 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen wa sallallahu wa sallim al-barak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa alihi sallam. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Alhamdulillahi, hope everybody is doing well. Rabi shahsadri wa salli amri wa l-aqtata min al-sani wa qalqali. Alhamdulillahi, so we'll continue on inshallah with this discussion on practical spirituality and today we're going to be diving into this topic which is focused on mindfulness of Allah and how to increase your mindfulness. The way that it's translated in the text is vigilance and the Arabic word that they're referring to is called moraqabah, moraqabah which is a form of essentially actualizing the idea that God is always watching us and that if he's always watching us we should try our best to maintain a degree of humility, shyness and just overall consciousness that he is aware of every single action that we do and he's aware of all the thoughts that we have and that in that he is also with us and assisting us and that should also inspire in us a bit of carefulness in terms of how we approach our life so that we try to stay away from sin. So the core hadith here that's really, really, really important is a hadith in which, known as Hadith Jibril, in which Sayyidina Jibril alaihi salam was mentioned actually that a man came to the Prophet's Islam while he was with the Sahaba, a few of the Sahaba and this man was wearing all white clothing and he had no traces of travel on him and he came and he sat next to the Prophet's Islam and he had his knees next to the knees of the Prophet's Islam and he asked him about, he started asking him questions so he said tell me about Islam and then the Prophet's Islam said that Islam is to pray five times a day to fast and then he listed the rest of the pillars of our religion and he said tell me about iman and he said iman is to believe in Allah, to believe in the messengers, to believe in the angels, the books and he listed the core principles and of faith believe in Allah on the last day and so on and so forth and then he asked him tell me about ihsan, tell me about excellence, spiritual excellence is how it's translated many times and the Prophet's Islam responded he said it is to worship Allah as though you see him but if you do not see him then know that he sees you and that was his emphasis in terms of what ihsan is and then he mentioned tell me about the hour and the Prophet's Islam said that the one asking knows no more than the one being asked and then he said tell me about the signs and then the Prophet's Islam went on to list a few of the signs and so those three that we usually emphasize right Islam, iman and ihsan are core core core aspects of kind of building the Muslim and then there's this fourth aspect which many many times we neglect which we're not going to talk about today but it's this idea of knowing the signs of the end of times which is also core core part of being a Muslim that we should definitely invest time into to making sure we know those so the third area though was this idea of ihsan to worship Allah as though you see him and that if you don't see him know that God sees you and that's what we'll be diving deeper into today inshallah and it's not like something versus Islam you can implement the outward actions and you will essentially be following the the process of being a Muslim right and then you can believe in what you need to believe in and you will follow the process of being a mu'min but to be a muhsin to be a person of excellence is not it's by no means that straightforward right there requires a very very in inward awakening that God is always watching me and always with me and that takes time to cultivate so imam ahadad he's going to once again as he does he's gonna give us the secrets for how to go about doing that very very quickly and so he mentions that you have to be mindful of God in all of your movements in every stillness in every moment in every blink of the eye with every thought and in every state so he tries to get us to realize the importance of knowing that okay God is watching me in not just what I say and what I do not just when I'm alone or when I'm in public but even my thoughts he's aware of and he is closer to me than my jugular vein he is closer to me than your consciousness itself as you know consciousness is linked to your jugular vein if you lose that you lose consciousness and so he's trying to encourage us then to feel God's nearness to you right actually feel it many times we go about our days and we just do the outward actions of worship and we very much have a difficult time being present right like for me last half of this past day was definitely like that there's so many things going on at work that everything we have prayers is going through the motions but it's very difficult to be present and so we actually have to work on our inward states such that even in the hustle and the bustle of life with everything we have going on when we go to those moments where we actually have to give time to our spiritual state we have to give time to Allah we are feeling that God is actually watching me and I am present with God this is not any any physical way we're talking here and in terms of a spiritual presence and so he then he mentions that the way to go about doing this is to actually realize and contemplate this fact he is actually with you whatever you are with his knowledge his he's aware of everything you're doing right and he's assisting you if he chooses he's assisting you in every single moment I mean for every human being if God was not assisting you you wouldn't be able to breathe you wouldn't be able to blink your eyes you wouldn't be able to your blood would not circulate and so on and so forth and so Allah is always assisting you and then he said though if you are of the righteous if you are from the salihin Allah will guide you assist you and protect you so now this awareness becomes something more comprehensive because you are not just aware of Allah but you are actually of the people who's aware and