Khalid Latif – Pursuing the Higher Self The Book of Assistance #14
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of creating a structure and routine to achieve holistic well-being and personal growth, including prioritizing one's time and finding one's own success in pursuing interests. They also stress the need for structure and routine in one's routine to avoid overwhelming behavior and suggest creating a habit to focus on one's life. Success is defined as balancing one's routine and personal life, with action encouraged, and a framework for one's routine and personal insecurity is recommended. The speakers emphasize the importance of intentionality and regularity in setting Shaitan's entry points, as well as setting a routine and intentionally spending time to find value in one's time.
AI: Summary ©
So we've been looking at a text, it's
called the book of assistance
by Muhammad Haddad, It's
a
book on spirituality
within our tradition
and
this text has
a unique
kind of structure and that it's very easily
digestible chapters
that
lay out a road map for
the reader
to approach their own spiritual growth.
We're on the 5th chapter. If you wanna
Google,
search for the book of assistance PDF,
so you can pull up the text. We've
been reading it together,
and we'll be able to kinda continue with
this 5th chapter.
Right? And the idea for us in our
tradition is that spirituality is not something that
is seen separate from religion,
but religion, spirituality,
ethics,
you know, these three
things, they synergize and they have overlap.
And if you've missed some of the first
few classes
that we've done or, like, the last few
months
rather. They're all online. You can catch up
to them. We're going through it piece by
piece just so we can extrapolate meaning and
not just understand things on a theoretical, but
also on a practical level,
for our own kind of capacity to to
implement things.
And so, where we started last week
on a chapter on regular devotions,
Awrad, having a wird,
And today, we'll look at what that is.
This chapter is a little longer than other
chapters. It's still only a few pages, but
instead of reading it kind of the way
it's written,
we're gonna jump to a part that helps
to give a definition of what a weird
is in the first place. Because likely,
many of us haven't had that relationship with
the idea of a weird in and of
itself.
You'll see that there's not a lot of
complexity to it. It's something that is pretty
straightforward
and then we'll jump back to the middle
passage
where he's essentially
emphasizing the need to have this and in
what way.
Do people have the text open?
Yeah.
Great.
So if we can just start reading from
the beginning again,
just so we can kinda submit
and,
we'll go from there. Somebody wanna start from
the beginning? You must fill up your time.
Oh,
no. Did you wanna read? Are you looking
for Mount Cheerne la? Yeah. Yeah. No. Not
You can't I mean, definitely read to yourself
if you like. But if somebody wants to
read out loud to the rest of us,
we just read to you. No, it's okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go for
it. Yeah. Anybody wanna read out loud? You
must fill up your time.
What chapter? Chapter 5.
Yeah, go for it. On regular devotions, you
must fill up your time with acts of
worship so that no period of time lapses
whether by night or by day without being
used in some act of goodness.
This is how the Barakah within time is
made manifest. The purpose of life fulfilled and
the approach to to God, the exalted, made
constant.
You keep going.
You should allocate specific periods of time for
your habitual
activities, such as eating, drinking, and working for
a livelihood.
Know that no state can be sound in
the presence of neglect, and no wealth useful
in the presence of heedlessness.
Great. So last time when we were looking
at just these first few sentences,
the idea was to first recognize
the importance of having structure
rooted in time management to begin with. Because
time management is essentially self management
and so much of what goes into our
own
spiritual increase
is rooted now in the idea of us
being able to both
harness time in a meaningful way,
but to
also understand that it's not actually that difficult
to increase
barakah in your time.
Right? If you're at Jummah on Friday, we've
been talking about Ramadan,
and mentioned that Uthman ibn Affan radiAllahu an,
he could do a complete khatam of the
Quran
in one day in Ramadan. That that was
his practice. He would read the Quran in
its entirety on a daily basis.
That there were some people who would read
it within 3 days,
some within 7 days, some in 10 day
allotments.
And it's the same 24 hour day, but
one of the ingredients
to increasing
blessing
and a consequence
of blessing is that you can do more
with the time that you have.
Right? These are not things that we're supposed
to just think about theoretically
or kind of idealistically,
but the relationship between the physical and the
metaphysical
is rooted in things that empirically you might
not be able to demonstrate, but they're still
truths nonetheless.
And one of the spiritual truths in our
tradition
is that Barakah is actually a real thing.
And that there are
ways and methods through which we can increase
our buddakah, our blessing.
So if you remember in the last 2
Jumu Akutbas Who was here for Jumu the
last couple weeks?
Yeah.
So I mentioned the hadith in both, right,
where the prophet alaihis salam, he says the
sahru
that takes
suhoor. Right? Have the meal
before
you start your fast, the pre dawn meal.
And then he continues and he says,
that indeed in Sarhur, there's barakah.
There's blessing in it. So even if you
take a sip of water,
it's
not rocket science. Right?
It's a very simple
act
to increase Barakah. Do you get what I'm
saying?
So
the vehicle to the attainment of it is
only yielded through the performance of the act
itself. You wanna have the barakah that comes
from eating suhoor,
then you gotta have suhoor.
Right?
So, Imam Al Haddad, what he's saying here
is that a key ingredient
to increasing
blessing in your time
is to have structure to your routine.
You have structure to your day.
You know that this is when I'm doing
this. This is when I'm doing that. This
is when I'm doing this.
You build now
a sense of structure
that then allows for there to be consistency.
There allows to be enhancement.
Do you see what I mean?
If you remember last week we talked about
this
and I was talking about or 2 weeks
ago, I wasn't here last week. But 2
weeks ago, we talked about it in the
sense of if we say, we don't have
time, what we're essentially saying is that it's
not important to me.
And that doesn't mean you have to be
defensive, but you're essentially showing what the priority
is
based off of how you utilize the minutes
of your day. Right? How you spend time
literally in in ways that you can understand
about yourself through yourself.
You see what I mean?
Does that make sense?
None of the rest of this is going
to necessarily
resonate if this concept is not something that
we build a relationship with, you know?
He's so cute.
Alright.
I don't know how many of you have
been here for, like, super long, but
last time
I said
that this beautiful boy reminds me of my
daughter when she used to run around because
she also had this curly hair and wearing
things, and then I said, you know, this
beautiful girl, and then mom said, he's a
boy. I said, oh, yeah. Course.
Yeah. I'll show it.
So, my bad.
So,
we're in a place where structure and routine
is a key part to this
and words that you want to build a
relationship with aspirationally,
not words that you take on in a
sense that you're demotivated
because you self deprecate,
but a big part of this chapter is
going to be rooted in discipline
and a discipline of the self.
One that allows for there to be a
sense of how do I create some of
this structure to my routine
that it's not purely about my hours are
rooted simply in the acquisition of things that
are outward or materialistic,
but there's a deliberate sense of me creating
a structure that prioritizes
what I know for my holistic well-being. So
this is where before
he talks about the weird,
he says, you gotta have designated times
for your eating, for your sleeping, for your
livelihood.
You're not just in this place where it's
either or, but these are necessary components.
So thinking within your own
day and routine.
Do you wake up at the same time
every day?
Do you go to sleep at the same
time every day?
Are you orienting your meals around a structure
on a daily basis?
