How to be successful on the Journey of Life by Sr Yasmin Mogahed
Yasmin Mogahed – How To Be Successful On The Journey Of Life
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of ease in life, including the concept of " easiness" and the need to maximize pleasure. They emphasize the importance of understanding the lifecycle of a car and mastering the journey to avoid mistakes. The speakers also emphasize the importance of practicing meditation and finding one's own way of living based on the Quran and Sun statement. They emphasize the need for guidance and finding one's own way of living to avoid confusion and mistakes.
AI: Transcript ©
Allah regimes
Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah Radha annual
rubbish nahi suddenly way acidity Ahmed, Mohammed Dr. Mahoney.
Whenever I start, or before I begin, I begin with a straw. And the reason why I was begin with this dog is because it's the dog that Musa alayhis salam Moses said, before he went upon and basically took on a very, very heavy mission. And that mission was that he was given the job of approaching the greatest tyrant to walk the earth and that is Pharaoh. And before he went to take on this heavy task, he made this dog the supplication to almost upon all darlin rubbish shrine is Sunday. Oh, my Lord, expand my chest. You know, sometimes when we in life, right, we have difficult tasks, we all have gone through things where, where it's difficult, and we have we know we have to do it. But it's
difficult, right? I'm sure all of you have taken some exam recently, where maybe you felt happy, or anything in life, that's difficult. And before taking on that task, you sometimes feel like you're your chest is constricted. And so this Doha is actually asking the beginning of this guy's asking for a love for God to expand his chest. Love the shrine, the *, way acidity agree and make my matters easy for me.
The thing about matters. So the thing about
everything in life, in fact, is there is another application that we are taught, and in this application is a very, very profound truth. And that profound truth is this a love of much less than Allah in the morality of deciding that, Oh, God, there is nothing that is easy, except what you make it easy. This is actually a very, very important concept. Because a lot of times we believe that things are either difficult or easy, based on the matter itself. But in fact, that isn't true. And I'm going to prove that to you. The reason that isn't true is you'll find and I don't know how many of you have experienced and how much you've experienced this. But if you observe the world, you find
that there are people who seem to have very comfortable lives, they might have luxury, and in money and power and ease. And yet internally, they are happy, internally, they don't have that satisfaction, that they are not actually able still to handle their lives. In fact, some of them are maybe suffering from very, very serious depression. And he might look at them and say, what, I don't understand why they have this. And they have that they have, they have these, these ease as things that we define as ease right money, luxury convenience. Some of them may be famous, right. And we know a lot of these kinds of stories that these celebrities, for example, that have fame, and money
and power, these are the things we run after right? A lot of us, now they have these things, and yet we are not happy. And some of them even die from suicide, or drug overdoses. So the question becomes, well, what's missing here? And then you look at other people, people from third world countries, people who don't have the luxuries, that the things that we consider, you know, the good things in life, they don't have those things, and yet they have contentment. So then the question becomes, well, what, what exactly is it that makes a person have ease in their life? And what is it that makes a person have difficulty? And when you really study it, what you find is, what you find
is that ease is only what God makes easy. And it isn't it doesn't only it doesn't have to do with just what's happening in your life, because there are people who have very, very difficult lives and yet internally their content. And you know, one of the most. For me personally, one of the most powerful personal examples I've had of that is a friend of mine who I met a few years ago, and some of you who have heard my old podcasts know about her story, but some of you may not. And she is a woman who inspired me tremendous tremendously, and she ended up inspiring many others who heard her story, but basically she's a woman who had her first child. And when her first child was around, I
think three or so.
The school called her and told her that her daughter had just stopped talking. All of a sudden she wasn't
really sure why. And eventually, she took her daughter to the doctor. And the doctor told her after some tests that her daughter had a very rare genetic disorder called MPs. And this disorder is such that this is what the woman is being told, she's being told that your daughter has this rare disease, and she will slowly lose all her faculties, she will slowly lose her ability to, to talk to walk, to even swallow on her own. And then eventually, she was told, you know, don't expect her to live to the age of 13, even or even into her teenage years. This is what this mother is being told.