who's acting upon his or her knowledge and now this assistant this special assistance comes so then he mentions this idea that now how do you again practically implement it we're gonna try to just take away like the most the most critical aspects of what he mentions or the most practical aspects of what he mentions so he says it's the first principle that he lays out and the first action that we can take is to inquire and instill a state inside of yourself that is a very very modest and humble state and what does that mean it means that you should actually take yourself to account to make sure God never sees you where he's forbidden you and that he never misses you where he's commanded you to be those are the two areas if you we can get those down in life we'll have the real successful life inshallah that okay did I go somewhere where he told me not to go did I do something that he told me not to do that that's the first level of this right so like many times we get into this rut with the religion where it's all rules and and you know no fun right all rules it's all rules it's all rules when you live the rules without any understanding of why the rules are there yes it can seem kind of boring and dry on the outside when it's all the rules but the rules are to get you somewhere the rules are to get you to this spiritual experience where you're actually having a tranquility as we mentioned this and you're actually feeling less anxious and you're really really knowing that God is with me he's gonna take care of me right if I'm going through this problem with my family or this problem at work or this problem with my friends or this problem with my spouse so on and so forth I know that I'm doing my absolute best I may be falling short but I'm trying to be conscious that God is gonna help me he will help you he says I'm in the opinion of my servant right to be in the opinion of his servant you have to have an opinion of him in the first place if you're just if we're just heedless and we're never thinking about Allah and we're never trying to be aware about Allah then how are we going to be in the opinion or how we going to have an opinion so that's the the first aspect here is this idea of modesty and this idea of feeling us a level of shyness so when you miss something ah man God told me I should at 6 a.m. in the morning I'm supposed to be awake I'm supposed to be praying but today I slept through till 7 and Fajr time was gone and now what am I supposed to do right when you have that feeling and you miss something you actually say oh hold on right what happened there instead of every day sleeping through till 7 or 8 and just like not even caring and then now that starts to become the problem the Muslim is not asked to get everything right the Muslim is asked to try the muhsin the one who's driving towards spiritual excellence generally speaking is asked to get everything as right as possible that that is the station to aspire to right to really be aware of God in every moment you don't just want to be like doing the basics I'll give a given example here just so we can make it very very practical that the idea of him never missing you where he where he has commanded you to be would be that at minimum it's let's say it's Fajr time and you at some portion of the time you are praying the Fajr prayer between like comes in like five I think 40 right now 545 or something like that right now and up until about 650 655 when the Sun rises work in that window we're praying that's like at the minimum right to just be where God told us to be but to aspire towards excellence in this state would be that you are awake at the beginning of the time that ideally as Fajr comes in you are seeking a loss forgiveness and then ideally especially if you are a male you are present in the Masjid praying Fajr in Jama'a that would be like the station to aspire to to be and if you're and if you're a woman then just praying Fajr at home but still in the earlier part of the time that would be better than praying in the later part of the time right is as kind of an example here and so when it comes to being aware and gaining this awareness the more you strive towards doing something with excellence and Ehsan and quality and trying to kind of perfect it right of course with our weak human abilities the more the mindfulness are staying crease the more the mindfulness are staying crease doing everything at the bare bare bare minimum it's very difficult to attain the state of mindfulness right because something else clearly was a priority mindfulness of Allah becomes attained when God is your first priority he's your priority nothing okay you have a meeting at work and the meeting is so long that you're gonna miss Juma gotta talk to somebody at work yeah I can't miss Juma this is for men especially again we're in this instance right can't miss Juma I have to go to Juma it's part of my religion it's a part of I'm gonna gonna have the confidence to talk to my manager and let them know hey I gotta I have something I have to be at right or I have to pray whatever prayer I have to pray at the time that I'm at work that's preferring God over something else preferring the dunya would be oh well my boss told me I gotta do so and so I'm not going to can't say no well there's a bigger boss than the boss who told you and that's God and we we're not obeying him right so that is the the level that we want to spark to it's okay if we're not there yet but we just kind of continue to aspire today to that then there's the idea of not being where he has forbidden you to be now this starts to get kind of intricate right but I'll just give it at a couple different levels at the first level it's like the big big stuff that he told us not to do right so like you know we shouldn't be at a bar drinking inshallah right we shouldn't be like at the party at the at the college party partying we shouldn't be if we know people who are like smoking we shouldn't be with them smoking so the big the big there were kind of kabahir sins right but then there will be more and more nuances as you try to attain