Reforming the Self #17

This will not happen or him at 100 International but it means a Salatu was Salam ala Ashraful, MBA will mousseline the been Alfred wasn't a Muhammad Ali he afterload, Surah escritor slain along the island that we may encounter like that that email antenna was even an element. Yeah.

So we're in a part of the book, where our author of aguadulce fi, has

talked a lot about the different types of blessings that Allah gives us.

And the reason he went down this road in the first place, talking about Allah's blessings, the different types of blessings that Allah gives to us, is that he wants to show us what are all the tools in our tool belt.

He's giving us provisions for the road,

right? If the whole project

is to purify ourselves, to obtain the McHattie, machete

elite qualities, so that we may become a laws representatives on Earth as he wants us to be.

Then we're going to be embarking upon quite a journey.

He's taken time to respond to doubts that people might have that would dissuade them from going on this journey at all.

And now he's talking about the provision that each of us is going to need along the way. What are the things that are at our disposal to us, to help us in the quest to purify ourselves and become better people.

And so he started talking about the blessings of Allah and he said, of course, the blessings of Allah to Allah, they cannot be enumerated.

However, you'll find that most of them fall into certain categories.

And these categories, there's a hierarchy to to them, right. The most lofty category, or the best or the top, the cream of the crop,

are all the blessings that have to do with the afterlife, and Paradise and eternal life.

And the rest of the blessings that we experience here on Earth,

he doesn't want us to think of them as a hinderance necessarily,

to obtaining those blessings of the afterlife. He wants us to see them as tools to get there.

If only we use them in the right way.

Now, he said, admittedly, some of these tools

can be misused,

and actually can become an obstacle to yourself improvements to yourself reform.

But many of them are,

if not purely good than overwhelmingly usually good and helpful in your quest

to reform yourself, purify your soul,

and become a better person.

So have those blessings that we experience in this world.

Our provision, the tools we have to use and work with. He said one of those categories was virtue,

blessings that have to do with the soul. This is what we're after this is the most direct path.

So the blessings of the afterlife.

Then there are blessings of the body, such as health, strength, beauty,

and longevity.

There are blessings that are external to ourselves such as livelihood, meaning, wealth, family,

and a certain level of dignity that we experience in this life.

And then finally, there are kind of these

blessings that have to do with success and our method and our process

and our satisfaction,

such as guidance,

such as instruction, such as,

relevance, pertinent action,

and such as assistance and aid

and so on all of us Farhadi

not only does he want us to be grateful for the blessings,

he also wants us to not make it hard on ourselves. Right, he doesn't want you to go cut yourself off from your family

and go live in the woods and become a hermit.

He doesn't want to to starve yourself into weakness and frailty.

He wants to flip the script, he wants to change your, the lens through which you're viewing all these things

as not merely potential obstacles, but actually tools at your service that if only you use them correctly, will help you develop virtue.

And thus will get you to what you really want, which is paradise.

So in the last class, you know, some of these types of blessings are obvious, like virtue, it's obvious that these are blessings that are going to help us get to Paradise and some of them are less obvious.

So the author is going on a defense, he's making a defense, he's stating his case,

to prove to you and I

that the other types of blessings, the external blessings, such as wealth,

the bodily blessings, such as health and strength,

are also things that are supposed to be for us and not against us.

A lot didn't just what a cool a cruel trick if Allah just gave them to us, and they were so

enjoyable.

Right? Everybody wants health. Everybody wants a long life.

Everybody wants family,

relationships, meaningful relationships, what a cruel creation that would be if these things were inherently necessarily obstacles to our own salvation,

instead of potential tools and aid.

So last class, we talked about his defense of these external blessings.

How is it they can help us on our path?

He began with wealth and he talked about how many of the acts of worship that are accessible to us, they have to do with money or they have to they require having a certain amount of money, such as a cat and Hajj.

And he mentioned how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam used to ask Allah for wealth

and seek refuge and a lot from poverty. There are other Hadith where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that there was a relationship between poverty

and an inability to completely obey laws. Well,

we're talking about destitution. We're not talking about people that just our content with little hat little but have enough we're talking about destitution.

As we've said in many other classes, if you have a need,

you are vulnerable to exploitation manipulation. Allah says in the Quran, so it's on batata that the devil threatens you with what? With poverty? Yeah, no Coleman Falco, we have mono Cornville fascia. He threatens you with poverty and tries to convince you that if you commit fascia that if you commit

enormities you commit immortality, that it's going to get you out of that poverty and destitution.

