Ismail Kamdar – Self Care of the Soul
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AI: Transcript ©
It's important that we
take time to remember
and to
remind ourselves
about some of the fundamentals of our religion.
And sometimes we get caught up in
detailed academic discussions
on secondary issues,
and we forget about the fundamentals.
So today is a reminder about some of
the fundamentals. It's a reminder of a aspect
of our religion that
should be a priority
every day of our lives
and should be part of our journey through
this world.
And that is taking care of our souls.
That's Geyatun Nafs, the purification of the soul.
The human being
is made up of 3 fundamental parts.
We have the body,
we have the mind, and we have the
soul.
1 of the problems with modern psychology and
modern lifestyles
is that
while there is a lot of emphasis
on taking care of your body and taking
care of your mind,
often, the soul isn't even acknowledged as something
real.
And so there is negligence in taking care
of the soul.
And I would argue that even though it
is crucial and important to take care of
our bodies
and to take care of our minds,
it is more important to take care of
our souls.
For very simple reason,
1 day, we will leave this body and
and mind behind.
But this soul,
this soul is who we are.
This soul is who we were before we
came to this earth. This soul is who
we will be in the bursa. This soul
is who we will be in Jannah, in
the next world.
The soul is who we are beyond this
life.
And so, caring for the soul
is even more important
than caring for the body and the mind.
And so, yes.
Make sure you take care of your bodies.
Make sure you are healthy. Make sure you
take care of your mind. Make sure that
you are emotionally and mentally healthy.
But also
prioritize and make time to take care of
yourself,
to make sure that you are spiritually
healthy.
When was the last time we checked our
spiritual health?
When's the last time you look into your
soul to check?
Is everything alright then?
Am I
taking care of its needs?
You know, there are many hadith that
teach us that the soul is in a
it's in a state of flux. It goes
up and down in terms of its condition
based
on the kind of deeds we are doing
and the kind of thoughts that we are
thinking.
And so it's mentioned in the hadith that
when a person commits a sin,
a black dot appears on their heart.
And the more you sin, the more black
the the heart becomes. Right? The more rusty
it becomes.
And every time you make a or do
good deeds, it cleans the heart. Note that
these hadis is about purifying the heart. I'm
talking about purifying the soul. The heart and
soul are used,
in these hadis. Right? It doesn't mean the
physical heart. It means the heart of the
soul.
So in another Hadith, the prophet
told us that they say lump of flesh
within us. If it is corrupt,
everything about us becomes corrupt. And if it
is
pure, everything about us becomes pure, and that
is the heart.
Even in the Quran, Allah
uses 3 descriptors for the soul, indicating the
3 levels that your soul could be at.
And so Yusuf Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala talks
to us about a soul that is inclined
towards sin.
This is the lowest level of the soul,
where
most of the time you have sinful thoughts.
That that's the norm. That's the default.
That's a sign that something's wrong, and you
need to look internally and fix the soul.
Higher than that, the soul of the average
person, those who are trying, those who are
making an effort, the majority of us, is
mentioned in Surah Al
qiyama. Allah takes an oath
by by the soul that feels guilty, by
the soul that has a conscious.
You see the difference between someone who sins
and they don't feel guilt about it, that's
the lowest level. As somebody who sins and
they feel bad about it and ask Allah
for forgiveness,
that's the norm. That's the general state of
a human
soul. Sometimes it slips up, but it feels
bad for slipping up, and it goes back
onto the straight path. And then the 3rd
type of soul, the goal, the 1 that
we should aim for, the soul that
the Ambiya and the Awliya have attained
is mentioned in the end of Surah Al
Fajr. So Allah
addresses them
as Oh, that soul that has attained inner
peace.
The soul that has attained inner peace.
Where your thoughts become what Allah wants you
to take. Where you don't even think about
sin anymore.
Where your soul is in a state of
complete righteousness.
That's the goal. That's what we should aim
for.
So we should take time to analyze the
state of our soul. What is the dominant
kind of thoughts that that go through our
mind?
Are we more inclined towards sin? Are we
more inclined towards good deeds?
