Adnan Rajeh – The Empty Space #04 – The Strategies and Rules
AI: Summary ©
The " pest control" and "nafs" cycle is a closed one that needs to be worked on to achieve success. The importance of learning and practicing to improve behavior is emphasized, as it is the way of life and will affect one's behavior. The speakers provide rules for dealing with various circumstances and emphasize the need to hold oneself accountable and slowly remove bad habits. The importance of honesty and evaluating one's behavior is emphasized, and tools for self-purification are mentioned. The speakers plan to continue discussing the topics in the next segment.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome to our series, The Empty Space.
Today is the fourth episode, I believe.
The strategies is what I'm going to be
talking about today, inshallah.
And I want to start out by pointing
out something that's really interesting in the Qur
'an.
When you go to Surah Al-Nazi'at,
you'll find Musa Alayhi Salaam's story in Surah
Al-Nazi'at very briefly.
It's a short surah, so the story of
Musa Alayhi Salaam is not told in length
or in detail.
But what's interesting about it is what Musa
Alayhi Salaam did when he approached Fir'aun
for the first time.
Musa Alayhi Salaam, when he came to Fir
'aun, what he said was...
Now, mind you, Fir'aun is a person
who has enslaved a full race of people.
He has claimed lordship over human beings.
He has called himself names that only Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la calls himself.
So this person is truly a transgressor, truly
an oppressor.
And Musa Alayhi Salaam came to him and
said...
These are the words that Surah Al-Nazi
'at uses of Musa's approach.
فَقُلْ هَلْ لَكَ إِلَىٰ أَن تَزَكَّ How about
I point out for you a way to
purify yourself, to perform tazkiyyah.
And it's interesting because it's as if the
Qur'an, or it's not as if...
The Qur'an is telling us that even
Fir'aun, on the scale that he was
oppressive, on the scale that he was harming
people, transgressing against people, the reason behind it
was just an issue of the nafs.
I mean, Fir'aun is a politician.
He's one of the world leaders at the
time.
And he was making huge decisions, enslaving people
and claiming, making certain claims.
And he's making true political, administrative, governmental decisions.
And the Qur'an is pointing out to
us, but all the mistakes he's making, they
stem from one place.
It's not as complicated as you think it
is.
I mean, sometimes we look at the world
and we think that in order for decisions
to be made and changes to happen, it's
really complicated.
It's really not.
هَلْ لَكَ إِلَىٰ أَن تَزَكَّ وَأَهْدِيَكَ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ
And I'll point you, I'll guide you towards
your Lord.
فَتَخْشَ And then you'll have reverence in your
heart.
And once you do that, things will work
out.
And of course, Firaun said no, and he
was punished.
But the concept there in the Qur'an
to me is extremely interesting.
It just points out to you, it's really,
that's all it is.
Don't be fooled.
Don't overcomplicate things.
It all comes down to the simple instincts
that we talked about yesterday, and convictions and
desires that the nafs has.
And it guides literally everything from the smallest
decisions to the largest decisions in the world.
That's why if we learn to deal with
them properly, if the path that we started
to walk down together insha'Allah in this
series is something that you continue in your
life, then you will change as a person.
You'll find the barakah of that in your
heart.
What is the definition of tazkiyyah?
If you were to define tazkiyyah very clearly,
I know I did the definition episode a
while back, but I left out tazkiyyah because
I think now is a good time for
me to explain to you what it is.
يَتَّبَصُرُ بِعْيُوبِ الذَّاتِ وَالإِنْتِقَالُ بِالرُّوحِ مِن مَرْحَلَةٍ إِلَىٰ
أُخْرَىٰ إِرْتِقَاءً بِهَا التبصر بعيوب الذات means for
us to be able to have insight upon
our flaws.
For us to have insight regarding our mistakes,
our shortcomings, our deficits.
It's personal insight.
لَإِنسَانُ عَلَى نَفْسِهِ بَصِيرًا Indeed, the human being
has insights upon his own self if he
chooses to.
You can easily choose not to.
But tazkiyyah, it starts by being able to
identify our personal internal flaws, the mistakes and
deficits.
And then taking the spirit and taking the
nafs, taking the soul, sorry, taking the soul
and then elevating it from one stage to
the other.
Yesterday I talked about the stages.
I talked about submitting to the nafs and
then forcing it, and then the nafs kind
of silenced, being accepting and then it actually
finding joy, kind of moving it from one
stage to the other, slowly until it reaches
the stage of love, where it changes its
convictions.
مِن تُغَيِّرَ قَنَاعَتِيَا So we have a change
of convictions.
That's what tazkiyyah actually is.
And I think you already figured that out
probably by yourself.
So what are the three domains we're going
to be working on in order to start
achieving that?
Well, there are two straightforward domains and there's
a third one that's a bit more complicated
that I'll be spending the next two episodes
talking about in detail.
And to be honest, two episodes or three
or four aren't enough to tackle it.
We're going to have to have a full
series about it if there's interest in this.
But the first two domains, which are relatively
straightforward and pretty simple if we start working
on them.
The first one is regarding the cycle that
I talked about a few episodes ago.
Feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
That cycle where each one of these elements
is affecting the other one positively or negatively,
and it's a closed cycle.
