Suhaib Webb – Stations of The Seekers Part One Beginnings and Awakenings
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So, Alhamdulillah, we're going to start reading, from
this book. Today I'm I'm, like, really exhausted,
so forgive me if you can tell. It's
not good to tell people you're exhausted, but
just in case you wandered,
because as I was walking in someone's like,
are you okay?
It's like the worst feeling when you're like,
yeah, I'm okay. I'm just like tired.
But alhamdulillah, may Allah
So, we're we're talking about religiosity
and the idea of like, coming into religiosity
and like, we mentioned the problem of cults
and like Muslim cults and,
the danger of
overly attaching ourselves to charismatic leadership,
you know.
I I think it's sometimes I talk about
my personal life here because
it's important for you to understand that we're
just like we all have the same problems
and,
you know, that that allows us to be
honest with one another.
I talked to an imam recently, he said
he's the loneliest person in this city.
I said, why? He said, man, like,
I'm I I can't share what I'm going
through with anybody, because they all think I'm,
know, they think I'm like Aquaman or something.
Right? So I said, but also part of
that falls on you,
that you have to model for them. You
can you can also miss that 3 point
shot.
Right? You can you can lose the game.
You can stumble
and that doesn't that doesn't take anything away
from you. Right? You're still who you are.
And maybe I said to him, it's because
you expect them to be perfect, like maybe
you're not being fair to them, like maybe
you act this way
because that's what you expect of the people
that you serve, which is also unfair.
So,
we're going to
begin reading from the book Manazil Asa Irene
of Sheikh Al Islam, Sheikh Al Harari.
Raheemuallahu
ta'ala. He lived in the 5th century.
Of course, we're gonna have to, like, fine
tune it a little
to our era era, but we said that
primarily this book deals with
mindfulness,
awareness,
and emergent religiosity.
The process,
the constant process throughout life of maintaining
our faith
and practice, which we talked about before is
is obviously gonna be fluctuating.
And
we noted and I I think there's a
few points I should make also. Like, you're
about to experience a very distilled form of
spirituality,
a very intense form of spirituality.
These people did not mince their words, like
and they were very, very,
I would say they had a very intimate
relationship with faith
that was rooted in Tawhid
and rooted in following the sunnah.
So you're gonna feel at times like overwhelmed
and that can be a good thing.
One time I taught a class, actually, Khad
was there. This is about 12 years ago.
I taught a class for Al Maghrib,
in New Jersey.
So I mentioned some stuff that I had
learned, you know, from a teacher of mine.
Maghrib does a great job, Masha'Allah.
But, like, I said some things that had
come from, like, texts that I had come
across and teachers I had heard from. And
this lady came to me and she's like,
I don't like your class.
I was like, why? She's like, because I
don't know any of these things.
So I said, do you pay just to,
like, hear what you already know?
Like, is that,
like,
is that what you want? Or, like, do
you wanna be challenged to think about
the parameters of your religion in a way
that pushes your capacity spiritually.
So you could see this as kinda like
CrossFit spirituality.
You know, you come for an hour,
get like a 100000 blurpees in,
and then what you eat after the training
session, that's your that's on you.
If you eat pizza, you eat pizza. If
you drink kale smoothie, then with no sugar,
then
God bless you. So it's important
to note that this is very distilled.
And it's it, you know,
I hope one day to translate the text,
but like it really needs a person of
letters because his language is very profound.
So
there's a few points I wanna make before
we jump into it, and that is number
1,
when he starts to talk about
these 10 foundational
and,
processes, they're not something that just happens once.
Like, they may happen at again and again
in different ways, in different experiences. So an
awakening may come
to someone who's a sinner
and an awakening may come to someone who's
a saint. You see what I'm trying to
say?
But those are gonna come in very different
ways, hence he says, abwab,
doors.
So that means we should learn to respect
each other's approaches.
Like, so if we see people coming,
if we see people engaged and they don't
look like us,
they don't come from our background,
or they may be coming from a different
place, but that's the awakening that Allah gave
them.
So one of the things that the sheikh
helps you do is, like, really respect other
seekers
and to be like nuanced in how you
engage people within the Muslim community.
At the same time, he frames this spirituality
in orthodoxy.
It's not a free for all. Right? He
frames it in foundations, and that's why he
mentions al ousool.