This is how the devil tries to influence people.

So to have a base level that

removes that vulnerability from you.

That makes you kind of independent enough to not be extorted, right? The devil is the great extortionist is something that should be sought after, is not something that we should associate with

a heedless life, or impiety. It's not something we should be ashamed of. If someone has the means to be independent, such that they're not vulnerable to the

the salaries of the devil.

Similarly, the family the family, it gives you networking it gives you the opportunity

They are your eyes, your ears, your hands.

The author took us to the statement of length on a Salam about how he said that he would have prevailed against the people, the men, knocking down his door in pursuit of his guests. He wished that he had some more family, some strong supporters to rely upon,

then he wouldn't be in as vulnerable of a position. Similar thing to wealth.

He also defended dignity and honor.

And this is related to destitution and poverty.

That not having to put up with humiliation

is a very important part of purifying the South.

This is something that the historians, Islamic historians have extracted from the story of the people of Moses, which we've been talking about in the Hapa. Last week,

when they were taken out of Egypt,

many of their attitudes, so say many of the historians, many of their attitudes, and in gratitudes

come from their condition as being slaves.

Right, they're so used to being abused, they're so used to having to not having any aspiration, we're going to get to that today Insha Allah, because no aspiration would make sense for them. Why would they want to work hard?

If working hard, is only going to benefit their master and not benefit them at all.

It's kind of broken the system of incentive that we like to think exists in a meritocracy.

There is no reason to strive. The only incentive you have is to avoid getting whipped, avoid getting beaten.

So you spend decades and decades and generations in this situation. And look at the result, once they come out of Egypt. They don't know what to do with themselves, they miss being slaves, they actually want to go back and eat the same food that they used to eat, instead of eating the men that was Salewa that Allah was giving them directly. They don't want to fight when they go to Palestine. They don't want to listen to Moses, all of these things, a lot of the historians of Islam, they said

these were actually effects from not live not living, dignified, independent lives.

And then so what does Allah subhanaw taala do when they get to the gates of Palestine, he turns them out and says, You guys are gonna have to wander the desert for 40 years.

And that toughen them up that toughened up the following generation, the next generation, they lived lives of independence, they knew how to stick up for themselves, they knew how to eat from what their own hand earned.

And so they were not servile, and they were not dependent and they were not broken down on the inside.

So dignity is something that does help with righteousness and piety.

And then finally, he had defended lineage and heritage, and said that, while it's not a causal factor, it's not something that is in a deterministic way, necessitate that somebody who had a good lineage or heritage will be good, of course, we see many examples to the opposite of that.

It helps. And he said, it helps. If you're able to combine both your righteous effort and a good supportive lineage, then mashallah the work of reforming the self, it's going to be easy, or it's going to come a lot easier than somebody who has to struggle against intergenerational problems.

So that was last class

that was in defense of these external blessings, how they can be put in your service, how they can assist you, towards your development of virtue, and how they can assist you in pursuing your real goal, which is eternal bliss.

Today,

he's going to defend the blessings of the body.

Right.

And he starts the chapter right off the bat by refuting the conventional wisdom. He says that some people say

that it's sufficient that a person be free from disease

that they call that health. A state a negative state being free from disease,

because being free from disease will

stop you from being preoccupied wasting your time right, you'll work more efficiently when you're not ill.

The author takes exception to this kind of negative theory of health, that health is simply the absence of problems. He says, no, no, no, no, no.

It's more deep than that. And more positive than that.

And there's a lot more room for development than that.

He compares the body that we're given

to the tool of a craftsman.

Or he says that the body that we're given is like,

the ship for a captain.

That thing that we're given the body

by Allah subhanaw taala, is exactly what defines us.

You can't have a captain without a ship.

What is a captain without his ship,

you take away the Craftsman tools, and what has he become?

The skill, the experience,

it's all kind of wasted without the tool.

And so he says the human body is like this tool.

And how much it shapes your identity.

And also in how much it can assist you in achieving your goals. So it's not merely an issue of being free from obstacles, being free from disease, but it's actually the body is something that we should proactively maintain, positive, positively develop.

So that we are trying for SN

with our body and everything related to the blessings of the body.

And this will, he says it's transferable skills, it will bleed over it will influence everything else that we do.

It will cause us to operate on a higher level, it will lower the barrier of difficulty to obtaining virtue. He's gonna go into that in a little bit more detail in a bit. But first, he's going to break up the body into categories because he's a very organized thinker, Mashallah. And he likes his categories. And so he has his own kind of anatomy lesson that he goes into says we can think about the body as four systems we have an he's gonna run with his his ship and Captain metaphor here.

