Adnan Rajeh – The Empty Space #03 – The Stages
AI: Summary ©
The nafs, the powerful people, have a desire to achieve survival and joy, but their desire is to preserve their own energy and have more connections with loved ones. They want to make sure their children are strong and successful in life, but also want to make sure their children are strong and successful in life. The nafs' negative consequences include distraction, lack of satisfaction, and punishment, which lead to their best friend and negative consequences. The nafs' transformation journey can affect their soul and spirit, and they need to find a way to achieve their survival and achieve their goals.
AI: Summary ©
The Empty Space ...self,
a human soul actually has.
The human soul has...
Okay.
Start again?
Okay.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والحمد لله رب العالمين
اللهم صلي وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد وعلى
آله وصحبه أجمعين وبعد Welcome to the third
episode of our series, The Empty Space.
Today, the episode is called The Stages.
And I'll be talking today, inshallah, about the
nafs, the soul.
And the nafs...
Yesterday, I gave a lot of different definitions.
And the nafs is probably the most important
aspect that we'll be talking about.
And it's the target of tazkiyah, of purification
and cleansing.
And it's the target of change, really.
So, in order for us to change, in
order for us to purify it and to
elevate its status, we need to understand it
properly.
So today, I'll talk about a number of
different aspects regarding the soul.
The first aspect I want to talk about
is the soul's nature or instincts.
And today, through psychology and sociology and evolutionary
biology, we know much more about the instincts
of the human soul than we ever did
before.
And the scholars of Islam have talked about
these instincts for many, many centuries as well.
So, I'm gonna put them together for you
so that, inshallah, they make some sense.
The soul has two main goals that it
wants to achieve for us.
It wants for us to survive.
It wants to keep you around for as
long as possible.
And it wants you to have as much
joy and pleasure as possible.
Those are the two goals that the human
soul wants to achieve.
Every human behavior, every human reflex, every instinct
you feel that you have can be explained
by these two goals that the soul is
programmed to set out to achieve.
From the first cell that ever existed, that
was ever created, that Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala put on this earth, that has been
the goal of every soul.
Every living thing wants to survive as long
as possible.
It wants to find as much joy and
pleasure as possible.
Those are the two universal instincts and goals
that every soul, every nafs, wants to achieve.
And when you think about them, they're not
bad, are they?
I mean, they're not evil goals for the
nafs to have.
It's just we're gonna have to figure out
a few...
We have to work out a few details
in order for it to actually be possible.
So, if you understand those two basic goals
that the nafs wants to achieve, then you
understand why the nafs wants you to have
more wealth.
It wants you to have more connections.
It wants you to have more social status.
It wants you to have strength.
It wants you to have more children.
Because all that, in its understanding, will allow
you to survive longer.
If you're stronger physically, if you're stronger financially,
if you're stronger socially, if you have more
children, that means you have more protection.
That means you're gonna live longer.
That's why we want all these things.
And the reason that we enjoy play, and
distraction, and leisure, and we're lazy, we don't
want to put too much effort into anything,
is because the nafs wants to find joy,
wants to find pleasure.
It wants to preserve its own energy.
It doesn't want to do something difficult and
hard, because that's gonna spend a lot of
energy, and that means you're gonna be weaker,
and you won't last longer.
That's how the nafs thinks.
That's how the nafs focuses, and that's how
it functions.
Now let's give a few examples to understand
what I'm trying to talk about.
Remember when you were younger, and your mother
would make a bowl of food, or something
you liked.
Let's say French fries, or falafel, in my
example.
Whenever they put that plate in front of
you, depending on how many people were sitting
around the table, you'd always feel this fear
that there's not gonna be enough.
And you start looking at how much there
is in the plate, and how many people
are sitting around.
You have this urge to put your hand
out and take as much as possible.
That's a natural reflex.
Now why is it that that's what we
feel that we want to do?
It's not just hunger.
You're hungry, that's fine.
But why is it you have this urge
that you want to * the first and
most amount?
Because the nafs, in its mind, is in
order for you to stay ahead, in order
for you to be the strongest you can
be, and survive as long as you can
possibly survive, you have to eat the most.
You have to eat more than everyone else.
You have to make sure that you take
what is yours first, and that's how you'll
survive, and that's how you'll be strong, and
that's how you'll find more joy and pleasure.
The nafs is just looking out for you.
It just wants to make sure that you're
gonna be fine, so it gives you this
urge to take as much as...
Of course, if you behave based on that
urge, it's going to be a problem.
It looks really ugly.
Children can do it, that's fine.
If a two-year-old does that, we're
not going to hold a two-year-old
accountable for that, because two-year-olds, actually,
they function purely on the urges and instincts
of their nafs.
And it's cute at its young age, but
when you get older, it's not.
But that's why we feel that way.
It's because we want to get ahead, we
want to survive.
The nafs wants you to survive, so it
makes you worry about, is it going to
be enough for me?
Is it going to be empty by the
time I get there?
Are they going to eat more than they
should?
Am I going to get my portion properly?
You can explain the same aspect of when
someone looks at something that's haram.
When we look at haram, especially for men,
specifically for males, the reason that you do
that is the nafs.
The nafs has this understanding that survival requires
strength, and one of the elements of strength
is not just money and wealth, which it
wants you to always get, but also social
support.
So if you have more children, that means
you're having, you have more strength, that means
you're surviving more.
And having children is a method of survival
as well, because if you die, well, at
least if you have children, they'll continue your
legacy.