So there's this idea of, like, compassion. There's
this idea of respect and nuance.
And then there's this idea that foundations are
like a a goal.
So let's just review the tin quickly. It
says,
He said, you know, you should know that
the stations or the places that you're going
to move through in this text that are
the foundations
of Surat al Mustaqim
are ten.
So he said the first one is El
bidayet. He didn't say
He said
as I mentioned earlier, because maybe we come
to God through different ways.
Like man, once I was traveling overseas, I
met this brother. He's from England.
He's a really cool guy, man.
I'm not gonna say his name because of
the story,
but, like,
he spoke fluent Arabic. He memorized the Quran.
I had just converted, so I was like,
wow, this guy's like a superhero, man. You
know? And
I asked him, like, kifa aslampt, you know,
like, how did you find Allah?
He said, I found Allah with a heroin
needle.
I was like, what? He's like, yeah. I
used to shoot heroin in Germany with a
Muslim brother.
I was like, what the heck? So he's
like, yeah, we we were shooting heroin,
and then
he started to say these weird words.
Like I didn't know what these words meant,
like, SubhanAllah, Hamdulillah, Ouzibillah,
right, whatever.
And then he said I found light in
my heart from the words he was saying,
man. I didn't even know what they meant,
but I just found like light.
So I asked him like what is the
stuff that you're saying, man? And he was
like, well, I don't really know if I
should be saying it because we live in
a park together and shoot heroin,
but I'm remembering Allah.
So that was like his catalyst
to, like,
change his life.
That's how he found this relationship.
Find other people through, like, great moments of
success,
through sickness.
So the idea of albidayat.
Right, we all come maybe through different moments.
Either to find faith or to improve our
faith,
as we talked about before.
The second thing he says after that is
He didn't say because
means that everyone has different passions and different
ways by which they will translate that beginning.
So through art, through being a professional, maybe
as an imam, as a athlete, as a
tech person, as a school counselor, as a
parent.
Right? All those are to Allah.
That's why Yaqub,
he said to his sons,
It's a strategy. Right? Go in different doors.
And said,
Like, different ways to god
doesn't mean that the different ways doesn't imply
that the objective is different.
Wa'anna ila rabbika almuntaha. So the prophet shalate
wa sallam,
he's surrounded by an infinite number of people
that have
multiple
levels of talent
and failure.
So alababwab
means like, how do you find your passion?
And what do you use to enter into
this relationship with
with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?
Then after that is
how do you and I carry ourselves?
And then after
is character that I should try to acquire
on this path. And that implies two things,
what's called
meaning what do do do I embellish myself
with? Scholars use the word like when you
wear jewelry in the mirror.
Right?
So what what jewelry, what character are you
gonna work on? Maybe I need to work
on being nicer.
Maybe I need to work on patience. Right?
So I'll wear the jewelry of patience metaphorically.
Means what am I going to remove from
myself?
And and that cannot happen, and this is
very profound by the way, unless you're looking
in the mirror.
So the idea here is what? Accountability
and looking into myself and being introspective.
And the third is, after his character is
the, like what are the foundations? Knowledge,
practice, companionship.
Knowledge, practice, companionship.
Knowledge, practice, companionship.
Is the usool, subhanAllah.
That's why I read it every week.
And after that
is al adwiyah, what are the remedies I
can use
to treat myself? Because
Allah said to say to Muhammad alayhi salatu
salam, you're gonna be tested, buddy.
You're gonna be rocked.
So there are times where I may have
to self medicate.
And there may be times where I need
to seek
medication from my community
for al Adwiyah.
There's another qira'ah, not to make it too
hard for you, this qira'ah is not authentic.
With
kha. Sabakhan
tawillah. The word sabha means to rip to
pieces. So
it means, like, oh, prophet, alayhis salatu salam,
you pray at night
because in the daytime, you're gonna be ripped
to pieces.
So the salah,
praying at night became the remedy, the the
dua.
See something, it's like really beautiful.
And after the remedies is the ahuwal,
being aware of my
psychological and emotional states.
SubhanAllah, as you turn 40,
as men, I can't talk about women, I
don't know,
but that inner voice somehow becomes amplified.
