Khalid Latif – Pursuing the Higher Self The Book of Assistance #23
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So, if people wanna pull up the text,
just pull it up on your phones you
can Google book of assistance PDF,
book of assistance, Imam Al Haddad.
We've been looking at this,
since the beginning of the year kind of
going through piece by piece,
we shifted here for the summer just because
our building space is open only till 8
PM in the summer. We wanna maintain a
space for Iftar.
I think
we'd love to get your feedback just throughout
the course of the night,
you know, how the setup is.
I think one of the things that I
preferably like to change, but it doesn't mean
we have to do it. Right? It's not
a dictatorship.
At least that's not what we tell people.
But,
you know, maybe we'll sit on the ground
next time. It'll be a little bit more
intimate. We'll keep the couches to the side
for those who need the couches, and all
of us will just be seated on the
floor. So it's a little bit easier,
to kinda just see one another and engage
in conversation. But if this works also in
terms of the setup and we're still able
to kinda be as interactive and discussion based
as possible, that'd be amazing.
Stick around for a thought. There's
no kind of restriction time wise in this
space.
My family and I live in this building.
We don't live in this room, but we
live in the apartment right above.
I don't know how many have actually been
to our place, which I apologize.
Pre COVID, we used to have a lot
of people over constantly. And then during the
pandemic,
before I got married, my door wasn't even
ever locked, actually. Right?
And my kids, Mahala, who are now 7
and 10, you're gonna see them in and
out. My son made cookies for everybody.
They have had the interesting experience
where quite often
they run into random men
who say that they used to live in
what is now their bedroom in our apartment
and my son
asked me very
concerned and also innocently,
Baba, how many men have lived with you
in your life? And I said, I don't
even know half the people, they just sleep
in this place, much I love.
But you know, I had a teacher who
told me that a successful community is the
one that knows where their imam lives
and accessibility
is a really big part of the ethic
that we seek to build our community upon.
Right? The idea isn't
to be distant from those that
we're in service of as a community, but
to be able to engage in meaningful ways.
And so I apologize.
This is the first time you've ever been
to this space where you
relaxed substantially,
over the course of the last year for
us to have more gatherings like that,
and to figure out how we can enhance
this experience.
So stick around till the end.
We'll pray Maghreb together. We'll have some food
together.
We're not gonna have artistic pizza today so
it won't be pepperoni pizza or, like, buffalo
chicken pizza. We're gonna order Domino's just to
kind of fill the gaps, but we're hoping
that the Iftar portion of this will be
able to add some kind of potluck element
or diversify
the food options.
Khalid really likes the pizza that we serve
on Mondays Thursdays,
and I've gotten to a point where I'm
so sick of eating pizza that I don't
know what we're gonna do. But,
for tonight, we'll have some pizza again. But
if people have ideas also, you know, we'll
think of things in the area.
But we wanna make it potluck as well
and encourage us to kind of fast part
of the process. Also, I know, Masha'Allah,
that many people maintained
the Monday Thursday fast post Ramadan,
and,
we wanna just kinda build
off of communal support and the Barakah that
comes from it to encourage these habits. But
even if you're not fasting today, stick around
for dinner so that we can still kind
of get to know each other better,
grow as a community in that way,
inshallah.
We'll pray Maghrib probably on that side. If
you haven't prayed Asr yet or you need
to make wudu or use the restroom, in
the back to my left, so your right
in the corner, there's a bathroom,
that you can use just around where that
lamp is at the corner,
and the Qibla is this way facing this
corner here if anybody needs to pray.
So why don't we pull up the text,
the book of assistance, Imam Al Hadad
and we're on chapter 9 on reflection.
And so, for those who aren't familiar with
the text, it's a text on spirituality.
It's really easy to find if you just
Google Book of Assistance PDF, it'll pop up.
And what this text does is it presents
a very easily
digestible
practitioners
in their own spiritual growth.
Islam as a religion doesn't separate
religion, ethics, and spirituality
from one another. If anything, they all synergize
within the broader framework
of this religion
and are in a place where they have
a deep connection to each other.
The chapters that we've looked at so far,
they create now
a sequential order that is this roadmap and
it's important to understand
because as much as you can draw meaning
from them individually,
you also wanna extrapolate
meaning from them to understand how they connect
to one another. Right? It's not a tradition
that is meant to be reductively understood.
We're not people who say that we know
this one hadith and that one hadith and
that's the extent of religion,
but
understanding that Islam is a religion doesn't have
a high bar of
entry for anyone to come into it and
there's a lot that we can understand through
prisms
of what we already know.
Right? So you might have memorized Surah Al
Aklas for example, one of the shorter chapters
of the Quran, and
when we're looking
at a chapter that's on yakeen or certitude,
aniyah, on intention,
on vigilance of the heart, on any of
the things that we're looking at, you want
to be able to enhance the understanding of
that chapter through some of these topics and
concepts. Do you get what I mean? You
wanna see how the chapters
link to each other and not just understand
things
wrotely
in separation,
but to start to understand them in terms
of how they overlap and inform each other's
disciplines
so that that inward and outward are able
to be more cohesive.
Right? We're not meant to be a people
that just pray with our bodies but pray
with our hearts. You say Assal alaykum to
everyone?
These tiny people are my children, Medina and
Kareem
and those are the cookies Kareem
made. And Medina brought dates for everybody also.
Yeah. Alright.
So they're gonna gonna stick around too because
they really like pizza as well.
And so,
you know, we're we're not meant to be
people who just pray with our bodies, but
you wanna pray with your heart and prostrate
with your heart.
Understanding also that the premise of this is
deepening in a sense of spirituality
that defines itself
as a mechanism through which we draw meaning
from the environments around us. Right? We take
understanding and comprehension,
much more. They're signs of things. What we
see in the Quran again and again as
identifiably
Ayat
that are meant to give us a recognition
of comprehension.
It's not something that's intangible
but escapes many because they just walk around
as bodies
and just forms as opposed to having real
presence and depth as we're moving through things.
Are you guys gonna stick around? Yeah? You
wanna sit somewhere?
I can take some chairs. You can take
some chairs from there. You could come sit
here too if you want. Yep.
Does that make sense?
And so, this is a challenge that comes
up, right? We have in our apocalyptic eschatological
traditions, for example, a character that's known as
Dajjal.
Allah protect us from his fitan.
Dajjal is described
in many different ways in the prophetic tradition
and one of the ways he's described is
as being one eyed, like literally as one
eye.
In a more esoteric sense, the understanding of
this is
contrasted to a verse in Surat Al Balad
where Allah says, that
did we not make you with 2
eyes? Right?
And so, the idea of being one eyed
in the physical sense
but
understanding now that this is a apocalyptic
character,
the end of times,
gives us a sense esoterically
that with modernity, as we get closer to
the end of time,
that vision in and of itself is going
to start to become
absent of depth.
That we are supposed to be people who
can see both outwardly and inwardly.
And what a the angelic creature is telling
us is that as you get closer to
the end of time,
people are gonna only be able to see
in one direction. Either outward or inward
but not both ways. The ways that we
as people of iman and people of irsan
aspire to being those things are supposed to
be able to be, right? Then you try
to think about it.
Who can see bigger than somebody's race for
example?
Who's able to see when you go into
Muslim communities
beyond how you dress or you don't dress?
