Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #11
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Today, we
are approaching the end of Ramadan.
I know for some of you, it's your
first time fasting. For some of you,
it's your first Ramadan as a Muslim, and
some of you are still
experiencing
what your spiritual journey is.
And then some of us were born into
it.
But to give an understanding,
it's kind of an entry point now as
we're getting towards the end of Ramadan,
and we're gonna have a holiday in a
couple of days.
How some of this fits into just a
broader framework
of
what our
foundational understandings of Islam as a religion.
And you probably heard me say this a
couple of times because when we started talking
about fasting,
we talked about it linked to
the essential value of consciousness
as, like, the verse in the bronze states,
that that's what the idea is beyond fasting.
Right? That it's an act
that
is potentially
able to yield within its practitioner,
a sense of mindfulness,
a sense of consciousness rooted in the presence
of the divine.
But that's not something that just exists
kinda intangibly. It exists very tangibly,
but not in a way that we might
think about it so much. It exists in
an inward state, not an external state. Does
this make sense so far, what I'm saying?
Yeah. So I wanted us to talk about
today was just a basic outline of what
is like
a Islamic
paradigm on
the psychology or the framework of the self.
Right? Because so much about Ramadan is getting
attuned to parts of yourself that quite often
are neglected,
day to day,
to not just focus on the physicality
of the situation,
but to focus on what is metaphysical,
to focus on parts of ourselves that are
definitely there, but we're not necessarily
engaging them so much.
What I'd like for us to do in
just the first few minutes, so we can
get people kinda talking and getting acclimated to
the space. If you just turn to the
person next to you, if you don't know
them, share your names, introduce yourselves. But
in this idea of, like, what makes me
me as a whole person,
what are, like, the different parts
that make you you?
Right? You're not just your physical body, but
your body is there. And if I was
to say what makes your physical in its
entirety, you could talk about your feet and
your hands and whatever else.
But if we're now talking about what makes
you who you are bigger than your physical,
what comes to mind for you? What are
things that
are still a part of you, but they're
not just rooted
in what is physical, but
they are other elements that are still there
with you nonetheless.
So you need to turn to the person
next to you.
What makes us who we are in our
entirety? Like, if I said, what is yourself
made up of? What are different ways we
could answer that? You could talk to the
person next to you, exchange names if you
don't know, and then we'll come back and
discuss. But go ahead. Yeah.
Okay. So what are some of the things
that are coming up for people? Like, if
somebody asked you,
my 7 year old walks in and he
says, what makes me me? Like, what are
the different parts of me?
And not in the sense of just telling
him, here's your toes and here's your pinky
and here's this and here's that.
But answering it at a level in terms
of what makes you you in your entirety,
what are some of the things that make
you
you? Like, what are you made up of?
What did you discuss?
Yep. I think that, like, a theme I
heard from us 3 is that it you
know, we are a part of our environment
and, you know, kind of like our place
in that that environment.
That's as far as I think we could
remember.
We could develop,
our definition of ourselves. But but I I
I think I heard, between what I shared
and what Okay. What part of you is
impacted by your environment?
So so Well, is it what No. Yeah.
I mean, that gives you something for me.
If so,
you know,
values,
the meaning,
the meaning that I make of things,
the the
the way the the beauty that I find
of things,
my emotional response to things.
I don't know if that's answering your question.
It is. Yeah. And we wanna think what
are the seats of these places. Right? Like
if I said the food that you eat,
where does it go
once you consume it?
You know it's gonna go through your mouth,
it's gonna go down your throat,
bunch of different things are gonna happen, part
of it's gonna stay in you, part of
it's gonna also exit from you. But the
physicality of it,
you can describe.
Right?
So all of these things, perspective, the ability
to, like, see beauty, all these things that
you're saying, where do they reside? Like, what
parts of you does that kind of function
from? Right? Because the eye can see something,
but you can see something
and you can see something. Maybe the same
exact thing but you could both see it
differently.
And how you see it is not just
about what your physical eye is seeing seeing,
but how you see it is about other
parts of you influencing it. And what I'm
saying is what parts of you
are like the containers of these things.
They just don't, like, kinda roam freely in,
like, a aura around you. Like, they exist
somewhere. Right?