And then a few years later, she had another daughter. And she started to show similar symptoms. And she was taken to the doctor and the doctor told her, your second daughter has the same disorder MPs. And so Pamela, she had a third daughter.
And the third daughter was, she was told had the same disorder. So now she had an within the community and you know, there's they have like support groups, and within that community of parents with children who have MPs, I don't know that there is another family that that has more than one, let alone three children who have MPs. And then she had a fourth child with severe autism.
So she has three, she had three children, one of her children recently passed away a few months ago, Subhanallah, well into her teenage years, she was told not to expect these children to to live that long, but her children and the amount of care that she gave her children for almost 20 years.
But what I why I'm telling you the story isn't, isn't actually to make you upset. But it's what I learned from her story. And that is that he or she is this woman that is in a situation that I couldn't even imagine I couldn't wrap my mind around it. And yet, one day, when I met with her, she told me a phrase that I never forgot. She said, quote, I'm drowning in gratitude.
She said, I'm drowning in gratitude. And to me, that just blew my mind, because she's in a situation that,
you know,
like you, and I couldn't imagine if I tell you what her life is like, because I've visited her many times. And literally, she does what
five nurses couldn't do. And in fact that she has to even just step out of the house for an hour or two, she has the amount of like, difficulty and the amount of
help she has to hire. It's unbelievable. And it's all done just by her, Michelle, that's about
the I mean, the oxygen tanks, they got to a point where I mean, they have like, long before they couldn't walk anymore, they were in wheelchairs. But there was something else that she told me and that is that it came to a point where they couldn't swallow their own saliva. And you know, a lot of us, this is something that we take for granted. We're caught every few seconds, where we're swallowing our saliva, we don't pay attention to it. But the ability to swallow your own saliva actually keeps you from choking to death, you understand, but we don't, we are not even conscious of these things. And you know, how many of us are saying and habited every single time we swallow our
saliva, and yet, this was something that was because they were not able to swallow their own saliva, they were choking on it. And she would have to, like suction them. And so just these small things that we have, and we take for granted, and yet this woman and why why I was so inspired by her is that this woman was saying she's drowning in gratitude. Now, how is something like that possible? And that That, to me was a silent, it was a sign of God, really? Because how is it possible that someone who has money and fame and ease and health and yet is not happy, and yet is not happy was not satisfied. And someone who has this type of trial, and is saying that she's drowning in
gratitude. That in and of itself is a sign of God. And what it's a sign of is that it's only the help of God that allows us to either be drowning in gratitude, or drowning in despair. And so I always begin by asking, rubbish, shocking. Suddenly, we're suddenly on the end make matters easy for you. And, you know, this is the words of Messiah is that out of Washington up to the military and take the knock out of my tongue if someone told me that they may understand my speech. So that's how I begin. I want to talk today about this concept of guidance.
When I think about it,
Your journey through this life, it's very much like any other journey. And you can liken the the the parts of this life spiritually with, you know, basically what you need to go on any kind of journey. The prophets lie Selim advised us in a hut, he couldn't fit dunya and V in this life as if you're a stranger, or a traveler. And one thing that you find, you know, someone like myself, who travels a lot, one thing that you find that when you do travel, there is a certain state that you're in with and travel, and many of you have experienced this, when you travel, there's a certain state that you're in when you travel. And I'll give you some examples of that state, when you go to a hotel,
because when you travel, you're not staying at home, right, you're staying in a temporary Lodge. And when you go to a hotel, how attached you become to your hotel room,
how attached to any of us become to you know, the desk in our hotel room, or the bedding.
And moreover, if we don't like something about our hotel room, I've been to many hotel rooms where I did like, think about it. Maybe you don't like the decor, maybe you don't like the color or the feel of the bedding, maybe you don't like the pillows, the pillows are always awful.