What kind of boxes
do people put you in because of the
accent you have or the accent you don't
have? When we try to understand and make
sense of the world around us, we live
in New York City right now for example,
and people are walking,
us. We live in New York City right
now for example, and people are walking on
the street and they see individuals who are
living on the street,
but they're not asking why do they live
on the street.
You might actually see adult human beings
relieving themselves publicly. May Allah make things easy
for them. You gotta remember
you have a prophet who sunnah is when
a bedouin came and urinated in the masjid
and people got upset, the prophet did not
get upset.
The prophet actually said to them, let them
finish what they're doing, this individual.
When we try to understand
this what is apparent, I can't believe somebody
would do this,
but when you are in a place where
you have a celestial self that's elevated,
you're bold enough to ask the question,
what kind of world is it that is
forcing an adult human being to have to
live in this way?
How come they don't have access to a
bathroom to begin with?
Why are they in a place where processes
of gentrification
that increase rents and all kinds of realities
have cast them out into a place where
there's not even public facilities that they can
engage. Do you get what I mean?
And so, that's why this text is an
important text
because the end result is not something that
is just rote memorization,
right? 2 plus 2 equals 4, here's the
verses of the Quran, I just spit out
in every prayer again and again and again,
but Ihsan,
spirituality
is an experiential knowledge.
It's something that necessitates
one
living and actualizing
what it is that they're actually
taking as information,
and can understand
its place in your life not from a
quantifiable
aspect.
This is how many rak'as I prayed. This
is how many verses I memorized.
This is how many dollars I donated.
But you can gauge this simply from how
do I treat
people? How do I engage
with a sense of etiquette with all of
Allah's creation?
Not just from the smallest
of humans to the largest of humans, but
from the smallest of animals to the largest
of animals, from the smallest of vegetation to
the largest of vegetation,
to people of all walks of life and
every creature having dignity to it. The state
of my heart is indicative
from the choices I make and the way
that I honor the rights of everything that
surround me.
So what we're seeking to do is delve
deeper into this. If you missed the first
eight chapters, it's all recorded. You can find
it online.
We can sit and go through it also
in more detail if you'd like, but we're
gonna move into chapter 9 which is on
reflection. It's called fiqh in
Arabic. This is a chapter that becomes a
sub topic to chapter 5 which is on
devotions,
urad, having a wird.
And having a daily wird, what Imam Al
Hadad is building that chapter off of is
the idea that time management is essentially self
management
and the way that we can increase in
buddha, blessing,
metaphysical
increase,
the ability to do more with less,
one of those ways is by bringing structure
to our routine.
And so, he talked prior to this about
a few different other chapters
that are
things that are subtopics
to this thing of having a daily with.
A set
of litanies,
adkar,
remembrances,
recitations of the Quran,
prayers, etcetera.
So he talked about reciting the Quran daily.
That was the next chapter.
He then talked about the acquisition of knowledge
in chapter 7.
Having a regular
practice of just increasing your knowledge base. He
talks about then in chapter 8 remembrance, dhikr,
which we talked about before
the last few weeks. Now we're going to
move into chapter 9 which is on fiqh
reflection,
deep contemplation.
So if we want to start chapter 9,
can someone start reading for us from the
beginning?
Who wants to read?
I'll read. Yeah. Go ahead.
Should have a word of reflection in every
24 hours for which you should set aside
not one or more hour.
The best time of reflection is 1 in
which are the least preoccupation, worries, and most
potential for the heart heart to be present,
such as the death of the night.
Note the state of one's religious
and worldly affairs depends upon the sound in
soundness of one's reflection.
Anyone who has a share of it has
an abundance share of everything good.
It has been said, an hour's reflection is
better than a year's worship.
Ali, may God,
ennoble his face, has said, there's no worship
like reflection. And one of the Gnostics,
may God have mercy on them all, said
reflection is the lamp of the heart. If
it departs, the heart will have no light.
Okay.
So
this is one of those things that as
a term
can't have ambiguity
to it. Right?
The way that we can
say live stream, can say laptop, you can
say cell phone, microphone,
all us in this room will have a
common definition.
We know
categorically
what it is that's being discussed.
Of humanity
that where we have capacity
to embody as best as we can divine
qualities.
Be compassionate.
But, this notion of Adam being taught the
names of things is that we also have
a capacity
to embody in a human level
divine intellect as best as we can. It
makes us distinct from the rest of creation.
Perception
is something that we can do uniquely,
and here now, the names of things is
what gives us the ability to deepen in
the meanings of things.
The more you have in your lexicon, the
more that it is then you can understand
and comprehend.
Right? Like, if I asked you how you
were feeling, all of you in the room,
most of us would probably say the same
six words again and again.
But the emotions that you feel are 31,000
in number.
So everything you feel is not just sad
ness, or anger, or happiness,
or things like that.
Do you know what I mean?
When we start to misname, or mislabel or
have limited understanding of a word and there's
ambiguity,
it's harder to harness it not because there's
not aspiration,
but because there's not definitiveness
towards what it is that we're seeking. So
if I said to all of you, go
over there.
And then you got up and you moved
in whatever direction you could
and you didn't land where I wanted you
to land, and then I said, well, why
aren't you where I wanted you to be?
You said, well, you didn't really tell us
too much about it, you just said go
there.
That's fundamentally
how it is that we work with language
also.
Right? The way you know concretely 2 plus
2 equals 4 and you know the word
live stream or cell phone with concrete definition,
what does it mean when someone says love
to you?
What does forgiveness mean to you? What does
compassion mean? What does mercy mean? What does
good mean?
They can't have ambiguity. They have to have
concrete definitions.
So I'd like you to do, just turn
to the people around you
and talk this out.
What does this mean to reflect?
What is it that we're talking about when
we're talking about reflection?
If we were to give it a definition
so that we can actually start to build
a relationship with this thing. If you turn
to the people around
you, share your names if you don't know
your names yet, if there's room next to
you on a couch, couch, just let us
know as people come in so they have
more places to sit. But let's talk this
out. How do we define
reflection itself and then we'll come back and
discuss. So go ahead.
So what did we come up with?
What is if we were to define
reflection,
what would we say?
Yeah.
We
talked about just one of, like, the reason
why it's so difficult to define
reflection or to reflect
is simply because, you know, we're just we're
so busy in our daily lives constantly. Like,
we're programmed to do stuff. Right? Like,
quite often on autopilot. So so quite, you
know, so
for us, like,
some people said at the time when they
really, like, drop in and start to contemplate
is either before, you know, sleep
or,
physical exercise.
Basically when, you know, we are not,
when we dedicate a period of time,
like, still to do something whether it's to
work out or to try and rest, this
is when this state of,
reflection just creeps in because that's the only
time when our brain is not overstimulated
with
work or, you know, whatever it is we
have to do. So,
so yeah. So one of the things we
talked about is just
how well, one of the reasons why it's
so difficult to,
to, like, really
reflect, as
Okay. Great.
So understanding what something is
principally by recognizing what it's not is important.
Right? So these are the things that get
away and these are some of the things
that make it a little bit difficult. What
else? Like if we were to make a
definition, right, my 7 year old, my 10
year old comes up to you and says,
what is fiqh?