So the nafs has males staring at females
a lot with the hope that maybe you'll
end up going and marrying or performing, even
if it's haram, even if it's zina, because
the nafs doesn't care.
Having more children to offer you more strength.
And that's why, that's from an instinctive perspective,
if we're looking at your instinct, that's why
men are tempted to look at, to stare
at women and to look at haram.
It's what their nafs thinks is doing you
a favor, it thinks it's strengthening you.
Why?
Well, because the nafs, there are three things
the nafs doesn't differentiate between.
See, the nafs doesn't care about halal or
haram.
Those two terms mean nothing to the nafs.
They will never mean anything to it.
So even as you're trying to, you know,
to purify your nafs and teach it, it
will never really understand the concept of halal
and haram.
And I'll explain this more as we go
along.
It's meaningless to it.
To us as, you know, to your mind
and to your spirit, it does.
What Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has commanded
for us to do and commanded us not
to do, that is meaningful.
To the nafs, it doesn't care.
Ethics and halal and haram, these are terms
that don't exist in its vocabulary.
So it will never ever urge you towards
something, or not urge you towards something else
based on whether it's halal or haram, whether
it's ethically acceptable or ethically unacceptable.
It only functions based on those two major
instincts that exist for it, those two goals.
Help you survive and bring you joy.
Nothing else to it is relevant.
That's the first one.
Second thing it doesn't understand.
It doesn't understand long-term harm and planning.
It doesn't understand boundaries.
The nafs will make you overeat because food
is energy.
Energy means better chances of survival and strength.
So eat.
Just keep on eating.
It doesn't understand that if you overeat, it's
going to harm you.
That that's going to, in the long term,
cause you cardiovascular problems and diabetes and you'll
be overweight and you can't move as well.
It doesn't understand that.
It doesn't have a long-term plan for
you.
It's very short-sighted in the nafs.
It only understands right now.
It's living in the moment, every moment, with
two very clear goals that is set out
to help you achieve at every given second.
Every given second.
That's exactly what it is.
It doesn't understand long-term planning.
It doesn't understand boundaries.
It doesn't understand, okay, you've done this.
That's enough of it.
No, it'll keep.
That's why people get addicted.
That's why people get addicted.
Because if the nafs understood long-term joy,
long-term health and well-being, people wouldn't
get addicted.
But you do.
Once someone tries a drug and finds a
very short-term, concentrated level of joy, that's
it.
The nafs wants that every single day.
It wants it all the time.
Even if this is not going to help
in the long-term run of our happiness,
even though it may even cause your survival
to be decreased, it doesn't understand that it
can't look that far.
It wants you to survive right now.
And it wants you to have joy right
now.
It can't see long-term.
It's very short-sighted.
That's why it doesn't understand boundaries.
That's why we have a high probability.
That's why we are predisposed to be addicted
as human beings.
That's why it's such an important part of
understanding ourselves.
It's why it is that we fall into
addictions.
Of course, this is not by any means
a series that is going to tackle that
very complex and important subject.
But I'm trying to open doors.
This whole series, my goal is just to
try and open the door.
Just try and set a direction.
We have to start thinking about these things.
We have to start talking about them.
We have to start discussing because it's an
extremely important part of our religion, our faith.
And if we want to advocate our mental
well-being, then we have to start understanding
our minds and our spirits and our souls
and our consciousness and our consciences and how
they work together.
We have to start working on them.
We have to start figuring out if there
are deficits or abnormalities or problems that need
to be addressed that we can't fix on
our own, that we need specialists to come
and help us with.
But if we don't talk about these issues,
and these aren't issues of interest, then we'll
never know.
We'll never be able to actually deal with
them.
And I think that's why this is so
important.
And it's not that I decided it's important.
This is what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
decided was important.
This is what the Qur'an talks about.
Which is why I did an introduction episode
where this is what Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala and the Prophet alayhi s-salatu wa
s-salam taught us that this is something
that you have to take care of all
of your life.
But we have chosen to not look at.
Why?
Because it's convenient for the nafs.
It's funny how everything we do is convenient
for our soul.
The soul doesn't want to be purified.
It doesn't want to be changed.
It doesn't want to be forced to do
something it doesn't want to.
So it'll get you distracted.
Distraction is a strong method the nafs uses.
Because if it keeps the brain distracted with
video games and sports and other stuff, it
doesn't have time to actually look at it.
If the brain starts looking at the nafs
with a critical eye, it'll say, you're not
taking care of us very well, are you?
We need to make some changes here.
So the nafs doesn't want that.
So keep it distracted.
So the first one, just to kind of
recap here, the three things the nafs doesn't
understand.
Number one, it doesn't understand halal and halal.
It doesn't understand ethics.
Right and wrong, very weak grasp on that
stuff.
Second thing, it doesn't understand long-term harm,
long-term planning.
It doesn't understand boundaries.
It's very short-sighted.
Number three, the ends always justify the means
for her.
For the nafs, the end always justifies the
mean, always.
It doesn't care how you achieve what it
wants you to achieve as long as you
achieve it, period.
That's as simple as it is for it.
That's why when you're sitting in front of
food and it doesn't seem that there may
be enough for everyone, it wants you to
take it all.
It doesn't care.
It doesn't care how you get it.
It wants more wealth.
You see something haram sitting there, you see
money sitting there that's not yours, the nafs
will give you an urge, maybe you should
take it.