A lot of you in this room wake
up at a certain time because someone has
told you you need to get up at
that time. Some of you don't even wake
up at that time. Right? I was a
student at this school. I literally was late
to every single class if I even went
to class. Right?
And you can work remotely rolling out of
your bed, getting to a place where everything
now is just last minute,
and there's no fundamental
routine
to it.
There's a hadith that describes the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam
where Aisha radiallahu ta'ala Anha
identifies him in terms of his nature, his
characteristic quite often.
And so in one of these narrations, she
says, kana amalahu dima,
that his actions were consistent.
But the word dima,
it refers also
in its most literal sense in Arabic
to kind of a gentle rain that falls
in the early morning,
which is what makes like the the world
green,
you know.
So the consistency of the acts being rooted
in this word, it denotes also that that
was a source of nourishment.
It allowed for there to be a different
source of sustenance
through this principle of consistency,
and consistency
is not going to be yielded without
structure.
You see what I mean?
What makes it hard
to have structure to our routines?
What makes it difficult
to get to a place where my days,
they have a presence of
my conscious awareness of what's a priority?
And I want you to not think about
this just in terms of the hours that
I spent in a workplace that yield me
a check, a degree, credentials.
Even if that's on a pathway that is
for me to be an amazing candidate, to
be a spouse, all of it is still
rooted here. I'm talking about looking at the
structure of your routine,
even in relation to that.
But in addition to so much,
what makes it hard? Why do you wake
up at a certain time Monday through Friday,
and you're so exhausted at the end of
it? This Saturday and Sunday, you sleep till
the most random of hours.
All it's doing is disrupting your routine and
making you more restless and tired. That's on
a physiological
basis. But you choose how to use your
time. Right?
So what makes this difficult and what can
bring ease to it?
Because
you can decide for yourself,
like, where the barakah
is presented to you as an option,
why would I not do it this way?
What gets in the way? Does the question
make sense? So if you can turn to
the persons next to you, ideally in pairs,
no more than 3, Introduce yourselves to the
people and actually talk about it. Right? And
I know because we had one person say
it's their first time here. For some of
you, it's gonna be your first time. For
some of you, you might have been here
before. If you don't yield to the process,
you're gonna get to a place where you
don't benefit from everyone else's insights, and we
don't benefit from yours.
Right? There's many things that we all experience
collectively
and individually somebody might be struggling with what
it is that you can uniquely shed light
on, but when you talk to each other,
if you talk about everything else, that's just
shaitan
just not wanting you
He's the one that made you in the
first place. So he's the one that's going
to tell you this is how it is
that you can function with contentment in this
world. Right?
And so having routine, having a structure is
important
before we can then interject into it a
regular wird
because then you're just gonna have a haphazard
implementation of this thing. Do you see what
I'm saying?
So what gets in the way? What makes
it difficult?
And if you have opportunity to talk about
what makes it easy for you, right, on
the other end, you talk about that for
a minute and then we'll come back and
discuss, and then we'll continue from there.
So what are what are some of the
things that we're talking about?
What makes it difficult? What gets in the
way?
Do you even buy into it? The idea.
What do we think? Who wants to start?
Yeah.
Well,
when you have other people in your life
that are depending on you and that have
different needs, different structures
to their day,
It's hard to anticipate
what they're gonna need at any given moment.
Stuff happens all the time that
you may plan to have
certain times in your day allotted for certain
tasks,
whether they be spiritual,
religious, or at work,
but then
somebody may have somebody to be sick, somebody
needs to have their homework done, somebody needs
a bath, somebody needs you know, there's always
other people's needs
that,
come to the forefront.
So the challenge is how do you
how do you stick to a structure that
you've created
just based on your own needs when you
have so many other people's needs that you
have to,
you know, tend to as well.
So what's the answer to that? That's an
amazing insight.
Right?
Because it's really easy to get wrapped up
in somebody else's routines,
you know.
How do you kinda distill this?
Any thoughts?
So I'll give you an example. I was
teaching a graduate class in Chicago
to people who
are studying to become chaplains.
And one of the first things that I
said to them
in this class that was about kinda
providing,
care in crisis situations, you know, people dealing
with trauma,
all kinds of
relevant events that yield trauma.
A principle that I said to them is
that,
you can't feel guilty
about saying no to somebody when they ask
you for something.
Do you understand?
There's no way you can say yes to
every single person always.
It's just not fundamentally
possible.
There's Hadith,
Al Adbul Mufrad,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is described
as someone who when he was asked for
something, he never like said no to anybody.
And when you look at that at a
surface level, you go, wow. How do you
do that? But the way we're taught this
hadith
isn't about
the idea that you just run on empty
and you say yes no matter what,
but that the prophet
would not leave somebody without referring them to
somebody else.
Do you understand?
It's real easy
to have guilt be the motivator
for why you do what you do
and you feel bad when you have to
say no to someone,
it's very different than having love be the
motivator for what you do
That still has a sense that I want
to do for you,
but
you're not inadequate
if you're in a place where it's beyond
your capacity.
There's not limits. There's not boundaries.
Everything then is a different version of what
he's gonna say next where it's you're not
supposed to be like cattle.
The consequence of this is that you lose
contentment and balance inwardly.
Even if the spontaneity
is based in reaction to somebody else's,
you're still just waiting for whatever comes
to plan your day. It's like letting your
inbox plan your day. Your email is telling
you how to live your day as opposed
to you bringing structure to your day. You
know what I mean? So I wake up
in the morning and I can anticipate
emergencies,
crisis situations
that are
abnormality
in the course of a routine.
But a routine nonetheless,
that has to have
some type of boundaries and balance to it
that allows for me to recognize
what my capacity is in a given situation
and that sometimes it's okay to say no.
That, no, I cannot be here or do
this thing for you without you having to
feel guilty about it. Do you see what
I mean? Does that make sense?
Does it?
Yeah?
And it's a really important thing to understand.
As a caregiver,
you want to always be in a place
where you can anticipate
that I'm just gonna be there for the
one that I'm providing care to. You can't
take care of somebody's heart if you're not
taking care of your own heart. And eventually,
you're gonna get to a place where the
burnout is gonna impact, and then you're gonna
have signs that say like things are all
over the place.
And then the hecticness that was already there
is not going to have suddenly order brought
to chaos
because other people's chaotic lives now rendered you
to be chaotic, right?
Applies in a lot of different ways, right?
That an individual
is on the dean of their friends, so
be careful who you befriend.
If everybody around you is without structure and
you allow for that to be the defining
variable,
then you define your life through that. If
you don't design your life, someone else is
gonna design it for you. But if you
say that I'm going to be the one
that rides this out, and over the next
3 months is going to be hectic because
everybody's going to yell in my face. You
didn't do this for me. Why are we
doing this? All these kinds of things. That's
fine. You bring order
by being the influential
friend that impacts other people's lives and starts
to bring some type of order to their
routine. And then if they didn't get it
done, they didn't get it done.
My daughter wakes up in the morning and
she says, I didn't do my homework last
night. Well, that's not you. Right?
I'm not gonna do your homework for you.
Do you see what I mean?
And that's not me
not helping her in that moment. Right?
