Hamza Yusuf – Shut Off These Electronic Hallucinations

			ask all of you to sort of
		

			give us some advice tell us what to do in a way, which is, what would you what thought would you
want to leave us all with? People are grappling with tragedies with the incessant, you know, bad
news coming into their feeds. And every time they wake up looking at, you know,
		

			despair and devastation on the news everywhere, how what advice do you have for for everybody here
to,
		

			to not let it push you into despair?
		

			Chris, you want to go for, I would say, build real relationships, which are never built
electronically.
		

			That it is going to be I once asked Dan Berrigan before he died, how he was responding to
		

			the decay of the American Empire. And he said, All we have is the Eucharist and each other, ie all
we have is ritual, and each other. And so many people have neither, whatever that ritual is,
		

			we need it. And we need to shut off these electronic hallucinations.
		

			Because they are only fueling the atomization and the isolation and the despair.
		

			And we have to build relationships, the way they're always built, which is face to face. And that
means relationships with people who are not like us may not even believe what we believe.
		

			But I think much of the malaise of American society comes from a deep and profound loneliness, which
is exacerbated by the technology which we all have available in handheld devices.
		

			She comes
		

			Yeah, I think
		

			one of the things that people are suffering from is distractibility, and, and which is again, a
daughter of a CEDIA of this spiritual slothfulness of not being on an active path, and actually
working on yourself spiritually. We have a limited amount of time in the Chinese Taoist tradition
that this is very important to maintain health, because you will not overcome yourself before 50 or
60. Right? So they say you owe it to yourself to try to maintain health so that you have enough time
to be prepared for the next step, the journey because death is coming to us all and the readiness is
all are we are we ready for that next step because it's coming in and are you know, the response to
		

			atheist atheists. The Quran is very clear. Let those who want to disbelieve disbelieve and let those
who want to believe believe that there's no argument against it, it's a choice, you're choosing
something and this is something that God's given every single human being, the ability to make those
choices. And so I choose to be hopeful. And my hope is in God with God and through God, it's not in
the world, with the world through the world, my hope is is is transcend transcends this world. And
and and that's what what I would hope other people recognize that that door is open for anybody to
enter into. And it is a choice and and and we we should think about it seriously because our
		

			civilization as a civilization, that just distracts people constantly, and never before have the
tools of distraction been greater. I'm Pascal's remark that that all the trouble troubles in the
world are a result of people the inability for a person to sit alone in his room by himself. And
that that was Kierkegaard said despair was about fleeing from the self. And and there's a verse in
the Quran, those who forget God will inevitably forget themselves by the very act of forgetting God.
		

			Remember,
		

			in the ancient world, amongst religious people, solitude was a means for spiritual refinement. In
the modern world, solitude is a torture technique.
		

			I think that uh,
		

			practically speaking, turn off the television.
		

			Put your phone away for hours at a time. Make sure that the first thing you do in the morning is not
checking your emails, or seeing who texted you and that the last thing you do at night isn't
checking to see what Trump is up to.
		

			Wake up pray.
		

			before you go to sleep, if you're a believer, pray, if you're not a believer meditate, but try to
try to cultivate the ability to be alone with yourself and to find contentment with yourself. And if
you believe in God to find contentment with God, and Shaykh, Hamza mentioned, it's with all the
distractions and don't share them. I was thinking like, I should be quick.
		

			How many people have drawn me into their addictions? Like people are addicted to YouTube clips, and
I know 1000s of people, and they're all sending me the must view clip.
		

			And I didn't choose any of them based on the logic and direction of my life.
		

			they've introduced them into my life. So I'm going to send a message out don't share your addiction
with me, cuz I have enough trouble overcoming my own