It's virtuous or vicious depending on which direction
it's going.
This cycle needs external elements to affect it.
And you can work on that.
You don't need steps.
You don't need lessons to tell you.
You just have to make a few decisions.
A few very clear, blunt, straightforward decisions that
you're capable of doing to affect your feelings.
You just need good experiences.
You need to have good experiences regarding things
that you want to do.
If you don't have good experiences, you don't
have good memories, you don't have good feelings.
That's why taraweeh exists.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala designed the deen
so that you would have good experiences.
We come to the masjid at night.
Going anywhere at night is fun.
Period.
As long as it's not a war zone,
going anywhere at night is fun.
Coming to the masjid at night where most
people are sleeping and praying and people talking
and being together.
It's a beautiful experience.
I know from myself, it leaves a beautiful
memory.
And when you have a beautiful memory regarding
prayer, then your feelings towards prayer become positive.
So just find fun experiences regarding things you
want to do that you're finding difficulty in
doing.
Sometimes you have to seek that out.
You have to find, you have to actually
go.
And I think one of our major jobs
and functions as Muslim institutions is to provide
those experiences.
That's what we do.
We run a halaq, quran halaq for years
in the masjid.
Whenever we had our meetings, the teachers were
always uptight about the fact that their kids
aren't memorizing as much.
And I'm like, it's okay.
What they're getting from coming to the masjid
and spending time with friends is a good
experience.
That good experience will leave a good memory.
That good memory will lead to good feelings.
And every time they think of quran at
the masjid, a good feeling will come to
them.
And that will start that cycle.
Start sending that cycle in the virtuous direction
and moving.
And they'll come back.
When they're older, they'll come back to the
masjid because they have good memories there.
Provide good experiences for yourself.
Sometimes if you're older and there's no one
providing experiences for you, go provide a good
experience for yourself.
Perform an umrah or have an Islamic camp
where you spend time with people outside doing
something.
But you're doing something that will leave you
a good memory and a good feeling regarding
something that you want to do but you're
finding difficulty doing.
Seek knowledge.
That's how you reflect your thoughts in this
cycle.
Learn.
Learning is the most important part of this
whole process.
Learn.
You have to seek knowledge.
You have to take it upon ourselves to
actually learn.
And again, you don't need steps for that.
You just need to decide, I'm going to
learn.
I'm going to go find a source that
I can trust and I'm going to spend
time learning more about the deen, about these
actions.
The more you learn about them, the easier
it's going to be for you to practice
them.
It's very simple.
There's really no complexity to this.
Again, these are straightforward issues.
They're not complicated.
But they do sometimes go unmentioned or unnoticed.
The reason why is because the nafs wants
you to be distracted from all this stuff.
The nafs doesn't want you to think about
these things and look at them because if
you do, you're going to make good decisions.
Those good decisions are going to harm her.
The nafs is not going to be happy.
It's not going to find what it's looking
for.
It's not going to be able to continue
to serve its two major goals that are
extremely short-sighted and extremely limited.
Find good companionship.
That's how you affect behaviors.
In order for you to affect your behaviors
positively, you need good people around you.
You have to change your friends maybe.
Why do you think friendship and companionship is
such a big deal in the Quran and
in the Prophet's hadith?
المرء على دين خليله فلينظر أحدكم من يخالل
The human being at the end will be
just like their friends.
دين is faith, but دين is also what
actually is the way of life, meaning way
of behavior.
You will end up behaving and acting like
your friends, so be very careful.
This is what he's saying, and be very
careful who your friends are.
Be very picky about your friends.
It's okay, because the most valuable thing you
have is your time, and they're going to
influence your behavior, and it's going to influence
that cycle, and it's going to influence who
you are.
That is something worth being picky about.
Don't be too picky about what food you
eat and what clothing you wear, but be
really, really picky on who you're spending time
with.
That's your capital, is your time.
Don't spend it with anybody.
If the person that you're spending time with
is not influencing you in a positive way,
is not offering you a positive vibe in
your life, if they're not behaving in a
way that you could...
Because you're going to emulate your friends, and
they're going to emulate you.
That's just how life is.
We rub off on one another.
We spend time with each other.
I learn something from you, you learn something
from me.
I become more like you, you become more
like me.
So if the person you're spending time with
is not a positive one, then you need
to change that.
This is so important, especially for my younger
brothers and sisters.
You need to make these decisions.
I know they're hard.
I know it's hard to reject someone, or
it's hard to distance yourself from a friend,
because you end up attaching yourself to them
emotionally.
But if they're not helping you in your
life, if they're not moving you forward, if
they're not drawing you closer to God, if
they're not practicing and behaving in ways that
are right, that are ethically sound, if they
don't have the right values you need for
your own...
You have to preserve yourself.
Again, you have to be selfish sometimes.
Because the long-term goal is Jannah.
You have to be selfish about that.
If this person is not helping you get
to Jannah, then what are you doing with
them?
What are you doing with them?
And you don't have to get rid of
your friends in an abrupt manner.
You don't have to say you're no longer...
You just pull yourself out of their lives
slowly.
Just a slow distancing.
You spend maybe every day with them, every
second day.
