MAS-MSA Oklahoma Conference in January 2017.
Yasmin Mogahed – Pain Depression And Anxiety – How To Heal
AI: Summary ©
The CEO of MSA discusses the sadness of life and how it causes physical pain and dangerous behavior. He emphasizes the need for tools to manage emotions and seeking help from science to address physical and mental health issues. The speakers stress the importance of protecting one's wound and avoiding toxic foods, and seek help from technology and science. They also emphasize the need for trusting one's mother to avoid bodily harm and problem-solving for powerless growth.
AI: Summary ©
I'm sorry again for being late but we have Sr yasmeen which I had with us. Or if you're a gyptian like myself, you say Moga head, but please join me in welcoming SR Yes, meanwhile j
My name is sir Chima and I'm part of the CEO MSA board. I'm just going to read her steadiest means bio. With her unique brand of inspirational and thought provoking talks. ismene Mojo has become one of the most sought after speakers in the Muslim world. After graduating with a master's in Journalism and Mass Communications, she pursued a career in writing. ismene worked as a writing instructor at the cardinal Stritch University and a contributor to the hafting The Huffington Post. She has had great success with her debut book reclaim your heart, which was released to critical acclaim currently, she's an instructor for a motive Institute. Study yes me
sound money calm.
How's everyone doing?
I have to be honest, I have never spoken in a room quite like this before.
I feel like we're all gonna take a vote at the end
out of a laminate Chanel regime. mera mera Rahim Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah Allah le Yousaf eedge main rubbish raha sadri we have suddenly Omni lock that melissani of coding.
The way that I want to sort of schedule or format this talk, is I want to have a portion of time where I speak and then a portion of time where we'll take a short break and then we'll have q&a inshallah. But what I want to do is,
speak about see my topic, the title is spiritual ways of overcoming hardships, stress, fear and anxiety.
First of all, before we begin speaking about how to overcome these kinds of things before you talk about any topic, in fact, you need to talk about you need to understand the importance of the topic, why should we discuss it? Why should we even listen? One thing that you'll find when you study the hot end, you'll find that when Allah subhanaw taala talks about Jenna For example, when Allah subhanaw taala describes Jenna or when Allah describes the the fate of a believer, he says something again and again and that is love homophone la him while at home, yes, no. And what this statement that is repeated many times in the court and means is that there will be no fear upon them. Nor
shall vague grief.
When we look at these two things that are lost content is speaking about, he's speaking about fear, anxiety, in other words, and he's speaking about sadness, or in a while, actually, I'm going to take a moment and explain the difference, but sadness, and to a more extreme effect depression.
When you look at, when you study psychology, and you study mental health, you find that most the most common disorders that people are plagued with fall into one of two categories, either anxiety disorders, or depressive disorders. So what we find, by studying the human condition is that
the that which plagues the human being the things that we suffer from most fall in one of these two categories of either fear or some sort of sadness.
So, so discussing how to navigate these two things is extremely important. I'll tell you, I'll give you an analogy to kind of express the importance. See you and I, we can't control the weather, right? Can anyone control the weather?
It doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how much power you have. It doesn't matter what position you have. No one can control the weather. No one can even make it rain or stop raining. You know what I'm saying? Not Trump, and not no one, right?
No one has the power to control the weather.
But we have to do what we have to learn to cope with the weather. We have to learn to live within that weather. There's one of these famous quotes, which probably you guys have seen on a lot of memes and stuff. And that is the quote goes like this, right? It's not about waiting for the rain to stop. It's about learning or waiting for the it to something to this extent, but it's about learning to dance in the rain. Right. So the idea here is that you can't control what storms
Come or what storms go, but what you can learn to do is to be able to cope within those storms.
And the fact of the matter is that you can never have a place without storms. Every location in the world has some sort of storm or some sort of natural disaster. You know this, right?
In some places, it's hurricanes. In some places, it's earthquakes. In some places, it's tsunamis, etc. But it's always there's always some weather that will come and it's impossible to stop the weather.
But what we can do is we can learn to cope. And that's what I want to talk about today.
You see, fear, and sadness are inevitable. Fear and sadness, some level of fear and sadness are inevitable in this life, in the same way that it's inevitable, it's going to rain sometimes, in the same way that it's inevitable that there's going to be wind, and that there's going to be storms, everyone agree.
But what you can do now you guys live in a place, which I'm assuming you have four seasons here, right? So you see cold weather and you see hot weather? What do you do when the cold weather comes?
You dress warm. So you change the way you dress when the weather is cold. And that's how you one of the things you do to cope. You stay indoors more, you wear gloves, you wear coat, we wear a coat, right? And that's how you cope with cold weather. But you don't sit and say no, I'm actually going to wait for for till winter just never comes again. Right? I'm just I'm waiting for that. Because that's that's denial. So what I'm saying to you is that fear, some level of fear and some level of, of sadness in all its different forms is inevitable. But what we can do is we can learn how to cope with that. Okay, before I begin talking about how we cope, I want to clarify some definitions.
Everybody cool with that? Okay. I want to clarify some definition because I think that one of the biggest mistakes that we've made, is in in in, in talking about mental health issues, is that we have mixed up a lot of terms that should not be used interchangeably. We don't have the correct terminology. And I'll explain what I mean. I'll explain what I mean.
There is a term called sadness, okay. And then this is I'm going to give you guys these these terms, and then I'm going to define them their sadness. Everyone with me.
Okay, there's depression. All right. Now under depression, under depression, I'm going to give you some sub sub sub sub headings. Okay, some more terms. So I said, there's sadness over here. I want you guys to just leave sadness on its own. Okay. And then over here, we have depression. Now, under depression, I'm going to give you some more terms, despair, despair, hopelessness,
make sense despair and hopelessness?
Why am I saying that the reason I'm saying that is because we have to be very clear that as human beings, sadness, some level of sadness is normal. It's a normal part of being human. And it's a normal part of going through this life. If a person never felt sadness, then it would mean that perhaps there's something wrong with them. Okay. And what do I mean? What do I, if somebody goes through their entire life?
25 years, 35 years, 75 years and never felt sadness?
How is that, that means that when they lost members of their family, they never felt sad, that when something happened that hurt them or hurt their children, and never felt that, that would actually mean that there's something wrong. So to say that we can avoid any kind of human sadness is actually it goes against human nature. So why am I explaining this soul? Why am I spending so long explaining this? The reason I'm doing that is because if we don't understand the difference between sadness and depression, and what was what were the subheadings under depression,
despair and hopelessness. If we don't understand the difference between the two, we can become very, very confused. And it actually can cause a lot of damage. Can I tell you why? I'll tell you why. How often have you guys heard statements like
a believer should never be sad?
Anyone
or sadness is from shaitan
Anyone heard that
these kinds of things are thrown out all the time? And
if you have enough Eman, then you should never be sad.
