinking.
How just you'll stop thinking?
That conscience has to be there to remind
you, no, you shouldn't be thinking about this.
Think about something else.
Stop communicating.
You can make that decision.
Your mind is there.
You can decide.
Alhamdulillah, you're mentally there.
You can decide what you're going to do,
what you're not going to do.
But how do I control my feelings?
Feelings come from, if you understood my definitions,
it comes from the heart and the heart
is receiving everything.
Everything is pouring into it.
You want to change that mix, that mix
keeps on changing by the way.
It filters out and you can start putting
in something different.
You can start putting in more different, start
thinking about other things, looking at other things,
listening to other things, contemplating other things and
then the heart will fill up with something
different and your feelings will be generated differently,
have a different generated feeling altogether.
You can influence it.
You can change it.
I don't need to be that decision.
I don't need to be like this right
now.
It goes for everything.
It goes for addictions.
It goes for bad habits.
It goes for everything.
All of it.
If you understand these definitions, you understand what's
affecting what and then how you can actually
make these changes.
What I'll be doing in the next few
days is basically explaining to you all of
these concepts.
I'll give you another example so that this
becomes clear inshallah.
When the conscience is strong because of the
strength of the spirit, the khayr and the
spirit, the conscience becomes strong and it's a
nagging voice on the soul.
When the conscience, the dameer, the nafs al
-lawwama, that nagging soul, its effect on the
soul itself turns into a feeling.
That feeling, Islamically, is called al-hayat.
That's what al-hayat, modesty.
There's a consequence, meaning there's a product from
a nafs al-lawwama, this conscience, the dameer,
affecting the soul.
The product is something called al-hayat.
Al-hayat, if you take the word, it's
difficult to translate, it's almost impossible to translate
into English.
Modesty is the best translation they have.
I don't even think it's remotely close to
what it means.
I'll explain to you why.
Because the word hayat comes from the root
hay, alive.
And the derivative hayat with an alif and
a hamz at the end is similar to
sumu is highness, sama is the sky.
So it's the manifestation of highness, the sky.
The ultimate high thing is the cosmos, the
sky because it's above there.
It's the ultimate manifestation of the concept of
highness.
Hay is life, being alive.
Hayat is the ultimate manifestation of being alive.
If you're truly alive, you have hayat.
And what is hayat?
It's the strength of the consciousness.
It's the strength of the dameer, the conscience,
affecting the soul, not allowing it to make
bad decisions.
Not allowing it to do what it wants
to do because it's such a strong voice.
It's that voice in the back of your
mind reminding you, no, that's wrong.
You can't do that.
Don't think like that.
Don't hate that person.
Don't say those words to that other person.
Don't waste your time here.
Don't procrastinate.
Don't break your fast needlessly.
Don't look at that, that's haram.
Don't listen to that, that's also haram.
You know that's wrong.
You know that's gonna harm you later on.
You're gonna regret that later.
That voice, the stronger it is, it produces
a stronger hayat.
And hayat is the ultimate evidence of you
being alive.
It's like if you're really alive, you have
hayat.
And if you're not alive, you have no
hayat.
That's why once you kill the conscience, you
kill hayat, it's like you're not alive.
You're alive but you're not really because you're
not in control of anything.
What's the point of being alive but you're
enslaved by something that doesn't even...
We can be enslaved by it.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says,
أَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُ هَوَاهُ You see the
person who made his god, the self-desires,
like I told you, what are the desires
of the nafs?
They're called hawa.
If we're enslaved by those desires, what's the
point?
You're like, well, I don't feel enslaved.
You may not, but you are.
If you only do what you want, what
the nafs wants, if you're only fulfilling its
desires and whims, then you're not really alive
because you don't have any control.
Your conscience isn't strong enough to tell it
what it can and cannot do.
And there's no hayat.
See the Prophet ﷺ said beautiful things about
hayat.
No other virtue was complimented as hayat was.
