Fatima Barkatulla – Envy Series – Episode 03 – Treating The Disease Of Hasad And Freeing Yourself From its Grip

			If you've ever experienced the feeling of hazard, whether it was, you know, with a sibling, or
whether it was with a friend or anyone, anyone or anything,
		

			you know that it feels rotten, it's a rotten feeling, it's a rotten state to be in. And you end up
feeling worse, you're the one who ends up suffering, right? The more you think about it, and the
more you indulge in it, and that's why sisters,
		

			the secret to conquering all of these kinds of negative thoughts, you know, even kind of hatred
towards other people, or second guessing them and having negative thoughts about what other people
are thinking about you and all of these kinds of negative thoughts, okay, that a human being
experiences, the core,
		

			or the key cure to them is to uproot them, as soon as they enter into one's mind, that's actually
the key, okay. And you'll see that and will lay if you practice the assisters, you will see that you
will become a very positive person, nothing will faze you in Sharla, and nothing will affect you in
a negative way. In Sharla, right, you have to become so sensitive that you realize that aha shavon
has put, or he is encouraged you to have this negative thought, right. So for example, you see a
blessing that somebody has, right. And suddenly you start feeling bad about yourself, right? Whether
it's okay, let's just say, you see somebody is wearing a very beautiful dress, and maybe you can't
		

			afford to have a beautiful dress like them, right. And you see that blessing on that person. And
everyone is looking at them, everyone's praising them, okay?
		

			Now, shape on will encourage you to have that thought in your head. And he will encourage you to
think to yourself,
		

			she's showing off, she's nasty, look at her, she's just, she's just trying to make me look bad. by
dressing up, right. Or you might start thinking, you know,
		

			I hope something bad happens to that person, you know, these kind of thoughts and stuff in a lot.
		

			The first time you start noticing that a certain thought is coming into your head, and it's starting
to go down a negative route, okay?
		

			The thing to do at that very point, before it even gets any further is to almost like shake it out
of your head, right? It's almost like shavon puts a little seed in the ground of your mind, right?
		

			She puts a seed
		

			into the soil of your mind.
		

			Now, if you allow that seed to stay there, and if you water it, by thinking about it more and more,
by adding evidence, you know, to the to the conspiracy theory that is in your head, the more you
think about it, the more you add to it, the more you obsess over it,
		

			that seed starts to
		

			become rooted into your mind, and then it starts to grow. And you know, the more that a seed grows,
the more that a plant grows, the deeper its roots get. And the harder it is to uproot it right? So
the more you think about it, and the more you entertain these evil thoughts, these negative
thoughts, right towards your sister in Islam or towards anyone.
		

			The more you think about them, and the more you entertain them,
		

			the more the more difficult it will be to remove them now from your mind and to cure them.
		

			So the key is that as soon as you start seeing that you have that thought or that feeling. You keep
it in check. And you say no, I'm not going to allow that thought to get ingrained into my mind.
Right. I'm adding a lot of meaning to this situation that does not exist, right? Because that's
probably that's usually the cause of most of our issues, isn't it? sisters, I'm sure you will agree
that, you know, how many of our disputes how many of our issues are caused by us adding an
interpretation to something someone said, or adding an interpretation to something someone did,
right? that that person may have had nothing to do with it. It's just all of our mind, because of
		

			the interpretation and the story that we've made up around that thing.
		

			We allow ourselves to get affected negatively. Right. We have to read
		

			It's just a story we've made up around that thing. It's not real, you know. So.
		

			So that's really the key, the key way to uproot
		

			envy, and any of the negative thoughts that a person can have, you know, Allah subhanaw taala
doesn't hold us to account for a negative thought entering our mind, you know, even a sinful fourth,
entering our mind, a lot of data does not account us for that. But as the scholars of Islam said,
		

			when a thought comes into your mind, that is not going to be sinful, right.
		