And then after that, just slowly remove yourself.
Just be less available.
That's all it is.
To change friends, you just have to be
less available to your friends.
Hey, can we go out?
I can't go out today.
Can we hang out today?
I can't.
It's not, I don't want to spend time
with you.
That's too rude.
Don't do that.
No one likes doing that.
You don't want to burn bridges between you
and other people.
But if someone's influencing you negatively, and your
behaviors are getting worse, then you need to
slowly withdraw yourself from their lives and replace
them with someone else.
Your circles in life are really important.
We all have these little circles where we
have people very close to us, then a
bigger circle, people are close but not too
close, then a bigger circle are acquaintances, and
then a bigger circle are just regular people.
These circles, we have to move people in
and out of them.
That's our choices.
We have to make these choices and decisions
because we want to affect that cycle.
That cycle has to be going, has to
be moving in the positive direction all the
time.
You have someone who's affecting behaviors in a
negative way.
Sometimes a bad friend can affect behaviors in
a negative way, thoughts in a negative way,
and feelings in a negative way.
That's why they're so dangerous because one bad
companion can take that cycle and trash it.
They completely ruin it because they can affect
everything negatively.
And parents see that in their kids.
When they spend time with certain people, they
come back, they're upset, they're acting out, their
behaviors change.
It's because the effect of that person is
hard to get them to leave them, but
hopefully if they understand why, they'll realize you're
not a better person when you're around them.
You're not a better person.
You don't want to be that.
You don't want to do that.
So that's kind of the straightforward, the first
domain we work on.
That cycle, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, it's pretty straightforward.
Find good experiences.
Seek knowledge to help your thoughts.
And make sure you have good companions so
that your behaviors stay in the right direction.
And that's, you don't need huge, you don't
need a lot of lessons for this to
happen.
You just need to make a few good
decisions.
And sometimes you'll need help with that.
The second domain that we're going to work
on is elevating the spirit.
Remember, I explained to you the conscience in
one of the episodes where we talked about
definitions.
The conscience or al-dameer or al-nafs
al-lawwama as the Qur'an calls it,
that blaming aspect of the soul where it
feels bad for doing something wrong or for
not doing the right thing.
That voice in your head, the conscience, that
voice becomes louder and louder the more the
spirit is elevated.
The higher the spirit is elevated, the stronger
that voice.
How do you elevate your spirit?
You fill it with khair.
You just fill it with goodness.
How do we fill the spirit with khair?
The spirit has a lot of khair in
it by default because it comes from Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
But you can contribute to it and you
can strengthen it.
You can strengthen that spirit, the goodness in
the spirit by a few things.
You just need to fill it with love.
You have to love people for the sake
of Allah.
You have to surround yourself with people whom
you love for the sake of Allah who
love you back.
Love is important.
A life that doesn't have love in it
is a life not worth living.
Just to be very clear.
When there's no love, when there's no emotion,
when there's no passion, when there's no affection,
life becomes almost unbearable.
So you need to surround yourselves with people
who truly love you for the sake of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And who are these people?
Your parents, your siblings, if you're married, your
spouse, your children, your close friends that are
helping you towards the way of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
Don't fool yourself and say, this friend is
not a good person, doesn't influence me at
all, but they love me.
If they did, they wouldn't do that.
A person who truly loves you does not
influence you in a negative way, does not
take you farther away from Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
Don't get mixed up on these issues.
Someone who truly loves you will help you
become a better person, will help your behaviors
be better, draw you closer to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, help you become the best
person you can become.
And if they're not doing that, then that's
not true love.
Surround yourself with people who support you.
We require support in our lives.
No one can actually go through life successfully
without being supported properly, without having those around
them who can support them.
That's why you need to be very careful.
Are there people around you who bring you
down, who mock you when you try and
be a better person, who you try to
build something up and they try to break
it all down.
Look for people who support you.
That elevates.
These things elevate the spirit.
Having loving relationships and having people who support
you, these things allow the spirit to elevate.
Go to masajid.
Again, another design that Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala inserted into our deen.
Coming to masajid, just coming to a masjid
elevates the spirit.
Just sitting in a masjid for a little
bit, the tranquility and serenity that you find
in a masjid allows the spirit to elevate.
And that's something that we don't have today,
but that's why we need to get it
back as soon as possible.
InshaAllah when this is all over, and finally
the masajid can open the doors, you need
to come to the masjid.
Your spirit needs it.
Your spirit is thirsty.
It's hungry.
It needs to come and find the khair.
And that's why you're in a masjid.
So make sure that you at least once,
twice a week you come to a masjid.
I know life can be busy, it can
be difficult, but you can commit to that
and come and find that khair that your
spirit needs to elevate.
Find a teacher, find a shaykh, find a
mentor.
You can't walk the walk unless you have
someone who is there to mentor you through
it, to watch over you, to help you
out, to give you advice, to help regulate
your steps.
Finding a good shaykh or a mentor or
a teacher is something that's very important.
It's harder to do, I guess, in this
part of the world, but you still have
a lot of resources around you in our
community.
So you can find people who can help
you do that.
Read the Qur'an.
Reading the Qur'an elevates the spirit.