الحياء كله خير Everything is khayr about hayat.
I'm not talking about bashfulness by the way.
خجل, being ashamed.
No, no, no.
I'm not talking about that.
That's something different.
That's actually evidence of weakness.
I don't want khajal.
I don't want bashfulness.
I don't want you to be ashamed.
I don't want you to be scared socially
from saying what you think and doing what
you think is the right thing to do.
That's not what hayat is.
Hayat is what I explained to you.
It's the strength of the conscience telling you
you shouldn't do this.
But everyone's doing it.
But the voice of your conscience is stronger
than all the peer pressure in the world.
That's hayat.
They're all smoking, all vaping.
You know it's wrong.
You know you shouldn't do it.
You know you shouldn't do it.
But they're all offering it to you, expecting
you to do it, and calling you something.
But all the peer pressure in the world
shouldn't be stronger than the hayat.
That loud voice of conscience that you have
inside because you've strengthened it.
You've strengthened your ruh.
You've taken that spirit and you've filled it
with khayr.
You've surrounded it with people who love it,
who show it affection.
You've surrounded it with proper virtues and proper
values.
And that's what you've been pouring into your
heart every single day.
You should strengthen those feelings.
See, nothing works inside independently, by the way,
just so that's clear.
It's not like the aql is independent from
the heart, independent from the soul.
They're all intertwined.
They're all affected by it.
That's why I gave you the cycle.
This cycle tells you everything is affected by
everything.
Your thoughts are affected by your feelings and
your behaviors.
And your behaviors are affected by the thoughts
and feelings.
And thoughts are affected by behaviors and feelings.
Everything is affected by everything.
Everything is like this electrical web net inside.
Once you put in a small electrical charge
somewhere, one place, it goes everywhere.
But there are ways for us to figure
out how to strengthen one part over the
other, how to become more capable of influencing
these elements.
I want to influence my feelings.
I want to influence my thoughts.
I want to strengthen my decisions.
I want to have a stronger conscience.
I want to have a wider consciousness and
wa'i.
All that is doable if you understand what
affects them and how they are driven and
which direction they're driven.
And that is basically the definitions that I
wanted to share with you.
Understanding what the spirit, the ruh, is to
whatever extent we're capable of understanding the spirit
and the ruh.
Understanding the body.
It seems to me that the body has
the least business in all of this, doesn't
it?
It is.
It does.
It's just there to keep you going so
that you can figure all these things out.
And if you're lucky, that's why the Prophet
ﷺ would say, ask Allah for a'afiyah.
Ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for good
health.
Because you have enough issues to deal with.
Add to it the body not working, that
becomes a lot.
It becomes very heavy, it becomes difficult.
That's why you ask Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala for good health.
And if you have good health, don't waste
it.
Don't waste it by not knowing what's happening
on the inside of you.
By not knowing why it is that you
feel, think and behave the way you feel,
think and behave.
By not understanding the functions of the different
elements of who you are on the inside.
Understanding that the nafs, it's the product of
the spirit, the heavenly spirit and the earthly
body.
It's what makes us unique, the nafs.
I'll talk about it in detail tomorrow insha
'Allah.
The conscience that comes from the effect of
the strong, filled with khayr spirit on a
soul.
It's that voice that generates haya, the feeling,
that virtue that is extremely important that we
need in order for us to survive.
The consciousness, that open space, it's like a
big dashboard where everything, where you're able to
receive everything that the eyes and ears and
mind produces, you're conscious and you're able to
receive all this information.
And the mind takes all of that and
then makes decisions.
The mind is what makes us accountable.
The mind is what we're going to be
judged by because it can make a decision
of doing this or not doing this after
receiving all the information.
And in that very important cycle, I want
you to think about the cycle.
It's simple, but it's really important.
I can give you like a million examples
that affect your life, but I think you
can do it yourself.
I think you can do it yourself as
well.