Is this all sounding familiar? Okay, why is this problematic? The reason this is problematic? In all there's many reasons. But I'm going to begin by telling you this.
Every single law created everything. A law created, he created with a purpose did not create anything without a purpose. No, obviously not a law is, is exalted above creating anything without a purpose. When a law created emotions, he created them with a purpose. And indeed, sadness actually was created with a purpose. And can and you might be shocked to hear this, but even anger was created with a purpose. Do you know that? That might seem kind of strange, right? anger was created with a purpose. Sadness was created with a purpose, joy was created with a purpose. Even fear was created with a purpose. Do you guys understand what I'm saying? What is the purpose of all these
different emotions? Well, each emotion has its function. But here's the key. Here's the key. The key is that we have to control and manage these emotions. And we cannot allow these emotions to control and manage us. You understand the difference? I need to control my emotions, that doesn't mean that I need to deny them, it doesn't mean that I need to numb or ignore them. Because numbing and ignoring an emotion completely means you're blocking the purpose that it was meant to fulfill.
So the question becomes, well, yes, I mean, what would be the purpose of sadness? What would be the purpose of something like pain? What would be the purpose of anger? It seems to me that we should just be able to do away with it.
And guess who also thought that way? How many of you have seen inside out?
Joy also thought that right? Do you guys are you guys following? Anyone? Good?
What am I saying for those who don't know what I'm talking about? It's it's a cartoon written by psychologists. And the idea of the cartoon is that there's this little girl, and we get to go inside her head. And inside of her head are all these different characters, five different characters, each one represents one of the five basic emotions. So there's fear, disgust, anger, joy, and sadness, and the each are represented by a character. Now the storyline goes that she's going through her life. And she her main emotion throughout her life has been joy. She says she's a happy kid. All right. But what we see is that some some hardship comes her way. She has to move, she's having some
trouble adjusting and stuff. So now what's happened is all of a sudden sadness is coming into the picture. Well, the character that plays joy, doesn't want sadness in the picture. The character who plays joy thinks the only thing this little girl needs is joy. And so she's basically trying to do away with sadness. You know what this sounds like? This sounds like a lot of
sort of the the the medical, the society, the medical society that we sort of live in the culture that we live in, where as soon as you feel something other than sheer exhilaration, you pop a pill. Do you get what I'm saying? You numb it. If you feel pain, numb it, right? Take a painkiller. The moment you feel physical pain, take a painkiller. The moment you feel emotional pain, take, you know, take some sort of meds. It's this idea that we're never ever supposed to feel anything other than joy and exhilaration, right? And if you do, there must be something immediately. There's must be something wrong with you, and you should just pop a pill. But let me ask you this question. Let
me ask you this question when it comes to pain. If a person has a heart condition, meaning there's something significantly wrong with their heart, all right, how will they know?
Does anyone can anyone answer that question?
How does a person know they have a heart problem?
They get chest pain.
Okay, that's how that's how Allah designed it. That for that the way that a person knows that they have a problem with their heart is they actually feel chest pain, they feel pain. How do I know that I'm burning my arm on the stove when I don't see it.
pain because the pain of being burned. See, that's that pain that my arm feels is what's alerting me that there's something wrong. So the pain itself serves a function. What is the function?
Now I gave you two examples deny I gave you two exams.
As I said, a heart condition and being burned. What is the function here of the pain in these two examples?
awareness, awareness and
for what of what awareness of what to do what?
To take action, you get it, had I not felt the chest pain, I would never go to the doctor had I not felt that I was being burned, I would not move my arm. And if I didn't feel the pain of being burned, and I didn't know that I was my arm was on the stove. Do you know what would happen to my arm?
You know what would happen to my arm, I, I might burn off all my skin in that place, you get it. So the pain actually is protecting me. Because it's telling me I have to take action. And I have to take action in order to change something. You get it. But if I numbed it, if I numbed it completely, then I would never move my arm. If I numbed the chest pain, if I didn't feel the pain, I would never go to the doctor and then fix the problem. Makes sense. I read this news article years ago about a guy it's very deep. It's actually a true story. It was in the news. This guy who goes to the dentist, and he doesn't have health insurance. So when he goes to the dentist, he's going because of
pain, tooth pain. So he goes to the dentist and the dentist tells him that he has an infection.
And he prescribes for him two kinds of medication he prescribes for him an antibiotic to actually treat the infection. And he prescribes along with that, a painkiller to just numb the pain.
Well, since the man couldn't afford both, which one do you think he chose?
He chose the painkiller. And so what happened to this man is that the infection spread to his brain and he died.
Do you know how deep that is? That's actually there's actually a lesson in that. There's a lesson there. And this is in fact what we do in life with our pain. This is what we do with our emotional pain is the moment that we feel pain instead of going to the root of the pain, what's causing the pain and changing it and addressing it. We just want to numb it. You get it? So what we do, and even modern modern traditional medicine is, is basically about treating symptoms. You know, there's like New Age medicine coming out now like the natural medicine, the natural Pathak and that kind of route where it's more looking at the route, what's the cause? Right, looking at the body as holistically,
that if you have pain in your head, it's not just about taking Tylenol, but let's figure out what's causing it right, or whatever it is that the body is holistic. But the idea here is that emotionally we do that emotionally, we feel something that hurts us, what do we go to immediately numb it. Let's distract ourselves. Let's look for something to like, like a sedative of some sort. You know, people have a lot of things that they use a sedatives a lot of things. Some people go to drugs, some people go to alcohol, some people go to, you know, their their careers, their jobs, music, whatever it is. But these essentially become escapes. It's like that painkiller, right? It's, it's, it's to numb the
pain, because I don't want to feel the pain. But at the same time, I'm not going to the root to solve the cause of the pain. Is this making sense? All right.
So I just told you that sadness, and pain has a purpose. And you told me that it's so that you'll take action, right? Take action to do what? To address the source right now, is pain and sadness supposed to be perpetual? Is it supposed to be permanent in this life?
Anyone know, it's not.
We go through life and you know, everyone's been in pain before, right? You stub your toe, you burn yourself, you cut yourself. We know what physical pain feels like, right? But Alhamdulillah you know if everything's okay, we're not in perpetual chronic pain, right? And may Allah Spano tala, protect us from that that's one of the hardest tests, isn't it? But But the purpose is supposed to be temporary, in order for you then to take to make a change. All right.
So now I told you at the beginning that I'm putting sadness over here. I'm putting in its own category. Why? Because I want to kill this myth that if you have a man and if you
are a good enough believer, you'll never feel sadness, because that's actually untrue. Sadness was created for a purpose. Yes, it's not intended to be perpetual. It's supposed to be temporary. But it does serve a purpose. You know, it serves a purpose. So what we need to do is this, dealing with our sadness is the proper way to deal with sadness. I actually get to that. But before I get to the proper way of dealing with sadness, and pain, is I want to just move over to depression. I want to move over to this umbrella term that I gave you. What were the two terms underneath despair and hopelessness?