Do we feel internally
a joy from doing good deeds?
Or is there agitation, like, I don't really
wanna do this. These are ways of assessing
whether your soul is in the right state
or not.
I just wanna share with you today
7 simple steps for taking care of your
soul. 7 simple steps of,
so purifying your soul.
Step number 1
is make sure you at least have the
the obligations taken care of. At the very
least,
make sure you are taking care of that
which is fun, that which is obligatory.
Allah says
that my servant,
there is nothing that can bring him closer
to me than the obligatory good deeds, and
then after that, the optional good deeds. And
so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told us in
a hadith Qudsi, if you wanna get close
to him, prioritize
the obligations.
What do we mean by the obligations?
Praying 5 times a day is the most
important 1. Make sure that we pray the
5 for salah every day.
Other obligations we should prioritize,
ensure your income is halal.
Ensure your food is halal. Ensure that you
are covering your in front of non.
These are amongst the obligations that are daily
for us. Things that we should be focusing
on daily.
The second step towards purifying the soul and
taking care of the soul is to do
daily, to seek Allah's forgiveness daily.
Think about this. Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam
would seek forgiveness
a 100 times a day.
And he is sinless.
He is the prophet of Allah. He is
guaranteed gender.
He is the best of creation,
but he will seek forgiveness a 100 times
a day, teaching us how we are supposed
to live our lives.
As normal human beings,
we sin every day.
Some of it is unavoidable.
We are weak.
We are not perfect. We are the angels.
We will slip up. The eyes will slip.
The tongue will slip. There are mistakes that
we make on a daily basis. How do
you counter the negative effects of the daily
mistakes?
Find your eyes wondering,
You find yourself saying something you shouldn't have
said,
Always follow-up your mistakes with
Immediately seek Allah's forgiveness.
This is a way of ensuring that that
mistake that you made does not damage your
soul. It does not compound. You don't have
a compound effect of 1
sin upon the other.
A third step,
a third practical step towards
purifying the soul
is to spend time in nature.
This is something that gets lost in our
times. You see, in the modern modern world,
we built up a man made environment,
full of man made devices.
So we are always surrounded by things that
we made.
And in the process, we are disconnected from
that which Allah made.
Take some time to go outside.
You know, as the kids say to touch
grass.
You go outside,
you spend time in nature.
You look at the trees. You look at
the flowers. Spend time with an animal. Look
at how animals behave.
Look at the
the way Allah created them.
Any time spent in nature
will bring you closer to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala because you are able to recognize
the greatness of the creator
by admiring
the beauty of the creation, the magnificence of
the creation.
And this is something that that we see
in
in the modern world today. There are a
lot of people who are going through doubts
about the existence of God. Very often, they
are people who are cut off from nature.
They are in a built up environments where
it's just man made structures around them all
the time.
As we don't see the beauty of Allah's
creation, all they see is the beauty of
what humans have created.
And a simple solution
is to simply go outside
and spend time in nature. Go outside and
actually
connect with the natural environment, and you will
find yourself closer to Allah
You will find your soul in a heightened
state
from being close to that which is natural.
A 4th way to purify your soul on
a daily basis,
a very simple thing for you.
Live in a state of gratitude.
Say
from the depths of your heart for the
blessings in your life.
We live in an age of ingratitude,
an age of complaining. People always looking for
something to complain about.
And it's strange because in 1 way, we
are living in the most technologically advanced time
that we know of, where we have, as
average people, access to luxuries that the kings
of the past do not have,
yet we still complain,
and we still find things to complain about,
and we still spend our days complaining.
But if we had to just change the
way we think,
and instead of looking at things to complain
about,
look for things to be grateful about.
Analyze your life, and you will find
that there are 100.
There are thousands of things in your life
to be grateful for.
Live in a state of shukkah,
in a state of gratitude,
And you will find yourself happier. You'll find
yourself purer. You'll find yourself connected to your
creator.
Number 5.
When you feel a evil thought entering your
mind,
do a good deed to counter that thought.