But how upset? Do you get that you don't like that aspects of your hotel room? Do you go and now start, you know, a revolution against the, you know, the hotel chain? And my question was why? Why do you not get so attached to a hotel room? And why do you not make it the end of the world that you don't like certain things about it? Anyone? temporary, cuz it's temporary, simple as that, in your mind, you're saying, you know what, I'm only here for 10 days. So it's not that big of a deal. Right? Now, if we apply that to our journey through this life, then you can understand the advice with the prophesies that he's giving. He's saying that view this entire life, like that person in a
hotel room? Yeah. So there are going to be things in this life that you don't necessarily like, there's going to be aspects of your life that are perfect, right? Yes or no? And, and there's going to be things that you do love, right? But the idea is how can you be in a state where it's balanced in the sense that you don't get to,
you don't get too worked up when things don't go your way. And at the same time, you aren't so attached, that when you have to leave, you're not able to make sense, or when you have to let go of things, you know, the whole is a journey back to a lot of vehicle is Julia, that Julia itself? Is the vehicle taking us back to UCLA?
How do we use dunya? To take us back to a lot. That's how we should look at
this life, right? If I looked at this life, as a vehicle, I'm going to interact with it very differently than if I looked at this life as the end in and of itself, you know, this attitude called YOLO.
What's the attitude call to YOLO? The attitude called YOLO is you only live once, and therefore see, because there's a therefore right? What does it mean? It means you only live once. So do whatever you want, live it off, maximize pleasure, whatever, right? So the idea is because this is all we have, then we should try to use this life. What for this life for the sake of this life, we're not using this life to get us somewhere after this life. YOLO is the attitude that you're just trying to maximize the temporary talking makes sense.
That attitude is very, very different than the one who believes that this life is only a vehicle
that it's a stepping stone that it's taking us to another higher life inshallah. So knowing that the concept of dunya and how to use dunya. And also understanding the nature of dunya is important because if you're going to use this vehicle, you need to know a little bit about it, right? Just like a car, you need to know at least the bare necessities and like at least something about the car in order to be able to use it for your journey. You need to know how where's the gas tank, you know how to turn it on. I know like minimum about my car, but I need to know these things in order to be able to use my car. All right. Now what are the things we need to know about dunia? One of the
things we need to know about lunia is that it wasn't created to be perfect. And it wasn't created to be permanent. That's very important. Now that might sound kind of obvious. Well, we already knew that this life is temporary.
But it's not so obvious.
Cuz a lot of people live in this world as if it's permanent.
A lot of people live in this world as if it's supposed to be perfect. Do you guys understand what I'm saying?
Like, it's very, very difficult to accept, for example, that we're going to age, right? That's why there's so many products out there, multi billion dollar industry to sort of try to hold on, and have, you know, these ageless creams, right? Because we want a plastic surgery. I mean, I live in Southern California, you know, and it is this, this industry, plastic surgery, and you know, all of these different ways to try to hold on to something that wasn't intended to be permanent. But we want to turn something that's, by its nature, temporary, into something permanent. And that's going against the nature of this life, no matter how hard you try. And no matter how many various kinds of
plastic surgery, you you engage, you know that you have done, you're never going to, you're still never going to live forever in this life. And eventually, no matter how much Botox you use, eventually you will, ah, but see, that's hard for people, that's hard for us to accept, because we want this life to be perfect. So understanding the nature of this life is very important in mastering it, and mastering it. Like you got to master your vehicle, you know what I'm saying? If you're going to use it, and if it's going to take you where you want to be, you got to master it, you can't let your vehicle master you, right, like your vehicles and driving you you need to drive
in. So understanding that, and it's not that it's temporary, and that it's imperfect. One other thing I want to add in that, in that regard, is that although this life isn't perfectly good, it's also not perfectly bad either. And what I mean by that is no matter how much hardship a person has, and no matter how much difficulty a person has, they also have many, many, many, many things to be grateful for. At the same time they have they have been given many blessings. Everyone on this earth has both difficulty and blessing. Everyone on this earth has both difficulty and ease, it never comes in just ease or just difficulty. Makes sense. It's a mixed bag. Yeah, this life is always a
mixed bag, you're never going to have it all good or all bad. And a lot of it just has to do with your outlook. So even when things are very hard or very, very difficult, it may look to you like it's all bad.
Okay, but actually, it isn't that there are many things in your life, that are
that are blessings, but you're not seeing them or you're not focused on them. And that's what distinguishes one person from another. That's what distinguishes my friend, play about the one with the with that I just told you her story. That's what distinguishes someone like her May Allah make all her matters easy. And someone else who has everything, but they're complaining because you know, they're in a traffic jam, you understand that it has to do with how your outlook and what you're seeing and what you're focusing on. But every single person has both every single person has both ease and hardship has both blessings and trials at the same time. And that is the meaning of Indiana
law students.