Do you remember at the beginning, I said, these quotes that people say things like, a believer will never be sad. Sadness is from shaitan, right? These kinds of things. You know what the problem with these quotes is? You know, the problem is, they've used the wrong word there. They've used the wrong word. They've used the word sadness. And like I said, and like any psychologist can tell you, sadness, in and of itself is a normal human emotion.
Okay, who created it?
Allah. All right. So they're using the wrong term there. What do you think should be there instead of sadness?
Or despair?
So if we want to reword that statement,
then we put despair, a believer never disappears. And that's actually true. A believer does not feel hopeless. And that's actually true. Can someone think what's the difference? They sound like they're the same, but they're not the same.
I'll tell you why. They're not the same.
hopelessness, and despair means that you're giving up. hopelessness and despair means I'm not going to try anymore. There is no point I have no more hope for tomorrow.
That's different than saying I'm sad today. Makes sense. And I'll give you guys examples. The profits of the line SLM went through periods of sadness, you know, the year of sadness when he lost his wife, Khadija, Dylan, her and his uncle, right? He had a period of sadness. Yaqoob Allah has Salah, jacobellis, salam, when he lost Yusuf Ali Salaam, he cried, he kept crying. And he cried so much till he lost his vision.
Why did he do that? Because he was sad. But did he lose hope? He never lost hope. Do you know that even within his sadness, he still had hope that he would see his sons again.
Do you understand? So while he felt that human, that normal human emotion when you lose your child is sadness, the prophets I seldom felt sadness and cried when he lost his son, right? When his son died, he cried, and people at the people around him asked him, What is this? And he said, His mercy which Allah puts in the hearts of the believers.
And when he his son died, he said, what the famous saying, the eyes shed tears, and the heart feels sad, the heart feels, the heart feels about the tongue does not utter except what pleases Allah. He's teaching us what that means to be human, right to be human. Because if you don't feel sad, when you lose your son, then that's not being human. That's being a robot. Islam did not come to make us robots. It did not come to meet us, to make us lose that soft heart and to lose that compassion. Islam is is something that came to to actually soften our hearts, and to help us to be the best type of human that we can. But the intent is not to make us something other than human. We're not making
a bunch of nice robots, you get it. And Allah is not expecting us to become angels, either. We're supposed to be human, but be the best human that we can the best form of human that we can. How do you be the best? And that's what Islam came to teach us. So these prophets who went through sadness, jacobellis salaam, when he says I complain of my sadness to Allah, He obviously was sad. He's saying I'm complaining of my sadness only to Allah. And at the same time, at the same time, what is he? How was he described what is his state? law tells us what? Slobodan jimmies
you know, these people
who think, you know, it's like, I'll give you a scenario. somebody
sees a woman at a funeral, and she's crying. What would they say to her?
have supper sister.
I'm a little confused.
You know what I'm saying? I'm a little confused. Where in the world did it say? That crying means you don't have sub?
If that were the case, then how explain to me how could a man jacoba his solemn, who not only has sobor like you and I can have Subbu he has subaltern Jameel meaning, like the epitome of Subbu. Right? And yeah, he's crying till he loses his vision, you understand? Do you guys are you following what I'm saying? So the crying itself is not a negation necessarily of Sloboda, obviously, because you have the example of Subbu right here, and he's crying till he goes blind. That's how much he's crying.
Abu Bakr on the line, used to be actually nicknamed el backcap. And Al Baqarah means someone who cries a lot, not just someone who cries, it's like an exaggerated form of the word, even so much that at the time, that the prophets I send them was on his deathbed.
And he told I should hold the line high because he couldn't leave the prayer. He told the line Hmm, tell your father to leave the prayer. And you know what her response was, but he cries too much.
That was her actual response. He was known to cry so much. Oh, my God, Lion, right, the man's man.
He had marks on his face from tears.
We need to go back and recalibrate our definitions. Because Allah created tears for a reason. And anytime you block, anytime you block, the natural way that Allah created, you are harming yourself, you're actually harming yourself. And this is where I'm going to go into the topic of healing. Because crying is actually part of the healing process. You know, scientifically, scientifically, they found that the actual the chemical makeup of emotional tears is different than for example, happy tears. You understand what I mean? chemically, a lot is clean. He's actually healing us when we cry, that it's part of the healing process, that it's part of the cleansing. So when you see
someone grieving and they're crying, and you tell them block that stop that stop that you're harming them, you're harming them. Because what happens when you block a healing process? I'll tell you what happens. Imagine someone gets a gunshot wound right. gunshot wound, and they think okay, I got a gunshot wound. Let me deal with this. Just put a bandaid on it. Let's just put a bandaid on it. It'll be fine. Right, and it's oozing and it was no No, I'm fine. I'm fine. Let's just cover it up.
Well, what's happened? Yes, you've covered it up. But has it gone away? Has it healed you can pop all the painkillers in the world all the numbing you know medic medications in the world, but your gunshot wound is not healed. You know, people say Time heals all wounds. That's wrong. That's actually wrong. I'll tell you why. Because if it is not properly dealt with time won't heal no wounds. In fact, time can just make it worse. If it's not dealt with properly, make sense? Study the physical world and it will teach you about the spiritual world. make yours out if you study any physical law has like a parallel in the unseen in the in the spiritual world. Okay, so physically
you and I know that if someone has a gunshot wound, and you just pretend that it's okay by popping, popping Tylenol and covering it up with a bandaid isn't gonna make it okay. It doesn't just heal. Oh, no, no, give it time, give it time. Can anyone tell me what happens to that wound after time of just covering it up without cleaning it and dealing with it?
It will actually lead to an infection and you know that that entire limb might have to be amputated? Do you guys understand that, that that time that you gave it because it wasn't dealt with properly? Did not heal it but actually it led to an infection and then you you may have to amputate that that entire limb.
This is what we do emotionally, most of us and we are taught to do this by the way. We are actually taught to do this by our parents and by our teachers and by our religious leaders. We're taught this is the right way. Yeah. I I cannot tell you how
How many times and how, like, annoyed it makes me when I see things like,
um,
I decided to be strong, even when I want to cry.
What's wrong with that statement?
As if they're contradictory.
You get it? You guys hear this stuff all the time. It's all over Facebook. It's these these annoying memes. Yeah, these annoying videos that say things like this this is this is absolutely poisonous. Be strong even when you want to cry, hold up.
Are you trying to tell me that jacobellis time wasn't strong?
Was he not strong? I'm sorry, but he's stronger than all of us combined. He had Southern Jamil, but he's crying. It does not mean that you're not strong because you're crying. The closest people to Las panatela cried the prophets I send them cried. Every book or the lion cried, are we better than them? Because we're not crying? No, I'll tell you what we are. I'll tell you what we are. With as it will cry. Em said, when a person stops crying completely, it's a sign of a hardened heart. It's not a good thing. It's not something that we should be.