The inner voice that I didn't listen to
when I was young,
The inner voice that was like, don't try
to dunk on that dude. I was like,
you got this. And then, oh snap, I
broke my ankle.
Right? That inner voice
that says, like, you know what, you're not
patient enough.
You know what, like, you shouldn't you should
be aware of this.
That voice I can say in my own
experience,
as you get older
becomes louder. As the tides of youthful arrogance
recede,
the voice of older wisdom starts to appear.
That's Shakespeare right there, boy.
I'm just joking. That would be youthful arrogance.
But
the point I'm trying to say is, like,
am I aware of myself?
What are the things that trigger me?
It's either good or bad.
And then after that is,
What does it mean to be truly
standing for God?
And then after that, the sheikh he says,
is
to see with Ihsan.
Muhammad, you didn't throw it. When you threw
it, Allah threw it.
And then the last
is,
the endings.
So today,
we're gonna talk about the beginnings,
and we're going to note again I'm sorry.
I'll have this for you next time written
down so you don't have to write all
this stuff down, and I can post it
on my Facebook wall, shameless plug, to follow
me,
tonight or tomorrow.
So he says,
The sheikh, he says
this is very important, man. Think about yourself.
Everyone, like, center yourself for a minute. Just
think about where you are in your relationship
with Allah.
Think about that, like
so the sheikh is taking you somewhere. It's
like super important, man.
He says
the beginnings are 10.
I I relate to this because as a
as a convert, like I see this.
Like I was like man, that is me.
And then as a father, you continue to
see it. You know, your children teach you
things about yourself that you don't wanna know
as well as things about you that you
wanna know.
He said, so your beginnings
are 10.
The first is a yaqava,
to be roused,
to be shaken, to be woke,
to be awakened. We talked about this a
few weeks ago. I touched on it. Right?
Test, trial, success, everything around us is really
a means to push us back to the
real truth.
So now I I began to see everything
around me as an opportunity to enhance worship
and Allah as though I see him, even
though you can't see him. So the prophet
knows we can't see Allah.
That's impossible.
So then how do we see
without seeing?
That's the mystery of qadah and qadr.
As though Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, oh
my servant, I love you, so I'm gonna
test you so you can see me.
Oh, my servant, I love you, so I'm
gonna give you so you can see me.
You can't see me, but you can see
my.
We'll talk about this in our spring break
retreat, the idea of like
outcomes.
So the first is being roused.
The second
is toba.
Come home.
Fix it.
Because
when I wake up
right? Today, we had a staff meeting at
12 o'clock.
I was super exhausted. It's upon while I
was traveling this weekend. And I woke up.
You know, you wake up, you're not sure
what time it is,
but then when you realize what time it
is, then you can fix kinda what you
may have been doing wrong. Right. So that's
the idea is like, I was spiritually neglectful.
I've been aroused.
I'm not really sure what time it is
spiritually.
Oh, dang. I need to work on this.
I become aware of things. So when I
become aware,
I begin to fix it. Or like if
you've ever like been joking with someone and
then, like, a few days later they tell
you, like, you really hurt me, how you
feel, like, pentent, that's the idea here is,
like, after being awakened, now I become aware.
I wanna fix what what I'm aware of.
And that's what he said earlier, that can
be between 2 extremes.
Has to be balanced in that.
The third
step in the process of beginnings is almuhasaba.
To audit myself,
to take reconnaissance of myself, to take inventory.
Like, what can I work on?
Where have I failed? Where do I need
to improve?
Then the next is el enabah.
And inaba is like toba, except toba is
to return from sin.
Inaba is to return from bad actions.
So, like, I didn't pray, now I pray.
I was mean, now I'm nice.
I was an oppressor,
now I'm just. So a toba
is the idea of like spiritually turning to
God.
Inaba is physically turning to God.
Then there's fikr
and that's the next and fikr means to
contemplate,
to think.
And that means to think about where God
has brought
you, to appreciate where we came from.
And that leads to the next, a zikr.
Because we say that to remember Allah is
rooted in thinking about Allah,
appreciating Allah.
We do dhikr of the dunya all the
time.
Everywhere I went this weekend, I heard people
talking about some flat phone, man.
They could describe this flat phone like they
could describe their kids.
You know what I mean? Metaphorically.
Like that's dhikr. So we make dhikr about
what we comprehend and what we know.