When she's sitting down and she's engaged in
all different kinds of things, an absence of,
like, focus because fun is present,
she's still gotta get done what she has
to get done.
If there's an emergency situation,
I gotta go pick her up from school.
That's something that, yeah, has to happen,
but they're 2 very different realities in that
circumstance. Do you see what I mean? Does
that make sense?
None of it in any scenario is gonna
feel good
if guilt and exhaustion is the motivating factor.
Right?
Mahabah
has to be like a key part to
it. And sometimes, the most loving thing you
can do is not enable somebody else's bad
habits.
Do you see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
What else gets in the way? What else
makes it difficult?
Social media.
Social media. How does it do that?
It loses your focus.
Like, if you're already distracted,
and then you lose anxiety
constantly.
It gets addicted and hits dopamine in your
brain and it's a reward.
And it's sort of there's a point where
it feels the free time in your day,
like, where you're more distracted and then something
comes up on on your feet and it
just catches your attention and you start thinking
about it. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of
people can relate to this. What else gets
in the way? What makes it hard to
have structure?
We're just gonna watch this new show on
Netflix. It's so good. You watched a new
show on Netflix? Yeah. What was it? The
New Amsterdam.
Oh, yeah? And then, like, I don't know
what happened to like 5 hours. It is
good. Is that what you said? It's so
good. You watched it for 5 hours straight?
That takes a lot of
strength. I didn't know that was 5 hours
straight. Yeah. I messed up my schedules.
Somebody else had their hand raised? Yeah. Yeah.
A couple of things. So I feel like,
for 1, social life because we all wanna,
like, hang out and do things and, you
know, go out and stuff. And then kinda
like off of the
the TV or the social media, I feel
like activities where you can you feel like
you're resting, but, like, your brain is off.
Right? Like, I just feel like I need
to relax for a moment and that moment
turns into 5 hours.
So I feel like,
when we might feel like we're resting, it's
like brain off activities,
but really now it's, like, 1 AM and
I need to be up at 10, like,
8 o'clock and then I think that gets,
like, it, like, confuses our brain to be,
like, I'm resting, but really, you're, like, taking
up actual rest time with
other people. So let me ask you this.
In these last two kinda
comments, right,
why can't that also be structured into your
day?
Like, you can't have a depiction of yourself
that says you can't watch TV.
You can't socialize.
Right? I hang out with people a lot.
Alhamdulillah. I I do. I was with some
of my friends yesterday.
We were having
lunch after my kids' Sunday school
and we were talking about different things and
they said some of their friends were like,
you hang out with Khaled? And they said,
yeah, all the time.
And they were like, he hangs out with
people? I was like, what do you what
do you think of what?
I'm not a loser. Like,
I have friends too. Thank you. You know?
But you can structure those things. There's a
there's a plan to it. Do you see
what I mean? Why can't these things be
added to a routine?
And that's the whole idea. Right? They're not
absolutes that are rooted in an either or.
If anything, they're a necessity
and it's a both and, but you're bringing
into it
a structure that now allows for you to
also say, here's a start time and here's
an end time to something
with like buffers that are reasonable.
Right? But nobody's going to tell you watching
TV is a a problem
other
than the issue here is not like that
I don't know what this TV show is
about, you know, but the the
the issue here isn't like watching television.
The issue here is like how did my
time escape me.
Right?
And why is there why is it hard
to have structure around it? You see what
I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
It does.
Yeah. So what what's the challenge here? Yeah.
I do still feel like there's, like, unexpected
things that come up in life. Right? Like,
your train is, like, delayed 20 minutes
or, like, things that just, like,
prolong your day or make them more exhausting
that, like, are unexpected. Obviously, things are gonna
come up. So I feel like for me,
that's what makes it really difficult to be,
like, man, like, today was really hard. Like,
I'm extra tired today. So, like, that puts
me out of my, like, trying to lean
up routine. Like, I need to sleep extra.
I can't wake up early to, like, have
a nice, relaxed morning. I need to, like,
wait until the last
minute to get as much sleep and rest
as I can before I start my day.
How many days in your week are like
that?
At least a couple, I feel like. Great.
That's a problem though. Right? And I'm saying
you would love
if 2 out of 7 days in a
week
render
you
extra tired as opposed to tired?
The idea that there's like exhaustion
and mega exhaustion are the only two options
are in and of itself like a problem
to begin with. Do you see what I
mean? Why are those like the only 2
yields at the end of the day? You
know, I slept a lot this morning,
but that was because over the last 2
days, I was in Buffalo
and I caught a flight out at 5
AM
so I got up at 3 AM to
get to the flight from Buffalo back here.
My kids had a presentation in their Sunday
school they didn't want to miss. And then
I had to pray Fajr
and is it not a good idea, but
I just didn't feel like making wudu like
multiple times. So I made Wudu and got
on my flight and Fudger wasn't coming in
for a while, so I stayed awake the
whole time and I was like super awake.
When I landed,
Fudger had just came in
in New York City and I prayed, but
now I was more awake now than anything
and so I I like had slept
probably
6 hours
over 2 nights, right? Not a good habit
but it's not regular.
So, yeah. Like, I slept a little bit
more this morning. That's not the norm, right?
Even when I travel, it's not the norm.
If anything, I had planned to catch a
later flight knowing the hours that I was
going to be up the night before
and because this thing came up with my
kids presentation,
that was fine. You see what I mean?
That's not what I'm hearing here, right? It's
also not you're not the only person that
brings this up consistently in a given week.
The number of people that I talk to
who just
are no self care
and everything is just running on exhaustion.
It becomes the root of like ill tempers,
just really heavy emotions,
constantly feeling overwhelmed,
like being in a place where there's just
dread, You know, a sense of just like,
everything is just
like, numbing as well as agitating simultaneously.
And, like, why is that like the reality?
Do you see what I mean? Do do
you get what I'm saying? Right? And I'm
saying it both out of love as well
as concern.
Those are not like the
normal
kind of feelings we should be ending a
day with,
you know?
Like the verse that says,
you know, that's telling us you work. Right?
You get free and that you still keep
going, but it's still rooted with a sense
of like self care and self love.
Not this idea that you just run yourself
into the ground,
like, and then maybe the next day, you
know, your head didn't hurt. So that was
like a sign that it was a little
less strenuous than the day before. Do you
see what I'm saying?
It's a long winded way of saying like,
a part of what's gonna make it hard
is
why are you pursuing the things that you
pursue during the course of your day?
Like, what's it all about in terms of
what you're chasing after fundamentally
during, like, the crux of your day? You
see what I mean?
And is it worth it?
Is it really worth the peace of mind
that you give up? Is it really worth
like the contentment and balance of your heart?
Do you see what I'm saying?
Right?
Yeah.
I'm an RA. Like, I'm trying to do
all these things, and I'm also still trying
to make time
for my team. Like, being here, like,
Well, it's a hard pill to swallow,
but inevitably, if you say yes to something,
you're also gonna say no to something else.
It's gonna catch up to you at some
point. Right? And you can do all of
those things and still be in a place
where let's use a different word from exhaustion
because sometimes the exertion
of oneself
in meaningful ways throughout the course of one's
day is gonna render a time at the
end of the night that makes sense to
go to sleep, right? Those are like normal
responses.