Even though that's not how you make more
wealth, it doesn't care.
It doesn't care how you do it.
And that's why if you look historically, the
most evil human beings are the people who
believed, forget about the nafs urging them to
do it, they actually turned it into their
own philosophy that the ends always justify the
means.
And that is by far one of the
worst statements that the human race has ever
come up with.
And it's one of the worst philosophies that
has ever existed and has caused endless suffering
and death and agony and destruction.
It all comes from a very simple aspect
that the nafs doesn't understand certain things because
it's pre-programmed by its instinct, by the
nature of how it is, to want to
get two things.
It wants to get your survival.
It wants to get your joy.
And that's it.
It doesn't care how.
It doesn't care what it takes.
It doesn't care whether it's going to end
up causing you pain later.
It doesn't matter for it.
And if you understand that, we can almost
explain everything that happens, everything that we do
and why we do what we do.
And I'll end with those examples, but I'm
pretty sure you can think of a lot
of other examples yourself.
The second thing I want to talk about
today is حق النفس, the interest of the
nafs.
Here's something that, as Muslims, we need to
understand.
This is very specific to us as Muslims.
The nafs, the soul, based on what I
just explained, will never do anything that doesn't
have its self-interest in it.
Based on what I explained to you, the
conclusion we should be able to arrive at
easily is that it will never do anything
that does not serve its self-interest because
it only has two goals, and both of
them are extremely self-serving.
I want to survive.
I want to feel joy.
It won't do anything that doesn't serve those
two goals ever.
The nafs will not allow you.
It will fight you.
It will claw you down.
It will put everything it has to make
sure that you don't do anything that is
not going to serve one of these two
goals.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows that.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows that
we want to serve ourselves.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala did not
ask us to stop wanting to serve ourselves.
Actually, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants us
to be extremely selfish.
He wants you to go along with your
nafs in being extremely self-serving, to be
the most self-serving, the most selfish individual
on the planet.
There's just a little niche to that.
There's a little clause that you have to
be aware of.
You're going to serve yourself and be extremely
selfish in terms of making it to Jannah
and the Akhirah.
Do not be selfless about that.
Don't say, no, no, I'm selfless, and even
when it comes to Jannah, I'll let you
enter before me.
No, no, no.
Be selfless as much as you want in
dunya.
When it comes to Jannah, you better be
the first person in line.
There's a known story where Jabir ibn Abdullah,
his father Abdullah ibn Hiram, and Jabir there
too, one of the great sahabas of the
Ansar, there was only two men in the
house.
There were a bunch of younger sisters.
The mother had passed away.
So one of them had to stay home,
and the other one was going to go
for the Battle of Uhud.
So Jabir is like, okay, I'm going.
You're an old man.
Stay with your daughters, and I'll go.
And Abdullah is like, no, no, I'm going.
You stay with your sisters.
And they actually argued.
And it came to the point where they
disagreed.
And they had to flip a coin for
it.
And they flipped a coin, and Abdullah ibn
Hiram got the...
He called it.
So he's preparing himself to go to the
battle.
And Jabir is crying, because he's not going
to be able to go with the Prophet,
and be with the sahaba.
He missed Uhud.
So Abdullah would say, If it was anything
besides Jannah, I would have flipped to ahead
of myself.
You're my son.
Any money I have, I would like to
offer to you.
Any status I have, I want to give
you.
I'll give you my organs.
I'll give you anything you want in dunya.
But we're talking about akhira here.
We're talking about Jannah.
I come first.
Be extremely selfish when it comes to akhira.
And that's what Allah wants you to do.
He just...
Look at how masterfully Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala did this.
He just made the path towards you being
as selfish as you can ever be.
The ultimate selfishness, which is entering Jannah.
Making sure that you go.
In order for you to achieve that ultimate
act of selfishness, you have to be selfless
the whole way.
سُبْحَانَ مَنْ جَعَلَ خِدْمَةَ الْآخَرِينَ السَّبِيلَ الْوَحِيدَ لِخِدْمَةِ
الذَّاتِ Exalted is the one who made the
pathway to self-serve yourself ultimately filled with
selfless service for others.
That's the only way to make it.
You want to become...
You want to achieve the highest level of
joy and survival.
Isn't that two things that the nafs wants?
It wants to survive.
That's خلود.
You're going to be eternal.
You want joy?
Jannah is only joy.
Isn't that the ultimate satisfaction of the nafs
in terms of what it wants?
You want to achieve that?
You have to walk a long path of
selfless service to other people.
That's just how it is.
And that's why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala...
Because He knows how the nafs works.
It's just a matter now of explaining to
the nafs, okay, we're going to get survival.
You just have to start looking long term.
It's just a matter of time.
When are we going to find that survival
and joy?
Now or we're going to find it a
little bit later?
It's going to be better long term.
وَالْآخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ وَأَبْقَسْ مَتْبَتَرٌ The equation that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala put for us is
one that helps us actually convince the nafs
that this is what we're going to do.
The equation is if you...
You can either get joy in dunya or
no joy.
And then akhirah, joy or punishment.
Now if you took punishment out, which is
a lot...
I speak to a lot of people and
they're always asking about it.
If you took punishment out of the equation,
then you leave the nafs with the following
choices.
Either joy right now or no joy right
now.
Or postpone joy later.
It may be nice.
But the nafs is like, why?
I don't know.
I don't know about later.
I have something in my hand right now.