Just the mere act of just opening it
and reciting it, whether you know how to
read well or not, will elevate your spirit.
All these little decisions, actions, will help elevate
the spirit.
Those two domains that I talked about are
pretty straightforward.
Just a few decisions that you make that
will help you massively along the way.
These small decisions that you make, well, they're
maybe not that small, but they're pretty clear,
cut.
There's really not much of a build-up
to them.
If you make these decisions, if you make
sure you have good friends around you, you
look for support, you seek some knowledge, you
have good relationships, you have good experiences, just
doing those on their own will help you
later on become a bit, control your nafs
without even knowing that you are.
That's why you don't have to be religious
to be able to control your nafs.
You just have to make the right decision
and take the right steps.
So those are the two first domains.
The third domain is dealing or managing the
diseases of the nafs, which is what I'm
going to be talking about in the next
episode after that, to whatever time or extent
we have, inshallah, going forward.
And the reason that we need to do
that, the reason that we have to talk
about the diseases of the nafs and we
have to deal with them, is because the
deficits that we have on the inside may
not be apparent right now in our lives,
even though they are there.
What do I mean by that?
There may be a lot of envy inside
of us, a lot of hasad that's there,
but because we're living a life where we
have everything we need and we're not surrounded
by people who we feel are outdoing us
or outperforming us, we don't know that we
have hasad.
This means that all it takes for that
hasad that we have inside to be exposed
is a change of circumstances.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, out of His
mercy towards us and compassion, will often not
give us extremely difficult circumstances all the time
and right from the beginning.
He'll allow us time to work on all
these diseases on the inside, to change them.
But mark my words, if you don't, life
will expose every deficit that exists on the
inside, I guarantee it.
Whatever you leave dormant inside, whatever disease that
you don't deal with, whatever it is, whatever
shahwa or laziness or oblivion or vanity that
exists inside, that circumstances have not exposed and
you didn't take the time to actually address,
to look at yourself and find where that
problem lies and deal with it, life will
later expose.
And that is how life works.
And if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala shows
you enough mercy that you never get exposed,
well, that is the amount of rahmah that
you should spend the rest of your life
being extremely grateful for.
Because it's very rare.
The Quran says that, you will be...
أَحَسِبَ النَّاسُ أَن يُتْرَكُوا أَن يَقُولُوا آمَنَّا وَهُمْ
لَا يُفْتَنُونَ The people honestly think that they're
going to be let to say, we believe
in Allah, we believe in Allah, and they're
not going to be put to the test.
We're going to be put to the test.
The test is mostly going to be psychological,
it's going to be نفسي.
The physical part and the financial, these are
all things that, they're much easier to deal
with than the psychological and نفسي part of
dealing with any difficulty.
So that's why this is so important.
There are many people who are cheap, many
of us are cheap, but we're just not...
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has concealed that
cheapness for us so that we're not exposed.
But any circumstances can come by.
It's easy to give when you have a
lot, way more than you need.
Can you still give when you don't?
الحمد لله, the circumstances right now, you have
way more than you need, so you're giving.
But you don't know, maybe there's a lot
of بخل inside, maybe you need to work
with that and deal with that, and so
on and so forth.
And we'll talk about these inshallah in more
detail as we move forward.
But that's the warning that I'm issuing.
Just because it's not apparent doesn't mean it's
not there.
And if you don't deal with it while
you have the luxury of time to deal
with it because the circumstances are of ease,
you can do it, then I fear for
you that the circumstances change and then expose.
And I've seen that.
Extreme circumstances expose that.
War, for example, will expose behaviors and thoughts
and virtues of human beings that you never
thought were possible.
You'll see things like, I would never think
that person would ever behave like that, but
that's what circumstances do.
And the lack of tazkiyah, that's what it
leaves.
And it's very painful to see and to
know that, to learn about yourself, something like
that.
I'm not talking about others, I'm just talking
about myself.
I'm going to share with you a number
of rules.
A number of rules that I think we
need to keep in our minds as we
go through all these different diseases and where
they come from and how to deal with
them.
These are just a set of rules that
apply for every circumstance, for every situation.
That's why I'm going to talk about them
on their own.
These are the rules of change.
If you want to make change, you have
to follow a few rules first.
If you don't follow them, the change won't
work.
First rule, rizq.
Tenderness, kindness.
This is qualitative, meaning when we're going to
do changes, when we make a change in
our lives, the quality of it has to
be, the nature of it has to be
tender.
It can't be extreme.
Extreme changes that are from a nature, from
a quality perspective, don't really work.
If you want to change your diet so
you end up going, living in a place
where there is no food and you're always
starving and you've cut out everything that you
like of your diet, that is too extreme.
The quality and the nature of that change
is too big.
You may end up losing the weight but
that type of, that won't work.
That will make the nafs very hateful.
The nafs will become, will be on a
vengeance because the way you treated it was
so...
The nafs is very flexible but it can
be broken.
It's extremely flexible.
You'll be surprised the circumstances that you can
live with.
You'll be surprised what you can live with
in life.
In your mind like, I wouldn't survive if
that happened or I wouldn't survive if that
was taken away from me or I wouldn't
survive.
You'll be surprised what you can survive with.
We're actually very, very flexible as human beings.