So we have the skeletal system.

And the skeletal system is literally the planks, the ribs, literally right as a nice part of the ship.

Right, that's what which gives the ship its structure and shape.

We have the nervous system, and the nervous system, he compares to the ropes that tie the ribs together that hold them in place.

He says that we have our flesh, our flesh is like padding for the ropes.

And then finally, we have our skin which he compares to the the membrane of a ship, maybe the resin that you put on the outside or something you put over top of it to cover it and make it waterproof to make it seaworthy.

So he says just like with a ship,

okay, with a ship, the stronger

each of these components is, the stronger the end result is or the final product is. If the final product is a ship, the ship is more than the sum of its parts. But the sum of its parts do add up if the ribs are weak, secondhand wood right? You found lying out on the street somewhere

then you might be putting yourself in harm's way you might be in danger that the second that you go out to sea right

if your ropes are weak holding those ribs together then those slightest when that comes along and the whole thing snaps and you've got a major issue you're not going anywhere.

The same thing with the the padding. If you don't have padding around the planks from the ropes or anything else than anything that can come and puncture your ship and you can spring a leak and then guess what you're going under

and the same with the membrane

or whatever keeps out the water.

So this is like the human body.

Every individual component of the body that you develop,

you are

adding to the whole.

And you are making it easier to work at a higher level, both in the sense of productivity that we usually think of efficiency, but also when it comes to achieving virtue. And as I said, he's going to get there.

The second thing that he says so he said that, you know, so that's his introductory metaphor, okay? If I'm going to defend the blessings of the body, I'm going to say that you we should be developing our bodies, and it will help us achieve virtue, how is that possible? Okay, he's gonna go down to the different parts of the blessings of the body. So first of all, he says, strength, strength is one of the blessings of the body.

Why is strength important? How can strength lend itself to righteousness and piety, and developing,

developing the self reforming the stuff?

He said, because it enables the body to exert effort, both for this world and for the next.

We know that the prophets of Allah Allah who was salam,

when he would stand in tahajjud, in night prayer, he would stand so long, that his feet would start to crack and bleed.

We know that the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, in order to reach the top of Jebel Knuth, I don't know how many of you have tried to climb this mountain and Mecca,

the mountain upon which, in the cave of hate off he received the first eyes of the poor and it is a workout. You realize the first thing you realize is that wow, the prophets of Allah he was set on must have been in incredible shape.

Now, there's stairs, you get to climb and there's like a convenience store halfway up, you can buy snacks and drinks and things like that trinkets all the way at the top, more water for sale.

Right.

In his time, it was nothing, nothing.

Just him and whatever provisions that he brought with him.

He was a fit person to be able to climb all that way. And what was the benefit? It was a spiritual benefit.

He got up far away

from Mecca.

From the shirk the idolatry that was going on from the last from the, you know, people at that time, they were making the offer in the cabin naked without any clothes,

drinking alcohol on the open. That was Mexican society.

And so the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam he retreated into into meditation into Dumbo

and prepared his hearts to receive the Koran.

And it took strength, it took physical strength to get him to the place where he went and did that.

Of course, we could talk all night about how strength aids in defending the Muslim community with the Muslims, they had the fight battles to defend themselves. We have narrations from the Hadith and the mozzie. The stories of the battles with amazing feats of strength. People like Zubair and Ally like plucking men off of their horses, as they're riding by these that takes strength. Those sorts of things take strength.

But even in the process, because you know, you and me, we're not so strong as them, of course, we're kind of soft, I'm a little bit deadly. I'm not the only one.

Right.

It even takes strength to go out and to make a living. It does to be able to wake up early, to benefit from the day, to not be fatigued, all day long.

To go out and to have the energy to

obtain your livelihood to seek the livelihood that Allah has written for you.

Or if you're in the home,

then you need even more energy, I think,

to raise the children to prepare the meals, to do the laundry, everything that requires lots of energy.

It's no secret why women who stay at home the first thing that they do when their husband gets in is they maybe collapse and they ask their husband to help them out with something. It's exhausting.

So physical strength, physical strength, and health can help you perform all of these duties. And these things are worship, if not in and of themselves than by your intention, right? You can convert absolutely anything that you do to worship if you simply intend it to be worship. And so all of that worship requires strength.

So strength is something that lends itself to that type of worship.

Then a lot of us for hunting, he says, The next

blessing of the body that he wants to defend is beauty.