Right? What does it mean to contemplate, to
reflect? Like, what is this world? Right? If
I went and said to them,
go engage in reflection,
I have to give them some kind of
understanding on what that actually looks like. Do
you get what I mean? Yeah. So what
what is that?
Yeah. Go ahead.
We brought the idea of, like, reflection, like,
the idea of,
a mirror, right? So, remember effects of that.
And,
we kinda just go back and try to
put things together, the idea of, like, actually
analyzing,
like, the things that you experience or specific
things, like,
through, like, your present in a sense or,
like, analyzing your reaction to things, analyzing
your,
like, your life or things that you come
across through
your own experiences almost.
Okay. Great. So there's kind of a analysis
of something,
right? But
here, there's a key characteristic.
It's got to be upon something.
Do you know? You're not just sitting
and engaged in a stillness
that then there's just a vacuum but the
reflection needs to be upon something.
What that thing is
can vary
and we can identify that and distill it
more, but there's something there that the reflection
needs to be done upon.
Anything else characteristically of this?
Yeah.
So we started
something similar. We started with
It seems like we usually have a very
narrow definition
of reflection
and I think you mentioned that we start
with our children when they do something wrong.
Go to your room and reflect over what
you did. So it's usually
you
it's a it's
a time to think about
what you did and how it was wrong
and how you may correct that.
But then we we thought, you know, that's
a very narrow definition of reflection and it
should be beyond that.
And some of the things we touched on
was just
allowing
yourself to change your perspective.
And we just talked about, you know,
a more
cosmic
perspective which might, you know, like zooming out
and
seeing how you're part of something so big
and how you're related to creation.
But then also
zooming in and
realizing
how big and complicated
even you are. Your body and your psyche.
And that might just be the starting point
to
reflecting on something meaningful. It's just I guess
we we were probably just talking about getting
in some zones,
some
depth. But, you know, he's making a big
claim here, right? He says that the Gnostics
say
that
Reflection is the lamp of the heart. When
it departs from it, there's no light in
it.
So, a key element to having luminosity within
tangibly. What do you reflect with?
More tangibly.
What do you reflect with?
Like what part of you do you do
reflection with?
Use of the mind and the heart. The
mind and the heart? Okay. How?
How are the mind and the heart? So
if we were to analyze ourselves
through a
Islamic framework of the self.
Right? You have your physical body, your jasid,
your badim.
You have the ruh, the soul.
You have the nafs, the lower self. You
have irada, sheer will and determination.
You have the kalb, the spiritual heart with
its layers.
You have the Akkad, the intellect. This is
what makes you who you are on a
whole, right? And, it's important to get down
to it at its most fundamental
level. You don't reflect
with your hands necessarily,
right? You don't reflect with your eyes. It's
not a physical
thing. The way that you hold with your
hands,
you don't reflect
with your hands.
And that might seem obvious but it has
to be something that is we now start
to synergize these various responses so far, the
things that get in the way are usually
things that are outward
that prevent an opportunity
for the inward
to do what it's meant to do. So,
if we can agree
that the organs of cognition
are the mind and the heart
and these are the things that if anything
you're going to reflect with, it's going to
be these things,
right? Does anybody think otherwise?
Like, what can you reflect with, contemplate with?
Right? You're gonna use your head, right? You
can use your heart, right?
What when you use those things now,
how do they relate from a reflective standpoint
to the rest of you?
Does the question make sense?
Like can my heart reflect
only on matters of the heart?
Can my heart reflect only on matters of
the mind?
Can my mind only reflect on matters of
the mind or the heart?
Or what are the things that the mind
and the heart can actually
engage
in a thought process
on. Does that make sense?
Like when you think about things,
what are the things that you think about?
Not specifically,
but generally,
categorically,
what is your mind able to think about?
Everything.
Exactly.
So reflection can be on anything.
So when you're in a place now where
the rest of you is connected to all
of you,
you can reflect
not just on bad habits,
go to your room. And quite often that's
not reflection,
that's self deprecation.
Right? And don't give shaythan victory over you.
You don't want to ruminate. All of these
words mean different things. The etymological
root of rumination
is
like rooted in an understanding of how like
cows eat their food. They're just constantly chewing
the cud again and again and again. That's
how people think quite often. They ruminate
on negativity,
the thoughts just weigh you down heavy. That's
not what reflection is, it's a spiritual act
that's meant to give you insight and clarity
on things. We're gonna talk about this in
a minute.
But fundamentally,
you can reflect
on what your ears hear, what your hands
touch, the food that you taste,
the things that you experience,
what you feel,
all kinds of things have the ability
to be reflected upon.
But that doesn't mean necessarily
that we're actually reflecting
on those things,
right?
But the potential is there to reflect on
anything
and when you can start with the broad
base that I can reflect deeply on anything,
then I can start to now think out,
well, why am I not doing it in
the ways that I'm doing. Medina baby,
can you grab some more chairs from the
the closet?
Thanks guys.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Everybody thinks.
Right now, all of you are thinking something.
That's not the goal.
The goal is to not be in a
place
where
the success is to simply think,
right?
Because everybody thinks.
The goal
is to be in a place where you
reclaim the ability
to choose what you think about
and how you think about the things that
you're thinking about. You're not running on autopilot.
You're not going just in default settings.
You're not meant to be a body that
just walks through the earth,
you are a soul. You have organs of
cognition
where you can think, you can reflect,
you can contemplate.
Potential
benefits
of actually engaging
in reflection?
Because you wanna notice. Right? Muhammad hadad,
he says
on Quran
and on fiqh
that you want to do this daily.
This he says in a 24 hour period
and he doesn't even leave it for chance.
He says, you want to dedicate
an hour or hours in that 24 hour
period in reflection. It doesn't mean that you
sit for 3 hours, but the sum total
of reflection throughout the course of your day.
Right? You pray your prayer, your hearts a
little open, it's a time where you can
take in.
But understanding
that in these two chapters
as subtopics to the Aurad,
the Quran
and reflection,
the recitation of Quran and reflection,
he's saying you got to do it every
day.
Why?
Why is it something that has benefit to
it?
Because it's not meant to be something just
for the sake of it, right? We can
talk about
why would you sit in the couch versus
on the ground, Should we get this vegetable
or that vegetable on a pizza?
We can have discussions
that can render insight,
preference, judgment.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm asking you
why is there benefit
to this thing of reflection?
What are the gains that one
can draw from
engaging in this in a process
so much
that this man who is a spiritual master
of this religion
is telling you
do it every day.
The way that you sleep every day, the
way that you eat every day, the way
that you pray every day, the way that
you do all of these things every day,
the way that you should be laughing every
day, the way that sometimes you should be
able to apologize on a daily basis, that
you want to tell someone you love them
and be told that you are loved, expressing
gratitude
and being in a place where you are
willing to receive
gratitude,
to do right by others, but also to
be comfortable and letting somebody do something for
you. There's a lot of things that if
they happen every day, the gains are things
that are undeniable.
So why is this something that he's saying
is so beneficial
that you wouldn't want to live 24
hours without
dedicating
an hour of it, at least, towards this
practice of reflection.
So you turn the person's next to you
and ask and discuss this,
what's the benefit of this thing?
What are the things that we can take
from it?
And then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Okay. So, what are some of the benefits
to this?
Like, why? Why would somebody do this on
a daily basis?