You get what I
mean? And this is an important thing to
understand because when you look at Islam as
a religion, you can take an Islam 101
class, someone can say, here's what it means
to be Muslim.
You're gonna get a lot of just like
the mechanics of things, the externals of things.
But Islam is a religion offers to one
who
practices it, engages it, is beyond just empirical
understandings of evidence, the how and the what
in terms of functions.
It can answer a lot of things of
why
that once you start to answer those questions
of why, they give a basis of real
contentment and satisfaction,
it's not just complacency, but we wanna know
how we function on a whole especially in
the aftermath of Ramadan because Ramadan has been
nourishing parts of us as we engage it.
What are those parts so that we are
conscious of those things and there's a continuation
to the nourishment. There's not a abandonment of
it. That's not purposeful. But if you don't
know where something is, then you're not gonna
be able to pay attention that it's there.
Do do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
So what else did we discuss in our
in our groups?
Yeah.
I always thought, like, the purpose of this
life is to be happy,
but,
this and then something happened
that in my happiest moments, like, suddenly, I
was so unhappy.
So this Ramadan, I realized that our purpose
is to make a lot happy.
So we become happy
and to serve people.
Amazing. And
where does the solace exist in you?
In my mind.
Okay,
great. Mind is a great answer, right? So,
so far,
if we're taking like
definitive things
that are parts of us, we've said like
a soul and a mind,
right? Do you get what I mean?
Because the solace has to live somewhere, right?
Does it live in your stomach?
Do you hear what I'm saying? Right? The
place of realization. Like, where is that?
You know? And understanding that these have, like,
beginning points because you can understand what it
is by understanding what it's not. If I
said I realized something and you said where
does realization exist? And I said, I think
realization exists in my foot. You'd be like,
no, like it doesn't exist in your foot.
Everybody can understand that it doesn't exist in
your foot. Right?
But narrowing it down to understanding that it
doesn't exist there still doesn't bring us to
a place definitively
of saying, well, where does it exist?
And what we wanna focus on today is
understanding that there are distinct parts to us
that don't have to exist in this ambiguity
that the recognition
of those things can then further enhance
the solace, the realization,
the sense of elation,
the experience of emotions and feelings.
Because it's not just it's just there
but there's parts of you that are
functioning in the ways that whether we're conscious
of it or not, they're doing what they're
supposed to be doing. Now we can understand
and that they're there, then we can think
about how do we fuel them
and how do they exist in kind of
balance with each other. Do you get what
I mean? Because you're not just gonna go
to learn about Islam or to practice Islam
in the way that it's just about the
outwards. You still gain from it. I don't
have to know what a glass of water
does to me in order to benefit from
drinking from it. Right?
And maybe some of you know better than
I do, but most of us probably don't
really know
what's happening inside of us when we eat
the food that we eat. We just know,
like, it's doing what it's supposed to do.
So you can experience
certain things
and they can still give you some type
of gain,
But if you can distill what is actually
going on,
it can then help to inform choices and
decisions
that then say,
well, if this is what was really creating
this sense of realization within me. Right?
Regardless of what the realization is, I'm not
saying, like, the idea or the thought that
you became cognizant of is not a good
or bad. That's not what I'm talking about.
But the idea that
you had to be able to be cognizant
before you could be cognizant of something. Do
you get what I mean? Where does that
cognition lie within us, right? And it's not
like a complicated conversation,
but it's not something that gets discussed with
us so bad so much, especially as you
get older. And when you're like 6 years
old, people give you golden rules. You don't
have something nice to say. Don't say anything
at all. Please and thank yous. These kinds
of things. And when you sit down, you
try to explain to a little kid, you
know, why lying is bad to them or
why lying is bad to somebody else. Right?
Why calling someone a name is a problem.
And you would try to explain to a
5 or a 6 year old what's going
on in the person that started to cry
because you called them a bad word or
a bad name or hurt their feelings.
You're going to trickle it down to the
capacity of a child,
but most of us get exposed to understanding
how people's hearts work
only up until a certain age in our
life regardless of our faith. Then when you
get to, like, middle school or high school
or even elementary school or definitely
college, nobody's ever telling you, like, this is
how, like, people's feelings function or this is
how people's minds work.