The added elements
of like stress,
anxiety,
being in a place where it has you
like running ragged,
those are signs of things that are problematic
and each one of us is different from
everybody else.
So, the intentionality
that comes to this, why Imam Al Hadad
has Niya in the second chapter,
that you are constantly going back to saying,
why am I doing what I'm doing? And
is it getting me to the broader objective?
So if you're in college and you're doing
x y or z things and you know
that it's going to yield you at the
end of it something,
that it has like a time frame to
it, right? When I have children, you know,
like we have this beautiful child running around
here, that law make him from the righteous
and understanding
that he's not going to be that age
for the rest of his life.
And so, in the
decision to choose to have a
child, you're choosing also to understand that you're
not gonna sleep throughout the whole night. You're
choosing to understand that it's gonna change up
like your social activities.
But you also have room to understand
that at some point, those constraints stop.
And then it's not about necessarily,
like,
what is this thing that's without purpose?
But it's a means to still something at
the end of the day. Right? It's still
bringing you to something. You want to become
a doctor? Then be ready to pre med
and MCATs and med school, and residency,
and fellowship,
and, like, all of this other stuff. But
at the end of it, it's going to
still have a point to it.
I'm not saying that bringing structure to your
day is about, like, being in this place
where
you have to come sit in a circle
like this
for like your spirituality.
You can make the pursuit of being an
RA
fully about your dean.
You can make the pursuit of a medical
degree
fully about the state of your heart. They're
not meant to be separate. They're meant to
be in a place where they can coexist.
That's what our religion posits at the end
of the day. Do you see what I'm
saying? And nobody
is gonna be busier than the messenger of
God, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. But he still has
contentment.
The consequence of using your time
in this way
shouldn't assume
misery
at the end of all of it. That's
what I'm trying to say.
What's the missing piece
that creates
misery?
Like, why is that like a part of
this that then has us saying like, Yeah.
You know what? Just when I'm totally on
empty, I'm just gonna sit and binge watch
something. As opposed to on my terms.
Saying, I'm clearing out my calendar and all
I'm gonna do today
is sit and watch this show for 5
hours.
Do you get what I mean? Do you
see the difference in the two scenarios? Does
that make sense?
What do you think?
I guess I didn't think of, like
oh, I felt like
the like, my life doesn't have to be
separate. Like,
this half of my day has to be
about Dean and the other half
of
I think, like,
like, it's just so complicated
and busy.
I'm kind of busy talking about it today.
Yeah. And if we use like different words,
busyness is not the same as distracting.
Right?
And a society that teaches you because it's
heavily laden and consumer driven
kinda
points of engagement, that like your happiness is
in buying these things that we sell to
you. Your beauty is in being able to
adopt like what we instill within you psychologically.
This is what success looks like. Do you
know what I mean? How much money is
actually enough for you? You have to answer
that question.
Why are you killing yourself in pursuit of
some of these things? You have to sit
and ask yourself that question, right? And recognizing
then within oneself,
like where am I bringing into my routine
things that are structured
that I can look in my schedule and
say, this is about me and this is
about my self care. This is about my
spiritual self, my emotional self, my mental self,
my physical self. What Imam Al Hadad is
positing
is that if you bring structure,
it's going to create Barakah.
If you have a routine
and you say, I'm gonna eat at this
time. I'm sleeping at this time. And you
have
discipline to be able to yield to those
things. As you create habits and break out
of other habits,
you're gonna be able to do more with
less.
That's like the equation. That's what Barakah offers.
You're gonna be able to do more with
less.
It's gonna stretch. This is why the prophet
alaihis salaam could I'll give you an example
from the hadith. They get a
gift of milk, Abu Hurairah is with the
prophet, there's other companions there,
and the prophet says he's gonna share this
milk with everybody. And Abu Hurairah says in
the hadith, that I was hoping that he
didn't pick me
to pass the milk around because then he
realized he would be the last one to
get to drink the milk.
Right? And so the prophet picks him to
drink, to pass it around. So he goes
to all of these grown men companions,
and they're all drinking this milk.
It's not like this large thing. It's just
this vessel of milk.
Then the last person to drink remaining is
Abu Herrera
and the prophet. And he gives it to
the prophet and the prophet says, you drink
first. And Abu Herrera says, to his astonishment,
not only was he able to take a
full sip, but he was able to take
multiple sips, and there was still milk left
for the prophet. He satiated himself
from something. So why there's hadith that say,
food for 1 is enough for 2, and
food for 2 is enough for 4. It's
not that you take a slice of pizza
and suddenly you cut it into quarters,
and one slice is going to be sufficient
in that sense, but the missing ingredient is
the barakah of it. Right? This is what
the the dua is.
That's the dua you make before you start
to eat, right?
Oh Allah make blessed for us
What it is that you have sustained us
with our risk, our livelihood.
Right? And
protect us from the fire. It's all about
Barakah.
So you're in this place where this
fuel now metaphysically
allows for you to take more from less.
Do you see what I mean? That's what
like these people did.
They stayed away from Haram,
and they engaged in what was the farad
because it was about also
It increased
the barakah. It wasn't worth it to do
something that was gonna now diminish
this thing. Do you see what I mean?
Take the blessing away from it. Does that
make sense? Right?
I don't wanna belabor the point.
But on a practical level,
just sit down at the end of tonight,
going into the week, and think about what
your structure looks like. And it takes the
discipline
of the nuffs because there's gonna be people
who are gonna say, let's go out.
And they're gonna
wanna do certain things. You can plan for
this. You know you're gonna go hang out
till 1 o'clock in the morning.
Right? That's fine. Nobody's saying don't do that.
But plan sensibly around it. Don't plan to
miss Isha.
Don't plan to miss Fudger.
Right? Be in a place where you're mindful
of these things. You also are totally fine
to tell people as they continue to do
something, Hey man, I go to bed at
10 o'clock.
That's just what I do.
Because I like to be in a place
where I can yield
the barakah of the mornings.
And that's not for me. The hadith says,
the prophet alaihi wasalam made dua for us
that there is more blessing in the mornings.
The
the morning times have barakah to them. Do
you get what I'm saying? Right?
And then you start to
engage with the other facets of yourself
because our religion isn't about
prioritizing
ritual
over like a sensible strategy for who we
are
as human beings and have basic human needs.
So he doesn't start with
interject into your routine
a structure
around the Orad,
but he says, have a designated time to
eat, and have a designated time to sleep,
and have designated times to work.
That work can't be this thing that just
washes over everything else always.
And it's always the thing
that has to take the priority
and precedent.
This is the time that I work
and this is the time that I do
not work. Do you see what I mean?
That's going to be much harder
than being in a place where you say,
this is when I eat. Because this is
when I eat is also problematic
when it's the quickest thing you can grab
and just sit at a desk when you're
just working more while you eat. Right? Then
you're not eating. You are actually just working
as the priority.
The structure is, this is the priority
at this time. You see what I mean?
And the consequences,
you're not gonna feel
inwardly
just
drained
constantly.
That's okay,
where I can and you know what, the
prayers that we have are great examples.
How long does it take you to pray
Fajr?