To be a better person. Yeah. Go ahead.
We were just discussing. It's,
the reflection is
when you when you when
reflection is judgment.
Judgment is for yourself.
You're judging your,
attitudes, your your,
way of
behavior. So is it good? Is it bad?
Why do why am I doing it? Am
I doing it for
a small purpose or for morality or for
myself, or my family?
Should I do it again
or not? So it's, it's just,
we we we think that it is it
is basically,
you are judging yourself. You are judging your
attitudes. Great. It tells you where you are
right now in life. Right? It gives you
an idea,
like, this is where I'm standing in relation
to where I potentially could be.
Assessment,
accountability,
inventory.
What else? What are some of the
you awareness.
It just helps you to be better if
there's something that you need to resolve with
yourself or just act on it or or
maybe, like, you're grateful for whatever things that
you have in life. Maybe think about things
that you did well and you know, and
so it it just can affect you in
all kinds of ways. Great. So this is
an important thing to
often the virtue itself. So if you want
to become more patient, the way you become
more patient is by being patient.
So the way that you can increase
in mindfulness,
reflection,
consciousness,
awareness
is by being conscious, aware, and mindful.
So if I engage in the practice of
solitude
reflection, we'll talk about it more detail in
like 10 minutes,
but I'm essentially
deliberately
engaged in the exercise
of
Right? Ehsaan, we talked about
the very beginning
is
a vision
based
process of spirituality.
Person
is beauty that's with the the eye.
So if I had a board here
and we put eyesight at the top, if
you can see that right here it says
eyesight.
We wouldn't now create a diagram that says
here are things that
are built off of eyesight as subcategories
of eyesight.
But we create a circle
and we would connect from eyesight
an arrow
that went now to hindsight,
an arrow
that went on the other side to foresight,
and an arrow that went straight down that
goes to insight. And then we put connecting
arrows
between hide sight and foresight to insight. So
all of it is connected to each other.
Can you see it in your head? You
get what I'm saying? Right?
This all connects.
Insight,
foresight
and hindsight.
They're not meant to be
clever
phrases.
These are words that have meaning to them.
And, when you are engaged in this process
of reflection in any of these categories,
as well as we'll see outward with the
eye eye as he's gonna say, you reflect
on Allah's creation.
You look at the sun. You look at
the
stars. Right? I said this to you last
week that how is it fundamentally
possible when we were talking about the that
people don't
gauge the beauty
and the awesomeness
of the fact that a tree has the
ability
to have its leaves
die and come back to life again, and
die and come foresight.
Do
you know what I'm saying? But the process
foresight. Do you know what I'm saying?
But the process
of increasing in mindfulness,
so that when I'm walking through the park
and I see the beautiful flower,
that time I spent in spiritual
exercise of reflection
seated in the place where he's describing this.
The best time for reflection
is the one in which are the least
preoccupations,
worries, and most potential for the heart to
be present such as the depths of the
night.
Right? He's giving
qualities
of what a space of solitude should be
but the idea is that now when you
do that there,
it brings mindfulness
to its presence
when you're outside in a place that everybody
else is just walking on default settings, right?
So the virtue
is the vehicle
to increase
in the virtue itself.
Does it make sense?
What else? What are other benefits to this
practice of reflection?
Yeah.
Sides, both different angles,
intellect, hard, quality, as much,
basically, the more you can listen to and
reflect upon, the higher is the chance that
you will find your truth and therefore, you
will live a happier
Yeah. Right? And this is Du'a the prophet
would make to Allah to allow for him
to see
reality is reality,
to see what is true is actually true,
and what is false is actually false.
But everything can be seen on multiple vantage
points,
right? And understanding what are other things I
might see things through then. I might see
it constantly through my pain. I might see
it constantly through my exhaustion. Most of us
see the world just through burnout. We see
it just through poor eating habits, poor social
habits, poor sleeping habits, right? It creates
now,
habits, poor sleeping habits, right? It creates now
a circular pattern that there is just monotony
to the day. The idea isn't that every
single day is supposed to be so different
from the day before,
but I am different every day that I
meet these things that might seem mundane, but
I can bring novelty to it because there's
change that I'm embracing
from within.
And that reflective
process
enables me to find growth, to find meaning,
and whatever it is that is taking place
around me. Other benefits that people can think
of?
Yeah.
I think from personal experience, introspection,
like, helped me sub to my heart,
to see things from other perspectives,
which helps me relate to other people more
passionately.
How does it do that?
I see if if I'm contemplating about, like,
God's creation, I'm thinking up. I'm thinking to
myself, like, how did this come about? Like,
I've softening my heart, and I I know
that there's no greater above myself that has
the capability to do that,
which takes
me to the place where I'm removing myself
on any pedestal allowing myself to see myself
on a smaller scale.
Great. And this is a great segue now
into the how to
of reflection.
One of the things
that can yield this as an outcome
is that
the exercise of reflection is going to force
you to actually also
rest. And if your outward is constantly in
a state, not of movement because movement is
not a problem.
But in a state of just agitation,
you're chasing after what you don't know
and you're in a place where you don't
know how to rest.
The stillness
that reflection
requires for it to be impactful
will have residual benefit
that can actively
allow
for the heart to actually now be in
alignment
in a way
where
it in this spiritual paradox of our tradition
that a hard heart is a weak heart
and a soft heart is a strong heart.
And the softening of it is in this
space of finding that stillness and rest and
being comfortable with it. You know? I don't
always have to be doing something
scrolling something. And these are meant to be
things that you've heard already and they go
in one ear and out the other but
you want to be a conscious person and
understand
that if it is dumb to do then
why do you do it?
And you can look at all kinds of
data and all kinds of analysis
by people who work in wellness
in all
fields professionally.
Little kids who are building out
all kinds of focusing issues,
challenges,
and psychologists
tell their parents, we can't do anything for
you if you're not willing to take the
phone away from your child. If you're not
willing to take the screen away from your
child, it's not different when you're an adult.
And, you're in a place
where constantly,
statistically,
22 years
of every average person's life now is going
to be spent looking at their screens. 22
years of existence.
Can you imagine?
That's insane.
You juxtapose it to stats of how many
years of your life you spend eating and
sleeping and going to the bathroom
versus now this is a new stat. It's
a modern phenomenon. We have to deal with
it and see how does our theology,
our legal tradition, our spiritual
tradition not bear relevance because we go out
and seek validation
from a anti black supremacist
society
does not gonna ever accept you for who
it is that you are
unless you accept yourself.
That's not the relevance but the relevance is
when they become now
conundrums
in the prism of what's in front of
us contemporarily,
we engage our text to be able to
say, well, how do you respond to this?
So you start to rest.
You allow for yourself to say, it's okay
for me to not constantly be chasing after
something.
I can breathe. I can relax.
I don't have to do everything right in
the moment.
So one of the main things
is that this has to be done deliberately
in places of stillness.
It doesn't mean you have to be away
from people,
but you have to be away from distractions.
You cannot have
reflection
reach its pinnacle
if you surround yourself with distractions.
You have to remove the distractions
from your way.
Step number 1, no distractions.
Number 2,
be at peace with silence.
You can't listen
if you're talking
and there's no learning if there's not listening.