It's just the nature of who we are.
That's how we survived as a race.
That's how we evolved.
That's how we became who we are.
But the thing is that the nafs is
also breakable.
There is a point where if the change
is too extreme you can break it in
snaps.
And it's almost...
uncurable at that point.
It's almost unfixable.
It's extremely difficult to fix it after that.
Extreme changes don't work.
They don't serve the purpose.
They don't purify the nafs.
We only do tazkiyah.
We want to purify it.
We want to improve it.
We don't want to break it.
So the first rule is that you have
to do this tenderly, kindly.
You have to make sure that we do
it properly.
The Prophet ﷺ would say, مَا كَانَ الرِّفْخُ
فِي شَيْءٍ إِلَّا زَانَهُ Put tenderness in anything
and it'll beautify it.
It'll be done better.
وَمَا نُزِعَ مِن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا شَانَهُ Take tenderness
out of anything and it'll make it ugly.
And it won't work as well and it
won't be as beneficial.
Second rule.
الصدق Transparency.
Transparency and truthfulness.
This is where most people will fail along
this path.
This is where you will fail.
If you fail, this is where it is.
The lack of being...
The lack of ability to be transparent with
one's self.
It's one thing to...
You know, we all wear masks.
Not the literal mask we're walking around.
The figurative mask.
We need people to see us in a
certain light.
So we put on a mask and we
walk around.
You want people to know you in a
certain way.
That you're tough, that you're serious, that you're
this, that you're that.
Whatever it is that you want people to
see.
But the truth of who we are is
something only we know.
When we take off that mask and we
look at ourselves transparently and truthfully and honestly.
If you don't have the ability to be
honest with yourself, then you should turn this
off right now.
Because anything you do in trying to purify
yourself will be a complete waste of time.
Because you'll just be lying to yourself.
And you'll be doing things that don't really
count.
It won't go anywhere.
Sometimes people are so good at lying to
themselves that only a polygraph will expose what
they really feel and how they really think.
And some people will be surprised that no,
that's what I think is true.
But no, your body doesn't.
Deep down inside, there's a part of you
that knows that what you're saying about yourself
and what you...
Do you know who you are?
Do you actually know why you do what
you do?
Are you honest about yourself?
Or do you...
Have you lied to everyone about who you
are to the point that you believe it?
Some people will come يوم القيامة and they
will lie to God.
يوم يبعثهم الله جميعا فيحلفون له كما يحلفون
لكم ويحسبون أنهم على شيء ألا إنهم هم
الكاذبون Allah سبحانه وتعالى will resurrect them all
and bring them.
And they will swear to Him, I swear
to you, Ya Rabb, I was like this.
I swear to you, I was a good
person.
I swear to you, I never harmed anyone.
I swear to you, I never wanted to
harm that person.
I swear to you, just like they swore
to you in dunya.
I swear to you, I didn't do it
to harm them.
But they've said it so many times and
now even they believe it.
ويحسبون أنهم...
They believe it.
But indeed they are the liars and Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will have
to explain and show them how no, no,
you did want to harm them but you
didn't want to believe it.
So you lied to yourself and you covered
it and we're good at that.
It's a way that the nafs, it's a
psychological reflex that we have.
We don't want to deal with the fact
that we did something wrong, so we cover
it up and we lie about it.
No, no, we didn't do anything wrong.
Because we don't want to face that very
brutal reality that we did something evil, that
we were wrong, that we were mistaken, that
we harmed someone, that we were oppressive.
We don't want to deal with that.
Sadaqah is going to be the most important
part, the most important rule.
You have to be honest with yourself.
Why are you actually doing what you're doing?
Do you truly understand your motives?
Are you truly doing this for the right
reason?
Do you truly feel the way you feel?
If everyone did this, by the way, the
world would be a much better place to
live in.
But we don't do it very often because
it hurts.
Because it hurts to stare yourself in the
face and be honest about what you see.
And some people will walk the path of
tizki, by the way, lying to themselves the
whole way.
They'll benefit nothing.
They're actually one of the reasons that the
tasawwuf has a bad reputation is because there's
so many people in it who have failed
to do this simple rule, which is being
honest with yourself.
I hope that makes some sense.
The third rule is going to be a
graduality.
بطء تدرج This is quantitative, not qualitative.
This is quantity.
We're going to make baby steps.
The Prophet ﷺ says, إِنَّ هَٰذَا الدِّينَ مَتِينٌ
فَأَوْغِلُوا فِيهِ بِرَفْتٍ This is a very thick
religion.
Making change has to be slow.
We don't want to make huge steps.
You're not going to change yourself every Ramadan
to the point where it's going to be
small, very gradual changes, baby steps.
That's all you need because you have time
on your side.
That's the beauty of it.
You have time.
You have time on your side.
You make these very gradual changes.
It's like growing.
If you're living with your child, you don't
see them grow.
But someone who hasn't seen them for a
year will come back and say, Look how
tall they've become.
Look how old they've matured.
And you look at them like they're the
same they were.
But then you look at an old picture
and you're like, Why couldn't you observe the
change because it was so gradual, so slow.
We have to do the same thing for
our nafs.