Like, like trying to attain. Because this, when the eyes become dry, it's a sign of a dead heart or a hardened heart. And he tells us that the hardened heart is the furthest from Allah subhanaw taala. So this is not our goal. Our goal is to soften the heart, not heart in the heart.
So then how do we heal? So I'm I'm making a point here, I'm making a case why the typical narrative is wrong and it's harmful. This idea of Be strong,
be strong, have sober sister, being strong, have sober, especially the boys, especially men are told, told when they're very, very young, that you're not supposed to cry. And it is actually harming men. I was just reading. I actually just posted something about it today. And I read this absolutely astounding statistic that 73% of suicides are men.
That's what I just said 70 not attempted suicides are men.
More women attempt, but more men actually kill themselves and not a little bit more 73%. So there's something going on. Okay, there's something going on. And what's happening, we all know is that boys are told from day one, that boys don't cry.
And so what happens is you've blocked this natural,
like part of the healing process, natural expression, that a lot designed, and it's come and it's actually having disastrous consequences. And you're having more depression, more anxiety, and an inability to deal with things. It looks on the outside, like they're dealing with things. It looks like they're dealing with things. Why? Because they're stoic. You know, a stoic means just not showing any emotion, you know, just numb. But that's, that's one of the most dangerous places to be. So, this idea is this idea of be strong have sobre means you shouldn't cry,
we we have to understand that sub. This concept of patience, of suburb of of, of accepting the decision of a law in no way is directly linked to how much you cry. All right, because sub sobre is in the heart. Sabra is in in whether or not we are complaining against the decision of Allah.
But as we said, with jacobellis lm, can I ask you guys a question? We're all taught, we're not supposed to complain against the law, right? That's something we shouldn't do. If Allah gives us something, we shouldn't complain against it. But jacobellis lm is saying, I only complain of my sadness to Allah. So Can someone explain that to me? What's the difference? What does that mean?
Okay, yes.
Speak up. I can't hear you.
He has hope. But I want to ask about that statement. I only complain of my sadness to Allah.
Okay, but aren't we not supposed to complain?
Exactly. It's not against the law that he's complaining. We have to understand the difference here. There is a difference between complaining against the law and complaining to Allah.
And jacobellis Sallam is speaking about complaining.
To Allah, does anyone know what that means? Does anyone know what it means to complain to Allah?
complaining to Allah is saying, Yeah, Allah help me This is hard. That's complaining to Allah complaining against a law means.
It's not fair, why me? That's complaining against a law, the profits, I sell them all the profits, they never complained against the law. But they complain to Allah and and that process of crying to Allah is actually part of the healing. Now I want to tell you guys something I said earlier that there's a difference between sadness and despair slash hopelessness, right? Can I give you guys an example of this?
Who is known as one of the most patient prophets and we said Yahoo medicine, but who else?
Are you buddies to them? Right? We all know his story. And you buddies Sam, you know, he had, he had wealth and he had health and he had children. He had family, right. And then one by one, these things were taken from him. And he was tested in that way.
Now, if we actually study his dog, his dog after years of this test, it exemplifies the point that I'm making. Were there the difference between sadness and hopelessness? He says to Allah subhanaw taala after everything he went through, he says to Allah, subhanaw, taala and Nima, Sania Dora and or hamura. I mean, you see in this one statement, if you study the eyes of the prophets, peace be upon them, you learn volumes from them, just study a da. He says ndms, Sania boorowa and our hammer Rahimi? So the first part of this
is he's saying that calamity or adversity has befallen me. What is he doing there?
He's acknowledging his pain. Make sense? Remember, back to the gunshot wound. Do you remember what I said about the gunshot wound? Right? The person who has the gunshot wound and they cover it up and they say oh, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm popping. I'm popping the painkillers. I'm good, I'm fine, right. But the gunshot wound is oozing, and it's infected and they haven't actually treated it. What they're doing is they're in denial. Denial is not going to make it go away. The following numbing, it is not going to make it go away, and you haven't treated it and time ain't gonna heal it because you didn't treat it. You didn't treat it. You didn't deal with it. So what is he saying is saying
any messages any authority starting out by saying acknowledging that this is hard?
Do you guys understand what that means? It means he's being real with Allah. He's not pretending he's not feeling strength. You know what I'm saying? He's not pretending Oh, no, no, I got this. I got this.
He's acknowledging that this is hard. And he's saying this is hard. He's saying this hardship has befallen me. But in the same breath, what else is he saying?
What are hamre human and you are the Most Merciful of the Merciful. Do not powerful that is because he's not losing hope either. Make sense? and hopelessness, depression, and despair is different. When you are hopeless. You're saying
it's hard right now. And it's always gonna be hard. It's hard right now, and I don't have any hope of it changing. It's hard right now. And it's always gonna be like this. That's hopelessness. And a believer does not lose hope. But can a believer acknowledge that it's hard right now? Yes, yes. That's called being human. Okay. But at the same time, he's saying what NTR Homura human, and you are the Most Merciful of those who show mercy. You are the Most Merciful of the Merciful. So at the same time that he is acknowledging his pain, he is also hopeful. Make sense? It's like a person who says walks outside, it's dark and says, You know what? It's dark right now. I acknowledge it. Some
people could be like, No, no, no, actually, the sun is out. Well, no, really. It's not. It's dark. Right.
It's dark right now. But tomorrow, the sun's gonna rise. I understand that you acknowledge your state right now you acknowledge the pain you're in now. acknowledge it. You know, you you're not just putting on a fake bandaid and saying it's okay. I'm not gonna deal with it. You're acknowledging it and you're dealing with it but you still have hope that things will get better tomorrow. That is the attitude of a believer in hardship. That is the attitude of a believer where you are real you are real with Allah subhanaw taala and with yourself, but you always have hope. You never lose hope a believer does not disappear.
So we said at the beginning, that these statements, I want to like cross them out. A believer never feel sad. And I want to cross out I want to cross that out. A believer never despairs. Sadness is normal part of human life. It's part of being human. We aren't made to be robots.
But a believer does not lose hope. And a believer always knows that Allah subhanaw taala is with the believer and tomorrow The sun will rise and continues to have that hope. Okay, I'm in a pause here according Holly Heather was stuck for a while it will come in our phone Rahim. subhanak Hello behind the shadow nyla Highlanders Dr. Rocha. Timberlake. I'm going to take a moment to take questions. And then after that, I'll go into specifics because about how to heal and how to address the wound because I've made a case of why we need to address the wound and not just ignore it. I've made a case of why this idea of Don't cry, that that's actually very, very unhealthy. But I'm going to go
into specifics of how can you clean out and address emotional wounds and then
how to heal How then to heal authentically right. But first, I'm going to open it up for questions.