And the cognitive abilities of the heart and
the mind and the ability to synthesize
information
from organs of sensory perception,
the eyes that we see with, the hands
that we touch with, the tongues that we
taste with, the ears that we hear with.
Think about this now, we are finishing the
month of Shawwal
just yesterday it finished, the day before, right?
May Allah accepted from us. You're a month
away from Ramadan.
Does it feel as strange to eat now
as it did on the day of
Eid?
And if the answer is no,
it means that you are becoming
desensitized
to the mindfulness you had
after a month of fasting.
And that's not to knock anybody,
but you have to know where you are
in relation to where you'd like to be.
What got in the way?
And silence
is important
because it helps you to hear other things.
It allows for you to experience and pay
attention to other things.
The hadith says. That whosoever
habitually
believes in Allah in the last day
let them speak good or be silent.
This is a saying of the prophets Lallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
So, the idea
is don't say what's bad,
say what's good, but the default state
is
also don't say anything at all.
Speak good or don't
speak. So you have to be comfortable in
a spiritual diet with silence.
To be in a place where you're taking
in
in reflection
and allowing for there to not be chaos
or commotion.
This is why it's important, you got to
understand
when people are praying and you're talking, when
you learn to be the imam, you're taught
to listen
to the cry of the baby. You want
to be mindful of the sounds that are
around you, right? This is not absent of
kushurah.
But,
if the athan is being called and you're
talking during the athan, then nobody's judging you.
Put away the people who make religion black
and white and tell you that you're terrible.
You're not. You're beautiful.
Think about it though. How can you listen
to the athan if you're talking during the
Adhan?
How can you listen to the recitation of
Quran if you're not in the place where
the Quran is being recited? And if you're
there and you're talking, how can you hear
it being recited? You can't do both things
simultaneously, right?
Right? Like, I'm talking. I talk a lot.
You know what I mean?
As I'm talking,
I'm not like listening. They're not it's not
the same as like you're singing in the
shower
or you're
like exercising
and watching TV.
This not the same.
The stillness and the silence go hand in
hand in
elevating
what it is
that we can take in because you all
are the ones that said, right? That you
can think about anything.
Do you know what I mean?
Location is important.
In modernity we have amazing
opportunities through technological advancement, growth of all kind.
It boggles my mind. Sending
emails and text messages.
Through sending emails and text messages.
But modernity
also offers certain gaps and one of the
gaps in the prism of modernity
are places of stillness.
Actual locations where you can go to reflect.
And this is going to be
most important.
Doesn't mean you have to go stand on
the cliff of a mountain
overseeing
a still
like bay and everything is great and the
sun is shining and setting upon you and
butterflies are flying in your face and birds
are bringing you flowers. You're just that's not
how it works. The prophet sought solitude in
a cave that if you've ever been
to that cave, it is the smallest thing
in the world. It is not big.
One person can fit in it at a
time and it's hard to get up there
especially without the steps that they've built into
the mountain right now, right? So
where do you go to find stillness?
Where in the course of your day, your
week, your month,
where do you go to find that place
of stillness
that is a place of solitude? Doesn't have
to be about being away from people but
about being away from distractions.
Where is that place for you?
Now, ideally just in pairs so that 2
people are talking and everybody gets to talk,
I like you to talk to the person
next to you about this.
Where do you go to find stillness in
your day?
Where do you go to find that place
where reflection
can actually be happening?
And then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Where do you go for your
stillness
to find a place where you can reflect?
Scuba diving. What are the characteristics of it?
Scuba diving?
Characteristics of it? Scuba diving?
Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. We don't all live in
Turkey, Barbara.
We can't swim in the water around us
but we're happy you can swim where you
come from.
Where where does one go? Right? And this
is a great example, you can.
Right? You're creating the environment for yourself. Do
you know what I mean?
Yeah. What does it feel like for you
when you go scuba diving? Oh, I would
we were we were just talking actually the
in a daily life,
I really don't need to do something special.
So,
it's like I can just close my eyes
somewhere
in the house and just think about myself.
But,
I was saying, like, I did couple when
I first started scuba diving,
I really liked it. Then then I I
was I was just thinking, my my friend
said that,
when he's
down,
he says, I feel like
that that is the that is the closest
place where I'm I'm with God.
So then I start thinking about it when
I'm down there because it's totally
silence.
You you you're not you're totally with you.
You're listening yourself.
So it's
then then then then I start looking at
it like that. So it is,
it's a it's a place where you can
listen to yourself.
Amazing.
Yeah. Definitely, it's a quiet place.
You said definitely is a quiet place. Quiet
place? Yeah. Under the water is
great.
That's why That's the song.
Little mermaid.
Right? Under the sea. Yeah.
What else? Like, what Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. Do you ever wonder
why your mind
and
the state it's in is different when you're
standing in prayer versus when you're prostrating in
prayer?
Like, how many thoughts get in your head
when you're standing in prayer
versus when you're in such
that?
Right? It's like 2 different worlds. Do you
know what I mean?
Why? Why do you think?
Because
what? The blood rushes here. The blood rushes
here? Yeah, maybe.
But, maybe from like a religious standpoint.
What what what
what's going on?
Who's bringing the thoughts to your head when
you are standing in prayer?
Shaitan. Shaitan.
Right? You think, what do you know about
prostration?
You're closest to Allah. The kind of things
you think about when you're standing,
they're usually not like mundane things like, oh,
man, you know, like,
I wish, you know, I could get some
chocolate milk tomorrow for breakfast. Right? It's not
really what's popping your head. It's the argument
you're having with somebody.
Right? Why is it so hard to find
a job?
You know, how come nobody invites me to
things?
Why don't my parents let me marry the
person I want to?
You know, all kinds of thoughts can come
into our head and when you go into
Sajdah and you're closest to Allah,
it's also the place where
depending
on certain variables, but let's just assume we're
all on the same page, you can make
Dua for whatever you want to at that
point in time.
And in that prostration,
the duas are more readily accepted
and shaitan is putting stuff in your head
when you're standing
and he knows exactly what he's doing
to keep it away from your conscious mode
of thought
when you have the ability now to make
Dua for it in a different capacity.
That's why reflection is important
outside of prayer because when you're in the
prayer, you want the reflective mind and heart
to be on your own terms
standing with thoughts that are coming from the
best places of you and your thoughts. Do
you get what I mean?
What else? Where are other places? What are
things that we look for in places of
reflection?
You can't think about this as good and
bad. Right? At some level, when you start
to grow in your own sense of relationship
to Allah, like, he's 7 years old. Do
you know what I mean? I know he
looks like he's 45, but he's not. He's
7 years old.
Most of us stop learning Islam at this
age.
We get to a place
where now when you're 40,
you're trying to make sense of religion based
off of information that was given to you
and reflection that because
of
this
or
I
must
be
good
because of this or I must be good
because of this versus you just understand
how things function and the utility of them.
So it's not because you're bad you don't
make Dua
or that you're bad that the thoughts come
or this and that. You just understand what
it is. Like he said, Barbaros,
right? He didn't think about what he didn't
think about. But now, the thought is there.
I can understand it and contemplate upon it
in different ways. Do you get what I
mean? Does that make
sense? What are other things that we can
look for in a place of reflection?