Like, in all honesty, you could pray Fajr
in a minute.
Right? But the interjection of a minute of
consciousness
renders now a translated,
like, strength
potentially
that can have you going for so much
more. You go talk to somebody that you
love for like 20 minutes.
It's very different when you're running on empty,
and you don't want to stop doing something
for 5 hours
because the rest of everything just feels so
draining. And this does not feel draining. Why
would I want to stop doing it? Right?
If you're doing it with consistency,
and you're doing it with a sense of
strategy,
then it's gonna be replenishing in the ways
you need it, and you can have a
feasible stop to it from like your own
sense of,
what do I really need for my wellness?
Does this make sense? Right?
So, as an exercise,
you open up a calendar, and you just
start to burn this routine in.
And where you can, you also see like
some of it doesn't take so much time.
Right? You got to start meal prepping in
the beginning of the week. So that you
got 15 minutes to eat. Then you got
15 minutes to eat. That's okay.
You like to take walks? Go take walks
regularly. Doesn't have to be every day. You
like to watch something on TV?
Watch it. That's fine. Right? As long as
you're not watching like crazy haram stuff, you
know. Like, was gonna just impact your heart
in a different way.
Just like you do it, but you start
to bring routine to it and structure to
it. And you implement these other things. Allah
has already told you
that these are the times you pray in
a day.
You have that as a starting point
to base some of these things around. Let's
read the next paragraph,
that he says the proof of Islam. Can
somebody
should read that?
Yeah, go ahead. No. What page are we
on? I have the textbook. We're still on
chapter 5 on regular devotions.
If you're on the 17.
Yeah, page 17, if that's the PDF you're
looking at. Anybody want to read it, the
proof of Islam?
It's titled on regular devotion. Yeah.
That page versus chapter 5? Yep. I can
start.
Sure.
You must fill up your time with So
3 paragraphs down. The proof of it's long.
The proof of Islam. May God spread his
benefits, said you should structure your time, arrange
your regular devotion,
and assign to each function a set of
period of
a set period of time during during which
it is given first priority, but which is
which is does not overstep.
For if you abandon yourself to neglect and
purposefully
to purpose this
as the cattle do and just do anything
that may occur to you at any time
that happens occur to you, most of your
time will be wasted.
Your time is your life and your life
is your capital. It is the basis of
your transactions with God and the needs to
attain
to everlasting
publicity
and the proximity of God be exalted. Each
of your regrets is a priceless
is a priceless because
the replaceable jewel, and when it passes away,
it never returns?
This is a beautiful
definition of what time is. Right?
And the transition has to come from us
just knowing
these kind of beautiful
descriptions
and shifting to a place that says, do
I buy into this?
Is this how I see like every breath
that I have? Right? And the breath is
such a unique
kinda instrument for us because even if you
say Allah,
you have the capacity to say Allah with
every breath.
Right? Just the sources
of the letters.
You have the alif that's coming from the
throat,
the lam now with the fullness of the
mouth, and the is the aspirated
kind of breath as it exits from your
mouth. Right? So within every breath you have
capacity
to actively
remember Allah because it's just the way that
we've been built in your breaths.
In order to
think
what you know about the value of something,
you have to create the time to think
about it in the first place.
And not somebody else's words, but your own
words. Right? When you look in our tradition
and we have a definition of taqwa. Right?
Taqwa is gonna be talked a lot about
in the coming months because this is what
the verse says. Right? Fasting was written for
you as it was for those that came
before you so that perhaps you might attain
this thing of taqwa. Everybody's gonna be talking
about taqwa. There's not just one definition. You
see, Omer Ibn Khattab, he had a definition
of taqwa. Fafyanath Thawri, he had a definition
of taqwa. Hasan Basri, he had a definition
of taqwa.
They're not changing what the word means, but
they've built a relationship
with the term and the concept around it.
Which means they've sat with it and they've
said, what does it mean to me
so that I actualize or pursue it in
my life?
Right?
How do you, as an individual,
know
what time means to you?
Have you ever sat down and really thought
about it? Do you get what I mean?
Like, why is time important?
Why is your time important?
What do you do that gives you an
indication
that your time is actually important?
One of the classes that I teach at
Wagner,
we
base it and frame it off of the
top five regrets that the dying have as
they're about to pass from this world. Right?
A end of life practitioner
and health care, a nurse.
She essentially writes an article that turns into
a book, and she says these were the
top five regrets of the dying in their
last phases of life. Right? In my work,
I go to the hospital a lot.
I've never sat with somebody
who said to me, man, I wish I
have 5 more minutes to go back on
the Internet, or I wish I had 10
more minutes where I could go fight with
somebody again.
Right? Their regret is rooted
in a recognition
of now the days are passing
to a point where they're going to reach
their final state.
And this is now the moment where they're
thinking,
like what did I really do with what
came before me? And the Quran constantly poses
these questions.
Asking about the utilization of time. Like what
your books are gonna look like? What is
it gonna be that's presented?
And how many pages are just gonna be
with things that had no benefit or detriment
to it? There was no acts being undertaken.
Do you see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
It might be the first time you've ever
actually
thought this with someone else
and experienced it,
I'd like for you to turn to the
persons next to you again
and speak about this as a prompt.
Why is time important?
And
how do you
understand its importance through the way that you
use it day to day? Do you hear
what I mean?
Does that question make sense?
And I don't want you to compel yourself
to say the right answer.
Right? Don't say like what is most profound
or quotes like, Imam Ghazali, rahimullah's
quotes here, but like from your own self,
how did you learn about the importance of
this?
And what is it that you
can apply for yourself from a base of
understanding
as a Muslim.
Right? How does it inform your understanding of
time? Not somebody else's definition of time, but
for you
as a believer in this faith, what do
you believe ideally time should mean to you?
And then we'll come back and discuss. So
you can turn to the person next to
you and we'll talk about that and then
come back.
Okay.
What are some of the things we're discussing?
At the home. What Yeah. Go ahead.
So we talked about revenge bedtime procrastination,
which for anyone to know Revenge revenge
bedtime procrastination.
Yeah. What does that mean? So according to
the Sleep Foundation
Yeah. It describes the decision to sacrifice sleep
for leisure time that is driven by a
daily schedule lacking in free time. Uh-huh. And
so it's basically, like, you know that you
need to go to sleep, but you because
you felt like you didn't have enough personal
time throughout the day, you just continue to
waste time even though you know it's gonna
harm you the next day. So we talked
about, basically, like, recognizing that. It's called revenge.
Revenge, bedtime procrastination.
It's a real thing. That's the technical term.
Sounds like a real thing. Yeah.
Recognizing that.
So we talked about that, and then we
also talked about the environment of New York.
Having everything so close to you
maybe gives you a false sense of having
more time that you don't have,
because of the perceived convenience. So we got
deep. Yeah. And this was a hadith. Right?
We talked about it. I think I think
we might not have. But there's a hadith.
It's like apocalyptic
in its
nature. The hadith says that the hour will
not commence until there's a shrinking of
of time. And they say, you know, that
the shrinking is literal.