You see, it's normal
for bad thoughts to cross the mind of
everyone.
The of
shaitan.
Shaitan is always whispering to each and every
1 of us.
What do you do when these bad thoughts
cross your mind?
Some people act on these thoughts. Some people
feel guilty about these thoughts. Some people start
to question themselves and think maybe I'm a
hypocrite. Maybe I'm a bad person. No.
Immediately,
do a good deed to counter that thought.
Doing good deeds to counter evil thoughts helps
keep your soul in check.
Number 6
number 6 is love a life of generosity.
The Quran, when it talks about charity,
it talks about charity as a means of
purifying the soul.
Even the word zakah
means to purify.
Charity is directly linked to the purification of
the soul,
And our love for this dunya is stripped
away
when we are generous
because you are purifying your soul
by by showing that you are not attached
to this world.
And so being generous is an important part
of taking care of your soul. And finally,
step number 7,
be humble.
No matter how successful you are, no matter
how wealthy you are, no matter how famous
you are, no matter how pious you are,
always
remain
humble.
Always remain grounded.
Always remember
that you are nothing more than a creation
of Allah,
and that anything good you have in your
life is from Allah
Never
allow your ego to take over. When your
ego take takes over, your soul suffers.
Arrogance and purification of the soul cannot work
together.
Make sure no matter how successful you are
in any aspect of life, that you remain
humble. And I say this especially about spirituality
because there may be people out there
who shaitan couldn't trick them in other ways.
So shaitan uses their own piety against them.
And so when they attain a high spiritual
rank, they begin to think, oh, I'm better
than all these other people.
And that way, shaitan gets them. It makes
them to feel arrogant
about their own spirituality.
Anyone who thinks they are pious is not
pious.
A truly pious person is humble and thinks
that they are the worst of people.
And so
let us
practice these 7 things daily to keep our
soul in check and to make sure that
we are purifying our soul on daily basis.
Let us fulfill our obligations.
Let us seek Allah's forgiveness daily. Let us
spend time in nature reflecting on Allah's creation.
Let us live lives of gratitude, annuity, and
generosity,
and let us follow-up our any waswasal of
shaitan with good deeds.
There's 2 sides of purifying the soul.
1 is what you do
to purify the soul.
The other is what you avoid so your
soul doesn't get corrupted.
Right? There's 2 things. 1 is the things
you need to do. The other are the
things you need to avoid.
We spoke about 7 things we need to
do daily to purify our soul.
Let's talk about 5 things
we need to avoid daily,
because these 5 things are listed
as things that corrupt the soul.
Things that cause
the soul to head off in a bad
direction, to head down a dangerous path.
Number 1,
let us avoid
unnecessary
debates and arguments and disputes.
When a person develops a
a personality of always arguing with people,
then it's very difficult for them to self
reflect.
It's very difficult for them to focus on
their own souls. It's very difficult for them
to prioritize their own internal faults because they
become obsessed
with the faults of others. They become obsessed
with what everybody else is doing wrong.
And so a simple solution is
avoid arguments.
Avoid fighting.
Avoid the debates
as long as they are not necessary. Yeah.
Sometimes they are necessary.
Right? Sometimes someone is saying something really bad,
and somebody else needs to stand up and
counter what they are saying and to tell
you know, to to express the truth. But
most of the time, the the debates and
arguments that we get into are petty.
Most of the time, the debates and arguments
you get into are a distraction from worshiping
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. I'll give you an
example of this. You
know, it happens every year.
A branch a bunch of Muslims will go
for Hajj or for Umrah,
And they will spend their trip arguing with
each other over whether this is acceptable or
that is acceptable. And this is Bida or
that is Bida. And this government's like this
and that government's like that. It could be
in the Haram doing about it. They are
sitting and arguing with each other instead.
This is a distraction from Shaitan.
Do not have the argumentative nature.
It is a a distraction from shaitan to
stop us from focusing on what matters.
The second thing to avoid,
bad company and evil places.
The people and places you associate with have
an impact on your soul.