It's not necessarily bad, but like, it needs
to be balanced, man.
The next is clinging to Allah. So after
thinking and remembering,
then there's a sense of needing.
And that needing leads to, like, clinging
in a healthy way.
And then that leads to al Firar.
Al Firar means to flee.
To flee to Allah.
I told you it's, like, really distilled.
Fafiru
il Allah. The Quran says flee to Allah.
What does it mean to flee to Allah?
So he talks about that.
And that's the next one.
Is actually what people used to do, like
people do with horses when they domesticate them.
It's called
But this is
domesticate your soul.
So I train my soul. I domesticate my
soul. I
I bring it in line with its fitra.
That's a process. And that's why the book
now you can understand something.
Rialdasalihin.
Right? The garden of the righteous. Talk about
a garden, but that's the place where you
train your soul.
So Imam Anawi starts with sincerity
and tawba. Actually, Imam Anawi's
book is actually
like mimicking the Manazil.
Like Imam Anawi's book, Riyad Salihin, The Gardens
of the Righteous, every chapter is one of
those stations
according to his understanding. So the station of
Ikhlas, the station of repentance, the station of
patience.
He's trying to say like, hey, here's the,
like, the daleel for this.
Rahimahullah.
And then the last,
asimah,
To be a good listener.
To pay attention.
So
I'll I'll repeat them again and and then
we'll start with the first one. He said
that the beginnings are the following 10. Every
chapter is 10. Just remember that's easy for
you inshallah.
The first is being roused.
The second, repentance.
The third, introspection and accounting, reconnaissance.
The 4th is physically returning.
The 5th is contemplation.
The 6th
is remembrance.
The 7th is clinging.
The 8th is fleeing.
The 9th
is training.
And then the 10th is listening.
Being 10th means like mindfulness.
So today we're gonna go through the first
one, Insha'Allah.
And then next week we're gonna try to
do some exercises that will help enhance the
theory
that we're gonna go through today.
Allah
says
Allah says in the, 34th chapter verse 46
this is the verse you wanna hang out
with this week because I'm gonna give you
some things to think about.
30 chapter 34 verse 46.
Say it, oh, Muhammad.
Means to
preach but like
preach in a way which moves people,
to adore people.
So it's not
just
like awaken them.
So oftentimes you find a hadith, like the
hadith of Irbaad, he said that the prophet
prophet
he
he adored us with his speech. Like,
he awakened us with this type of preaching
to the point where we begin to cry
like we were moved by it.
The verse says, say
I, you know, I I I extort I
exhort you. That's the word. I exhort you
to 1.
Here means, like, tawhid.
1 means tawhid or ta'atullah or the obedience
of Allah. So the idea is, like, when
you give someone ma'aiva,
they're not what?
They're not paying attention.
So the verse here is used to talk
about the beginnings of that relationship. So I'm
waking you up from your slumber to understand
tawheed,
to understand the obedience of Allah. If you're
Muslim, to improve your
That you stand, that you arise for god
is the meaning.
Either together or as one.
In twos or 1.
But actually, this is a form in Arabic
which is used to show, like, all situations.
Whether you're alone, whether you're in your group,
wherever you are.
So the idea is, like, someone here, the
rising is like the metaphor for someone rising
from what?
From sinna to rafla
to arise from a state of negligence.
So that verse is used
often and and I'm gonna give you some
questions I'll put later out out later inshallah
to think about this verse.
So the sheikh, he says
Sheikh, he says about the verse when when
when when
Allah says to stand, to rise for God,
he said what that means is that
you arise from a state of negligence
to a state of mindfulness and awareness.
We mentioned this, I think, before. We said
that there are, like, 3 ways that shaitan
attacks people,
3
entry points. One of them is negligence.
The other is anger. The other is desires.
So the sheikh is saying
To arise means to move from the state
of negligence to the state of mindfulness.
And that's why Allah says
Say I
only exhort you to one thing.
And actually, 3 things are mentioned later, And
this is a form in Arabic. It's like
when when I was in education, we used
to do multiple choice exams. They say give
the easiest question first. So you say 1,
so people aren't like, oh, gosh. It's so
much.