In Arabic they say, أَصْفُرُ بِالْيَدْ وَلَا عَشْرَةٌ
عَشَّجَرَةٌ You have a bird in your hand
or ten, like your promise in a tree
later.
No, no.
What you have right now, I have right
now.
The nafs is like, well, if later there's
only either joy or no joy, I don't
know about later, I know right now.
And I can achieve pleasure, I'll achieve pleasure
right now.
But then you tell the nafs, no, no,
see later it's either pleasure or punishment.
There's no third ground.
There's no nothingness.
There's either joy, either you get pleasure or
you get punishment.
And punishment is, the nafs wants to preserve
you.
It doesn't want you to be in pain.
That's the opposite of being in pleasure.
So if you tell the nafs that there's
pain later, there's punishment, if you don't make
choices right now, you have a better chance
of being able to get it to do
the right thing.
If you take punishment out of the equation
of dunya and akhirah, of life and afterlife,
it doesn't work.
It doesn't work regardless of what your nafs
is like.
And what you are like.
Because, you know, I don't know what's going
to...
I'm told what's going to happen after death.
I have high certainty in it.
But it's so far down the road.
You know what, I like the life.
I like the life I'm living.
I want to enjoy this life.
You know what, I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I don't need to be eternal.
I don't need to have joy later on.
That's fine.
I'll leave that for everyone else.
I just want to enjoy life right now.
Because that's what I have in my hands.
It seems really interesting.
I'm so excited about it.
And people will make that choice.
And if they made that choice, they wouldn't
be insane to make it.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made the
equation very, very easy.
I mean, didn't...
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala did not give
us an equation or did not give us
a scenario where I'm not sure what to
choose.
No, the choice is very clear.
Either pleasure later or punishment.
Obviously, what you're going to choose.
Obviously, you're going to choose pleasure.
Now, the beauty in the scenario that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala put together is that
in order for you to achieve that pleasure
at the end, that ultimate manifestation of your
selfishness, self-serving instinct, you have to walk
a path of ease.
I know you're thinking, no, no, you mean
you have to walk a path of difficulty.
No, no.
You walk a path of ease.
وَنُيُّسِّرُكَ لِلْيُسْرَىٰ وَمَا جَعَلَ عَلَيْكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ مِنْ
حَرَجٍ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that
this deen is the yusra, is the easiest
of ease.
He did not put within your faith.
He did not make your faith based on
haraj, on difficulty.
Not at all.
Well, then why can't I do this and
I can't do that?
It's not because these things are difficult.
The haram list and the halal list, or
the wajibat, the obligatory list, aren't difficult.
They're actually what's going to make you happy
in this life.
It's just that the nafs doesn't want to
do them.
That's all.
It's not because...
It's just the nafs, the soul doesn't want
to do them.
Why doesn't the soul want to do them?
Because the soul, as I said, has two
very clear goals that are extremely short-sighted,
that don't have any long-term planning, with
no ethics or values, and no understanding of
what is right and wrong.
That's why.
I mean, the problem isn't the path that
we're walking, isn't the ultimate goal that we're
going to achieve.
The problem is the soul.
The soul has to change.
It has to adjust itself.
Which is why we're doing this.
It's why we're talking about this issue.
It's why the Qur'an came.
يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِي وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ You have to purify.
قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ تَزَكَّى
You need to purify.
Because the problem is not the road, the
path.
It's not extremely difficult, it's of ease.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la told
you, you want to achieve full ease, walk
the path of ease that I gave you.
And the path of difficulty, meaning, and the
outcome or the consequence of punishment, you walk
a path of difficulty.
Yes, the nafs likes this one more than
this one, but that's because it's messed up
and needs to change.
It's the issue of the soul being adjusted
and being taught certain things.
Why does the nafs want to walk a
difficult path with a difficult outcome, when we
have a path of ease and easy and
a great outcome?
It's because there are certain things that has
to change about itself.
That's why Adam Alayhi Salaam was told, you
need to leave paradise for a while.
Go, go to the earth.
Go learn about yourself.
Go figure yourself out.
If you can't prevent yourself from something that
I told you is forbidden, even though I
have provided everything for you, just don't touch
this and you couldn't do it, that means
you have to go and figure yourself out.
You have to learn some self-control.
You have to learn to purify that nafs
and get it under your grasp, or else
you're not worthy of being with Allah Subh
'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
That's all it is.
I've summarized for you the whole point of
creation, the point of the trials that we
go through as human beings in a very
simple way.
And that's where the self-interest is important.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la does
not want you to become completely selfless.
He wants you to become completely selfish.
Just on the way to achieving that level
of selfishness, you need to learn to be
selfless.
In this dunya, just give others.
Because why?
It's like instead of filling your dunya bank
account, you're filling your akhirah bank account.
It's a matter of the nafs coming to
that conviction, which is my third aspect of
today's episode.
The soul's convictions.
The soul has instincts.
Those instincts turn into convictions, beliefs.
And those beliefs or convictions turn into values
and ethics.
I'm going to give you a few examples
so you understand what I mean.
The instinct is, as I said, survival.
Survival, the best chance of survival is being
ahead.
If you're ahead, if you have more money
than everyone, if you have more resources than
everybody, then you're more likely to survive than
everyone else.
That means, that's the instinct, right?
That's the instinct.
I want to survive, I want to be
the strongest, I want to be the best.
That leads to a conviction, that others being
ahead of you is a negative thing.