The prophet
described that company
like going to a blacksmith. A blacksmith in
the olden days most of the young people
may not know what a blacksmith is, or
maybe they know from their video games, but
a blacksmith in the olden days is basically
the man who used to make weapons. Right?
So every time he strikes the iron, this
dust goes everywhere.
So the prophet, gave it an analogy
that when you're near a bad company,
the evil effects will get onto you Just
like when you're near a blacksmith, the dust
will get onto you. You cannot enter a
place that is dusty without dust getting onto
you. That's the analogy given to bad company,
and bad places as well. As a Muslim,
we should stay away from places
where bad things happen.
And, also, as a Muslim,
we should stay away
from people
who corrupt our soul. This doesn't mean we
should be mean to people. This doesn't mean
we should cut off people. This doesn't mean
that we should mistreat people. It simply means
we shouldn't let bad people have an influence
on us.
We should be influencing them.
Right?
Number 3.
We should we must avoid
overeating and oversleeping
and overindulgence
entertainment.
Basically, going to an extreme and eating halal.
In fact, specifically mentioned in the books of
purifying the soul to avoid overeating and oversleeping.
Why?
When you indulge too much in this world,
even if it is halal,
it makes you lazy.
It makes you lazy. You see what happens
when we sleep too much, when we eat
too much, when we entertain ourselves too much,
it makes us lazy. Now look at the
modern lifestyle.
How many young kids today, their life is
just eating, sleeping, and entertaining themselves?
What is this doing to their souls?
Where's the balance?
Where's the prioritization
of their studies and of their and of
their families?
We need to understand what is important.
Avoid oversleeping,
avoid overeating,
and avoid over indulgence in in entertainment.
Number 4, we mentioned in the first list
that if you get a bad thought, do
a good deed. So what should you avoid?
I won't say avoid bad thoughts because that's
impossible.
Shaitan is always trying to put the bad
thoughts in there. So I would say avoid
acting on your bad thoughts.
Avoid acting on the of shaitan.
Shaitan puts an idea in your mind to
the best of your ability, try to avoid
it. If you slip up, make it far.
But don't just act on every impulse. Don't
just act on every thought that comes to
your mind. Learn self control.
Learn to think before you act. Just because
your body or your mind or a whisper
of shaitan is telling you to do something,
doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
And finally,
if you want to keep your soul pure,
control what you look at.
Control where your eyes go.
1 of the biggest
corruptors of the soul
is to look at that which is haram,
to look at the aura of others with
lust.
And this has become a defining trial of
our times
because we live in a time
where people have unrestricted
access
to the fitna,
and people are going crazy because of it,
people are becoming addicted to it, people are
losing their iman because of it. We have
to learn self control.
This is a test for us. This is
a test for the Muslims of this day
and age
to lower the gaze
in the 21st century
when technology gives you access to all that
which is haram.
This is a test.
And if you are able to do so,
then this would be a major
step forward in purifying our soul.
If you are able to discipline yourself enough,
then you do not look at that which
is haram. Even when it is easily accessible,
even when nobody in the world is going
to find out.
But you still discipline yourself and you still
control yourself. This is a huge step forward
in purifying your soul. So let us, inshallah,
work on these things.
Let us take the steps towards purifying our
soul. Let's take our steps toward avoiding that
which corrupts the soul. I understand that this
is a journey. This is a lifelong journey.
Nobody's perfect. Nobody's sinless.
But we have to be constantly moving forward.
Each day, each month, each year, we should
be better than before. We should be 1
step closer. And if we slip up, we
seek Allah's forgiveness, and we try again. If
we mess up, we seek Allah's forgiveness and
we try again. But we don't stop trying.
At the end of the day,
nobody gets to Jannah for being perfect.
We get to Jannah because of Allah's mercy.
You try your best, Allah forgives the best.
So let us be people who are constantly
trying. Let us be people who are constantly
working to purify our souls. Let us be
from those who do not give up on
trying to be from those whom Allah loves
no matter how many times we slip up,
and let us be from those who are
determined
to get to Jannah.
We ask Allah to accept from us from
us from