a deeper state of mindfulness a show comes on and or let's say you are you're on social media and start now images start to pop up it we shouldn't be seeing it does the person lower your gaze because if you're not lowering your gaze it means you don't think God is watching you because how could you ever look at something Haram if you knew God was watching you it means the mindfulness isn't there yet right the minute you know God is watching me say what am I looking at and you want to scroll past you'll just delete that you'll the ideal stages delete that entirely or you'll just exit from the app whatever it is right maybe there is a Netflix show or something someone is watching and that show we know it has quite a lot of problematic scenes in it the ideal state of mindfulness is I don't even know anything to do with this because every 10 minutes I have to for every three minutes I have to figure out like lower my gaze or try to ignore what they're saying or so on and so forth right or forward the scene whatever whatever it is but if someone's not there yet then okay at the very least we kind of try to make sure we don't see Haram and Haram by the way of viewing Haram anything that's Haram to do is Haram to look at sometimes we like only focus on adult scenes and sexual scenes when it comes to it's not the only thing Haram Haram to look at mass killing it's Haram to look at people shooting each other all of those things would be considered impermissible by many of the Olima because they're Haram to do and so they're gonna hurt your eyes it's how it would be considered impermissible to listen to foul language people always cursing at each other and and so on and so forth that wouldn't be something you would want to do if you're not there yet we just keep working towards it but at least we know that if I want to be mindful of Allah I need to know that he's watching me in this instance and I need to know that I shouldn't probably shouldn't be doing this thing that minimum I should make us that far so that would be the part of not being where he told us not to be and this gets into like deeper and deeper levels right like you're at a wedding and there's just like really really things you're not comfortable with going on at the wedding which is like oh it's not a big deal is every all the people here are Muslim so what's the big deal for me to engage well God is would probably not prefer for us to even be doing that let alone to be engaging us you have to know okay and when this type of stuff happens right example here this happens all the time now in the Muslim community that you have weddings where there's like open dancing going on and so on and so forth that that's categorically impermissible in our religion if we engage in that we would be considered to be in a state of sin we have to at least be conscious that okay I'm gonna step out during the part when the dance floor opens up right like I'm not just gonna be in it I'm gonna try to because otherwise if I'm in it my nuffs is gonna slowly pull me towards it pull me towards it I won't be able to lower my gaze so on and so forth we're not ready yet though okay we just you know we have to negotiate things with the way our lives are our families lives are and what what types of ways we might want to be trying to kind of keep ties because people will do things in a different way you don't have to be the guy who's like this is how wrong go shut everything off that's not what we're saying but you have to know for yourself God is watching me and he I don't want to be in a place that's impermissible and then there's there then has are you doing the second part then he asks where God has commanded you to be so the prayers are at the basic level okay in Ramadan he's commanded us to be fasting to be awake at certain times so that would be inculcating mindfulness every time you do a certain action you realize that God is watching you rather than just doing the action because your parents told you to do so or because you just grew up thinking that was the thing to do and not actually being present and aware that hold on like the Lord who created the stars and the planets and the heavens the galaxies and the universe is actually watching me right now and he's aware of what I'm doing try to take five seconds before you engage in something to bring that to heart right so that will now bring this this this kind of aspect of modesty deep down inside and and you actually feel a little bit shy before God before you do anything and modesty applies just as much to men as it does to women sometimes only discussed in Islamic circles as a concept of women men are supposed to be humble modest people who feel shy before God right any from an outward aspect of clothing and so on and so forth all the way to just the way that we engage just as much of course as women are then he gets into now how do you practically how do you practically start to remind yourself now this is like gonna sound a little bit weird but Imam al-Khazali in his section on this topic and his section on vigilance he actually says you have to hold yourself the account you have to talk to yourself like you can't just assume that you're gonna get it on your own he mentions that the nuffs is like an animal that has to be trained the nuffs here being your lower self and your ego and you cannot assume that an animal is just going to be trained on its own and so we have narrations for example that there would be times that somebody would come outside the home of Sayyidina Omar and they would see they were here Sayyidina Omar admonishing somebody how could you do this how could you do this and then they would seek permission to enter and then the normal would let them in and there was nobody there except for him and he was just talking to himself admonishing his own self and this is Sayyidina Omar what would he even need to admonish himself on he was such an amazing person mashallah but this is the level that these people get to right and they're talk they're like admonishing themselves on their own thoughts let alone their actions but that