We have to change it slowly, gradually, taking
baby steps, just minor improvements, minor progression, just
small steps.
Within a year or two years, you're going
to see, Oh my gosh, I used to
be there.
Now look where I am.
But you try to make that same amount
of change in a short amount of time,
it won't work.
It rebounds.
It backfires really badly.
I've seen this so many times.
This is a really important rule.
I've seen so many people say, I want
to change my life.
So they come to every single prayer and
they read the Qur'an every day.
And I'm telling them, Just slow down, Ya
Hu.
Just slow down.
You're going to burn out.
Your nafs is not used to all this.
You have to...
And they don't listen because they're so enthusiastic.
And then two, three months later, they're back
to where they were.
They're back to where they were.
And you're like, Why?
Why didn't you take it slowly?
Why didn't you just do this slowly, just
gradually?
And someone doesn't pray who suddenly is going
to pray every single Fard and all the
Sunnah and all Qiyam al-Layl all at
once.
No, that doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Just realistically, it doesn't work.
Unless you're...
Somehow the Prophet ﷺ made specific dua for
you.
If you're just a regular person like myself,
then you need to make baby steps, just
baby steps.
Be happy with the small changes on a
prolonged period of time.
Put yourself a goal for a year.
I want to be there.
And you just slowly make that adjustment, make
these adjustments and you'll see it.
It'll work.
Make habits.
Something...
Whatever you have has to be consistent.
It has to always happen.
The Prophet ﷺ tells us, أَحَبُّ الْأَعْمَالِ إِلَى
اللَّهِ أَدْوَمُهَا أَوْ مَا دَامَ وَإِن قَلْ The
thing that Allah loves the most is whatever
is consistent.
Even if it's small, just consistent.
Don't take days off.
Don't say, Okay, I'm gonna take a week
off.
No, no.
Whatever it is that you've committed yourself to,
whatever changes you committed to, as we said,
they're going to be tender changes.
They're going to be small, slow changes.
They're going to be based on honesty with
ourselves that we know that we need to
make these changes.
Then you have to stick to these changes.
No matter what your circumstances are, you do
them.
And I'll give you examples very soon.
But you have to hold on to it.
You cannot...
There's no cheat days when it comes to
these type of changes.
Cheat days, no, no.
Cheat days are only for people who are
making changes that are too big for them
to handle.
That's why they don't work.
That's why these type of diets, they don't
work.
Maybe you lose some weight for a couple
of months, but it doesn't make...
You're going to go back and gain it
all over again.
Because you didn't actually build habits.
You can't be consistent.
That's why smaller changes, slower changes are better.
Because they can be consistent.
Because that is a golden rule, a day
mu'mah.
It has to be something you do all
the time.
Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى obligated five prayers and
Siyam of Ramadan and Zakah and Hajj.
You're obligating yourself to do something.
That's why make it small.
Make it small.
Make it simple.
But obligate yourself.
I will do this every day.
Period.
I could be...
Wallahi...
I could be in jail.
You could be...
You could have exams.
You could be extremely ill in the hospital.
As long as your brain is functioning, you're
going to do it.
That means a lot to Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ
تَعَالَى and that means a lot to the
process of change.
Point after that.
Self-regulation.
You should try to write them down.
You'll find them helpful.
المحاسبة إعادة التقيم We need to always, throughout
our process of change, take a moment and
look back.
And we need to evaluate.
You have to do some evaluation.
Self-regulation or evaluation is probably a better
word.
We're going to evaluate.
Where were we?
Where are we now?
Have we made progress?
Am I on track?
Have I regressed?
Have I forgot how to do this properly?
We have to do this.
Umar ibn Khattab tells, حَاسِبُوا أَنفُوسَكُمْ قَبْلَ أَن
تُحَاسِبُوا Judge yourself.
Hold yourself accountable.
Hold yourself accountable before Allah does this for
you.
Evaluation is holding yourself accountable.
I was supposed to do this every day,
and look, I'm starting to slack.
I was supposed to make these small changes
every few months and I haven't been doing
these changes.
I haven't been making any progress in this
domain here.
I have to change that.
You have to hold yourself accountable.
Without doing that, people who set out for
long-term goals without doing evaluation on the
way, lose their goal, lose their direction, go
astray, and find themselves in a completely different
universe.
They're not even remotely close to where they
were trying to go at the beginning because
they weren't doing evaluations along the way that
allowed them to redirect.
Because sometimes, you know, you're going down a
path and then slowly, that's how the next
thing starts pushing you away from it.
Then you have to say, no, no, you
need to evaluate.
Oh, I'm going in the wrong direction.
Then you kind of, you steer back to
where you were going again.
And that's important to have self-evaluation, to
have evaluation and self-regulation.
Complete abstinence.
Once you get rid of a bad habit,
it has to be complete abstinence from that
bad habit.
What I mean, you have a bad habit,
you've been doing it for a long time.
If you stop at cold turkey, as I
said, that's, there's no rizq, there's no tenderness,
and that's not gradual.
So quantitatively and qualitatively, that's too much.
So you need to slowly get rid of
these bad habits.
You slowly get rid of them.
You cut down in frequency.
You cut down in amounts.
You cut down in intensity.