Others also succeeding and having a lot is
a negative thing, because if there's someone else
that's succeeding and getting ahead, that means they're
competing with you over strength and survival and
resources, and the nafs doesn't want that.
So other people succeeding becomes a negative thing,
which leads to envy and arrogance.
Leads to envy and arrogance.
So envy and arrogance are just the result,
just the result of a soul conviction, which
is people getting ahead is a bad thing,
that stems in an instinct of always wanting
to be ahead.
And the examples here are, there are many
examples, but I'm going to give a few.
These convictions can change.
The nafs instincts can't change, but the convictions
can change.
And we don't want to destroy, we're not
out, this whole series is, we're not out
to destroy the nafs.
The nafs is our best ally.
I mean, if you took away the nafs
instincts, the instincts of the soul, the human
race would have never survived.
The child that screams in the middle of
the night, the three-month or four-month
-old child, that's screaming in the middle of
the night, why do you think it's doing
that?
Because it wants to eat.
Well, I could wait until the morning.
Yeah, no, it can't.
It won't grow up as strong.
It won't grow up as healthy if it
didn't.
That screaming child is functioning based on the
instincts of its soul, but that's why it
survives.
That's why it grows up to become strong
and healthy and capable.
These instincts keep us alive.
That flight and fright reflex that we have
comes from the instincts of the nafs.
It keeps us going.
It allows human beings, it allowed human beings
to survive over hundreds of thousands of years,
and that's why you and I sit here
today.
So it's not all evil, but we need
to figure certain things out in order for
us to be able to deal with it
in a proper manner.
Another conviction.
In order for you to get ahead, in
order for you to survive, you need to
get ahead, which means that you should obtain
as much as possible, be as successful as
possible.
That's the instinct.
The conviction is self-value.
The nafs gives you a conviction that you
are worthy, that you are valuable.
That's a good one.
You need that.
Can you imagine if you take that away?
If you take self-value away, self-esteem
away, then what do you end up with?
You end up with people who struggle in
life, who are constantly depressed, who are constantly
struggling with low self-esteem.
These are problems that require years of therapy
and years of medication, and it's actually very
difficult to deal with, and there's always such
sad endings for these type of problems.
It's not easy.
We need that.
You need the nafs to offer you that
high self-esteem.
What needs to change is the reason for
it, the motive behind it, the perspective that
allows it to exist.
We don't want to take it away.
We don't want to tell the nafs, no,
we have no self-value.
No, we do.
Keep that.
Just make sure that you understand why.
The nafs has to...
You have to convince the nafs, the convictions
have to change.
Why is it that I'm valuable?
Why is it that I have self-esteem?
What's the reason?
The nafs' reasons are all wrong.
They're just based on you wanting you to...
to continuously take more and more and have
more and more and more, just so you
survive longer and find more joy.
But we want to change the conviction or
the conviction is different.
That's why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, when
He talks about the nafs, He says, إِنَّ
النَّفْسَ لَأَمَّرَتُمْ بِالسُّوءِ إِلَّا مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّهِ Indeed,
the nafs will command evil, except the nafs
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has shown
His compassion to and mercy.
Why does it command evil?
Not because the actual concepts it has are
evil, but because of the means that it's
going to use to achieve these goals are
evil.
Because it doesn't care, as I said, about
ethics or halal or haram or right or
wrong or means.
It doesn't care.
It just wants the final conclusion.
So yes, we need to hold on to
self-value.
That's important.
But why?
Why am I valuable?
Where does my value come from?
I'm a servant of Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
My value comes in obeying Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
My value comes from the fact that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala saw enough in me,
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala believes in
me to the point that He offered me
this chance to exist, to live, to prove
myself.
That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave me
a way of life and that He's holding
me accountable.
He holds me accountable.
He knows that I am capable, that I
can make decisions, that I can be a
good person.
That's where my value comes from.
That's where self-value comes from.
You don't want to get rid of the
self-value.
You don't want to end the instincts.
You just want to change the convictions.
What it believes, why you have to convince
the nafs.
The nafs is convincible.
It's like a child.
You can totally convince it and change its
thoughts.
You can't change its instinct.
The nafs will never stop wanting to make
you last longer.
The nafs will never stop wanting to make
you happy.
And that's important.
If that drive went away, we wouldn't be
here.
No one would be here.
There would be no point of life.
Life would be meaningless.
It would really go nowhere.
We can't change the nature most of the
time.
So the question becomes, why does someone lose
their self-esteem completely?
If you're telling us the nature doesn't change,
then how is it that maybe someone ends
up with no self-esteem?
Because the conviction should be I'm very valuable.
That's the natural conviction that comes from the
instinct of the nafs of wanting you to
survive is high self-esteem.
Then why do we have low self-esteem?
Because the conviction changed for those people.
How does it change?
It changes if you're abused, if you're mistreated,
if you're continuously told that you're worthless and
that you're never gonna amount to anything.
If you see no love or tenderness or
hanaan, or kindness, no empathy and no affection
growing up, that can cause it.
If you go through enough difficulties in life
without any resolution, if you're oppressed to the
point where you lose track of your own
integrity, the nafs starts being convinced that it's
worthless.
And that causes all the problems I talked
about.
In our line of work, we see a
lot of this stuff.
If you want to learn more, talk to
child psychiatrists or adolescent psychiatrists.
Speak to them.
They're a big asset in any community because
they can tell you things.
They can tell you things about raising your
children, about what can happen if you don't
do certain things properly and correctly, and how
it can affect the soul.