But he he's quick to say, no, no, no, hold off, not what you think.

I'm not talking about the type of beauty that leads to romantic feelings, or things like that. He says, what I mean by beauty are two things.

First, statute, this kind of concept of statute.

Which is, I'll go one by one, though. So the first thing he says is statute.

And that has to do with something being fully formed and developed.

He makes an example out of a tree, right? A tree whose growth because maybe it was in the shade of something a building or another tree, its growth was stunted it didn't have the proper nutrients is that tree or the tree that had full sun was able to grow to its fullest natural extent, which one is more honorable? Which one is more

pleasing?

The one that's been able to grow fully to its natural extents. So that's what he's talking about when it comes to stature. And then this concept that he says the second part of what he's talking about as beauty is the concept of being fit,

fitness.

Because if you're fit, then you're able to be strong, it causes the other blessing, which you mentioned with it, which is strength.

It enables one to be patient

with things, physical ailments and things like that.

Then the author, he anticipates

an objection. And this is kind of what I foreshadowed earlier.

If someone's going to say, Wait a second, wait a second, wait. Are you trying to tell me that there's some sort of connection between virtue and

our bodies such that

this is kind of discriminatory

towards people who have disabilities? Or people who are weaker? Or have smaller stature or whatever have you?

And allow the most fun? He's crazy. No, no, that's not what I'm saying.

He's saying that

these things are not one to one.

It's not always going to be true, that these things are not causal, and they're barely even,

of correlation.

But he said, when it comes to

feeling dignity, if we take the same kind of example, as not living in destitution,

if you're able to be independence, financially, but not invites a certain amount of honor and dignity that makes it easier to develop yourself and reform yourself.

He says, similarly,

if we're able to develop our bodies, not something that Allah has given us, that's just a trial for us to deal with. But if we're able to

obtain

a fit, healthy body, then this is something that similarly is going to ease our way towards dignity and respect, and is actually going to ease our way towards virtue and all of us for Hani as master of the Koran is he is he's got is from the Koran to back him up.

One of the ones that he brings up

from Sorenson Bacara

in Allah has to offer who Alikum was that who best thought failure Amy was just

when describing

the king that they were going to that allows pilots Allah chose to appoint over Bani Israel yet.

He said that he increased him best of all time, in a generous way he gave

Give him

bountiful tiller, I'll meet Well, Jason, in knowledge and in his body

in his body as well.

Then he quotes an idea from solar solar off, was that a cool Phil county basketball,

the same sort of meaning is that this was a favor that Allah granted people in order so that they would have a certain degree of respect and honor among the people. So we're not getting down on anybody. We're not saying that these things are, you know, if you

can't obtain a certain level of soundness and body due to something that's not able to be overcome, that, of course, that's out of your hands.

But he's saying to the extent that we're able to control it, to the extent that we're able to obtain it, then this is not just something that is dunya. Right, in that way that we say, Oh, you're choose just to busy with the dunya know this to pursuing a sound body, a healthful body

can be an enormous benefits and aid when it comes to developing virtue, and reforming yourself.

Finally, the last one that he mentions, the last

bottle bodily blessing that he's going to defend, and this is probably the along with strength is an easier sell. It's way more intuitive, is longevity,

longevity of life,

saying that having longevity of life, and only Allah knows when we're going to die, of course.

But hoping or having reasonable hope,

in a long lifespan,

increases our aspiration.

It increases our aspiration for the good pure things in this life. And the good pure things in the afterlife, somebody who thinks that they might live 80 to 100 years.

They are going to have high hopes and high goals or at least they're more likely to

when it comes to the things that they're going to build, the nonprofits, the walk, the the quests and all the things they're thinking ahead, the thing you have to think,

as opposed to somebody

who believes or feels or expects that their life is to quote, nasty, brutish, and short,

then this leads to recklessness. This leads to a callous attitude. And this leads to hedonistic behavior. And anybody who's got their finger on the pulse of pop culture at all knows that this is true. Because for example, when I was growing up, one of the biggest Rap Albums was Illmatic, by not us, okay.

And one of his most famous songs was about this thing.

He said, and I'm going to give you a PG version, that life is unpleasant, and then you die.

That's why we engage in risky behavior, because you never know when you're gonna go. That was an adaptation of a line from one as alums. 20 years later, rappers like Little Wayne, and everybody else who's on the radio are saying the same thing. This whole concept of YOLO you only live once. That became a rallying cry maybe 10 years ago, for hip hop culture and youth culture. This was the attitude. And you see this attitude, develop and grip, inner city.