And I think we have a mic
just raise your hand if you have a question. And then
oh, Mashallah, thank you.
Oh, sweet, does that go okay?
That was quite brave of you, Mashallah.
Okay, so the question is, can a Muslim be depressed? A Muslim, of course, can be depressed. But what I what we what we can say is this, that within our faith within our faith, we have tools to fight despair and hopelessness. Can a believer be sad? Absolutely. Can a believer even get into periods of depression? Yes, that can happen. But what I will tell you is that there are tools within our Deen. Absolutely. There are tools within our Deen that fight despair and hopelessness. These tools will not turn you into a robot that doesn't feel emotion. That's actually not the objective. We're not just supposed to be numb. But yes, it can absolutely fight despair and hopelessness. And that's why
Allah subhanaw taala tells us again and again and again that the believers like he's he's comforting the believers. He comforts the believers against despair and hopelessness. One of the areas which talks about sort of Bukhara where Allah subhanaw taala says I'm hesitant and Ted whole agenda while I may ethical methodology, no Holloman publico that Do you believe do they think that they will enter paradise? Do you think that you will enter Paradise without going through what those who came before you went through? Mr. toman betsa or Dada who was always you know, they they were they dealt with hardship, adversity and they were shaken. Had they akula Rasulullah levena em and Omar who Mata
Nasrallah so much they were shaken until the messengers and the people with the messengers were asking when will the help of Allah come?
Allah in Nan Austral la Hikari. And then Allah tells us at the end of this area, indeed, the help of allies near so you see for a believer, believer might go through periods where they feel shaken. Yeah. And they're asking when will the help of Allah come? But a believer always knows that la nostra liability that indeed the help of allies near?
Yes.
A true believer.
She's like against Mike's Okay.
Yes. Okay. Okay, great question. That's a great question. So her question for those who didn't hear it is about anxiety, where you have we have this big discussion about sadness, I am going to get to anxiety. Okay. But your question is very valid. She's asking, Well, what about the people who say that if you really have trust in a law, you wouldn't feel worried or you wouldn't feel anxiety? Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna get
more into detail later, but I'm going to answer that question generally now. Again, what I would say with regards to anxiety is this. See fear I said at the beginning, fear is a natural part of this life. And a lot actually tells us also in sort of the mahkota about this, while an evolution neck can be shaped in middle Hopi, while jewelry one minute and Wiley will unfussy what's tomorrow we're bachelors forbidding, we will surely test you with something of fear. So fear is the first thing Allah says in the say that the it is part of the test of this life that there's some thing of fear, okay, just like we have something of sadness. Okay, we will surely test you with something of fear
of will it appear hunger and loss loss when everyone nakoma shame and hope you enjoy what Nakata meant and while you will unfussy with the moderate loss of wealth, loss of people and loss of the fruits of your toil results. And I'm I mean, this this point here actually is really important, especially for activists. And I know I'm at a massive convention. So I just want to mention this, that this idea of when loss of thammarat thammarat literally means the fruits of your toil. Well, no one in this room is a farmer, right?
Okay. No one in this room is a farmer, I'm assuming.
But But will we ever put in a lot of effort and not see results? Absolutely. If you ever worked with MSA, you know the answer, right.
You might put in a lot of effort into an event and no one shows up or you put a lot of effort into a campaign and no one you know, I'm saying. So Allah is telling us to expect these things that this is part of the test of this life. All right. That being said,
all encompassing, debilitating, paralyzing fear, means that there's a problem. Okay. And yes, it actually is related to Tilak. Okay, assuming it's not like some sort of chemical thing.
But but there's a lot we can do up here. There's a lot we can do up here. And there's a lot we can do here.
See, I believe that there are these two extremes in our community. We have the one extreme where people say, yeah, Eman just deals with everything. And so you'll never have any problems. You'll just become angels and robots. I don't know how you're gonna be both. But you know what I mean? That's, that's not true. We're still human. We're still human. We have human struggles, no matter how much Amen. Those who had the most Eman were prophets, and they had human regular humans, like they had a human struggle. They dealt with loss and they dealt with fear and they dealt with I mean, Mussolini's to them, when he's being told to address Pharaoh, he's afraid. That's why Allah says,
Don't be afraid I'm with you. Because he felt fear. It's normal. He's human. The prophets I said, I'm felt sadness. You had a whole year of sadness, right? I'm and this is because they were human beings, a lot didn't bring us messengers that were angels, because then we couldn't relate to them. They're human. So it's not about leaving our humanity. But then we have another extreme, which is, as soon as you feel anything other than exhilaration, pop a pill, get it? So we have another extreme which deals with everything and sort of by a biological or or like a medical way or a
through cyber, either meds or some sort of it, that it's it's not dealing with the spiritual. So I think we have to be somewhere in the middle, we have to be balanced. And that is to understand that yes, we have very powerful tools to help us cope with both anxiety and depression.
Any other questions?
Yes, no? Come on. You guys. This is your chance. Yes.
Okay, so one time somebody told me
Okay, thank you for sharing that. She said someone told her that she's not true believer because she has anxiety. See, these are the kinds of really really toxic statements that I just want to destroy.
And it happens a lot, especially with people who suffer from sadness. I've heard it all the time. And you know, the thing is, the thing is, that, like I said, Everyone has their tests a lot set it in sorted baccata right, that we will surely test you have something of fear. So some people are going to be tested more with fear. They may be more naturally anxious than others. Some people are just chill, you know, I mean, especially from California.
Yeah, I don't know if you guys know about Cali culture. But um, yeah, just super chill. You know what I mean?
Some people are just more anxious than others. That's their test that they're more anxious. But, but even within those tests, is there a way to cope? Yes, Yes, there is. Again, a stem didn't come to make us non human. But it came to teach us how to be the best form of human that we can. So how to manage and I said this at the beginning, we're meant to manage our emotions, our emotions aren't meant to manage us, okay? We're meant to control our emotions, and our emotions are not meant to control us. The problem becomes when we allow our emotions to control us. Make sense? We are created with desires, we are created with sadness were created with fear, we're created with anger, the
problem becomes when we're not in control of these things. Alright, it's not about denying them, but it's about controlling them.
Anyone else? Yes.
Everyone hates Mike's
dependency.
So her question is about someone who's takes medication for both anxiety and depression. And they've come to a point where they're dependent upon it. And if she wants, she's asking, How can we help someone like that? to wean off of it and not and not be dependent on it? Right? It's your question.