Maybe it's not the same terminology in terms
of soul and spirit and all that.
They'll tell you about the human condition, that
if you take away self-esteem, it can
happen.
You think that it's impossible to happen because
the instincts won't allow it.
Yeah, but the nafs can be convinced.
It can be swayed.
It can be persuaded in one direction or
the other, which is why there are therapies
that work.
They're difficult because it's hard to convince the
nafs.
It takes a long time.
It takes extreme...
Either it takes extreme conditions or a very,
very gradual line of work.
It takes years and years and years for
it to change.
That's why tazkiyah is not something that's going
to happen now.
You're not going to listen to this ders
and walk away a completely different person.
Neither am I.
No one can.
It takes time.
It takes...
You have to be very persistent.
You have to continuously convince the nafs of...
And we'll talk about insolent methodologies within the
series of bi-idhnillah ta'ala or extreme
circumstances.
That's why people go through very difficult experiences
that are very extreme where there's loss or
there's a lot of pain.
It can harm the convictions of their souls,
which leads to values that don't function as
well.
The instincts will say, but the convictions will
change.
And I hope I've been able to make
that clear because that's what we're going to
be working on.
We're going to be trying to convince our
souls.
We're going to be telling our nafs.
It's like you're doing personal therapy.
You're explaining something to your nafs.
No, no.
This is what is right and that's right.
And explain why by contemplating and thinking.
Like I told you, when you think about
things and you contemplate them, what you're doing
is you are sending a river of positive
thoughts into the heart.
And that heart is in this big mixing
pot.
It's going to affect that cycle of thoughts
and behaviors and feelings.
And that's going to strengthen the spirit that
will strengthen the conscience that will sway the
nafs.
It will change.
It will slowly change the direction of the
nafs.
The last segment of today's episode, I want
to talk about the stages of change just
to understand what we're looking at.
The nafs, there are four basic stages.
Depending on what books of tasawwuf you read
or tazkir, you'll find different stages.
And depending on what books of psychology you
read, you may find some variations.
This is my breakdown of it.
Inshallah, you'll find it beneficial.
It's pretty simple.
The first stage is the default stage.
Full submission to your soul.
Whatever it wants, we do.
And that all animals on the planet live
by that.
And all children live like that.
And that's fine.
And anyone who doesn't have...
And people who have mental retardation or mental...
They're delayed in terms of their development.
They will live in that stage because they
just do whatever their instincts tell them to
do.
Whatever the soul...
The soul loves that.
It's having a ball.
It will cause you...
That's why children are extremely selfish.
They're very greedy.
They want everything for themselves.
They want more.
They want even what they don't need.
Have you ever had a kid bring some
chocolates or some fruit and give them one
piece, take another piece, they'll start crying that
you took one.
Well, why?
I mean, you have...
There's enough for all of us.
It just doesn't want you to have anything.
He or she, they want it all for
themselves because they're functioning based on their instincts.
That's all they know.
And some people...
Unfortunately, some of us will grow up and
continue to do that and submit completely to
the instincts of the soul.
What are the soul's desires called?
I talked about this yesterday, the definition.
It's called Al-Hawa.
It's called...
Self-desires are called in Islam Al-Hawa.
You have the instinct, you have the conviction,
and then you have Al-Hawa.
It turns into the desires, what I want.
And if we don't...
If you don't make some changes, people will
live all their lives just following their Hawa.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talked about
that in the Quran at least twice.
فَرَأَيْتَ مِنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهُ هَوَاهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ
عِلْمٍ See the person who chose their self
-desires to be their Lord.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala love them
straight even though they have knowledge.
Because knowledge is not gonna fix it on
its own.
Other measures need to be taken in order
for that to change.
So that's the first stage.
The first stage is just submission, full submission
to the next.
And I use the word submission because the
opposite, that's one extreme that the pendulum swings
to.
And then the other one that we're looking
towards at the end of the line is
full submission to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
But full submission to the next is how
we start out.
And thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that's
how we start out.
Because that's what makes us survive.
But you can't expect that to continue.
Because the same example, if a child is
crying because he didn't get all of the
fruit or all of the chocolate or all
of whatever is there.
You think it's cute when they're two years
old.
It's not cute when they're 22.
And there's something wrong definitely at that point
if someone's that level of selfish and that
level of lacking ability to share.
So there has to be some change.
The second stage is the stage of ikrah,
of forcing the nafs to do the right
things.
Your spirit is well nurtured and nourished growing
up.
You get a lot of love and a
lot of affection and a lot of kindness
and tenderness and you see all the right
ethics and you're fed all the right values.
And your mind expands because you're learning a
lot of experiences.
So you're starting to figure out what is
right and what is wrong.
All of that is happening and you have
a good ability to make decisions and your
conscience is loud.
You start doing things that your nafs doesn't
want to do.
And we do that all the time by
the way.
This is not just specifically for acts that
take you close to Allah.
We do this all the time in the
form of studying, in the form of getting
up in the morning and going to our
jobs, in the form of doing errands and
chores that we don't want to do.
You see when I say I don't want
to do, why don't you want to do
it?
Isn't the right thing to do?
Yes.
But why don't you want to do it?
I don't know.
I'm lazy.
Why are you lazy?
It's not you.
It's your nafs.
The soul is lazy.
The soul doesn't want you to spend energy
that is not going to make you survive
longer right now or give you pleasure and
joy right now.