I think that you can come up with
examples where this cycle harmed you and where
this cycle benefited you.
You didn't like the teacher, feeling, so you
stopped liking math, thought.
So you stopped doing well in math, the
behavior.
Not doing well in math makes you hate
even more, so the emotion becomes stronger.
You hate the teacher more because he gave
you a bad grade, so that emotion becomes
stronger.
And the thought that math is useless becomes
stronger and just keeps on going, and then
you fail math.
And then your whole life career changes.
Maybe you're extremely talented in math, but you
allowed this cycle to spiral out of control
and send you on a completely different trajectory
in life because you didn't stop it, you
didn't control it, you didn't bring an outside
component to change things for it.
That cycle is extremely powerful.
It's so powerful.
It controls everything, really.
And if I told you nothing today besides
the cycle, that's all you need.
Just think about it because if you can
just start affecting it, what affects it?
The conscience can affect the thoughts.
The heart can affect the feelings.
The mind will make the decisions.
And then remember your heart.
It's that mixing pot where everything is poured
into it, everything, everything we do.
You want to fill it with khayr?
You want your heart to generate khayr feelings,
emotions of khayr?
Fill it with khayr.
Just pour khayr into it all the time.
Just make sure that you're surrounding it with
people who are filled with khayr, who speak
khayr, who act khayr, who model khayr, who
say khayr.
Just make sure you're filling it with khayr.
And that will be what it produces, I
guarantee it.
And your feelings will be like that.
You want to love Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala?
That's how you love Allah.
That's a feeling.
I want to love Him.
I want that feeling to be there.
When the heart generates the feeling, what are
you pouring into your heart?
What's going in there?
Do you seriously think that you can just
pour garbage into the heart, and then the
heart somehow is going to produce a feeling
of loving God and loving the Prophet?
Impossible.
It's impossible, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
It's impossible.
There has to be some logic to the
way we behave and what we do.
And those are the definitions that I have
for you.
Tomorrow, inshallah, I will take the next step,
and we'll take some time, and we will
put the nafs under a magnifying glass, and
we'll talk about the nafs so we understand
it, so that we can start actually.
How do you purify something you don't understand?
How do you purify something that you're not
sure where it's dirty, where it needs purification?
How do you improve something that you don't
know what it needs to improve?
I mean, if you want to grow a
plant, you know it needs water.
But what does a nafs need to grow?
If you don't know what it needs, then
how do you strengthen it?
We have to understand the nafs, and that's
what we'll do, inshallah, tomorrow.
I hope this session today was beneficial.
Please put any questions or comments on the
video on Facebook page, and we will get
to them, inshallah, once we have our Q
&A session.
I appreciate and encourage any feedback, positive or
negative, constructive or otherwise, because what I'm offering
here is aimed and targeted to help everyone,
really, regardless of your age group.
This is aimed to help you and to
help me, obviously.
I don't claim to have any superiority regarding
any of these issues at all.
I'm just like everyone else, struggling.
But I think if we can work together
on understanding how all this works and finding
some strategies to improve it, then, inshallah, this
will help everybody.
And if you think that the world will
change any other way, if you think the
world changes anywhere else from any starting point
besides within the human soul, then you're wrong.
إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُ
مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ This ayah that's been repeated upon
us a million times.
Allah does not change the status of a
nation until they change what's inside of them.
Yes, that is true.
That's the law He made, subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
We have to respect and honor that law
by starting with ourselves.
I hope that was beneficial.
سُبْحَانَكَ اللَّهُ وَبِحَمْدِكَ شَرَمًا لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا أَنتَ
أَسْتَغْفِرُكَ وَأَتُوبُ إِلَيْكَ وَسَلَى اللَّهُ عَلَى سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ
وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحِبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ جِزَاكُمُ اللَّهُ خَيْرًا وَبَرَكَ
اللَّهِ فِيكُمْ وَمُسْيِّرُكُمْ وَعَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