Like I'm starting to determine for myself,
I want this thing. The benefits,
they make sense to me. I want a
soft heart. I wanna be able to be
aware when I walk through the street. I
wanna be nice and kind. I wanna be
able to make sense of things for what
they actually are and see reality is reality
and falsehood is falsehood. I don't wanna walk
around like a cow or a zombie or
just a body. I wanna be a heart.
I wanna live in the world with like
a wakeful
thriving heart,
so what other things do I need
when I am now situating myself
in a place of reflection?
What does that place need to be like?
Quiet.
Quiet. Right? Yeah. Quiet.
And for some people that can be their
house.
For some people, may Allah make things easy,
the house is not quiet.
Or sometimes,
it's in
the understanding of the routine.
So when he's saying in the late hours
of the night,
that's when there's stillness
because what's everybody doing in the late hours
of the night?
Right? People are knocked out. People are doing
all kinds of stuff
different times a day but when you're in
your home and it's late at night, there's
just stillness.
If you're walking the city
on a weekday,
morning
before the city wakes up, it's crazy.
You know, it's very different.
But the idea isn't again being away from
people, it's about being away from distractions.
There's not so much that can distract you
at those times of the day, those times
of the night.
You were gonna say something?
Yes. I can Yeah. So physical safety is
a big one.
Like, are they safe?
Because right now I'm in a situation where
I live with many people and so the
other time I can get a quiet, you
know, like, place is in the park.
And the problem is, like, I'm sit sitting
in the park and I'm trying to contemplate
and I can't stop thinking about somebody just
coming up and like stabbing me or something
like
that. Because I'm still in a public place.
What park do you live near, man?
What's going on? No.
It's fine. That's real. And you can control.
Right? This is the whole thing. The idea
with this,
you are not any one of your thoughts
because then who's thinking the thoughts?
Just like you're not any one of your
feelings because somebody's got to be feeling the
feelings.
So the thoughts come and they rise up
and reflection
is what gives us the capacity to now
be able
to deconstruct or break down or take advantage
of our
thinking ability
to say that, well just because the thought
is there doesn't mean that it comes from
me.
He started to think about something
scuba diving from somebody else putting a thought
in his head, right? Wasn't a bad thought,
it was a good thought but the thought
came from elsewhere. Do you get what I'm
saying? Think about how many times you've been
stressed out and when you're dealing with stress
and life's difficulties
and you start to go talk to friends
and family and they love you but they
don't know what to do and they don't
say, 'I don't know.' They're not empathetic in
their listening, they don't listen to understand, they
listen to respond.
There's often solutions. Why don't you do this?
Why don't you do that? Now, when you
have all this exhaustion and stress,
you now have their voices in your head
too and it just adds more to it.
The thought is there,
this do this, this didn't work, I must
be bad because I couldn't get this done
or that done. Right? Just a big mess.
Do you know what I mean? So yes,
safety is important, right? And being able to
understand
where and how I can find
opportunity
for reflection,
I need to have a comfortable environment
where I'm not worried that somebody's gonna come
and do something to me.
Yeah. Just say something about,
that being
knocked out at night.
You know, he says that that's the best
time or a good time to But what
if you're one of those persons that's knocked
out at night?
That's okay.
You And how do you Because you wanna
be acquainted with yourself, right? Like this guy,
when he was 3,
he like
I don't even know. Wakes up 5 o'clock
in the morning, 6 o'clock in the morning,
right? He gets up now and he's gotten
older so he doesn't run right into our
room at that time, sometimes still.
But ever since he was really little, he
would wake up super early,
be ready to go, jumping up and down
and his sister, who I think is still
in the room He's over in the back.
Really amazing person
also
and she tends to wake up later in
the day. There's times when my baby girl
is not trying to get out of bed.
I got to carry her out of bed
and she's slept for like 10, 12 hours
and she's still exhausted, right?
He is a morning person. Just gotta go
to sleep right now. And then he just
goes in his room.
Just gotta go to sleep right now.
And then he just goes in his room.
She'll stay awake till anytime in the morning
whatsoever.
They're kids.
They're not good or bad. They're innocent.
They just respond to the day differently.
Right? Some of you,
some of us,
when it's cold outside,
it just brings down our mood.
When there's more daylight in the day, it
helps to kind of make things feel a
little more light. Do you get what I'm
saying?
You have to have self awareness
to be able to understand
where do I bring this stillness and location
becomes now intrinsically
linked to timing for yourself.
You get what I mean? If I wake
up and in the middle of the day,
I am in a place where my kids
are up, my wife is up, everyone's up
and then I yell, everybody needs to be
quiet because I gotta find some stillness.
Right?
That's not gonna work. Do you hear what
I mean?
I chose to be married, I chose to
have children,
I also then choose how it is that
I engage time around me and so I
build stillness
at moments
where it makes sense.
Do you get what I mean?
In terms of practice within our tradition,
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
he regularly would engage in this as a
practice.
Sorry, I think this is the pizza. Hello?
Hello?
He would engage in what's called the Hanuth,
right? He would move out of his society,
find solitude,
and be in
a place where he wasn't running away from
people, he was just trying to understand
what his role was in the world.
Mariam, peace be upon her, the mother of
Jesus, peace be upon him, would engage in
reflection
in this way.
She went into the temple at a time
when people
were not going into the temple, let alone
women.
Lusi, he separated himself from the Bani Israel
for 40 days.
What were they doing at that time? They
were seeking solitude deliberately.
The solitude
wasn't something that was an escape from reality,
but a means through which they would enhance
the understanding
of the reality they found themselves
alaihi sanam speaks with Allah in solitude.
Maryam, peace be upon her, gets fruit from
nowhere in solitude.
And characteristic
of each of them
was that whenever they left,
they always came back to their people.
It wasn't about let me run away but
let me use it as a means of
enhancement
to come back to where it is that
I need to be.
So the world is now different because I'm
a little bit different. Do you get what
I mean? It's built into our tradition.
The
happens in Ramadan.
That's what it is. You're seeking this solitude.
You engage in processes
of reflection.
What we wanna be able to do is
think about this now in your routine. On
a daily basis,
when are you engaging in this type of
reflection?
The word fiqh,
it is got the same root as the
word for notebook book in Arabic, lufakir.
The idea is that you can see the
link between these two terms.
What I would do if I were you
is get something that isn't a device
that you use in a way mindlessly,
but you get a notebook and you reflect
into
it. How did my day go today?
Was today a good day? Was it a
bad day?
What is going to make my day good
a week from now?
What will my 99 year old self say
to me
in gratitude for how I lived my life
at this
age?
When I stand in front of a law,
what will that look like?
When people are eulogizing me at my funeral,
what will they say about me?
There's so many different things that you can
reflect upon, that you can think about, contemplate
upon,
engage in reflection
around.
And what Mohammed is gonna do now is
he's going to go through the process
of
giving us insights on ways that we can
do this.
So let's continue in the text.
To read? The ways of reflection are many.
Yeah. Go ahead, Luna.
The ways of reflection are many. 1, which
is the most level of them, is to
reflect on the voice. Of the cosmic
creation,
the inward and outward signs of peace of
living,
and the signs he has scattered abroad in
the realm of the earth and the heavens.
This kind of reflection increases your knowledge of
the essence,
attributes, and names of God.
He has encountered it, encouraged it by saying,
say,
who had worries in the heavens and the
earth?
Keep going. Reflect on the wondrous creatures he
has made and on yourself.