A 24 hour day could become now a
23 hour and 50 minute day. Right? A
shrinking of time, meaning
tasks that used to take a longer amount
of time to perform now take a shorter
time. Right? A letter
mailed overseas would take weeks, if not at
one point months to go, you know, if
we're looking at this decades ago,
versus
interpretation
is that there's just less buddha in time,
you know, that kinda creates a shrinking of
time, you know.
What else do we talk about? Other groups?
Other than revenge, bedtime,
procrastination?
So we talked about, like, whenever a disaster
happens, like, the the earthquake happened in
there. And everybody, like, can say, and
it just makes it feel like, oh my
god. I I should be, like,
Oh, may Allah make the best of our
deeds the last of our deeds. And make
things easy for our brothers in Turkey and
Syria, and sisters, not just brothers. Yeah.
What did other people talk about? Yeah.
I think,
it's interesting, like, with, like, the perspective of,
like, social media or, like, society versus, like,
maybe what Islam might say about time. Like,
sometimes I feel like
maybe what Islam might say about time. Like,
sometimes I feel like it's like, Yolo, you
only live once, like, what is my bucket
list? What do I need to do before
I die? Versus like,
what should you really be working towards? Because
you know you're gonna die, so like,
how, like, how should you really be spending
your time? Is it like
going down that bucket list or, like, preparing
for the afterlife?
Yeah. And we reframe the question to say,
how should I be spending my time?
Right?
Language is important. You can learn a lot
about yourself just in the way you express
yourself.
When it becomes uncomfortable
to take ownership over something, like your breaths,
it becomes now, I'm gonna talk in the
second person or the third person or a
broader first person plural,
but it becomes really hard to say me.
What am I doing with my time?
Me. What is Khaled doing with his time?
Right?
It's hard when the course of your day
also runs habitually,
and there's not paradigm shifts that are rooted
in the why of what I do, the
things that I'm doing. Do you see what
I mean?
And if you're in a place where at
the end of the day, you have to
sacrifice sleep
because
what you did during the course of the
day
wasn't really enjoyable,
a great thing to ask is, well, why
am I spending my time doing what I'm
doing?
And should I get out of those things
or
is there a way for me to shift
the paradigm to be able to say I
actually like or there's meaning to it that's
necessary.
Right?
A great, like, life tip,
you should sleep well
and you really have to think about this
for yourself.
It's really dumb the way a lot of
people sleep.
Makes no sense.
Really doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
And in the course of the structure of
this, you have to be able to bring
solid routine to your sleep schedule.
And if you have 50 reasons as to
why in your head right now, you're telling
yourself,
I can't do that, then you've already given
Shaitan victory over you.
I know for some of us, it's not
as easy as the rest of us to
to fall asleep and life can get in
the way. We deal with challenges. Relationships don't
work out. Family is real tough. I'm grieving
certain things.
Nobody likes me, nobody talks to me. Right?
These are hard things to deal with.
But there's still modes
through which we can remedy some of this.
And the entire idea here is that what
you seek in terms of contentment
that allows for you to still be sad
or happy because contentment
is not absent of these things. It coexists
with these things.
Require some of these foundational
building blocks to be a part of the
entire process.
Then you don't have to put all of
your self worth
simply in the acquisition
of just this one specific job
or if I'm married or not or have
kids or not, or any of these different
things, contentment comes from within.
Sleep is a big part of that.
But in the reflective mode, I would say,
why is my day filled with things
that necessitate
me saying that I need to use my
nights in these ways where I don't sleep.
Why do you think about what you do
during the days in the ways that you
do?
Are they actually like so kind of abhorrent
that you just need to
not sleep because of the way your day
is? Then like get out of whatever you're
spending your day doing. Why would you do
that constantly?
And if that's not the case,
how do you sit and find some stillness
and you shift the paradigm
of
why do I perceive this in the way
that it is? Do you see what I
mean?
Because then you can get to a place
where you build resentment.
Do you really wanna have resentment
towards
a loved one
that you're a caretaker of during the course
of the day?
Do you really wanna have bitterness
within yourself
towards some of the things that are rooted
in responsibility
or things that are bringing you to another
place? It's not good to have these feelings
inside. Right? Sometimes a change is not outward.
It's an inward change. You see what I
mean?
Right?
Anything else that comes up before we move
on?
I think you brought something up last time,
that stuck with me was,
you said, why should you be, like, mediocre?
Why can't you be, like, higher than that?
Right? Like, so I think we were talking
about how time is an opportunity.
So if you're actually
whatever you're doing
with it or you're not doing with it,
it actually affects, like,
who you are. So for example, for me,
why do I think I should not do
that for careers? Do I think I'm unworthy
of reaching my highest self? Do I think
something I've done in my past that makes
me limited of thinking I could be actually
better than just someone who graced my times
a day. Right? So what is stopping me
from taking the opportunity
to actually wake up a little bit earlier
than fajr and just do the 2 rakat
that could be very easy. What is deep
down in me that's holding me back? Yeah.
And what I'm saying is
answer the questions.
All of you and your responses so far
have posed things at some point
in the form of a question.
You gotta be bold enough to answer the
question.
What is holding me back?
What is informing my perspective?
Why am I chasing after what I'm chasing?
And you just give yourself an answer at
the end of the day. Right?
You have to decide this for yourself.
I did not want to go to Buffalo
this weekend.
No offense to anybody who might watch this
from Buffalo. Right? It's cold this weekend. You
know how cold it was in Manhattan?
Think about how cold it was in Buffalo
where it's already always cold. In addition to
a polar vortex coming in. I didn't wanna
leave my kids. I didn't wanna leave my
couch. I didn't wanna leave Manhattan. There's all
kinds of reasons as to why,
But I still fundamentally know why I got
on a plane and flew there, and I
still fundamentally
woke up at 3 in the morning and
gave up sleep
in order to come back to something.
And those are things that informed prior to,
not after the fact. So I wasn't sitting
grumpy and mopey and irritated and angry
as if it was the biggest burden on
the world
that I suddenly now had to go do
this thing that I agreed to do in
the first place.
But my self talk becomes important
being able to understand it. And did I
get to go do certain things? No. My
kids, I'm facetiming them. They're at like some
birthday party having a great day. Baba, the
food here is so good. You love it.
Like, what are you doing? I'm walking in
the snow. They're like, oh, there's no snow
in where we are Baba. Why is there
snow where you are? Because, you know, my
life sucks. What do you want me to
tell you? No. Like, is that what I'm
gonna tell my kids? Right?
Or am I gonna be in a place
where I understand that my perspective is also
rooted in my inward state and
I'm bigger than any of my thoughts because
somebody's gotta be thinking the thoughts.
Just like someone has to feel the feelings.
Right? You are not any one of them
and you can shift some of this.
Imam Ghazali here being quoted by Muhammad Haddad,
he is telling you essentially,
all of this is encapsulated
in time. He's not pulling it out of
nowhere. The Hadith Jibrael
which is a foundational hadith within the Sunni
tradition of Islam, The angel Gabriel comes, what
is Islam? What is iman? What is ihsan?
Many of you are familiar with this hadith.
Gives to us a dimensional understanding
of our religion.
The three dimensions to it. Islam, iman, and
ihsan.
And then he asks, tell me about the
hour. And the prophet says, the one who
is asking
knows as much as the one being asked.