In my last video said that with hardship, comes ease. Ease is and in fact the word is plural. So in the verse itself, in the ASL A lot has, has used the singular of hardship, and has used the plural of ease, you'll saw in my last three your strong, so Allah is telling us even in the grammar, that for every hardship you have, you have many eases at the same time. Along with it, they come in packages, they come at the same time. So this has to do with also how you master the the vehicle of dunya. And if you want it to take you to your destination, right? Number three is that whenever you're on a journey, you need to be aware of the pitfalls you need to be aware.
You know, there's construction ahead, there's a sign that tells you if there's a pothole or you know, a major speed bump that you know that these things are coming so that you can handle them right.
So in the same way in this journey spiritual and you have to be kind of aware of the pitfalls. And when you're aware of the pitfalls, then you can master them and be able to face basically cold. Alright, coping becomes easier when you're aware of the pitfalls. So what are some of the pitfalls? One of the biggest. One of the biggest major pitfalls on this journey is the outcome.
to color the pitfall of despair, of despair of hopelessness. Now what I mean by that is sometimes, well, not sometimes, but when we make a wrong turn in life, when we slip when we fall, okay, when we get to a point a low in our lives, okay? What happens at that point is some people will despair, some people will give up. But doing that is life, you know, you're driving, and you make a wrong turn, you miss an exit, you did something wrong. How many of you when you make a wrong turn or missing exit, just pull over, turn off the car and say That's it?
That's it. I'm done.
Like, I made a wrong turn. I'm done. I'm not going anywhere. That's it. You know what, I'm not even ever going to drive again.
Like who does that? Anyone? Exactly. Nobody does that. Why?
Because making wrong turns is part of driving. And when you make a wrong turn, or you miss an exit, guess what your GPS does for you reroute rerouting, simple as that. Simple as that. And it will keep rerouting over and over and over. And it never gets annoying that you write in.
Yours get annoyed at you. It doesn't change. It's a rerouting. You know what I mean? It's a robot. But the point here is that when you make a mistake, you make a wrong turn, you miss an exit, you don't give up on the path, you don't give up on driving, you keep going and you reroute and that's what has to happen in life, you're gonna make mistakes, and you're gonna take wrong turns and you're gonna slip, and you're gonna mess up, because that's part of the journey. Understand the same way, you know, that is part of driving, you should know that it's part of this journey. It's part of the life journey, and that you're going to make mistakes. And when you do, you can't give up on driving.
You have to keep going can't give up on the journey. Alright, something else about driving? And that is, see in the car. There's this thing called the rearview mirror, right. Okay, what's the purpose of a rearview mirror?
To show you behind? Simple, right? You guys are awesome. 100%.
That was like a pop quiz. And you all aced. The purpose of the rearview mirror is to show you what's behind you. Okay. Let me ask you guys a question.
What would happen if a person who's driving spends too long focused on the rearview mirror?
They're gonna crash. You guys see what I mean? I don't know why I'm up here.
They're gonna crash. And you know what, in life, it's the same way. It's the same thing.
A person who stays too focused on their past, too fixated on their past, you know, what happens? they crash. And the reason is they're not looking forward. They're not looking forward. They're not looking at where they where they need to go, because they're stuck in what's behind them. And so one of the biggest mistakes we make is we spent too much time focused on the rearview mirror. All right, now, can you completely do away with the rearview mirror? Not really, because why you need it for reference. And you know, I'm there was this quote that I read recently, and it says that your past is supposed to be a place of reference, not a place of residence.