Right? It's crazy. You could go into a
bookstore
and you can find entire sections that are
about self help,
self discovery.
You know, how do I take care of
myself? There's no book section that's about how
do you take care of other people? How
do you help other people?
How do you see other people as whole
beings? Right? And part of the disconnect comes
in that I don't see myself as a
whole person.
And what makes me me in my entirety?
Where is the place of contentment?
Right? And you can think about it in
a way that might seem simplistic.
Does contentment lie in your fingernails?
No. Like it doesn't. But where does it
exist?
And if that's the thing that actually exists
within you, why don't you pay more attention
to it?
That's what Islam also offers to his practitioner.
A framework of the self that doesn't understand
prayer and fasting and ritual as an ends
but a means to something. So as much
as you learn the mechanics of a fast,
you're also learning to fast with your heart.
As much as you understand the mechanics of
prayer, you're also learning how to
see with your heart and pray with your
heart. Do you get what I mean? So
we had like a mind and a soul,
right? You're definitely like a body. Everybody knows
we have a body, right? What else goes
into you? What makes you you?
Any other thoughts?
Yeah.
Basically our consciousness
or
awareness of our existence.
I'm not sure physically where that plays is
within the heart or the mind, but that's
that's what makes us possible. Amazing. So you
added a third thing. Right? You don't know
if it's in the mind or the heart,
but if it's in either one of those,
then the heart is something.
So here's a third part to you, right?
So we have a mind,
we have a soul, we have a heart.
These are three things that are not the
body,
but they're still a part of us. Is
there anything else that comes to mind?
I was thinking about, like, action.
Like, what,
I was thinking, like, I like, a character
nonnegotiable
of mine when I engage with other people.
I like I like being of service to
those who
just anywhere. If I see somebody who, like,
needs a hand with something,
I wanna jump in.
It it's something that integral to me gives
me gratitude. It gives me joy,
makes me feel purposeful.
Great. And that and that's something that I
can't get, you know, like,
many other like, it's a very specific feeling
that,
like, a satisfying feeling that wells up in
me. Amazing.
Other thoughts
before we kinda go into it more? Yeah.
Great.
So why is this important conversation is because
some of you have experienced an entire month
of Ramadan,
and you've gone through a lot of things
that have been pretty helpful
in terms of just, like,
experiencing the world a little bit differently. Doesn't
mean that you're in a competition with anybody
else. Right? There's a young woman in our
community who reached out to me. She said
she started a new consulting job. So first
Ramadan,
then she's traveling so much. And she said,
you know, I don't really get it. Like,
I had all these goals and now I'm
just tired and I'm all over the country
and I couldn't do this the way that
I've done before and I couldn't do that
the way that I've done before. And her
end result was in a place of self
deprecation
where she said, you know,
am I gonna somehow be devoid
of, like,
connecting to God, or is this indicative that
I have, like, a weak relationship with God?
So my response to her was like, look.
Everything changes. Right? Ramadan is not for me
what it was when I was single as
it was after I got married, as it
was after I had kids.
It's not the same after my parents got
elderly and they're ill. It's not the same
as when we had a community
that literally had this many people in it,
and now it has like a 1000 fold
over this many people. Right? This is a
10, 12,000 person community.
Everything changes experientially
as life changes and there's adaptation and there's
malleability.
The one thing that does not change is
God.
And
God why we talked about God in the
very first class before we talked about anything
else because everything goes back to God.
And so God does not change
and
so too like God's mercy does not change,
God's love does not change. These are things
that are constant.
And where and how you have adaptability,
It's important to understand this at the end
of Ramadan
because the days after Ramadan, they're not the
same as what the days of Ramadan are
like.
And if you're not consciously aware of what
makes you who you are in your entirety,
it's really easy for self deprecation
to just come in and have unreasonable expectations
of yourself
that get rooted in a sense that, like,
maybe this religion is too tough for me.
Maybe the religion is too hard for me.
As opposed to not seeing the religion as
something that's just about what is formulaic or
just practice alone,
but it synergizes with a theology
that's very robust
as well as with
a sense of ethics and values. They're not
seen separate from each other. You get what
I mean?