Right? Tell me it's signed. But that's like
the 4th dimension to all of this.
You have Islam, iman, and ihsan,
and then tell me of the hour. It
encapsulates
it in time.
All of it gets connected to time.
That's what all of this is about.
Stop wasting time,
like, fighting with yourself.
Stop wasting time not apologizing to people.
Stop wasting time carrying grudges in your heart.
Stop wasting time putting off till tomorrow which
you could do today. And where you can
have micro habits, you engage in them. Especially
as we now start talking about the awrad,
these are gonna be things that don't have
to take hours of your time.
They don't have to be things also that
you do simultaneous with other stuff. I'm running
on a treadmill and I'm reading Quran. So
I'm killing 2 birds with 1 stone. No,
man. Run on the treadmill
and then go and sit and read Quran.
Right? That's just a product of this
like hyper
overworked society
that you have to be doing like 70
things at the same time. Do you know
what I mean? Like this is that's not
what our tradition says. Our tradition tells us
if you do one thing, it'll be written
for you 10 times over. Right? You do
this simple thing, you'll get the reward of
it 70 times, like a 100 times. And
this society tells you, you gotta eat while
you are on a zoom and you are
also at the same time like changing your
baby's diaper. Right? None of it makes any
sense whatsoever. And that's why you have to
ask the question.
So you sit down and you renew the
intention
You say, why am I doing this?
And if the answer that you give yourself
doesn't make sense,
stop doing things that don't make sense.
Right?
Yes.
Great.
Let's go to the bottom of the next
page.
We're gonna come back to the text that's
before it.
But so we now start to have a
definition of what a weird is.
And so he says at the bottom of
page 18,
urad usually take the form of superogatory
prayers,
Quran recitations,
the acquisition of knowledge,
invocation,
dhikr, or reflection, fiqr.
Right? These are, like, specific
kind of things you can identify. This is
what makes up a word.
Quranic recitations,
prayers, adhqar, dua, and and we'll look at
different examples in the coming weeks. Right? There's
a well known,
weird that's called, we're the latif. Imam Nawawi
has a weird. There's other, like, aurad we
can look at that scholars from
our tradition are in a place where this
was a regular practice that they engaged in.
But to have a base definition now, this
is what Imam Al Hadad is giving.
This is what the urad are made up
of.
It's particularly
like a spiritual practice. So it's gonna be
made up of things that are ritualistic
within our tradition.
We should now mention some of the properties
with which these religious activities need to be
performed.
He says, you must have aware of superrogatory
prayers
in addition to the textually established ones and
should assign a definite
time for it and a definite number which
you can constantly sustain.
Some of our virtuous predecessors,
may God have mercy on them, had to
wear the 1,000 rakaz each day and night.
Such for instance was Ali, son of Al
Hussein,
may God be pleased with them both. Others
had to wear the 500, 300, and so
on.
The paragraph before the definition of a horad
That's why I said we're gonna jump around
a bit. You have to interject into this,
where if you go back to page 18,
one paragraph before urad usually take the form
of, and then he gives a list of
what those forms are. He says, it is
Satan's way
to entice the seeker, the murid, at the
beginning of his quest to be excessive in
his devotional activities.
The purpose being to make him retreat.
Either by giving up acts of goodness altogether
or performing them incorrectly
and the accursed one does not care with
which of these 2 he afflicts a person,
a man.
Meaning, the ideas that ours is not a
tradition ever. That's about quantified
aspects of things, but qualified.
Not like how much you do, but how
you do what you do. The Farahid,
there's no
like kind of going back and forth on
those. Those are set and structured.
You got to pray them 5 times a
day at their designated times. But when you
are now in a place, there's gonna be
more principles that we extrapolate from. So he's
gonna say in a later chapter or a
later paragraph in this section,
for example, if there's a defined sunnah practice
at a certain time,
then do that instead of doing something that
is not that. You know, so if the
prophet, alaihis salaam,
he
outside and he mentions. Right? The sunnah that
go wrong with the 5 daily prayers. But
if he prayed Ishaq,
like then pray Isharak at that time. Don't
invent a prayer like you do what the
Prophet did. You know, he's praying Qiyam, he's
praying tahajjud.
There's set prescribed practices. There's gonna be other
things that he talks about. But when you
are in a place like, I went to
Mecca and Medina
in June with some friends of mine and
there was nobody there. It was right before
the Hajj
restriction started. We're not allowed to go. And
so we were, Alhamdulillah,
able to go to the Rawdah
for like 2, 3 hours at a time.
Every night we were there because it was
empty
and may Allah enable us to
be with the Prophet, alaihis salaam and the
world beyond this one and bless us to
pray
in
the Rawdutul Jannah again and again insha'Allah, accepted
prayers and it was amazing. So I was
to connect to my friend
and we prayed and we were in our
own world
and
when we were leaving
you know I asked him like, how was
that man? He was like, it was incredible.
You know,
and he said, I must have prayed like
200 rakas
in the 3 hours that we were there.
That's okay to do. He's praying in like
the Rouda, you know. He wasn't in a
place where he was gonna say, I'm going
to only do this.
But he's not creating worship
in the time of tahajjud.
He's just praying more and more and more.
Do you see what I mean? That's what
he means by he says have like superogatory
prayers that you do, but they can't take
the place of what's already
established at certain times and we'll talk about
that more. He's gonna talk about this in
terms of Quran and Dua and Adhkar
but this point is really important.
You're not in a competition with anybody else.
You're not.
There's reasons why in our tradition
there is emphasis to pray your sunnah prayers
at your house like the companions would go
home and pray sunnah because the bar to
entry is not up here. The bar to
entry
is like something that makes it easy for
everybody. So you don't walk into the masjid
and everybody else is like reciting out loud
and you're like, man, I don't even know
Arabic. You know?
Hi.
I wish I had a baby. Everybody make
Dua, my wife will kill me. But, make
Dua
say, Yalla, bless Khalid
with a baby,
cute one.
If you are in this place where you
come in and you let self hate
and self loathing
be an entry point for Shaitan into your
heart. Look at how everybody else is a
better Muslim than me. I'm gonna tell you
something,
everybody's got garbage going on in their lives
across the board,
And most of us are in a place
where we have insecurity with a lot of
different things about ourselves. You are beautiful because
Allah
has
know,
mode. Right?
That you have these basic entry points.
That's what's there, and then you go at
a pace that makes sense for you.
When the companions ask the prophet for advice
on fasting they can do outside of the
month of Ramadan,
he tells them to fast the middle days
of the month. The 3 full white days,
right? When the moods at its fullest. They
say I can do more than that. He
says Mondays Thursdays. They say I can do
more than that. He says then every other
day as was the sunnah of the Prophet
Dawood alaihis salam, he says don't do more
than that. The companion is recorded of saying
that, I wish I'd taken one of the
lesser advices of the prophet.
There's 2 things that we learned from this.
1, the prophet doesn't start from the largest
number of days first,
15 days every other day of the month,
but he starts with 3 days out of
the month. Then he goes to 2 days
a week, then he goes to every other
day. Cause it's about the quality of it,
not the quantity of it. You see what
I mean? Right?