			But if you then start entertaining it, you then start thinking about it and entertaining it and
actually, you know,
		

			helping it to grow. That's when it could even be even thoughts could become sinful, you know. So,
the key thing is not to entertain those thoughts. So here are some of the other things that the
scholars of Islam have said, are ways to cure this.
		

			disease of envy.
		

			First of all, increasing our knowledge of Allah subhanaw taala. Okay, because when you realize that,
		

			you know, Allah Subhana, Allah, the great
		

			creator of ours, he's the one who blesses people with things. And he's the one who actually has the
power to bless you with that thing that you wish for. In fact, Allah subhanaw taala can give you
better than what that person has, when you realize that and when you realize the greatness of Allah,
		

			I mean, just just contemplate on the fact that lots of $100 said that if every single human being
was to ask Allah for everything that they wanted, and allow us to give every single person
everything they wanted, it wouldn't decrease from last kingdom.
		

			Anything. So Pamela, this is our Creator. This is the power that las panatela has. So once a person
realizes that and has knowledge of a lot, what they will realize is, instead of focusing on the
person who has that blessing, turn your focus away from that person, and turn your focus to build a
law.
		

			Please, Allah, plead with Allah, beg Allah, cry to Allah, wake up in the night, and ask Allah for
that thing that you want.
		

			Because he's the one who's going to give it to you. In fact, nobody else needs to lose out that
person who has that blessing, they don't need to lose that blessing in order for you to get that
blessing. And even better than it. So instead of focusing on that person, instead of blaming people
in your mind, you know, oh, my parents, you know, they didn't give me a good enough education or so
and so, you know, my husband's not rich enough or whatever, whatever things that we might start
blaming, and then you know, Spanner, like can have a terrible kind of negative, kind of like an
avalanche effect, right? * effect.
		

			instead of allowing that to happen, turn your focus away from the dunya turn your focus away from
these human beings who can't help you.
		

			towards Allah subhanaw taala and ask him, make sure you're pleasing Him, make sure you're not
disobeying him.
		

			Another remedy or cure to hazard is
		

			realizing that when you indulgent hazard, and when you allow it to take root in your mind, okay?
		

			It doesn't actually harm anyone but you. You're the only one who ends up suffering, and what could
be worse, right? Then, being jealous of somebody, and the blessing that somebody has, right? And
then harming yourself because of them.
		

			I mean, that's just completely illogical, right? So when you realize that it's actually eating away
at you, and it's causing you to basically indulge in thinking about that person, right?
		

			rather than getting on with your own life, then you realize that actually, envy is actually only
harmful to yourself, doesn't harm anyone else, it only harms yourself.
		

			Also, knowing that envy is actually a crime against oneself and a crime against one's fellow
Muslims, okay? Because the one who envies ends up being insincere towards their brothers and sisters
in Islam, right.
		

			And also ends up showing enmity
		

			Maybe it would cause them to do negative things towards that person.
		

			Even if a person ends up concealing or hiding their envy, even if the person who the person is
envying doesn't find out that they envy them. A lot of Allah knows what's happening in your heart,
Allah knows that the cause of your mistreating them is envy. So everything will be exposed on the
Day of Judgment. So it's very important that you don't ignore this emotion, this disease, but
curate.
		

			Reflecting also is one of the ways to battle hazard reflecting on the harms of envy in this life,
okay? It ends up making your miserable ends up causing you grief. Every time you see somebody
blessed with something, you end up having negative thoughts having hatred, right, you become
preoccupied with that person. And with that thing,
		

			why would you want to allow yourself to be a slave to the person who, who you have some, you know,
maybe some animosity with or that you're envying. also realize that envy doesn't harm that person at
all. It's not going to reduce their blessing. And it could cause you, you know, to have a major sin
on your hands, right? If you if you look at somebody in that way, and if you wish for evil for that
person. That's it, that's one of the worst things that you can do.
		

			striving for.
		

			One of the ways to cure herself is to strive to be content with whatever Allah Subhana Allah has
given you. Okay.
		