Like in Ramadan, Allah says, a
few days, just fast a few days. The
next verse,
shahuramadhan. So 1 nasahabi here, oh, a few
days insha'Allah insha'Allah. What's a few days?
Oh, okay.
So this is a form in dawah called.
Like how do you how do you not
lie to the person but, like, give them,
like, ease it for them, facilitate it for
them.
So it says
You know, I'm just telling you one thing.
Meaning
or tawhid or ta'atullah,
obedience or whatever. But then later on, you
find, like, 3 or 4 things mentioned.
Then he says that
to be
awake,
to be roused is,
number 1, to move from the state of
negligence
to the state of awareness.
And to move away from destroying your time.
So it's like to become aware
and then acknowledge the fact that be careful
that you're not wasting time. You're destroying your
life.
There's one poet he
said,
he
said,
oh
you
who, like you work to build a dilapidated
house.
Meaning dunya. Doesn't mean neglect dunya, but it
means to be overly consumed.
Is there for somebody who
dilapidated their lifetime, a structure for them? Like,
you completely, like, just got lost and focused
on everything else about what really matters is
the point here. Not extremes. We talked about
it earlier,
but being balanced.
He said, you should turn to your soul
and focus on refining its qualities.
Because it's your soul, not your physical appearance
that makes you human.
So here that's what the sheikh is saying.
Meaning that I wasted my life and stuff.
I didn't use my life
in the right way. So I become aware
of that.
Then he says
I don't know how to translate this, man,
if you have any Arabs. But basically he
said, this is the first moment where the
heart becomes lit with the divine light.
And the heart begins to see
with the light of faith.
And it brings this life to their heart
that allows it to become aware.
So it's like a flashlight turned on in
their heart that showed them the path.
So it's like, again, the metaphor is like
being blind
and then suddenly the heart can see.
Said the hearts are blind. So here it
means now the heart begins to see.
And this could be a metaphor for, like,
values.
Right? That there's an emotional moral compass now
to how the person sees and and looks
at things.
It's not just a a corporal reality.
Now they see also with, like, a spiritual
reality.
So he said that moment, that awakening is
when someone's heart is moved. Like, when say
in our language, like, the heart is moved.
He he uses the metaphor
That they're able to process that awakening in
the right way. The heart shines the flashlight
on that moment, and they're able to say,
oh,
this test is why this is happening.
Or this success, I'm able to shine the
flashlight of my soul onto this dunya
and see beyond it,
is kind of the idea here.
Then he says,
awareness is of 3 types. Is everybody okay?
Slight, we'll try to finish.
He said awareness
is 3.
Number 1
is that the heart
becomes aware of blessings
to the point that it becomes despondent
of ever being able to count them all.
So the heart, like, sees nahma.
That's that yesterday
Right? So the heart begins to process and
it begins to see.
Like if you tried to count the blessings
of Allah, you couldn't.
So he said the heart, at this moment,
the person,
the heart begins to feel and appreciate the
fact that they are surrounded by blessings
with, like, giving up any hope that would
ever be able to limit or count or
quantify
or qualify
quantify the blessings.
The second part of this first moment of
of of first type of yaqaba
is then also becoming aware that
they have no limits.
Meaning, like,
are the blessings in your life stopping?
Like I see,
my heart beats, like it's constant. There's, there's,
there's always going to be train pain and
trauma in the test, but he's saying if
you think, if you squint, right, you're you're
gonna find there's NAPA that don't stop.
So in some ways he's trying to help
people make it out of despondency and sadness
and saying, listen, like, at the same time,
take a step back. Remember we talked about
it in.
Right? The darkest nights have bright stars.
So the heart now begins to recognize blessings,
see blessings, even though it's tough. And that's
one of the goals of postmodernity
and capitalism
is to break you.
There's only happiness
in wearing serum.
There's only value in having easies.
If you don't have 6 pack abs,
your body's nothing.
And that's why
it has a smugness and a coldness to
it. Capitalism is smug and cold.
It will throw you in the streets.
So what he's saying is,
you know,
don't fall for it. And we have to
be very careful that even within the Western
Academy, all of the isms,
the goal of those isms is to find
no happiness.
So there's never higher.
And and
we wanna balance that without saying, like, yeah.
It's like, you know, never never land over
here something. Everything's
great.