So if we were to think about us
in terms of what Islam posits is a
framework of the self
there's definitely
what is the physical body
And you don't have to know these words
in Arabic,
but this could be called the
or
the.
But then you have a lot more than
that.
So we have what's called
the intellect.
In Arabic this is called the aqid.
It's an intellectual capacity
to discern
like right from wrong,
but not rooted in a moral relativism,
rooted in an understanding
of what
is
by God's understanding of what's right and wrong.
Right? In the Haqqal, in the Quran, like
on every page, it invites you to use
your intellect. It tells you to, like, think,
to ponder, to reflect, to contemplate.
You have what's called
the nefs,
the lower self.
This is called the nuffs.
The nuffs
is the same thing as, like, what people
might describe as the ego
when you're talking about things in terms of
self help and mindfulness.
The nuffs in its nature
is something
that is lazy.
Right? It doesn't want you to be generous.
It doesn't want you to be charitable. It's
gonna be what makes excuses. It's gonna
render itself, like, in a place
where
it just tells you why you shouldn't be
doing something
even if you have the capacity
to get it done.
Somebody else is gonna pick up the chairs
that I just sat in. Right? Someone else
is gonna, you know, serve the food.
I'm gonna, you know, not really go out
of my way to say thank you to
somebody.
It's got like an inherent laziness to it,
the lower
self. Then you have what is just
your sheer will
and determination.
In Arabic, this is called Iradah.
And we have
what is called the soul,
the spirit.
This is called the.
This is what essentially makes us who we
are individually.
Right? So Islamic theology posits that before any
of us came into existence in this world,
all of our souls exist
in
an abode of the souls in the world
beyond this one.
And it's the soul that is making a
journey through these, like, lived existences. So it
goes from that place
into the womb.
It goes from there
into this worldly existence and the bodies that
we have.
From here,
death is not seen as something finite,
but it's just
a mechanism to get you into another worldly
existence where the soul moves into an intermediary
realm, the grave,
and there's a resurrection, a day of accounting,
and then there's eternal existence.
Right? But the soul
is, like what's kind of functioning within you
individually.
That's what Islam mixed kind of theology posits.
Then we have what's
called the Kalb or the the spiritual heart
which is called the Alqalb.
Alqalb
is essentially
like what you want to have
be sovereign over you, you and your entire
team. Right? Because like if here's
here's you,
I don't know why your legs are off
your body, but here's you.
All of this
exists within you.
Some of it is rooted in the physical
sense of things.
So your spiritual heart has an intrinsic link
to your physical heart.
And the way we're even constructed
in terms of our beings,
you have like a higher self and a
lower self.
But Ramadan
is about learning how to make decisions from
your mind and your heart, not from your
stomach and your sexual organs,
and getting to a place where there's a
presence of your literal higher self and not
your lower self in choices that you make.
What ends up happening
is that it's not any one of these
things, but it's all of these things
that
get cultivated in the course of a practice
like Ramadan.
But if there's not a deliberate recognition that
these are things that make me who I
am,
it doesn't mean that just like you don't
know how the water is refreshing you fully
and hydrating you and nourishing you that you're
not benefiting from drinking the water,
right?
When you eat your food
and it's giving you energy and maybe some
of you could but most of us probably
could not. I can't tell you like how
it's functioning
on a physiological level, the food, but it's
doing something for me.
Similarly,
the practice is doing something for you, but
not being aware of these other parts of
what make you you is going to make
it a lot easier to get to a
place where the only thing that you pay
attention to is what is most apparent
and that's what's happening here in terms of
just the external
whereas there's so much more to you that's
in here. Do you know what I mean?
Like when you talk about values,
right?
Where would values exist
in a person? Are they gonna exist in
their physical body?
Right?
Where would you say if you had to
guess or you would just think for yourself,
like where does your sense of value exist?
Your ethics,
like, the philosophy upon which you make your
decisions.
If we were to just put them in
one of these categories, whether you buy into
it or not, that's like a separate conversation.
But if somebody was to say, you know,
honesty is important to me, right? Where does
that live within you, that sense of value?
You understand the question?
Yeah.
Yeah. Right? You can have an overlap. Do
you know what I mean?