There's literal hadith
where the prophet talks about
how a time will come at the end
of time and there's not gonna be, like,
a lot of Islam in the world.
And the companions ask them, like, asked him,
salallahu alaihi wa sallam, is it gonna be
because we're few in number?
And he says, no. There's gonna be a
lot of Muslims.
There's gonna be so many Muslims.
But we're just not gonna be actually connected
to Islam in that
way. You see what I mean? And may
Allah not make us from amongst those.
Mhmm. The idea is to not look at
success in terms of like
rapidly increasing numbers. That's not what this religion
was ever about, and no prophets tradition was
about that. That's why you're taught about prophets
who had handfuls of followers, or maybe didn't
even have any followers. Because the idea wasn't
a metric of success that said, look at
how many I got outwardly in a certain
way. It was more so about what was
really happening transformationally
inwardly. Do you know what I mean? You
want to be from the Ummah of Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam on the day of
judgment, where he looks at you with pride
and a sense of real dignity that this
is my community.
That's an inward journey. It's not an inherited
journey. You're not just a birthright Muslim. You're
somebody who accepts it
where it's qualitatively
accepted, like from within here. So you go
at a pace that makes sense for you.
This chapter is not about,
man, this was the example that was given,
a 1,000 rakahs. How do I do that?
That's not the idea.
The idea is that you just start reading
like one extra verse of Quran a day.
There's none of you in this room who
could say you don't have time to do
that. In the same way you ask the
question of why do I not do it,
you have to give an answer in the
first person. I don't do this for this
reason.
You see what I mean? When you start
looking at your day, you're like, look at
how much time I spent today
like fighting with somebody. I spent this much
time today like
speaking ill of somebody. I spent this much
time today just sitting down. Like doing what?
You know?
The structure then allows for some of this
at a pace that makes sense for you.
The second thing from that hadith, and we'll
stop there for today, when the companion says,
I wish I took one of the lesser
advices.
The principle
is that when somebody started something, they stuck
with it.
Right?
They asked the prophet for advice
and the prophet says to the companion,
Then, oh, Abdullah,
don't be like so and so and such
and such.
They used to stand in the night.
And then they left, they abandoned the night
prayer. Right? The idea is that you just
stick with what you do. You start fasting
these Mondays,
start fasting, keep fasting to the rest of
your life. Why would you leave it behind?
You read verse of Quran
like read it and then read it every
day. Engage the book every day at a
pace that makes sense for you. You see
what I mean? But qualitatively
bringing your whole presence to it. Does that
make sense?
Any thoughts before we make just a few
announcements on some things?
Questions, comments, anything?
So what I'd love for you to do
is just 2 minutes, turn to each other,
What are some of the things you're taking
away from tonight? And then we'll come back
and discuss, and then a couple of announcements,
and then we'll pray Isha InshaAllah.
So, what are some of the things we're
taking away from today?
Okay. What are what are some of the
things we're taking away from today's conversation?
Who wants to start?
Anybody?
Yeah.
Time is the most important thing in our
life, so we should
utilize it as much as possible as we
can.
Great. Yeah. Go ahead. We talked about,
once we kind
of can figure out what our purpose is,
it's easier to know how to intentionally spend
our time and to find value in our
time that way.
Okay.
Yeah.
So we were talking about, like, a relative
of time. So, for example, like, I talked
about how when I'm traveling, I feel like
time there's, like, so much of that I
could have my time because I'm very aware
of everything and I'm very excited. But,
coming back to regular life, it's really hard
for me to set a routine and try.
But it's and it's because I get bored,
and because, like, things become a little monotonous.
So,
like, maybe framing the way I see routines
instead of being something that's, like, because structure
to me has, like, the connotations of boringness
and and, like, boringness and and, like,
something that's been imposed on me from, like,
school and institutions.
And so looking at it in in a
different framework and a paradigm where it's, like,
actually allowing me to be my female self
instead
of trapping me, which is how I've been
seeing it,
might really, really help me, like, actually be
consistent with my,
Yeah. Amazing.
Exactly. Yeah.
Anyone else?
Yes? No?
So, as we go into these conversations now,
in the coming week on
Yawrad,
Superogatory prayers, which are like your
nawafil
and other things.
Like, the starting point to do what is
additional
necessitates
first doing what is obligatory,
right,
that you're not gonna get to a place
where you do, like, extra nafil or sunnahs,
if you're not doing the Fard. And, so
between this week and next week, just pay
attention to the relationship you have with the
Farahid in your life,
you know. And then, if you are kind
of on point with that, which is hard,
it's a struggle
for for some of us, may Allah make
it easy. Right? Again, you're not in a
competition with anybody else, it's about you trying
your best. Do you you know what I
mean? And then you think about your relationship
with, like, the established Sunnahs through the Prophet
alaihis salam's example. Right? The Sunnam Waqah
that we're taught about, and then you think
about other things in relation, but just pay
attention. It's not about like, let's just run
wild with throwing a bunch of things on
the table. Just pay attention to your day,
like your routines
and start to think about how your day
in its entirety, starting where where Imam Al
Hadad starts. If you don't wake up, for
example,
and
you are you're not fasting, let's say it's
not a fasting day, and you still go
throughout the course of your day not eating
any food. You don't drink any water. The
first thing you put into your body is
like like I landed
from
Buffalo,
I'm talking about Buffalo today. I landed from
Buffalo
and,
at like 6 in the morning, I ate
a donut,
you know, bad idea. And then,
I got to my kids Sunday school
and they had like presentation and other stuff,
we prayed the Zohar. There was a bake
sale going on and
so,
it's like, kids gave me these
broken cookies at the end of the bake
sale. Like, no one needs this, you want
to eat this? And so I, I was
like, yeah of course. I have no self
control. So I started eating all these chocolate
chip cookies. They look like ugly deformed cookies,
but they tasted great, so I ate them.
But like by 2 o'clock in the afternoon,
all I had eaten as a 40 year
old man who had slept for 3 hours
the night before
was a glazed doughnut, a chocolate brownie,
and probably equivalent of like 5 cookies. Right?
Why would I not feel gross the rest
of the day? And why would I not
feel exhausted?
And that's not like a grown up person's
diet. Right? Do you see what I mean?
It's just as problematic to have mindlessness
in which you eat as it is to
not eat anything at all. You know?
So those parts to this are gonna be
critical.
How are you eating? How are you sleeping?
All of you is connected to the rest
of you. How are you building routine
that takes into consideration that you are in
control
of the way you spend your day. You
spend your time.
And you fit in now like a gradual
structure. Because before
we can say we're gonna adopt these new
practices,
you gotta get some of these other things
in check and your physical wellness is gonna
be a big part of this. Right? So
if right now, it seems like you're good
on x amount of hours of sleep,
you're just chipping away at parts of yourself
that 10, 20 years from now, if you
live until that time, Allah knows best, you're
gonna have regret. Like, it doesn't make any
sense. Do you see what I mean? So
between this week and next week,
like, let yourself be vulnerable and really pay
attention
to these things in the course of your
routine. How am I spending
like in terms of the physicality
of the circumstance
in addition
to the Farad,
then we'll pick up from this chapter next
week inshallah.
Assalamu alaykumab tayla. Right.