So it tells you just sit back, do
nothing.
Sit back and do nothing.
That's what the soul wants.
In your mind you're like no, I should
want to do this.
Knowledge is great.
Learning is awesome.
This is going to give me status.
It's going to give me clarity.
It's nur.
It's light in my head and my mind.
Why don't I want to open this book
and study?
Because it's energy spending that the soul is
too ignorant to understand is important for you
in the long run.
That's all it is.
That's why if you can change that conviction
that oh, my nafs, listen to me.
This learning right now is going to make
me very very happy.
Give me a lot of joy later on.
I'm going to be extreme and find a
lot of pleasure from this.
And it's going to help me survive.
Because survival is not just living longer and
having more children.
Survival is leaving an impact, leaving a legacy.
That's also survival.
Once you convince the nafs of that, you're
fine.
If you can see that legacy is survival
is legacy of doing great things and leaving
an impact rather than just living longer years
and having more children and having more...
Then you'll start to read with ease.
That's why some people they are addicted to
reading, addicted to learning.
They've been able to convince their nafs.
Some people do ikrah.
They force the nafs when it comes to
acts of worship.
And that's okay.
At the beginning, that's fine.
If you're a young gentleman or a young
lady, you don't want to pray but you
know it's the right thing so you're forcing
yourself to make wudu and to pray every
day.
That's a good thing.
You should stick to that.
That's the first step.
But that step cannot last forever.
Anything that is done under coercion, anything that
you're forced to do, doesn't last.
Experience and years of...
and history.
It tells us that.
It doesn't last.
If you do something that you don't want
to do, it doesn't last.
It will end.
You can't keep up, keep doing it for
too long.
You'll get tired.
You'll get bored.
And you'll give up.
Or you'll find ways to do it but
not really do it.
Where you stand there and you're...
But you're thinking about, you know, food and
falafel or some other thing that you're thinking
about.
You're not there because you don't want to
do it.
So you're doing it but you're not really
doing it because you spent too much time
forcing your nafs to do something.
Forcing your kids to do something only works
when they're really, really young.
When they don't understand reason.
You have to do...
Don't run around with the scissors.
You can't, you know, put the fork into
the electrical outlet.
You can't do...
Certain things they can't...
But when they get older, you have to
move on to the third...
to the third stage.
The third stage is مرحلة الرضا is acceptance.
The nafs still doesn't like what you're doing
but it gave up.
It gave up.
I mean, it found that you're not...
You're not listening.
It keeps on telling, I don't want to
do this.
I don't want to be...
Keep on doing it.
So it just...
It's silent now.
Fine.
We have to do this.
I'll do it.
It's not happy about it but it stops
putting up a fight.
The nafs stops fighting you on it.
And some people have achieved that in acts
of worship in salah.
They don't have a fight anymore.
They're not enjoying it but they're not...
They don't feel that they have to fight
their nafs to get up and do it.
They don't feel that they have to fight
their nafs to fast or to pray or
to read Quran.
Their nafs has accepted that this is the
reality.
This is how it is.
I don't like it but that's how it
is and I'm too tired and I've given
up trying to fight this person off it.
What happens in these situations...
It's a good...
It's the next step.
It's a good step to arrive at.
But if you stay there too long, things
habitualize in a boring manner.
Meaning they lose...
Actions lose their purpose, lose their function, lose
their benefit because they're being done in a
boring manner.
So we don't...
We're not taking anything.
We're not actually benefiting from them anymore.
And there are a lot of people who
live like that.
Most people live in the first two stages
by the way.
Either complete submission to nafs or forcing it
to do things it doesn't like.
But if you're lucky enough to arrive at,
you know, doing something at the point where
your nafs is not putting up a fight
anymore then good, that's a good place but
you can't stay there forever either.
We do that a lot outside of acts
of worship as well.
When you get up and go to school
or...
You just do it.
You just wake up in the morning.
You're waking up in the morning.
You don't want to but you get up.
You get out of bed.
You get dressed.
You leave the house.
Your nafs doesn't fight you on these things
anymore at a certain age.
It just happens.
It's the habit.
That's how things have been for a very
long time.
You've been doing it long enough that the
nafs stops fighting you on it.
And when you're younger it's hard to get
up.
Oh my God, getting out of the bed
was the worst thing in the world when
you were younger.
So hard, so difficult.
When you get older it's fine.
It's no big deal because you've been doing
it long enough.
The nafs is just quiet now.
It just gave up.
See, the nafs can be...
You can't tire it out.
You can outlast it because it's short-fused.
Like I said, short-sighted, short-fused.
But it's very important because the instincts keep
us alive.
But you can outlast it easily.
The third stage is when the nafs just
stops putting up a fight.
Doesn't mean that you've achieved perfection yet.
You're far from it.
You can easily habitualize all your actions and
they can lose any true meaning.
And they can become just a shell with
no substance in them because there's no joy
in them.
Which takes me to the fourth and final
stage which is مرحلة الحب والاطمئنان.
When you find love, you find pleasure and
joy and calmness in what you do.
It's when the nafs convictions change.
The third one, it's stopped fighting you but
doesn't believe that doing the salah is of
any benefit for it.
It still feels there's no self-interest for
it there.
So it doesn't want to do it.
But it's not fighting you anymore.
Fine, we're going to do it.
Whatever you want.
This fourth stage is the real shift.
It is the actual...
It's that moment of...
It's when the light shines.