He has said,
in the earth are signs for those who
have certainty
and in yourselves.
Can you not see?
Okay. So if you can turn to the
person next to you, what are you taking
now? A deliberate thing to reflect upon. What
are these two paragraphs telling us to engage
in as a process of reflection?
Go ahead and then we'll come back and
discuss. Yeah.
Okay. So what is Imam Al Hadad saying
in these
two paragraphs?
What are we taking away from
it? The ways of reflection are many,
he says, one of which is the most
noble of them to reflect.
What is he telling us practically to reflect
upon here?
That's in
the 3rd paragraph, but just these 2
where he's talking about or, yeah, maybe gratitude.
Outward and inward reflection. I'll
outward and inward reflection.
I was telling,
about this morning coming back from pressure, like,
this, mostly, like, 2 blocks from me.
And then there's these like, these birds, they
were and, like, having clearly having a conversation.
The one would do, like, 3 sounds, the
other one would do 5 sounds. It was,
like, a back and forth. It kept going.
I was, like,
I couldn't help but think about the car
and just like the window of it all,
and and that often is like my way
of flipping, and just like thinking about these
things and then also
like going from that to then myself.
If like I'm recognizing this is happening, then
what am I seeing in myself and in
my
the one that is me in my existence.
Yeah.
What does he mean by something that's wondrous?
Yeah.
To me, and connecting that part with the
part about the the science of feasibility,
I also think about, like, the living and
nonliving
sort of, like, miraculous things that some people
would call coincidences,
you know, like the tilt of the world's
axis
and,
like, a water molecule that is, like, sort
of, like, in
perfect balance. The fact that, like, the you
go to the smallest of things into the
biggest of things like a canyon and it
also, like, makes
sense
as if, like, God knew that he would
scratch at every single part of his creation
or, like, try to look for a meaning,
and there is a meaning there to be
explained.
Yeah. Those I think that's where I read
sort of like those signs
of intentionality.
Yeah. It's crazy. Right? The earth is on
a certain axis.
If you can imagine
the sun
that is so far away from
us. If it was
closer in any capacity
or farther in any capacity,
we'd either burn or freeze.
Right? Like it's so far away, but
it still makes you hot on a sticky
day in Manhattan.
Right? You go to places in the world
where it's so far
and you still feel the presence of its
heat
and it's so far that you still
can feel
when it's slightly a little bit different in
proximity
just how cold it can get.
But if there was any other distance, you
can put them up here guys, don't you?
There's more. Okay.
Great.
But that proportionality
is remarkable
in how it becomes applicable
in everything else around us. Right? What else?
What else is are we taking from this?
Yeah.
Just meant
Yeah. Right. You're taking the reflection
all the way
to its most logical concluding
point. It's not just like how beautiful is
the sunrise,
but how magnificent must be the one
who made
this sun in this way in the first
place,
you know. And you take stillness and you
stop for a bit and you can understand
the essence of God is different in Islam
from other religious traditions.
Even religions that claim to be mono theistic,
the mode of monotheism
is distinct,
categorically, in Islam
from other religious traditions.
Allah's
capacity,
ability
is something that you don't have to believe
in in order to believe that he made
you.
You can believe that God created you and
that he's
without being in a place where you ever
try to just think about
how
crazy it is
the way that all of this is put
together. You don't have to think about it
even for a second. The 2 can be
mutually exclusive.
So Imam Al Hadad is saying, you're gonna
reflect.
Here's point number 1,
reflect
just on how remarkable
all of this is
and then think how remarkable must be the
one who put it all together.
If you're in a place where the sunrise
is and the sun sets and how everything
functions at those scales
are things that might not be accessible in
the same ways,
you don't have to look so far, just
look at the way that you were made.
Look at how it is that you have
been built and how you have been created
and just truly how stupendous it is.
One of the craziest
Insh for those of you who desire
children in your life, may Allah bless you
with amazing children.
And for those of you who are seeking
companionship, may Allah
you the best of companions.
I would recommend
if you are in that relationship already or
seeking it out, that you make a firm
commitment
that if and when you choose and Allah
blesses you with children in your life, that
you are in a place where you let
your partner and also
you are if you're the other person involved
not the pregnant one but the non pregnant
one, that you are supporting your partner every
step of the way.
It was crazy
to hear
my daughter's
beat for the first time.
When our doctor showed us a sonogram,
it was pointing things out.
My wife looked at the picture
and she said, Claude, look at how cute
our baby's face is. Medina didn't have a
name at that time. And then the doctor
who was looking over her shoulder
said, yeah, that's actually her butt.
My wife wasn't even phased, she was like,
that's cute too.
But when I was in the room, when
my my wife was pregnant for 36 hours,
she was in labor.
For 36 hours, she was in labor with
our first child.
And being in a place
where
I witnessed
just firsthand
the experience
of a child being born into the
world is the craziest thing you can ever
imagine, see.
SubhanAllah.
Like,
to
experience that and in that room, I was
the only one. My wife didn't get to
see the baby being born the way I
got to see it being born. When Kareem
was born, he was a c section baby.
It's also pretty remarkable,
but it was something that a story I'll
tell you another day in terms of what
that was like in the hospital.
But just seeing it and being in a
place where you say,
how can you not believe in God?
How can you fundamentally
not believe in the existence of a divine
entity. And what's getting in the way?
And so all Imam Haddad is asking and
challenging you to do is you don't know
a starting point, here's something to start on.
Look at the world around
you. Look at everything that's amazing.
Look at yourself.
Think about how it's place
where
place where you can think and feel and
comprehend
in ways that nothing else can do.
Then he continues,
so that's step number 1. This is a
practical thing. You find the place of reflection
and then you start to engage
in one part to it. This chapter
is longer
than some of the other chapters that are
there,
he's gonna go through a bunch of different
things that you can reflect upon,
you will have to decide why you will
choose to not reflect on them or why
you will make deliberate
time to reflect on it.
I went to this place today
in Flat Iron, it's called Stretched. Has anybody
ever been to one of these places?
It's just a place that herniated some discs
in my neck in the beginning of Covid,
herniated
some discs in my neck in the beginning
of COVID. It's really bad. Our community is
very large
We had to pivot a lot virtual online,
but all kinds of people still reaching out
in terms of homelessness,
food insecurity,
people now it's stuck at home with their
abusers.
You all, Michelle, raised $10,000,000
in the onset of
COVID to be able to help people in
their time of need. And that's something that
still
I'm so proud of this community
in terms of how it stands and steps
up for people when they are struggling. May
Allah
continue to make this a generous and giving
community.
But absorbing all this trauma,
carrying it in, right? We live around multiple
hospitals,
the amount of death that was experienced, sickness
that was experienced,
all kinds of things, it could take a
toll. And so my body was just collapsing
on itself.
And then I had to deal with the
consequences
of an absence of self care at that
time and being pushed to a limit and
what it resulted 3
years,
a lot of what I was able 3
years, a lot of what I was able
to do prior to, I couldn't fundamentally do.
And this guy, I don't even know what
he's doing. Straps on, like, my foot, he's
like twisting it in weird ways, you know,
like
I he's telling me to take deep breaths,
but as he's like stretching me, he's like
taking super deep breaths. And I'm like, who's
like exercising who right now?