You keep on, until you come to the
point where that bad habit is gone.
Once it's gone, once you remove it, that's
it.
You never do it again.
Ever.
That is something they teach people who have
addictions.
A recovering alcoholic cannot ever drink not even
a sip of alcohol, should not be in
places that serve alcohol, should not have friends
who drink alcohol, should not discuss alcohol, should
not look at it, should not smell it,
should not think about it, should not even
see it on TV, on a commercial.
They should completely remove that from their lives.
And that is something that is important.
The moment you're able to rid yourself of
a bad habit, you need to rid yourself
of it.
That's why you have to do it slowly,
that's why you have to do it properly.
And then you never go back.
You don't miss it, you don't, just one
day, just on vacation, just people who smoke,
once you start smoking, never pick up a
cigarette again.
And don't surround yourselves with people who smoke
or remind you of it because that will,
you will rebound, you'll regress, you'll do it
again.
Another important part of complete abstinence is replacement
of bad habits.
If you don't replace the habit that you
had with another habit, you will go back
and do that original habit.
You had a habit, it's bad, you removed
it.
Now there is an empty space.
Hence the name of the series.
There's an empty space sitting there.
There used to be a bad habit there,
but there's nothing there anymore.
Oh, shaytan loves that.
The nafs loves that.
Now it can just fill anything it wants.
Probably the same bad habit, but if not,
some other bad habit.
Unless you have a good one ready that
you're gradually, has to be gradually replacing it
with.
You're taking time away from this bad habit
and putting in time.
With this good habit, by the time you've
removed the bad habit, a new one is
sitting right there that you have now developed.
It's impossible for people to get rid of
bad habits if you don't have a good
habit in place.
This is specifically for parents who have children,
teenagers who have bad habits.
You want them to stop the bad habit?
You have to help them develop a good
one.
That's why sports and volunteering and learning Islamic
knowledge and having good experiences and extracurricular activities,
these are all things that kids' lives should
be filled with.
Because if you don't fill their lives with
good habits, they will fill them with bad
habits.
I mean, only if you haven't lived life
would you not know that.
So it's extremely important that complete abstinence from
bad habits and replacement of good habits.
The last point, so there's seven Yani rules,
is intentions.
It's unique to us as Muslims.
You have to remember why you're doing what
you're doing.
Why are we trying to make these changes?
Why are we?
It's for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
Because we want Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to be satisfied with us.
We want to show Him as much love
as He's showed us.
We want to be able to stand and
pray properly, where we're focused, where we're not
distracted, where we're not feeling that there's something
better to do.
We just want to be able to do
that.
That's the concept of being, drawing ourselves closer
to Allah is the intentions.
Remember the intentions.
Reminding yourself of the intentions will make sure
the nafs doesn't sneak its self-interest into
your actions.
Sometimes you'll be doing something and you know
it's the right thing to do and it
should be hard, but it's way too easy.
It's just way too easy.
And you wonder, why is this so easy?
Why is my nafs not fighting me on
this at all?
And the reason that your nafs is not
fighting you at all, the reason that it's
not putting up a...
It's because it's found a way to get
its self-interest in it.
It's happy.
It'll give us a good reputation.
Go ahead and do it.
People will like you if you're doing it.
In the long run, this will make you
more powerful.
It'll give you more...
It'll give you more reach.
So the nafs will find ways to justify
why it's going to allow you to do
the khayr by having self-interest.
And to change that requires tasheeh al-niyyah.
And we're going to talk about that inshallah
as we move forward in the diseases.
Because the nafs will always find a way
to slip in its self-interest.
And you'll be like, oh, I have no
problem praying.
I have no problem fasting.
Well, then be careful.
Because the nafs is very sneaky.
It'll slip in its self-interest and that
will ruin...
It will ruin the purity of the action
that you're doing.
And you're not actually changing.
If the nafs is not changing, if it's
not being purified, if its convictions are not
improving, then whatever you're doing is not working.
We have to be able...
The nafs is going to be painful.
That's why you have to do it slowly.
That's why you have to do it tenderly.
But it has to happen.
The nafs has to change its ways.
If the nafs is too sneaky and it
just finds ways to justify, I'm okay with
you doing that.
Because there's self-interest in it.
Then we're not doing anything.
We haven't actually achieved anything.
And that is, after lack of honesty, is
the second reason that this will fail.
If you allow the nafs to find self
-interest in every good thing that you do,
and you don't actually manage your nafs and
teach it and educate it and help it
change its convictions.
If it holds on to the same convictions
just by slipping in its interest in whatever
good deeds that you're doing, we're not going
to get anywhere.
And that is the common thing, the most
common problem.
People who are doing a lot of khayr
and never actually thought about their nafs not
even once, it's because they find self-interest
in everything that they do.
And they're satisfied with the self-interest that
they get.
And that's something that needs to be addressed.
As a Muslim, you have to address it
if you really want to be a better
person in the long term.
So these are the seven rules that I
think are important.
Number one, rizq tenderness.
From a quality perspective, it has to be
tender.
Honesty.
We have to be honest with ourselves.
We have to be truthful with ourselves.
Graduality.
It has to be gradual.
Changes have to be slow.
Daymu'mah.