When you're able to convince the soul that
this is what's best for you.
This is what will allow you to survive
and give you joy.
You convince it that this is where your
joy and this is where your survival exists.
And then the nafs will start to want
it.
Just like it wanted not to do it,
it's going to start wanting to do it.
You've actually been able to change your convictions
to the point where your nafs...
You didn't change its instincts.
It still wants you to survive and find
joy.
But now you've convinced it that salah, siyam,
good deeds, helping others, being selfless, is what's
going to offer you survival and joy.
You convinced it, so now it wants these
things.
That's why the Prophet ﷺ would say, وَجُعِلَتْ
قُرَّةُ عَيْنِي فِي الصَّلَاةِ And the cool of
my eye exists in prayer.
Meaning, my happiness is in prayer.
أَرِحْنَا بِهَا يَا بِلَالِ أَرِحْنَا بِهَا يَا بِلَالِ
You take too much time, make adhan, so
we can finally find calmness and happiness in
prayer.
Now you're like, I don't understand what that
means.
I just want to get through the motions
as quickly as possible.
Yeah, because you're still in maybe level...
stage two or three.
Either you're forcing it or you've just turned
it into a habit.
The nafs stops fighting you.
But you need to make that transition where
the nafs wants to do this.
It finds it.
The Prophet ﷺ tells us, لَا يُؤْمِنُوا أَحَدُكُمْ
You don't have full iman.
حَتَّى يَكُونَ هَوَاهُ تَبَعًا لِمَا جِئْتُوا بِهِ Until
your self-desires, your hawa, are aligned with
what Allah ﷻ commanded us to do.
And it is doable.
That is the نفس المطمئنة.
In the Qur'an, نفس المطمئنة, the calm
nafs, is the nafs that now convictions, its
convictions have changed.
It believes that all these good deeds, all
these actions that are helpful are within itself,
it's interest.
It's serving its interest.
Because it's always going to want to serve
its interest of survival and joy.
It's never going to want to stop doing
that.
But you're just unable to convince it that
this is where it lies, not there.
Not looking at hara.
That's why, I'll give you an example.
People who stop smoking, if they still look
back at the days of smoking, oh, those
were the days.
Oh, what I do for a cigarette.
You didn't make the transitions properly.
You're just in...
You're in the first stage where you're just
doing whatever the nafs wanted.
You're smoking to relieve stress.
Then you move to the second stage where
you're like, no, that's wrong.
I'm forced my nafs to stop doing it.
In order to actually get rid of this
addiction, you have to move to the fourth.
Where you look back at smoking, that was
horrible.
Those were the worst days.
I can't believe I did that.
I can't believe I did that.
I don't want...
Do you want to go back?
No, I don't want to go back to
it.
I would like to remove that from my
history.
Because now the nafs doesn't...
The nafs doesn't see smoking to be joy
and survival.
You've convinced it that, no, this is actually...
It's not joy and survival.
It's not survival.
Here's joy.
Here's joy.
Here's where you'll find joy.
Something different.
And we'll talk about those in shell a
bit more.
Same thing goes for every act.
And you can force yourself not to perform
zina for a very long time.
See, forcing not only is doing good things,
but to force it not to do bad
things.
You can force yourself not to do zina.
But how long can that last?
How long can it last that you don't
force yourself?
You're doing everything before you're looking at haram,
listening to haram, but you're not actually doing
it.
You're forcing yourself, but don't you think at
some point you're going to tire out?
What if your nafs outlasts you?
And then let's say you fall into this
ma'asiyah.
Because you spent so much time in that
second stage of just forcing it.
You have to move to the stages later.
That no, no, I don't want zina.
I don't want haram.
When you're disgusted from the concept of zina
and you find your joy in halal, you
find your joy, you find pleasure in engaging
in halal, not haram.
Haram is something that is beneath, it's disgusting
to you.
You can arrive at that.
It's not abnormal, it's not weird.
I know you're like, I've never heard of
that.
Because most people don't make these transitions to
these stages.
But if you lived with the sahaba back
in the day, that was the norm.
They were disgusted from haram.
If you talk to them, what are you
doing?
It's not something, oh, I would love to,
but we can't, we can't.
No, no, that's not how they were.
They weren't looking at drugs and alcohol, wishing
that they could do it.
No, they don't wish because it's haram, it's
disgusting.
I don't want it.
It's not the path of ease.
I want to be on the path of
ease.
My nafs wants to be on the path
of ease to Allah.
And that's not the path of ease.
So it's disgusted of it.
It's disgusted from that type of behavior.
The nafs, it takes time to convince it,
but you can.
I've already gone on beyond my limit of
time and brother Khalid is staring at me.
So I'm going to end inshallah with that.
And tomorrow we'll be talking about some strategies.
And we'll give more examples and explain on
how we can start making those steps inshallah.
I hope that was beneficial.
Please put any comments or questions on the
actual video link on Facebook page.
And all the questions I get and all
the inquiries I will, inshallah in the Q
&A session, try and answer and address for
you.
And I'll try to address them even within
the halaqat if the question comes early enough
inshallah.
So that this is beneficial for everybody.
And any feedback is welcome inshallah.
Jazakumullahu khair.
Subhanakallah wa bihamdikashay.
Wa la ilaha illa anta astaghfiru wa atubu
ilayk.
Wa salallahu wasalam wa barak ala nabiyyina muhammadin
wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Jazakumullahu khairan wa barakallahu feekum.
Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.