So the idea here is that while we need the rearview mirror, but you can't keep fixated on it, why do I need the rearview mirror, you guys all very astutely told me so that you can see what's behind you. But you need to keep your eyes on the need to keep focused on the road and what's ahead of you. You only look at the rearview mirror for reference, to give you an idea what's behind you. What you have to look quickly is the same thing with our past. We cannot become fixated on our past. We have to learn from our past, but we have to keep focused on our future. Make sense? Fair enough. And one of the tricks that shikon will use against a person and this is part of despair, by the way
is if you've had a rough past,
if you've made a lot of mistakes or you've been through a lot of pain, one of the best ways to paralyze you. One of the best ways to change you up is to keep reminding you have
to keep repeating it like put it on repeat like a broken record. Why? Because every time you keep repeating it and repeating and repeating it's like chains around
You, and you can't move forward. And that's the idea. See, if a person looks and just keeps looking at the rearview mirror, they're going to crash because they don't know where they're going forward. So keep in mind that this is something you have to struggle against.
getting stuck in your past, and allowing your past to define your future. Makes sense. Now, your past, again, everything you've been through in life.
Yes, it happened for a reason. And yes, it's intended to teach you something. So learn the lesson, but move on. Don't get stuck. And just always remember, you guys are never going to forget this. Because whenever you drive, you're going to look at the rearview mirror and be like, I can't stay fixated on it. And that inshallah will remind you that in the same way, you can't stay fixated on your past, you look at it, you learn from it, and then you keep going, and you go back, and you focus on where you're moving to, no one should ever allow whatever kind of past they've had to define their future. It can teach you but she never defined. And I can tell you, you know, one of
many, many examples, but if you look at some of the greatest companions, for example, some of the greatest companions to walk, you know, those promise Gen that look at all of your life. And you realize, if you looked at their past, you know, they have a day, they didn't always believe and in fact, although the line was against the profit center,
and so when you think about, but then what did he become? Right? If you look at, you know, contemporary, Malcolm s, right, think about his past, he ended up in jail. And yet, what was his future, so the idea of our past, defining our future should never be something that you allowed to happen, but you learn and you keep going.
Now,
finally, what I want to say is this.
If I'm driving, I'm checking, you know, I'm, I'm unconscious of my vehicle, I know where I'm going, everything's in the GPS, awesome. I'm rerouting. I'm not giving up. I know the pitfalls. But then I run out of fuel, I run out of gas, and I don't know where to refuel, then what's gonna happen?
Well, it doesn't take a mechanic to know that you can't move without, you're gonna cause him to stop. Right? So part of the journey for you to be successful is you have to keep the car fueled, you have to keep it fueled. Similarly, I'm going to say this is the same thing spiritually, you need to have your spiritual field. And guess what it doesn't run out. Just like the gas in the car runs out. Eventually, your spiritual fuel needs to be re, like refilled. It does run out just like food you eat? Yeah, no one says, Okay, I don't need to eat today, because I ate last October.
It doesn't work like that. You need to consistently keep eating, and part of the spiritual. And so so for you to be successful in this journey, you have to have a source of consistent spiritual fuel, sometimes spiritually, and you go through these highs and these lows right.
Now, while the spiritual path has highs and lows naturally, but when a person gets to their low, if they don't have a source of fuel, then that's when a person gets lower and lower, lower, lower until they crash. And once they crash, and the car just That's it, it doesn't move anymore. So be conscious of your refueling. I'm going to sort of wrap it up here by saying this, what is our spiritual fuel? What is it? You know, once in a while, we'll come to lectures or maybe we'll read a really awesome book, like repaving your car.
Seriously, though, sometimes we will will do these things periodically, right? But what is our daily fuel? What is our daily? This is extremely important. There is something that the prophets I send them said will be the first thing we're asked about the Day of Judgment. It's our salon, our prayer, why is that? Our salaah our prayer is literally like our oxygen. And it's something that you can just do once in a while, right? Nobody in the world says,
You know what, I'm busy today I have an exam. So I'll breathe tomorrow. Right? You got to keep breathing to stay alive. And it's the same thing with our, with our prayers with our salon. So the salon itself is one of the most essential parts of that fuel to keep us going. And sometimes what happens is when we are in, whatever,
in whatever way a person starts to give off or go off track or turn off their car and just give up, it usually is rooted in some sort of abandonment of solo
Some sort of like that there's something deficient in the prayer, either a person is not praying anymore, or they're not praying all their prayers, or they're praying very late that when the salaah gets affected, everything else gets affected. Does that make sense. And that's just because just like the human body, if they're not getting enough oxygen, it's going to affect every other part of their body, it's going to affect all their organs. And that's simply because a body in order to function, it needs a certain level of oxygen. Make sense? So spiritually, for us to function, we'd have to have our salon in order. And obviously, that is the very bare minimum, which is five times
on time, that's just your oxygen, that's just keeping you alive. And now beyond that, there's other kinds of fuel such as the connection to the football, being a big regularly having a regular relationship with the put on the book of a book. And
any kind of remembrance of a lot is if you have any kind of remembrance of God is oxygen. So think of it in that way. That the same way I have to keep my body oxygenated, I got to keep my car fuel, I have to continuously remember a law. And it's not something I do once in a done, right. It's something I have to continuously do to stay alive, right. So that's how it works with the remembrance of the law. Finally, let me just say this.