			And what that means is not that you should not wish for, you know, the good thing, like we said, is
not a bad emotion, you know, wishing for good, wishing for the good blessing that that person has,
without harming them. There's nothing wrong with that. However, if a person was really to reflect
and enumerate the blessings that Allah Subhana, Allah has bestowed upon them, okay? Then their sense
of great gratefulness would really overflow. And that's why sisters, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam often, you know, one of the advices he gave was that, when it comes to the dunya, when it
comes to the material things, look at the people who have less than,
		

			in fact, we should spend time with those types of people as well, the people who are less fortunate
than us when it comes to material belongings. And if you do that, what happens is you you come home
to your home, or you come home to your family, and you have a real sense of gratefulness, because
you realize, you don't have a fraction of the problems that some people out there have. And the
Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us when it comes to Deen, when it comes to religiosity and
piety, we should look at the people who are better than us. Because then that will make us want to
strive to be like them. And to be better. Some types of envy are natural.
		

			We mentioned some of them already. However, what one has to do is really to keep one's actions in
check, right? You don't act upon that envy in any way you do not backbite that person is instead you
should do the opposite of what you feel like doing. That's one of the cures. So if you feel like
backbiting somebody,
		

			you should say something good about them. Even if that is kind of hard for you to do, you know, you
feel negative towards somebody, you might be envious of that person, okay. But the way to deal with
it is to train your soul not to allow your soul to control you, but you have to control your soul.
And you train it by doing the opposite of what it wants you to do. So maybe your your, your nuts
Your soul is telling yourself is telling you to
		

			avoid that person, well, you should do the opposite. You should try and communicate positively with
that person. Maybe your soul is telling you to mention them in a negative way in front of people
instead do the opposite, and mention them in a positive way in front of people. Maybe you feel
negativity towards that person, instead, make dua for that person, even though you don't feel like
doing it. Okay, and what that will do in Sharla is keep one sense of pride and arrogance in check.
Right? And it will force us to remain humble and modest. And that's really how one trains on soul.
Initially, we might have to force ourselves to do certain things. Even when it comes to Salah even
		

			when it comes to any any good deed. Initially we may have to force ourselves to actually do that
good deed.
		

			However, over time, that good deed will become a habit and they're not
		

			Over time, we will start loving that good deed, we'll start loving the act of worship.
		

			So initially, it is a struggle, and it is about forcing oneself to do things that might not come
naturally. Another of the ways to cure hazard is engaging in good deeds, when you're somebody who
has a lot of free time, a lot of time on your hands.
		

			And you don't keep yourself busy,
		

			especially with good deeds, then shaitaan plays with your mind more, he really plays with your mind
more. Right? As one of my
		

			teachers said, once, I think I think it's a saying of Gandhi, I'm not sure, if you find a big
problem, if you find a really big problem to deal with, then
		

			your problems will disappear, your problems will become insignificant, right. So find a bigger
problem to deal with. And then you'll see that these little problems that keep you know, they're
basically holding you back from being the great person that you have the potential to be.
		

			And so by finding a bigger problem to address in Sha, Allah, what you're doing is you you're making
those little things insignificant in your eyes. Right. And this is what you usually find that
sisters or citizen brothers who really have a lot of time on their hands, they're not really doing
much in terms of, you know, looking out in the community, what needs doing what needs to be, what
are the problems of the of the community, what are the problems in other people's lives that they
could help out with, that they could contribute to, when they're very insular, they're very much
obsessed with their own lives in their own little worlds. And what that does is, it's like an
		

			invitation for shavon to come and play with your mind. You become easy for SharePoint to play with.
		

			So the way to address that is to engage in good deeds go out and find a bigger problem to deal with
than these little silly things that keep coming into your mind.
		

			Okay, and so this will allow you to occupy yourself with something that I lost, loves.
		

			Tony Romo seems
		

			to be a
		

			smoothie