We have to be consistent with what we
do.
We have to make habits.
Evaluation.
We have to evaluate ourselves along the way
so we don't lose track and lose focus
of where we're going.
Complete abstinence and replacing of bad habits.
Once you get rid of a bad habit,
you get rid of it and you have
to replace it with a good one and
then intentions.
We have to make sure that we revise
our intentions because nafs will find a way
to put its self-interest in there.
We'll talk about that more inshallah as we
move forward.
I'll finish my talk today by talking about
the tools.
Subhanallah, I thought we were going to have
more time.
Maybe we can go into more detail tomorrow.
We have seven tools as well.
Before I start talking about okay, here's the
first disease and the definition of it and
where it comes from and how to deal
with it, we have to also be aware
of some tools that Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala put at our disposal to use which
makes this approach of self-purification unique to
the Islamic way of thought, to Islamic faith
because others don't necessarily have these tools.
People who want to purify themselves aren't Muslims.
They will make progress obviously and they'll actually
achieve but they lack certain tools that we
have.
The first tool for example is dhikr, remembrance
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, invocation.
Not everyone has this tool.
They may use certain...
and you'll find this in different therapies.
They may use meditation in certain...
but when we talk about the dhikr of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, being able to
do that, that is the barakah and the
nur that exist in the Islamic approach.
So I'll go through what the tools are
and you can think about them and then
tomorrow inshallah I'll start explaining them and we'll
enter the diseases.
First one is going to be dhikr, by
far the most important and I'll explain why.
It's extremely, extremely important and for many reasons,
not just Islamically but even from a psychotherapy
perspective, dhikr, it has parallels within what they
do in psychotherapy that are extremely powerful but
dhikr, because it's attached to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, is even more strong for us.
It's actually...
it is the anchor tool.
It's the most important tool that we have
in our kit, is dhikr.
Number two is dua.
Dua is a tool.
I know we use it as...
unfortunately it's used as you know, Aladdin's lamp.
We're looking for a genie, we're looking for
some...
for immediate gratification to get exactly what we
want.
When we ask for it, dua is a
tool for self-purification and I'll explain that
inshallah tomorrow as well.
Third, al-khidmah.
Khidmah is service.
Meaning taking yourself outside of your comfort zone
and going and serving people in ways that
you didn't imagine yourself doing.
And I'll tell you some stories tomorrow about
how I witnessed that and how I did
that in my life and took it too
far and made a career out of it.
But that's...
khidmah is extremely important.
Al-hizb is not a political party or
any party.
Al-hizb is what we call the amount
of Quran that you recite daily.
The amount of Quran you recite daily is
called al-hizb.
There has to be a small hizb.
You have to have that.
Just like you have dhikr, a wird, a
certain amount of it, you have to have
al-hizb.
And then, qiyam.
Qiyam al-layl is another tool.
Extremely powerful tool.
The actual prayers that you pray on your
own.
You can say, well that's just dua and
dhikr put together to a certain extent but
there is an aspect to it that makes
it a bit more unique.
Qiyam al-layl, anyone who's done it or
continues to do it or hides in or
fits in a few rak'ahs at the
end of the night or early in the
night knows that the barakah of it is
something you cannot give up once you get
used to.
Qiyam, fasting.
Believe it or not, fasting is one of
the main tools that we have in our
kit.
Not Ramadan specifically, even though Ramadan is probably
the most important, obviously.
But qiyam itself is a tool that we
use for self-purification.
And the seventh and last one is knowledge,
is reading.
To read.
As in iqra, as in what Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala told the Prophet ﷺ first.
That first word, iqra, and every meaning that
it contains.
Increasing your wisdom, increasing your experiences, increasing your
knowledge, taking time to listen to what other
people have to offer within any domain.
Reading is a tool.
Again, reading is not just reading a book,
it's reading between the lines.
It's learning to understand why things are happening
around you.
Being able to observe behaviors and observe incidents
and understand them properly.
Listening to people explain their life experiences and
learning from them.
That's what read means.
And so these seven tools, if you've got
seven rules, seven tools, I'll talk about them
inshaAllah tomorrow.
That wasn't my plan.
My plan was to actually get them in
today, but I guess I misjudged how much
time this is going to take.
But we'll talk about them tomorrow inshaAllah.
They're very interesting, they're very helpful.
And then we'll start talking about the diseases
of the heart and we'll try and tackle
the main ones at least until the series
is over.
And if there's interest in the series inshaAllah
afterwards, I'm happy to continue talking about stuff
like this if there's enough interest in it
inshaAllah.
Again, please offer feedback on the Facebook page
under the video or just send messages to
anybody, to myself and Brother Khalid, you're welcome
to send.
And we'll put all the questions together if
there are any questions and we'll try and
address them inshaAllah in a Q&A session
or even during the halaqat I'll try and
touch base on or touch upon the points
that you brought up.
I hope that was beneficial.
SubhanAllah wa alhamdulillah Ashadu an la ilaha illa
anta astaghfiruka wa atubu ilayka wa salallahu wasalam
wa baraka ala nabiyyina wa habibina muhammadin wa
ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in Jazakumullahu khayran
wabarakallahu feekum Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi ta'ala wa barakatuh