I'm not a doctor. So I don't want to get into the specifics of meds. I can tell you, I mean, of course, I have my stance about meds. But that's beside the point. What I can do is offer what I know and what I've experienced. And that is, like I said before, we have tools, we have tools, within our Deen, we don't have to invent anything within our Deen, very powerful tools to help us manage these things. To help us cope with both of these with both anxiety and depression. I am not going to say that there is no
there is no biological, chemical, genetic aspect of these things. I'm not going to say that. But what I am going to say is Allah subhanaw taala told us that that we have different tests, each person is going to be tested differently. However, even within those tests, there are ways to cope. And unless panel to Allah and His Messenger gave us very, very powerful tools. So what I'm going to do is just kind of jump into that now. The specifics of coping the specifics of healing. All right. Um,
let me first talk about healing the wound, healing, like from a wound, and then I'll get into everyday things that we can do to help cope with, you know, chronic situations like anxiety and depression. Okay. So there's two different issues here we have the issue of a wound, like something tragic happened, something that really really wounded you. And now we're talking gunshot wound, right, emotionally. Now, how do we cope from that? How do we now heal from that? That's one category. Now we have another category, which is just daily things that we can do to help us cope in general with depression and anxiety because life is stressful. Okay, just everyday life is
stressful.
To begin with, I want to talk about wounds. All right.
Let's look at the physical body for a second. Okay, if a person gets a gunshot wound, what do you do with it?
What do you do with a wound? Physically? What do you do? Anyone? Clean it, clean it. So first, you have to acknowledge you got shot, right? You cannot address it, you cannot treat it if you don't acknowledge that it's there. Fair enough. Everyone with me? So if I pretend that I didn't get shot, I'm not going to be able to heal that wound. I'm not going to be able to address the wound. So I have to acknowledge that I got shot. I have to acknowledge that the wound is there. That part is scary. That part, why do you think people suppress? Why do you think people numb because it's scary to address that I got a gunshot wound. Alright. And another reason I believe that people suppress
and numb is because we have this shaming that happens. shaming, like we live in a society that teaches us that we're supposed to be a certain way. And part of being that certain way is to be flawless and perfect. And you're never supposed to be anything less than exhilarated, happy like basically
We're all supposed to be cheerleaders all the time. Happy, like exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, you know,
it's so annoying.
It's so annoying. It's not real. It's just fake. It's just fake. It's just the photoshopped kind of fakeness. Now, the problem with that is that we have a lot of pressure to just numb and suppress when there is something wrong, right? Because we're gonna be shamed. Why are you so negative? or stuff like that, right? or Why are you always depressed? Why are you things like that? Like, what's wrong with you? Oh, my favorite, get over it.
Well, that's real sensitive. Get over it. Well, why did I think of that? You know, like, you're really helping me here. It's this very insensitivity about about, okay, someone's dealing with. So there's a lot of shaming people suppress people, people are like, no. And even families do this. They consider it shameful, that there's something in the family that happened.
So we have to get over that this idea that because we're all we've all it's part of the human condition, it's part of the human experience, that we are going to get wounded sometimes.
Agreed, because I'm seeing a lot of,
you know, like, people are just like, really scared to show any expression right now. It's just like, not me.
Um, one thing I didn't say at the beginning of this talk, is I need expressions. Like, I need you to make faces and be expressive. So I understand if you get me, but when we get to a really sensitive topics, it tends to be
people don't want to express because then someone might know that or someone might think, oh, that person. Get it. Okay. This is the safe space, guys. I know. It looks like the United Nations, but like, this is safe.
I really never spoken a room like this before. Okay, everyone take a vote. Okay. Um, so, yeah. So there's this this pressure to suppress it, there's a pressure to put to put a filter right, there's, there's, there's like Instagram filters and then there's like, filters and like emotionally so it's, there's, there's a pressure to put a filter and to put the armor into like, you know what I mean, put the fake fake smile on and everything like that, okay? to Photoshop your life to Photoshop, Emily Photoshop, everything we Photoshop our Facebook, right? We only talk about how thrilled we are that we're eating a burger. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, it's just a burger. But
everything's so exciting and everything. So, you know, perfect is like, anyways.
So, so that's one thing is to get past that suppression. And that, that, that pressure to just not acknowledge it, that denial, facing it, it facing it. Okay. The second part is cleaning it. So the first was was facing it, I got shot, I got a wound. And that doesn't mean that I'm a bad person. And it doesn't mean that God hates me. And it doesn't mean and it doesn't mean it doesn't mean any of those things, it means that I'm human living a human experience, and it's part of being human. Do you guys understand? Because I'm getting those blank faces. Okay. So I got shot, then what do I do? I need to clean it out. Can I tell you how you clean out emotional wounds. You may not like this.
You may not like this, to clean out an emotional wound if you really want to clean it. If you really want to clean it. You have to break down to Allah. Does that make sense? I'm telling you something which people don't like to do. People don't like to do this, but it is actually the quickest and
honestly, the only way to really heal is you're gonna need to cry. People are so scared to cry, you're gonna need to cry and I'm telling you that you're gonna need to be real and you're going to need to face it and you're going to need to be honest with yourself and with Allah. Ya Allah This is hard. Yeah, Allah helped me is Tiana is Tiana is Tiana escala for help. And I'm telling you this not from my own brain. I'm not telling you this from my own brain.
I am telling you this because this is what the prophets did. See, how do we know how to cope we have to watch how they coped How did they do it? This is how they all did it. This is how they all did it is that they turn to Allah any miss any I don't want our hammer. I mean, that hardship has befallen me and you're the most Merciful of the Merciful. What did know how nice
and neat nema luban from Casa de as a strong statement. He's saying I am overtaken I am defeated Maha Lubin from cluster so give me the
They never fiend. They never seen strength. Like they never said I got this. Their reaction was never ever I got this. Does that make sense? It wasn't this false kind of like, Oh, I'm strong. One of the biggest mistakes we make when we're being tested, is to find strength is to say, Oh, I got this, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Really? I'm fine.
Really, really, I'm honestly I'm just I'm fine, I'm fine. Well, maybe, maybe if you would admit to a law that you're not fine, then you'd actually be fine.
Make sense? But this idea of I got this and I and it's this sort of dependence on yourself is one of the biggest mistakes we make in hardship, that as soon as the storm comes, some people's reaction is to depend on others.