You live in like a weird time in
the prism of modernity
where people don't talk so much about personal
values anymore. They talk about like companies having
value. Right? You know
a non animate
entity having a value versus like an individual
person having a value.
When you talk about the ability to realize
something, to have awareness
right?
Do you think it's just your physical body
that can see how beautiful a flower is,
right? What part of you is able to
determine what is beauty?
Do you get what I mean? Like real
beauty.
And understanding this at a foundational level when
you're trying to figure out well what is
the point of this Islam thing anyway.
A point of this Islam thing is to
get to a place
where you can actually see
like what is innately beautiful
as being beautiful.
And what is categorically
ugly as being ugly.
So we're not in a place where we
validate and justify like racism. It's always terrible.
Inequity, oppression, these kinds of things. And Ramadan
is given to its practitioner. Not so they
just learn how to fast, but the fast
brings them to
something. And where most of what we spend
our year on is just the feeding of
our stomach,
now it's about hey feed like the other
stuff.
Get what's more important to you to be
what is in control. And this is not
about like degrading anybody's way of life or
being in a place where you live in
opposition
to any other person in existence,
but would you rather be a person who
makes a decision
through their heart or at their heart's expense?
Would you rather be a person who makes
decisions through their heart and their mind or
through their stomach and their
organs alone.
And it becomes the basis of a lot
of what we see this challenging in the
world where people can glorify but also validate
conflict and war. They can justify
all kinds of things that are deeply problematic.
Why somebody could have literally
a 1,000 times greater salary
than somebody who's doing most of the work
day in and day out and won't get
paid
less than minimum wage which isn't even livable
wage
if they don't show up to work that
day, right?
Those are decisions that are made from here
not from up here.
Where I can intellectualize
why I have more than I need
but can continue to have more of it
while you have even lesser than any human
being should have. Do you get what I
mean?
And these are important things to think about.
It's not us just sitting here and me
saying, this is how you wash your hands.
Those are important,
but they're meant to bring you to places
that parts of us that we don't think
about so much we're paying attention to more
and then individually
saying what part of me makes most of
my decisions?
What part of me is it that is
choosing most of my choices? Because you could
have, like, a rhetorical conversation
on just a purely theoretical level.
But when it comes down to it and
you're out there living in the world,
which part of you is what you're really
consciously or unconsciously
focused most on and what part of you
is in turn then the one that is
strongest in exerting control over your decision making.
Right?
And am I making decisions
through my heart or am I making decisions
through my body?
Is my lower self
in control,
and is it like a tyrant over the
rest of my inner state,
or is my heart what is a sovereign?
And it's keeping this thing at bay. Do
you get what I mean?
Does that make sense? K. What I'd like
you to do is just take 2 minutes,
maybe 5, turn to the person next to
you. What are you taking away from this
so far? What is it kind of giving
rise to in terms of just the conversation
that we'll come back and discuss. Go ahead.
Okay.
So
do we have if you're sitting, like, on
this side of the room, can you guys
maybe move over this way? Just so we
can kinda see everybody who's in the room.
Oh, you can
So what are some of the things you
talked about? What are coming up for for
people?
Is somebody praying back there?
Yeah. We can do.
Yeah.
Thanks, man.
So what what are we discussing?
Like, what came up in our discussion?
What are you taking away from the conversation
so far?
Yeah.
So we talked a lot about, like, how
we make decisions based on the lower self
and a lot about our stomach, especially in
relation to Ramadan. We spent a month fasting
and we neglected our stomach for the daylight
hours,
and how hard it is
to go
from
that lifestyle to, like, living
our regular lives again and maintaining that connected
result.
Because, like, we talked about it. We're we're
really looking forward to that Friday morning coffee,
and maybe that's not something we should be
thinking about as much as we are.
But, like, it's very hard to, like, keep
that in check and be
Why are you looking forward to the Friday
morning coffee?
It's a good question. That coffee in in
the morning is so nice.
Okay.
And take it to like its most logical
conclusion
because you don't wanna have a negative cognitive
bias
that is rooted in understanding
something like that
through the lower self,
right?