There's something that I personally discovered. I've been sort of trying to be practicing throughout most of my adult life, I'd say yeah, so since I was a teenager, but there was something that I wasn't regularly doing. And when I discovered basically the power of this one thing, it really changed a lot in my life. And that is the of course. And what I mean by the athon is that the prophets I send him had this habit that every single day in the morning after, after he prayed, he would say certain supplications, they were they're called the opcode of morning of survival. And then every day after us, we would say certain supplications, which are the the certifications are
the opcode of massage, have evening. And then before sleep. Now the prophets I said that if you study his life, you find that he was always remembering, like there's a supplication for everything you can imagine under the sun. Right? There's a supplication for leaving the house. There's a supplication for coming into the house, supplication for eating, finishing, eating, going to the bathroom, leaving the bathroom, putting on new clothes, starting to drive, you feel me, there's a supplication for everything. And there's a reason why. What the prophets I sent him is teaching us is how to be in this life involved. Right? He didn't just go away, he didn't just become a monk. He
was married, he was a father, he was a teacher, he was a friend, he was a politic, he was all these things. And yet, he was always remembering God within these roles. So our deep our religion is one of balance. It's not one that tells us the way to be spiritual is only to just live in the mosque, you understand that that the spirituality that we're taught is something that you do while you're driving while you're walking while you're a student, while your wife while your husband, while your father, while you're a mother, while you're a teacher, while you're a cop, you get it. So it's something that you do within your roles. It's not something you do on the side. It's not something
you do on Friday, right? It's not just something you do once a year, or once in Ramadan. And that's it. It's something that we're taught to do throughout our lives and throughout our roles. That's what Islam is. It's a it's a practical religion that teaches spirituality within the dunya rules and within the dunya action, the things that we're doing in Serbia. So when you start to actually when you start to live these solar like this sunnah of remembering a lot in your different worldly actions, it transforms your life. It transforms your state, it transforms how you interact with people and with your life in general. But one thing I'll tell you this is specifically the call of
morning evening and the force sleep personally absolutely changed my life. And whenever I told others about it, or I prescribed it to others in my classes, or just you know it personally, it also people found that it absolutely changed their life. So these are just honestly, this is the journey that we are on. It's
it's intended, it's not intended to be impossible. It's not intended to be so hard. A lot of does not want us to fail. A lot wants us to succeed, but we just have to be conscious of certain things in that journey. Know your destination know your vehicle, know the pitfalls, and then know how to continue to keep that car running a political you have suffered a lot you will happen you know from writing, Spanish will become the crescendo at the end of suffering.
So I don't know if there's time for q&a at.
Yes, no, maybe so Okay. All right. Um, I was also considering doing a short book, reading like an excerpt from my book. But I won't, I'll put up, I'll put that off for a second. And I want to take questions. But really quickly, I do want to just kind of give you guys an idea of why I wrote reclaim your heart and what it is. So Reclaim Your heart is about this idea of the journey that we go through life. And in that journey, we give our hearts away. See everybody in this life, whether they're a Christian or Jew, or atheist or an agnostic, they give their hearts to something, you know, whatever it happens to be some people, it's money, some people have status, or fame or power.
But what we think your heart is about is about taking the heart back and giving it to God, and how doing that helps you be successful within your human relationships, and within your work. And within here, everything that you do in this life, and how to be successful in that journey. So let me go ahead and actually open it up for questions. I think we have time to take a few
questions.