Right? At the same time,
I don't wanna fall into despondency because when
to
When I went to Egypt,
one of the most different and and when
I went to Umrah too and Hajj, I
always tell people this, try not to complain.
Right? And they're like, man, it's hard, man.
It's hard. Like, you can complain about things.
She mentioned those are things we should be
worried about. Right? But just like little things
that don't really matter, man.
So in Egypt, a lot of times I
notice students of knowledge when they come to
Egypt. We had our brother, he came to
Ezzar. He was mad because there was no
air condition.
I said, man, where do you think you
are, buddy?
You're a Umadunya, man.
Alright. This is Egypt.
Right. Grab a piece of paper. Get some
karkedi, man.
Get some of that good cold karkedi drink
and live your life.
And I said to him, to be a
student of knowledge means you can't complain a
lot.
Alright. In the sense of like the minuscule
stuff.
The big things?
Okay. I'm with you. If you can impact
that and make change,
kill it. So the sheikh here is saying,
like,
here's a way
to shift that awakening to something, because oftentimes
we find awakenings lead to people looking down
on everyone else and painting the world in
a horrible way.
Because Sheikh is saying, yeah, the first step
is to be appreciative of blessings,
to see the nam of Allah. And that's
hard. That's a process. I'm not telling you
I've done it. He said,
and the the the second part of that
first moment of the heart appreciating appreciating blessings,
giving up on their limits, or being able
to to quantify them, he said, is
what meaning that I become aware that I'm
deficient in
my relationship with God. I'm deficient in giving
those bless I can never repay those blessings.
Like they're too immense.
So in my shortcomings
in that relationship,
I become aware of that.
And then he says,
and then you flee to the one that
you know gave them to you.
So that's like the first step in
the first the first part of being awakened
is awareness of the blessing.
Understanding its infinite nature, understanding it's impossible for
me to cause it. So then I turn
and I look at myself and say, wow,
I'm not really fulfilling.
I'm not reciprocating these blessings. I can't.
So the only thing I can do since
I can't reciprocate them and I can't control
them is to trust on the source of
them. That's the vibe that he's given you.
Then he says,
is to uncover your sins,
to experience seeing your sins,
understanding our shortcomings.
And appreciating the danger of falling into sin.
So the first is recognizing blessings.
The second type of awareness is being aware
of my evil,
the danger of my evil.
And
then striving to find out what triggered this
evil, what causes it,
investing in myself,
understanding myself.
And then to
cease.
And he uses a word, he says, to
emancipate
yourself from their shackles.
So, like, he uses a very strong word.
Because there's a very profound
ethos that moves in this form of theology.
Either I'm the slave to Allah
or I'm the slave to something else.
I'm the Abd of Allah,
or I'm the Abd of something else, or
I'm kinda like mixed.
That's most myself, most of us. Right? Somewhere
in the middle of trying our best
to find that balance.
Then he
says,
and then seeking Allah's help
to help you survive the test
of the sin. And the word tamhiz means
to filter.
So he's using really powerful language as though,
like,
mistakes
and sin
are a way to, like, filter who you
are. Like, you can use it as a
opportunity to know yourself
and find and that's why the prophet said,
now you can appreciate the hadith.
People are like metal. Anas al Ma'aden
kalfitlahi
wazheb.
People like metals like gold and silver. How
do we discover gold and silver?
You gotta go through dirt.
So like the process of being tested by
sin,
if I survive it, ultimately may uncover your
what?
Your gold.
It's like a really beautiful man language that
he's using.
And the last inshallah and we'll stop here.
And the last, he said, is to be
aware of how you used your time.
Is everybody okay? Is it too distilled for
you?
Alright. I don't wanna, like,
take you somewhere and then you'll be mad
at me,
but it's very powerful. So he's saying awareness
is 3 things. Right?
Number 1 is to be aware of blessings,
how they're infinite, how you can't control them,
and you can't stop them, you can't increase
them, you just gotta roll with it. And
since you gotta roll with it, you might
as well roll with the one who's rolling
it.
That's how we can state it in our
language.
Meaning,
a heightened sense of awareness of blessings
should lead to a heightened sense of reliance
and trust. But he's not saying that yet.
The second
is,
wow, I just woke up.
Man, I have been doing some crazy stuff
for a long time.