How can you
get to a place where the anticipation
of a Friday cup of coffee
is not seen as if you're lacking
in response to Ramadan, but Ramadan actually enhances
what that cup of coffee means to you.
Do you get what I mean? So how
can you reframe it for yourself?
Yeah. It can be any of those things.
What else? What else can you do that
doesn't make you think, like, oh, man. It's
Friday and I'm drinking coffee.
Ramadan was pointless.
Right?
That's like the worst conclusion.
Right? You're like, you can drink coffee. You
know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, it's like
like taking a quiet moment in the morning.
Right? Like, you sit like, that's like a
moment you sit. You have your tea. You
have your coffee, like, your hot drink. Right?
Like, just to yourself. It's a little mind
mindful space.
Do how does it feel when you drink
that coffee?
Does it feel good? Yeah. Yeah. Right?
How many times
have you been able to appreciate
the taste and the function of the coffee
when you were immersed in drinking it daily
without really
understanding what it was doing for you?
Right? And now you haven't had it for
30 days
and you're in a place where you can
make a choice that every time you sip
it on Friday morning, it can be like,
I know how much my day sucks without
this thing.
And I'm so grateful that I have this
cup of coffee
and then you take it to its most
logical conclusion
because you're not thinking about it from your
stomach and you're not thinking about it from
a lower self but with an awake heart
that went through 30 days of Ramadan,
you trickle down, right, to what is really
going on
to get you that cup of coffee in
your hand. The idea with Ramadan
is not to say, I'm never going to
eat food again.
Right? The idea with Ramadan
is to get to a place that says,
I see the food now differently than how
I saw it before.
I see like the cup of coffee a
little bit different. Go drink coffee. It's not
a problem.
But you don't want to engage in it
absent of the mindfulness that you bring. If
you can only understand
awareness
through the deprivation of something. You can only
get to it from a place
of leaving it behind for a certain amount
of time
in order for it to now have that
much more presence when you're consuming it,
that's like the idea. Do you get what
I mean?
Do do do we get what I mean?
I know I talk a lot sometimes. So
it doesn't make sense. But do you see
what I'm saying? And then you can enjoy
the coffee
both outwardly and inwardly.
You don't have to wake up on Friday
and be like, I'm a terrible Muslim. This
religion's too hard for me. I should have
just stopped being able to drink coffee once
Ramadan was done. No, man. They're like spiritual
masters of this religion
where they would drink tons of coffee and
they write about it. I don't drink coffee,
but that's for different reasons. But I'm not
you and you're not me. These guys would
drink coffee. These women would drink coffee
purposefully as a mechanism to actually enhance their
alertness
within the course of their worship. But the
paradigm shifts are inward.
And that's why the starting point of this
conversation
was what it was. I'm not trying to
be annoying to ask you questions so you
can think about it. Islam is a thinking
person's religion. It's not a religion for people
who do not think if you want to
get to the depth of it. You gotta
be bold enough to actually embrace your mind
and your heart. Not be scared to think
but think also in a way that challenges
you sometimes. Do you get what I mean?
So, like, you appreciate the coffee. And then
one day you drink and you're like, how
many people had to move for me to
just have this cup of coffee?
How many people had to, like, get up
before the sun was up to go and
get these things harvested?
How many people had to pack this thing?
How many people had to move so that
it would just land in this
hand that I'm looking at right now.
That's what Bismillah means.
The ba in Bismillah,
when we say in the name of god,
is that you
are acknowledging
everything that came
with this thing coming into your hand.
Do not have that level of mindfulness
if you're just a body walking around
because then it allows for you to open
other conversations.
How many people
are not getting paid fair wages for me
to drink this coffee?
How many people
have
unduly inequitous
labor practices that they become subservient
to so that I could drink this coffee?
Right?
How can I bring more presence into supporting
brands
that are more ethical
in line with the values
that are in my heart, that can even
resonate in a cup of coffee?
You can't have that conversation
if you didn't drink the coffee in the
first place. Do you get what I mean?
So the goal is not to never drink
coffee again,
but the goal is the same way. You
can see, like, the beautiful tree
and not pass it without seeing its beauty.
You take a pause to engage. That's why
we talked about reflection last week. Remember we
talked about
last week? The ability to reflect and the
importance of it so you can now get
to a place
where with this, you're thinking about drinking the
coffee. Does that make sense?