But some people's reactions to depend on themselves.
to depend on themselves. Yeah, maybe women we we tend to depend on others, but men dependent, they also have this thing of a false dependency, which is themselves. Right? You know what I mean? This idea that no, I don't need anyone I got this. That's also a mistake. Because if you depend on yourself, you won't be able to handle it. The prophets lie Selim one of the dryers that he would say continuously, while at to kill me, he'll NFC for for time, and do not leave me too myself for the blink of an eye. He said that, and one of the other two hours that he used to ask for every single day is protect me from an eye that does not shed tears. You know, he asked that I actually asked
that. That's one of the like, one of the the continuous drives he would make is I seek protection with a law from an eye that doesn't shed tears. That's not what we're aspiring to guys. It's not in fact, it was the opposite. He was he was seeking protection from that. And he was asking for a law not to leave him to himself for the blink of an eye. So what we have to do to clean out the wound is you got to be real with a law, you have to have time with Allah subhanaw taala where you actually go through and acknowledge the pain and you ask Allah to heal you. And you ask Allah to help you. And again and again, you ask Allah to make it easy for you. The eyes of the profits, and you missed any
literal Anton hameroff I mean, you, you are the Most Merciful of the Merciful. Any McLovin Fanta said that I am defeated, so give me victory. And you know, the Dr. Yunus la Sallam when he's in the belly of the of the giant fish, right? What is he c'est la Ilaha? Illa? anta Subhana Allah in the continent of Valentin, practically you just keep repeating these doors. Practically you cry to Allah in tahajjud. I'm telling you, I'm not giving you guys theory right now, I'm actually giving you practical things. This is a prescription. This is a prescription for healing. But it involves opening the wound and being real about it. And actually just going using it to go to Allah and and
cry and cry. And the more that you can be real. And ironically, the more you can break to Allah, the faster you will heal.
Like, I'm serious. I have this thing about what about like,
see, so Wolverine, right?
Wolverine has the superpower? Does anyone know what it is?
He heals so fast. You get it? So Wolverine his superpower is like if you shoot him or he gets cut or whatever, he heals fast. And to me that's just awesome. Because and I and I honestly believe that through spirituality, you can become like that. Now it doesn't what I said when we say fast, there's no timeline. It's not like, Oh, god, you're taking too long. You know what I'm saying? There's no timeline. But I do believe that through these, like this process that I'm telling you about. You can be like Wolverine, where the healing process actually can become like, quick and it can be quick. It can be quick, but let me tell you what makes it take forever. Can I tell you pausing it, saying
actually there's nothing wrong. There's no problem or putting a bandaid on it. You know what that does? It just completely stops the process. So you are slowing you're getting in your own way. You're stopping the process. Because you're not allowing you're not going through that that those steps. So we said we got to clean it up, right? We got to clean it and that process is painful cleaning a wound is never fun. It doesn't it's not fun. It is painful, but know that it is a process and it will be over and it will be over. It doesn't last forever after cleaning a wound
What do you got to do? You got to protect it. You got to cover it up and you have a way to protect that one.
How do we protect our hearts? One thing I said this yesterday I was speaking in Chicago. And one thing I said is that we're very mindful of what we eat. You know what I mean? If I gave you a plate that had like, a giant piece of cheesecake covered in molt? Are you going to eat it?
not rocket science folks know, you're not going to eat it. Why?
Cuz it's gonna poison you. It's it's toxic, right? It's toxic. So you know what the problem is. We're careful about what we eat. But we are not careful about what we take into our hearts. Everything you watch everything, you look at everything you listen to, everything you say, and converse about is all like food that's going into your body, it's going into your heart and your soul. And that the problem is that you are not careful enough about the quality, like we take and stuff that's covered in mold. And we think it's not going to affect us make sense, toxic, toxic stuff that we watch on TV that we watch on YouTube that we listen to, and I'm talking Trump too, by
the way.
Like, I'm not, I'm not I'm not only just talking about profanity, I'm talking about just toxic things. You know, one problem we have as a community, here's the one problem we have as a community, the way we deal with crisis, the way we deal with crisis is we, we sit and talk about it
a lot.
So if I were to like, if the lights were to shut off right now, all the electricity goes out, and it's pitch black in here. We would just sit in here and just talk about how dark it is, for three hours, in fact, all day, and we would talk about it, and then we'd post about it. And then we'd be like, what did you see how dark it is in that corner? Oh, but but you know what else? You guys understand what I'm saying?
But have we changed the situation? Like the fact that we're sitting and talking and posting and reading and writing about how dark it is right now in the room? We haven't changed anything. And we haven't brought any light. Am I making sense? We have. So the way we deal with what was the challenges that we're going through right now is we post about it, we read about it, we talk about it, we surround ourselves with it, and then what? You get it, I get it, Trump said XYZ. All right, I get it. There's a some of phobia. Okay, this happened that happened. But if that's all we're doing is focusing on the darkness. We're not actually doing anything to make it better. Make sense? And
sometimes it just becomes paralyzing and debilitating to focus on the darkness. I will tell you this, what you focus on grows, what you focus on grows. So when we're talking about healing wounds, I said that we acknowledge I said, We clean and then I said we protect one of the ways to protect ourselves emotionally, is to protect and be mindful of what kind of input we're taking. Are we around really negative people? Are we around a really negative toxic environment? What are we reading? What are we looking at? Is it all negative? Is it all like check your newsfeed just look at your newsfeed. What is your newsfeed ask yourself this question, is your newsfeed enriching you? Is
it inspiring you? Or is it making you really depressed?
You get what I'm saying? Is your newsfeed only about hijab tutorials. And that's it. And talking Instagram now. It's like, it's cool, like all the different things you can do with all the different kinds of makeup tutorials and all the different kinds of hijabs Okay, great, and all the different fashion this and that. But is that it? Is that Is there anything more? Is there anything more that you're taking in? You know, what I look at that stuff is like, Okay, you know what I'm saying? I get it, fine. But is that it? Does that make sense? So we have to be if we're going to be strong internally, you know, they say you are what you eat.
You are what you eat, right? It's the same thing spiritually. You are what you take in, you become like what you take in you, it becomes like inside you you become that. So be mindful of what you're reading every day. What you're looking at what you're listening to, what you're aspiring towards what you're talking about.
Because that becomes who you are. Make sense. Be mindful of that. So protect the wound protect the wound. All right. Um, I want to just quickly talk about anxiety. And then I can take a couple questions at the end.
The thing with anxiety, like I said, everyone's tested differently.
But the antidote to anxiety, the more that we can put our trust in Allah subhanaw taala, the less we can feel, the less fear or anxiety will have. And I'm going to tell you give you guys an example. I'm just giving you an analogy. Okay? If you guys walked outside of this hall, and your mom picks you up, all right, your mom drives up, she picks you up. And she tells you I'm taking you somewhere.
All right. And you say where? And she said, don't worry. I'm I'm just taking you somewhere.
how scared are you?
Come on now. Your mom. You're not scared. But wait, but wait, but wait, but you have no idea where you're going. But it's your mom. Okay.
I have okay. She's not taking you to a Russia thing. And
it's like, it's like, well, actually, I'd be kind of scared. No, I'm talking about scared scared, like, Are you afraid that she's gonna take you to a ditch and leave you? Like, are you afraid that you're going to have bodily harm come to you, you're not afraid. My question to you? Is this why? Why are you not afraid, even though you don't know where you're going?
