Naima B. Robert – Patience Episode 05 Na’ima B. Robert A Sisters Ramadan
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And welcome back to a sister's Ramadan. I
am your host, Naima b Robert, and I'm
so honored that you joined me today.
As you know, this show is all about
answering that one central question.
How can we as Muslim women
use this special time in Ramadan
to grow, to heal,
to replenish and renew our iman?
And, how can the rituals of Ramadan help
us to do that?
In this show, I've been sharing a set
of 5 skills that are essential for personal
growth and healing,
and how we can best practice them.
So Insha'Allah,
I pray it has offered you a perspective
that will be beneficial
long after this month has passed.
In this show,
our final show together, we will be looking
at the importance of tadabbur
and choosing your emotional home.
I'm sure it has not escaped anyone's notice
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created us as
human beings in a very, very special way.
And one of the characteristics
of being a human is that we have
emotions.
We are emotional beings.
Now a lot of people when they hear
the word emotional,
take it in a negative. There's some negative
connotation to being an emotional person. But emotional
just means that you feel, and emotions can
be positive or negative.
So let's have a bit of a game.
I will name an emotion and you can
tell me whether you think that's a negative
emotion or a positive emotion.
So let's start with something easy, sadness,
frustration,
panic.
What about joy?
What about
tranquility?
What about confidence?
As you can see, there are negative emotions
and positive emotions, and most of us will
experience
both sets throughout our lives. There's a huge
range of emotions that we as humans are
capable of.
The main thing I want to share with
you however,
is that our thoughts
are what effect our emotions.
Now a lot of people think that it's
events
that affect our emotions, but it's actually not
life events that cause us to have a
particular emotion.
It is our
perspective
on those events, the things that we think
about those events that affect the emotions that
we feel.
So
for a brief experiment,
I'm gonna invite you to cast your mind
back to a negative experience that you had
in the past few months.
Think of the event or the conversation or
the the experience that you had and try
to name the emotions that come up.
The deeper you think about that memory,
the more emotions will be conjured up.
Similarly, if I invite you to think of
a positive event and I'm thinking of positive
event and immediately smiling.
So I'm already feeling something as a result
of the thought that I'm having.
Which is an amazing thing because it shows
you the link between your thoughts and your
emotions.
And so,
negative thoughts produce negative emotions
and positive thoughts produce positive emotions.
I'd like you to understand the difference between
responding to things and reacting to things in
an emotional way and understanding that it's not
just the things that happen, but your thoughts
about those things that affect the way that
you feel.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said
that Allah the most high said,
I am as my servant thinks I am.
We are all familiar with this Hadith Qudsi,
SubhanAllah. But I want you to think of
it in the context of what we are
talking about.
How we think of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will affect how we feel about him, subhanahu
wa ta'ala. And in exactly the same way,
how we think of our present reality,
our lives, our families, even ourselves,
will affect the way we feel
about that reality.
How you think affects how you feel.
So choose your thoughts wisely.
Now the aspect of our Ramadan worship that
I would like to focus on in this
final episode is that of tadabbur.
Pondering over the words of Allah.
If we remember
that we were talking about
harnessing our thoughts in order to produce certain
emotions.
If we spent time thinking
about Allah, Spannad, Wa Ta'ala's words and His
message to us,
His mercy, His Parables, His lessons.
What kind of emotions would that produce for
us on a regular basis?
Now, tadabur is something that many people may
not do on a regular basis. Maybe they
recite Quran, maybe they're even memorizing.
But tadabur is not the same.
Tadabur is the practice of
sitting
with the Qur'an.
With Allah's words
and truly bringing their attention
to the meanings they're in.
I am sure that throughout this Ramadan,
your time with the Quran has increased. And
so, my invitation to you my sister is,
to incorporate
these aspects
into your practice. To elevate that relationship with
the Quran.
And the first is,
to develop and nurture a true love for
the Quran.
For it to be your go to. For
it to be your source, for it to
be your reminder.
Ponder on the verses that you've memorized.
Very often when we've memorized verses, they come
to mind much quicker and you can read
the translation to understand what it is you've
memorized.
Sit with that,
ponder the meanings.
Ponder on the Quran while you're in Salah,
when you're in that deep meditative state before
Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la.
Think about the words you're reciting,
their meanings, the sound of them, the fact
that this is the word of Allah that
was revealed and that has been perfectly preserved,
bring all of that to the forefront of
your mind.
Marvel at this miracle
that alhamdulillah,
you have,
you are privy to, you have access to.
SubhanAllah,
what a blessing it is to be able
to access the Quran in this way.
Another thing you can do is to take
care with your recitation.
Take your time with it. Practice your Tajweed,
beautify your voice.
All of this helps you to increase in
your love of the Quran itself
and your appreciation of the lessons.
And on that point,
look out for the personal lesson or message
in what it is that you're reading.
Read this with the intention
to take real benefit for yourself and InshaAllah,
if you're able to do that and incorporate
Tadabur
into your Quranic practice on a daily, weekly,
monthly level,
this is something that will take you further
in your relationship with the Qur'an than many
many other things bi'idnillah.
Now the personal skill
that I wish to share with you
is what I call another one of those
super powers. And that is
choosing your emotional
home.
What is an emotional home? At the top
of the session, we talked about emotions. We
talked about negative emotions and positive emotions.
And many of us have a default setting,
that emotion that we feel most commonly.
But what most of us don't do is
actively
choose
what that emotion is going to be.
Some of us are naturally fiery.
Some of us naturally apathetic. Some of us
naturally fall into
resignation,
or fear,
or anger or frustration or even just being
passive.
Many of us go into the default setting
without giving it much thought.
But what I'm inviting you to do is
to make an active choice.
Which emotions
do you want to experience the most often?
Right now,
you may be experiencing certain emotions
on a regular basis that may not be
helpful to you. They don't make you happy.
They don't increase you in iman. They don't
make you a more positive or active person.
And if that's the case,
think about the emotions you would like to
experience on a regular basis.
Choose an emotional home.
It could be gratitude,
it could be patience,
it could be joy, it could be love,
it could be confidence.
Whatever it is that you want to feel
most often,
choose that actively. And I already know that
I taught you about how your thoughts produce
your emotions, so you know already
how to get yourself to that emotional home.
You choose the thoughts that take you there.
Let's see, at the end of the day,
my dear sister, Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, does
not want us to dwell in negativity.
He does not want us to dwell in
despair,
and sadness,
and resignation, and resentment.
We have a Lord who is Ar Rahman
Al Raheem.
A Lord who invites us to trust Him,
to have Tawakkul.
That means, you get to be positive and
trust in Allah's plan.
Now, I know there will be some of
you who are asking simply,
how can I stop myself falling into negativity?
And what I would say is this,
the first step to breaking that cycle
is
the understanding
and acceptance that I am responsible.
Take ownership,
take responsibility for your emotional state and choose
the emotional home that you want to live
in.
I'm
so, so honored that you joined me for
this season of a sister's Ramadan.
I pray that Allah, punanahu ta'ala, accepts all
your deeds, and blesses your family, and forgives
us our sins.
And if you benefited from anything I shared,
alhamdulillah,
please share it with others.
As always, we end with the dua. SubhanakAllahumarabanaobihamdik
ashaduwalaalahaillahandwastaghruka
wana2woo ilaik.
May Allah bless you all and taqablaalahminna
waminkum.