But then he started doing things with my
neck
that I haven't done in 3 years
and I was scared to do them,
I didn't know what would happen
because it wasn't just that the pain was
there, this whole part of my body was
swollen up to here and my left hand
didn't work for a while and I had
to teach myself how to use it again.
I wasn't worried about that as much as
what the pain did, it didn't allow for
me to sleep longer than 10 minutes at
a time.
And then the pain killers they gave me
cause ulcers in my stomach.
So I just had to deal with the
pain, there was no way around it.
And the whole time
this man is doing this to me, he's
asking me questions,
in my head I'm just thinking,
how did God make me
that I literally saw the x-ray
where it looked like a part of my
spine was broken
and everything just works again?
And what did I do to make that
happen
other than
time just healed my physical body.
That's crazy.
How does that work?
Do you know what I'm saying?
So you spend time in this reflective mode.
He then continues,
know that you must reflect on the favors
of God and his bound which he has
caused to reach you.
Remember the favors of Allah that you may
succeed.
Should you attempt to number the favors of
Allah, you would not be able to do
so.
All good things that you possess are from
Allah.
This kind of reflection results in the heart
filling with the love of God and continuously
rendering thanks to him
inwardly and outwardly
in a manner that pleases and satisfies
him.
And so bullet point number 2,
that you reflect
on what you have that are blessings in
your life.
You reflect
on what it is that can create
deliberate
acquisition of contentment
because he's telling you what the exercise is
and he's telling you what the yield of
the exercise is that it fills the heart
with the love of Allah and continuously
rendering thanks to him inwardly and outwardly in
a manner that pleases and satisfies him. It
just brings balance inwardly.
The platitudes
that we get fed quite often religiously
don't always help.
You want a prescription
that can help as a vision modifier.
That doesn't mean that you say challenge does
not exist, but allows for you to see
the challenge differently is to just engage in
the deliberate reflection
of things that you are grateful for.
Foundational to this is reflection
point number
1 because when you can understand
that Allah is the one that put everything
in its place and that Allah is the
one that gave you everything that you have.
That just because you have it doesn't mean
that you deserve it. Just because you want
it doesn't mean that you need it. And
just because you feel it
doesn't mean that that's enough for it to
create
perspective that is true through the feeling,
but it's given as a gift.
Everything that you have,
all of what you have is given to
you as a gift.
My son, the other day, he pays with
these things called Beyblades.
Do you guys know what a Beyblade is?
Right? Something like that. Yeah. Why do you
all know what a Beyblade
is? Why do you know it is? It's
a spinning thing. Right? No. I yeah. That's
what but why do you know it? I
don't know. Have they not been a while
for a while? I don't know. You're probably
like, did you have them when you were
younger or do you just have them as
adults?
Guys. It's okay. My younger cousins.
It's a toy. You pull it on a
string and it spins.
Right? And he loves it and he couldn't
find it and he got sad
and we talked to him about putting things
in their place and where they belong.
And then he found it a little bit
later, and then he came to talk to
me and said, Kareem,
Allah is the one that gave you this,
me and your mother did not give this
to
you.
And just think for a moment what you
felt when you no longer had it,
and think about how happy you were that
you got it back.
Allah is the one that gave it back
to you.
When you were given a namah,
the idea is to not just recognize the
namah, but to recognize
almunaim through the recognition of the namah.
So you recognize the blessing
and you recognize then the giver of the
blessing. And when you recognize the giver of
the blessing and the gift, you then also
recognize,
do I use it the way that
the giver of the gift would want me
to?
Am I in a place where
I appreciate
that it was given to me in the
first place, right?
Right? The Arabic in the dua,
That, oh Allah,
make from my wife my offspring the coolest
of my eyes.
Literally is not give it to me like
rabanaatina
fidunya
but hablana
is make it a hibba for me. Give
me the gift of this
thing. You understand?
And what he's saying here, Imam Al Hadad,
is when you can recognize the gifts that
you have,
you're then gonna be in a place where
it renders contentment.
But you take it to its fullest extension,
the recognition of the gift can then help
you to understand that I need to use
it the way the gift was intended to
be used. Use your brain the way that
it was gifted to you be used for.
Use your skills, your talents, your credentials.
Don't feign humility
with confidence and gratitude.
Embrace
all of the spiritual gifts that Allah gave
to you. And it's not going to look
the same way as it's going to look
for other people and that's totally fine. Right?
Somebody might be a great singer.
Somebody might be a great orator.
Somebody might be able to run really fast.
Somebody might be a good cook, somebody might
be a good listener,
somebody might be good at drawing things. Everybody
has different spiritual
he says that raise your words not your
voices. It is the rain that makes the
flowers grow not thunder.
So all of us have the ability
to communicate
and it's a gift because there's people who
don't. You come to Jomah, you see the
sign interpreter, you see people who are hearing
impaired and how that affects also their verbal
communication.
Why didn't Allah give you the ability to
speak? It wasn't to hurt people.
And when you can recognize the gift and
the giver of the gift and you use
the gift in the way that it's intended,
it's gonna make you feel good inside. That's
the purpose of all of it.
And what Imam Al Hadad is saying, in
your reflection,
week and next week,
I want you to just find a place
of reflection. It's a spiritual exercise.
Find a notebook,
write at the top of it, what are
the things I am grateful for?
What are the things that I have that
are blessing, gifts in my life?
And go to whatever extent you
can as you yield to the process.
Because as you get acclimated to it with
regularity,
you can then start to gain from it
what can only be gained by doing it
with regularity.
Does that make sense?
And then,
and us so that you can have awe
when you're walking through the world and you're
in a place where it's not pessimism,
nihilistic
world views, it's not cynicism
that's going about. The prophet had to believe
that he could make things different.
He had to have hope and optimism.
He had to be in a place where
he recognized that even if something's hard today,
tomorrow will be better. The things that soft
in your heart are these things.
They don't give you complacency,
they give you contentment.
What I like you to do is just
turn to the person next to you now.
What are you taking away from today's conversation
on a whole? Then we'll come back and
discuss
and then we'll wrap up
and,
pray Maghrib and have Iftar, but go ahead.
You take full So what are some of
the things we're taking away from today?
To do
something.
Amazing.
Other thoughts? Other take aways? Yeah. Okay. So,
for me, I was just saying how how
I can look at things from different
pleased that you're in the rain. And then
I
go
back home, watch TV,
water. You could see the fish
moving around. You could see the bottom of
the water.
I was like, okay, this is still I'm
not trying to show us destruction after it
wasn't.
So
it wasn't
just about, you know, the negatives,
that could brought the deaths. I mean, people
to show us something that
even the waste that we generated,
pre coated, food waste, whatever kind of waste,
Yeah. Right? I mean, the whole world is
impacted by climate change,
but we're the only ones that can actually
do something about it.
Right? You know? And we have to sometimes
see what's there in order
to kinda get things to the place that
they need to be fundamentally.
Other thoughts?
Anything we're taking away from today?
Yeah?
I feel like I'm talking too much.
I guess intentionality
continuing the theme.
Yeah. So rumination versus reflection,
being intentional about the periods of time and
the environment you're doing it in rather than
constantly being in some kind of, you know,
cognitive loop about,
yourself or,
you know, so basically not mistaking rumination for
reflection.
Great.