Yeah?
What else came up for people? What else
were we thinking about? Go ahead. Well, it's
also gratitude. I mean, all of this has
gratitude that we are able to
have our senses and sights listen and be
able to come there and learn
and, you know, look at the tree and
and be able to see the beauty, you
know, and or be able to afford
a cup of coffee and to be grateful
that you're able to afford it. Yeah. And
that's and what I'm saying is where does
gratitude come from?
And you might, again, like, be like, we
don't think about it this way. Does gratitude
start
from your physical being?
And when the overt emphasis
is on your job is so that you
could feed the physical, Your relationships are for
the satisfaction of the physical. When you live
in a society that teaches you to look
at yourself but not for yourself,
becomes very hard
to be able to at times
just be present
to these things state within us. That's what
the whole point of Ramadan is, to get
you to a place where you start to
pay attention to the rest of you because
how you pay attention to what's going on
inside of you is going to then enable
you to make sense of what's going on
outside of you differently. Do you get what
I mean?
Anything we do on a Wednesday night going
forward,
this is going to be an integral part
to it. When we start talking about prayer
and the mechanics of the prayer,
all of this is going to be a
part to it. When you think about what
we talked about months ago, we talked about
the
chapter of the Quran called Ikhlas, sincerity
that introduces
god to us as.
You remember this? God is uniquely 1. Right?
He's Samad, the eternal refuge.
What part
of you connects to the divine?
When you're praying to god,
you can pray with your body. How do
you pray with the rest of this stuff?
Do you get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Other thoughts, what did you discuss? What came
up when you were talking in your groups?
Yeah. Thought about how my thinking about the
lower self,
and in relation to all these, my therapist
always ask me, like, am I having my
emotions or my emotions having me? Yeah. And
so what is driving? What is in control
in the way that I engage with the
world and other people?
Yeah. Right.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he
has a relative by the name of Ali
ibn Abi Talib.
He is his close friend. He's in a
place where they have a deep connection.
Ali,
he
has many councils and wisdoms. And one of
the things that he says is
detachment
isn't
to not own anything of the world,
but detachment is to not let anything of
the world own you.
Right? Does it make sense? Like, you possess
your possessions. Your possessions don't possess you.
You are the one feeling your feelings. So
So you have to be bigger than your
feelings in order to be the one that's
feeling them. You don't have to deny them,
you can celebrate them. But to get to
a place where you can actually celebrate sadness,
celebrate grief,
celebrate anger, you have to pay attention to
the place that these things live.
Just like you're not any one of your
thoughts because then who's thinking the thoughts? You
get what I mean?
And in the last, like, day or 2
of Ramadan,
the idea
for Muslims
is that they now have some element of
enhancement
to this. Whether they're aware of it or
not, it's there.
They just fundamentally
now can make a decision. Like, you will
want to make a decision.
Am I going to reflect on this consciously
or am I going to just let it
be something that I experience unconsciously?
Like, I drink the water. I don't know
what it's doing to my body, but I
don't have to know what it's doing to
my body.
But then the challenge is when it comes
time to find meaning from something,
you can really easily deflate yourself
and you can start to hate yourself for
drinking a cup of coffee which is a
normal thing to do. But the ability to
find more meaning in it is not an
outward process. It's an inward process. That's what
Ramadan is seeking to bring to its practitioner.
Do do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
Okay. We're gonna take a pause from next
week. It's not gonna be Ramadan anymore.
Right? So for those who it's their first
time here on Wednesdays,
of like the weekly classes and hallakas that
we do discussion groups at the
IC, I do one on Monday nights that's
just open to everybody and everything's open to
everyone.
On Tuesdays, Doctor. Murmur who many of you
probably met on Tuesdays upstairs,
he does a program, he's gonna continue that.
Those all start at 6.
On Wednesdays, Doctor. Madhwa who's one of our
staff psychologists
will do something at 6. And then this
program
will be at 7 o'clock in this room
starting from next Wednesday, and we'll kind of
continue at 7
until mid May.
And then we'll kind of reassess what we'll
do because the building hours will change.