Because you trust your mom. It's because you trust your mom. And the more trust you have for this person who's driving, the less fear you're going to have. Right? Why? Because even though you don't know where you're going, and you don't know why you're going there, but you trust the driver. And when you trust the driver, you won't be afraid, you will know that your mother has your best interests in mind. Does that make sense? One of the best I'ma tell you this, like take home message. One of the best tools to fight both despair hopelessness and anxiety is something called hosting Ivana Bella,
hosting Ivana Bella, you know what that means? It means having a good opinion of Allah. That's it. Knowing that Allah wants what's best for you, knowing that whatever Allah is doing is for your own good, even when you don't understand it, even when you don't get it even when you don't know what's happening. But you know that he knows what he's doing. And you know that he has your best interest in mind. You trust your mom, right? But a lot actually has more mercy for us than your mom. You get it? And guess what else? Allah knows what he's doing even more than your mom. Okay, so this is kind of, honestly the more that we can have a good opinion of Allah subhanaw taala and know that Allah
not only not only does Allah have our best interest in mind, but he's, he knows what he's doing. He's an alien, you know, he knows what he's doing and he has all power, the more that a person has that yaqeen that that certainty inside of them. The the the more that they will feel at peace and and the more that they can combat anxiety. Okay. Could you call me Heather was Dr. Ali welcome. innovaphone Rahim. subhanak Elohim samdech I should want let Allah Allah and sakurako like, I think I have a few minutes for any last questions. My book is also available where anyone outside somewhere
and I'm
I brought
the new edition which which actually has new chapters. So those of you who had reclaim your heart, the first edition, this actually has the same, but it has new chapters. The whole point of Reclaim Your heart is about this, this topic of how is it that we can cope learn to cope with the weather when we can't control the weather? Right, but learn how to cope. Any questions?
Yes.
Well, yeah, come.
Sorry, I can't I can't hear you very well. Okay.
For your presentation and the good points, you have raised
two part questions.
You know,
on the medical term, the chemical imbalance do exist in some people. What
are the points you raised on that?
depression and anxiety and other things there, there is a chemical imbalance who some people have. And they have reached the point that they might need the medical help, number one. Number two,
clearly we cannot isolate ourselves from the community at large we live in. And there is a significant number of people in our community who are affected with the conditions. You know, it was a prevalent situation as you you have said, Yeah.
I think the dilemma is my observation. And your point I want to hear is that the lack of recognition, number one, lack of resources within our community. So what is your opinion how best we can handle it, and how best we can create the resources
within our own community? Okay. So the second point that you made is, is actually exactly what I'm saying is I'm saying that, instead of sitting and focusing on the problem, see, there's two ways to look at something, you can either be problem focused, or you can be solution focused. And I'm talking about that we should be solution focused, not problem focused, because the example I gave you is we're just sitting and talking about the darkness. But we haven't talked about the solution. And and so when we sit and we focus on how bad things are, and that's it, then we're being problem focused, we're just focusing on things are bad. He said this, she's cheated this on this happened to
this. And that's it. What I want us to do is at is be positive in terms of what what is the solution? What can I contribute? Because in the example I gave, if it's dark, and all we do is talk post, right? You know, complain about it being dark, but no one has gone and gotten a candle, no one has gone and done anything it when they're just sitting and talking about it and focusing on. So my point is that we should be solution focused and talk about, well, how can we address these things? How can we be positive in terms of how we live and how we contribute, instead of just talking about and focusing on the on the obstacle itself. And the problem itself? What what also happens when you
focus on problems is it grows in your mind. So it actually becomes debilitating. It doesn't empower you. If all we talk about is how bad things are. What it ends up doing is making us feel powerless. It's not a good thing. It doesn't empower it does the opposite. A lot of times it will just demoralized, it will paralyze, yeah. Because you're you're focused so much on the problems that they just grow. It's like a monster, you just keep feeding it until you just feel like oh my god, there's absolutely nothing I can do this as a beast, who am I to this beast, you know, looks upon Allah when you shift your focus instead. One of my favorite stories is the story of Messiah listed in front of
the Red Sea, right? Because musala is 10am in front of the Red Sea. He saw the issue very differently than the people who were with him than he is valued. Benny Israel are saying we're going to be overtaken why because they're focused on the problem. For lm moto LG, my fellow Motorola Germany call us habermasian Alamo Dragoon, that when they saw the Army's approaching, so they're focused on the problem. They're focused on the army. So they're like we're gonna be overtaken because they're in the situation of the Army's coming in from the Red Sea. They're trapped. But look at the reaction of Mossad a student pilot Kela he said No. Nope. It's like killers like capital and
Opie? No way, you know, Kenda, in a mire of peace, a dean, indeed, my Lord is with me, and He will guide me through this. Why is he have a completely different reaction than them? Why is he being positive and hopeful? Anyone? Because his focus is Allah. That's the That's it? simple answer. That's it. His focus is on a law and their focus is on the problem. This is deep. This is very deep. If we continue to focus on the problem, we'll always feel defeated. We'll feel powerless. We'll feel weak, we'll feel small. Right? Because the problem is so big, right? spam a phobia, Trump, whatever it is, the problem become look starts to look so big, and we start to feel so small and so
powerless. But if instead you focus on Allah, it doesn't matter who's in office, Allah still there. You know, like reminder, like newsflash, yeah, Alo is still up, but you know what I'm saying? But if we forget that if we forget, and we don't focus on him, that's when we start to feel powerless. If we focus on Allah subhanaw taala. We don't
feel powerless. We don't feel powerless, we feel actually extremely powerful. And we have that strength. And that's what most scientists did. So my my point is just focusing on what we can contribute and on the positive things, it doesn't mean that you ignore the issue. It just means your focal point isn't on the darkness, it's on the light, and what we can do to contribute and grow the light. And in terms of your first point, I did acknowledge that and and like I said, I'm not getting into the issue of chemical or not chemical, what I am speaking about here, what tools do we have spiritually to help address these things? Okay, I can take maybe one last question. Because I've
been up here for a while.
Anyone?
If these tools are not working, means your physiology has gone to pathology, you need to seek help. And seeking help does not question your level of
physical, okay? always realize this, too, that these are not mutually exclusive, that when we talk about putting our trust in Allah, when we talk about spiritual tools, that does not mean that you can't seek help, because they're not mutually exclusive. Because part of
anytime we seek the means we seek the tools. That's not it. That's not in contradiction to putting our trust in Allah, as the famous example says, when the prophets I sent him saw the man who wasn't tying his camel, right, and he said, alkyl how water works. And he said, tie it and put your trust in Allah. So we do the two at the same time we take the means, but what the point I want to emphasize is we don't depend on the means. That's number one. And number two is it's done at the same time as we put our trust in Allah, where it's not. It's not mutually exclusive. It's not one or the other. All right, so I think I'm going to wrap up does that go off here, including Holly Heather
was thoughtfully welcome in our pool Rahim. subhanak Elohim Dhaka Chateau La Ilaha. lanta stock required to black was Santa Monica Rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh.
Does that
mean give it up for one more time?