Or I guess you can just raise your hand as well.
So when you want to try to introduce a lot, what are some ways to try to prove this a lot? First of all, I will tell you, there's courses like, I know what shaqab, the Gnostic Junga had a course that where he meaningful prayer, all about the show, and how to improve the quality of our prayer. And, but just generally, one of the best ways to improve the quality of your prayer is simply to understand what we're saying.
Just to understand what you're saying, because you might communicating with a friend or a spouse or a parent. And I don't even know what I'm saying, I'm just saying, you know, words in Chinese, and I have no idea what they mean, I'm not going to be very invested in that conversation or involved. And my connection to the person I'm communicating with won't be very strong, because I don't even know what I'm saying. Right. So understanding the meaning of salaat, the very basic level is, is really, really important. Regardless of whether Arabic is your first language or not, you can still learn the basic part of saliva, the meaning of it, what is the time it will be an address, at the end of
the seminar, just understanding that. The other thing is, you don't have a saying about the cause of the supplications. The more that you remember a lot outside your prayer, the easier it is to remember a lot inside your prayer. Makes sense. So the problem sometimes we face is we don't think about a lot at all all day, we're thinking about everything else, you know, our business, or our Facebook, or our exams are this. And so once you start praying, you're just gonna think about the same exact thing you've been thinking about all day. But if you can sort of slowly Institute more remembrance of a lot outside us a lot, then you'll be able to naturally have more remembrance inside
the salon and be easier to focus.
Another thing is just not being rushed, not being rushed. And one thing that's also I found to be really helpful is praying towards the beginning of the time rather than the end. It's so much different. And for brothers like praying at the masjid, that also is a huge difference in terms of bushwa and reward. Like when you pray towards the beginning of the time, it's a lot easier to focus and like the first 10 minutes or the first 30 minutes versus the last 30 minutes. It's like the difference in day and night. So those are just some things, you know, being in a quiet place, obviously things as much as possible, removing distractions.
Yes.
It's not really a question. I just want to kind of add on to what you're saying before.
It's oftentimes common sense a foreigner know that.
You can submit.
So you're asking
Yeah, if there's instructions.
So during this alive, you get distracted. So you're asking what should you do if you're getting distracted?
Yeah, exactly. Well, so the thing is, when you're getting distracted in the salon, the best thing you want to do is refocus. Just refocus and then keep trying. The thing about
the thing to keep in mind about
was found that he's not expecting us to be perfect angels, but we have to just keep trying, and to do our best not to give up and to keep trying. So ask a lot to help you keep doing do try the things that I mentioned, understanding what you're saying, taking out another thing that many people have found helps is having
a few moments before you start to sort of clear your mind. You know, nowadays, you're finding just even the, the, the power of meditation, what is really what is meditation essentially, is clearing your mind. It's clearing it out, so that you're actually like mindfulness is actually being able to just to actually clear so just practicing that. Even praying, Sunnah will help you focus in your salon, interestingly enough, and that's because usually, like say, you have a Sunday before the salon, and then you have the fun, you've already sort of gotten your, into your into the exercise, right of the spiritual exercise. So by the time you're printing your, your thought, you're more
conscious. So that's another thing. Anyone else, I think, in the back.
So, you know, with the GPS, we have an easy way to reroute. So we kind of asking one year at that point where you feel like you need to reroute? How do you know what way to go? I mean, you don't have a clear direction on 17 sentence or like if Prem is to hire people say sometimes you get dreamed, but how does that really work when making a decision? So how do you?
How do you know, you know, the right path? Right? That's a really great question. So how do we reroute? I you mentioned one of the best ways in order to seek guidance, obviously, there's some off days, and specifically istikhara is too caught up is the dot that we asked a lot for when we're making a decision, and for Allah to guide us. And you mentioned dreams, it's sort of misconception that we believe that we believe that the answer to is the heart always comes in a dream. Because if you actually look at the meaning of istikhara knew, and you just look at linguists like what you're actually saying, you'll find when you break it down,
you're not asking for, you're asking for a dream, you're actually not even asking for a son, what you're actually asking for is for a lot to facilitate what is best to understand the difference. That's totally different than God give me a sign of a bolt of lightning in the sky. That's not what you're actually asking for. Essentially, his default is saying a lot of instances, Allah has it on the site and add a new module. So if this thing is good for me, and this light, and the next one anyway, a suitable deformability for this is what you're asking. You're saying, if it's good for me, then make it happen, make it easy and put blessing in it.