But it doesn't mean we'll stop. We just
might shift it a little bit earlier because
the building closes earlier. Sheikh Fawaz Jafar will
do something on Thursdays,
and
Fridays, we tend to leave open,
for different things, and there's other programs that
are happening.
So this is like a typical Islam 101
class that we do. It's for people exploring
Islam,
people who are recent converts, people who might
have converted some time ago,
as well as people who are born into
Islam but are trying to reconnect usually here,
we'll be here at 7,
And if you know people who are usually
here,
we'll be here at 7 next week instead
of 6.
So Ramadan is gonna end this week, and
it'll go back to, like, a different schedule.
Yeah. Does that make sense? Okay.
This Friday,
we are gonna be hosting our Eid prayers
in Washington Square Park. You're more than welcome
to attend.
We'll start getting people seated at 8 o'clock
and then at 8:30,
we'll start with the prayer service.
Once that's done, we're gonna have a brunch
that's open to everybody
that'll be on the 10th floor of the
building next door. It's very large open space
that many of you've been in. We've done
Iftar
there in Ramadan
sometimes.
Tonight, we're gonna actually be there for Iftar.
If you're sticking around for that, that's the
space we'll have brunch in. If you have
children in your life, like, bring them, bring
anybody, your families. But during the brunch, we're
gonna also have special things going on for
kids,
face painting, balloon making, cupcake making, ice cream,
sundae making.
You also can jump in the line. We
won't tell you that you can't get some
of those things as well, But that's gonna
be happening. We'll wrap that up probably around
like noon ish.
We'll still have our Friday prayer service here,
the Jummah prayer, and that'll be in this
building on the 5th floor.
Then I think at 4 o'clock
our converts group, our conversations group, they're gonna
be having a special get together for converts.
So if you're someone exploring Islam,
as a non Muslim,
you are somebody who is a convert to
Islam,
or you're a family member of somebody who's
a convert to Islam, you know, relationship with
somebody who's a convert to Islam,
That event would be for those 3 categories,
particularly,
and they're gonna,
I think, go to
a bowling alley in Brooklyn.
There's already, like, a few dozen people who
have signed up for that So definitely join
in. It's a nice kinda
event to be a part of. And then
in the evening,
we've rented out a bowling alley in Midtown,
but space is limited there.
And that's for anybody to attend. So if
you're looking for people to hang out with
on Eve in the evening, New York can
be like a very transient city,
can be also at times a very lonely
city. So definitely come and join, recommend to
your friends. People are just having some fun
things to do during Eid,
and that'll all be on Friday
starting at 8 in the morning and going
through the duration of the day. You can
come and go to whatever it is that
you would also like to go based off
of your schedules,
but we'd love to see everybody there. Okay.
Does anybody have any questions or anything before
we wrap up for today?
Yeah. Did this make sense, like, what we're
talking about?
So whether you come next week or not,
we'd love for everybody to come. Just you
wanna pay attention to yourself and your entirety.
You know, you're not like the logos of
the clothes that you wear.
Right? You're not the ornament on the hood
of the car that you drive. You're also
not just like the job title you have
or the degree that you've been given. There's
so much more that makes you who you
are. And I asked you this question, right?
Like where do your memories exist?
Where do your feelings exist?
Where is this source like the starting point
of certain things in your personality, your demeanor?
You wanna start to get acquainted with these
parts of yourselves
so that where and how proactively
you can kinda
make malleable
getting to goals that the default isn't that
you're bad in your initial state, but what
Islam posits is that you're good, but good
people can be better.
Right? That you have growth even if it's
gradual.
But if you start to just
stop paying attention to things,
doesn't mean that they're not there and then
other things are just going to in their
own course
be what it is that starts
to define and dictate
kind of their presence in your decision making.
Do you get what I mean?
Okay. So let's take a pause here. People
can put their chairs back against the wall,
and then we're gonna head up to the
10th floor.
Has anybody not been to the 10th floor
before?
You have not? Great. So can someone help
her get to the 10th floor, and we'll
all just reconvene up there.
And,
will be in, like, 15 minutes. There's a
brother who's gonna take a shahada also.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you. It's just the end. MBU
Soccer College.
It's right here.
Thank you,