People in the inner city that have no hope, basically, they have little opportunity for advancement for development. They know that the system kind of has stacked the odds against them, you find very low aspiration.

And so you find fatalism. You find an attitude that's resigned to

this sort of immoral behavior that is predominant. And

it kind of affects your outlook on life and the goals that you set for yourself. So who knew that a lot of us for honey would be vindicated by Hip Hop lyrics, but it's true.

Okay, we have about five minutes I think we can get through the next little section. So then a lot of us

He moves on from defending these. And he's going to also defend the virtues of success. But that's a lot. He's less concerned with that, because it's a much more obvious kind of intuitive connection. Of course, somebody if they wanted to obtain virtue, they wanted to reform themselves, they would need success, they would need these sorts of things. But he was really intent on proving to you that the blessings of the body and the blessings of wealth and things that are external to you dunya

dunya blessings

are not just icing on the cake, but actually very important to some, to some extent, in helping you in your path to reform yourself.

So he takes a little detour here, and he's going to talk about

backing up about the virtues, right, the blessings of the soul, the virtues that everybody recognizes, as being important things. And he says that every single one of these virtues

that he had talked about previously, it's like a tree.

And it bears not just one single fruit, but it bears many, many, many fruit.

So for example, if you take the virtue of the intellect,

he said, If you develop your intellect, it will result in many beautiful things, such as insight, such as thoughtfulness, consideration for others, such as memory, and such as understanding and wisdom.

He says that developing your bravery,

it will bear fruit in the form of generosity to others in good times. Patients, when you're afflicted by grief, personal loss, or adversity.

It said that the virtue of restraint

results in the fruits of contentment,

which drives away sort of this cycle of wanting, wanting the next thing wanting the next thing.

It also results in trustworthiness because you don't want to view someone leave something in your trust. You're not tempted to partake from that thing. Because your content, you don't want anything, you don't have your eyes on what belongs to other people,

just as he says,

blossoms into mercy, and compassion, into forbearance into forgiveness and clemency. And that he ends with a little thought. And he's mentioned this earlier in the book, but he'll he reiterates it now, he says that

all of these virtues, there's various levels of development. So we have way up here we have the level of the angels. And way down here we have the level of the beasts, the animals, and then we have a level that's in between that.

And he says, As for some people, they're so far developed.

When it comes to the virtue

of capacities, they're

repurposing, or I should say they're correct purposing of the blessings Allah has given them towards their final goal of the afterlife,

that they are better than angels. And he called Surah Yusuf again. The ladies when they see use of in her Illa, Malecon, Corinne. This is none but an angel.

Generous, noble Angel. It's possible.

And then he quotes for the second group that has gone that has basically lost the plot entirely, has gotten busy with the trinkets and the blessings and of themselves, the wealth and the children and everything in and of themselves doesn't realize that they're tools, doesn't realize they're meant to be put to work for you for the afterlife. They're just busy with what's right in front of them. He says that they're actually worse than the animals.

And he quote sodas and photon inhome Illa. Cal and Iommi, Bell home of all, law says something similar and sorted out off as well.

And then he says the last is where you and I are that middle ground.

Somewhere between the animals and the angels, sometimes succeeding sometimes failing and embarrassing ourselves. One step forward, two steps back, two steps forward another time struggling

and

this is why

I all every single one of us

struggles and probably can relate to experiences of

actually fighting against the devil. And the devil suggestions that they compared for example, some people they're shocked, they're shocked. They say, Man, I used to not be practicing, I used to not pray. I used to not wear hijab, for example, or other things worse than that, you know? And they would say, you know, and when I started practicing, all of a sudden, I'm like, have all these terrible thoughts and now all of a sudden I feel like I understand like the devil is coming to be

trying to get me to do bad things. And it wasn't like this before.

What changed? The scholars they said well, does a thief robbing empty house?

Or does the thief rob a house in which there's something of value?

Right? So once you start doing the good work, living the good life, fighting the good fight, Oh, that makes you a prime target. You're on the devil's most wanted list because he's going to try his hardest that the people who are like use it for like angels that are too far gone. They're too good. There's no touching them. You and me however,

we are prime suspects, prime targets and May Allah help us and aid us in our struggle. That's all the time we have for today. Anybody have any final questions? Comments.

My pleasure

Okay, everybody, enjoy the what's left of your weekend

and I'll see you soon inshallah. So don't want to come after that.