That's what you're asking. And then you're saying, if it's not good for me,
I'll sort of blindly then take it away from me was sort of the animal and take me away from it. Watch live, say hi to confirmar db, then make me then bring me what's good for me and making pleased with it. So to think about, what is it that you're really saying, and it's the Hata? You're saying? Yeah, I'm watching the steering wheel, of this of my life of my situation? Does that make sense? So so you're paying is staccato, say about a job or a career or a marriage? You're asking a lot, you're putting your trust in a line saying Yella, do what's best and make it easy. And and if it's not good, then take it away and replace it with whatever is good. So sometimes the answer to is taharah
has hat is actually comes in what happens in what's facilitated or on the other hand, what is closed, sometimes appraise the thought about something and it's obstacle upon obstacle upon obstacle comes after the staccato? You understand? So that's how sometimes that's the answer to the staccato it's not. Because if you look at the idea of dreams, that's complicated, I'll tell you why. Because there's three sources a dream can come from three sources, a dream can come from a love that's, that's Roja. That's like a true three or three concoction on
origin can just come from the next like, I ate too much ice cream, so I don't have ice cream. No, it's not like symbolic. So the idea is that you never know for sure about dreams. Never know for sure about green. So to make your you know, decisions based on something you're not you don't even know for sure what it means or what the sources is decolonized
asking Allah to Siri will do what's best take away whatever is not good for me. And I can't emphasize enough what a gift that is asking a lot for guidance. You're saying what we reroute, and we don't know which way to go.
One thing that
I think one, one thing that we really underestimate, or we kind of put aside is the power of
you don't have confused. The first thing I do when I'm confused is I go to this person, I go to that person, I go to this website and go to that website. That's all great. But I've forgotten something essential. And that's asking Allah for guidance. You know what I mean? Sometimes we just forget, we step over the law, and we go to every other means, but we forget about da, we forget about asking a lot of guidance and for Allah to help us. And it's good for us to seek help from those who have knowledge we should, but we shouldn't forget to ask Allah for guidance.
I think I can take one more question.
Yes.
Yes. So
first example, if we look into the
destination, that you'll see the
same thing.
So people used to say that if they did not want to start doing this,
the point being, at what point do you know that? Okay, this whatever you're
kind of doing? Okay. Yeah, it's a good question. His questions asking that sometimes we need to, we're going to be strange, right? The idea of being a stranger is another hazard that says of better Islam of it more people say, Oh, don't worry, we'll come out better that Sandy Anna's something stranger overturned, to being something strange as it began, but what a lot of that give glad tidings to the strangers. But then at the same time, at what point do you do? Is it like that you're being strange because you're inventing something, right? Our or you're not part of the it's not part of what's acceptable within the fold of the snap? And I mean, to answer that, we have to use a
methodology, there is a specific methodology, you don't just go you know, you don't just make it up. And oh, this is what I feel right? Or I had a dream that told me to do this. There is a methodology in terms of how we live our lives and how we follow the Quran and the Sunnah, we need to abide by that methodology. Of course, there's, there's
leeway in terms of first, for example, which scholars you and there's difference of opinion. And fifth, there's different schools of thought, that's fine. But there's still a methodology and there's still a, like a, like a, like a border. And we need to be within that board or within that, that, that managing that managing that methodology of, of his solo enjoyment of the Quran and the Sunnah. And so as long as we're within that, it's okay, that this person, you know, holds their hands here and this person holds their hands down here and so on. That's okay. There are some differences within our Deen that are acceptable, and that's fine. Even the scholars agreed to
disagree. That's, that's okay. Then of course, there's things outside of that border. And those are the things we have to avoid. Our Deen is not about following our * up. It's not about following our desires or our own inclinations. I might think that this is better. You know? Why? I mean, who knows? And someone might say, Well, you know, what I share is later on we're more tired. So I think it should be three cars and method is early on.