Let me let me be aware of my
evil.
So,
So I I become
means to climb mountains, so it's like you
climbed up over the summit and now you
look down and you're like, oh, man, I
really did that?
Oh, man, I did that?
So now you can see why the second
station is gonna be what?
Toba.
Because tahba is for either failing to recognize
blessings,
failing to stay away from sin, or failing
to use my time, which is both of
those.
So you can see, like, how he's kind
of building it. And that's something that I
really want us to appreciate, man. And I
don't mean to say this in a bad
way to disrespect anybody,
but our Sunday school educations ain't cutting it.
Like, we need to expose our younger community
to a much more refined, deeper sense of
theology.
And oftentimes, the Muslim community is worried. They're
like, no, we need to bring them Nasheed
artists.
I have no problem with Nasheed artists.
I'm down with some Nasheed artists. You know
what I mean?
But I can't just be Nasheedan.
Like, I gotta be learning.
So there has to be both. And I
can't just be learning and not what
Nasheed. Know what I mean? So like, I
gotta have both.
But I worry that at times when, like,
when I teach these kind of texts, people
are like, man,
I had no idea that we had this
kind of robust
and for you educators,
these people, you know what they started to
write about a lot?
Cognition.
How do you learn?
Emotional cognition.
Because they they tied all this together,
trauma and culture. How does that impact people?
So don't get frustrated. Like, I'm gonna push
you sometimes, but I'm gonna be here for
I'm like, I'm here for you, and you're
here for you're there for me. Like, if
I screw up, you'll help me. So the
first is awareness, and he said awareness is
caused by 3 things.
Number 1 is
a blessing falls into my life that is
just like,
I realize I have no control over it.
It's something I never expected. It completely blows
my mind. So then I should think about
what's the source of that?
All of us probably have had some experiences
in that way.
The second
is that I become aware of the sins,
the crimes I've committed against my lord
and their danger.
So I I turned to Allah
to seek safety and security
from those sins.
And the third
is that I become aware of
how I have
used my time.
And here, that plays out in a few
ways. And he actually says in
in mindfulness awareness.
That someone becomes aware
of how he or she has
either
flagrantly used their time
or miserly used their time.
So it means by flagrantly is like,
I just did all kind of ratchetness.
So I've like flay I've been like generate
generous with my time in a wrong way.
Or I've been a miser with my time,
meaning
same thing. Right?
I had the opportunity to do good, and
I was miserly with it.
I had the opportunity to do something right,
and I didn't I just didn't do it.
So he said that time rests between those
two things.
And he said,
no.
I will finish here.
And he said, if you go through that
process where you examine your time in this
way,
you'll see where you have been guided to
use it properly
and where you've allowed it to be ruined,
where you've where you've wasted it.
So we're gonna stop here, and then next
time, we're gonna talk about
what's a blessing. Like, how do you recognize
namma? Like, how do I awaken?
How do I find the opportunity for seeing
good
in my life?
And then also we'll talk about
how to utilize and and
frame our time in a positive way,
and then that will take us into the
next station which is toba.
So the first is an awakening.
Right? We went through the awakenings, like, in
detail 3 weeks ago. It's on YouTube, if
you wanna find it there. Right? That's why
I did that to kinda set this up.
And the sheikh, he's saying, like, the awakening
is the
ability to move from negligence
to awareness. And we said that there's a
lot of there's a lot of vulnerability there,
man.
So someone has to be really careful that
they stay balanced.
They don't go too hard. They don't go
too soft.
And he said three things. It could be
more. He's not saying these are the only
three things. Right? He's not a modernist.
Just saying these are kinda like the 3
general things that cause awakenings.
Appreciating blessings and and realizing something's a blessing.
Like, can you imagine if we, like, we
really were able to comprehend
the value of our vascular
system.
We lose our minds, man. Right?
The second, he said, is to become aware
of sin,
personal sin,
and the danger of personal sin and how
to flee to God for that.
And then the third is being aware of
how I've used my time either flagrantly
or
in a way which is like miserly.
And that's gonna lead to tawba.
So when I make tawba, I'm making Tawbah
for not using a blessing,
not recognizing a blessing.
I make Tawbah
or using it wrong for falling into sin.
I make Tawba
for not using my time.
So any questions or thoughts?