is a high high high spiritual station but it's good for us to know that those stations exist that there are people who literally are so careful and they're so in tune with their spirituality that the thoughts that they get they're able to channel those thoughts to make sure they're good thoughts that bad thoughts don't even enter their heart and if they do they immediately seek forgiveness of Allah because they don't want to be held accountable even though you're not held accountable for your thoughts but that's that they're trying to be very very very careful not just in their actions this requires a very conscious approach to your to our deen and to our spirituality so he says then do you have to remind your soul of three things first is you have to know that God is watching at every step and reminded of that right so one time a day just talk again it sounds weird just talk to yourself and tell yourself Allah is watching today so you bet I better behave you had to tell yourself that right and slowly slowly you do that every day ultimately the nuts like I mentioned is like an animal it needs to be trained and it will start to submit but the second step after you do that if it doesn't work you have to remind yourself that you have two angels here one here one here so like in total in addition to inshallah any of the other angels that are in the masjid there's a bunch of angels in this room I can't count everybody but two for every person that are literally there's two angels that are with you and you have to remind yourself of that that like hold on how could I be doing this the angel is seeing everything I'm seeing right now in my phone uh-oh and he's writing everything down everything down and we know right that the right angel is writing the good and that the left angel is writing what is bad and not like God doesn't know but this is going to be the kitab that you get the book of deeds that you get on the day of judgment so the angel will be able to pinpoint to you on September 22nd at this point in time you were in such and such a place doing such and such and all be written in your book so he says if you can't know that God is watching you at least remind yourself that the angels are watching you and that they're aware what you're doing as a method of of sitting with it I will get to the question then the third thing he says is if you can't remember that the angels are watching you and it doesn't work get realized that you will die at some point and let death suffice as a reminder that sit with the fact that okay I'm gonna die and everything I do is going to impact me in some way either positively or negatively when I die and usually death is the thing that is not not always but it can really wake somebody up that I know many people who have seen quite a few people die in front of them and that was the means of their like turning back to Allah maybe they grew up Muslim they kind of stopped practicing and then they saw a lot of death and then they began to practice the religion again because they realized hold on death doesn't only come when you're 75 you can also come when you're seven or when you're 18 or when you're 23 or when you're 32 or so and so on and so we can come at any moment and so he mentions to realize and sit with that those the three levels is first is know that God is watching you then realize that the angels are watching you if that doesn't wake you wake us up then realize that death is very very close and then depending on the type of person that you are you can use other tools the fourth one he mentions is if you are the type of person who really is incentivized by reward remind yourself of how many rewards that are coming to us inshallah if we have a successful life and the next life in heaven and if you are the type of person who is more admonished by like some fear instilled in you reflect on how serious the hellfire is and how much punishment can happen and when we say reflect here all of these things and there's a whole section we'll get to in a couple of weeks inshallah probably like two weeks inshallah just on reflection and what that means but you have to sit with this stuff this is not just like a think about it for two minutes and then move on this is like you sit with just one concept for like I would advise 10 20 30 minutes and just sit in a room and contemplate the fact that you have angels that are with you and they're watching you and they're writing everything down because it has to become a spiritual muscle that's built nobody builds muscle when working out with one or two minutes in the gym that requires significant amounts of exercise and concentrated exercises where you increase the weight gradually until the muscle mass starts to develop right you just do the same thing over and over again the muscle is not going to work which is why in order to travel the spiritual path the deeds have to increase in quality most importantly and also quantity right you do the faraid and then you do the sunnah and then you do the no afil and so on and so forth city phantom you're going to hear something okay when we were talking about remembering god you've probably heard that the thing that marie said that god is with me and god is with me god is watching over me and god is with me and god is with me and god is with me god is watching over me if you repeat that like during every prayer you have to bring that awareness so that's an exercise that i heard you excellent idea i mashallah i was going to mention at the end right so city phantom he mentioned that one way to do this is to remind yourself sit with it either at the beginning right before you engage in salah right before you sit down to do anything to do dhikr especially something in relation to your spirituality but that you remind yourself practically Allah is with me Allah is watching me Allah sees me Allah hears me Allah is aware of my thought so there's a couple of very specific you can just use these specific phrases right that god is with me Allah is watching me and you can just remind yourself so just repeats over and over again until the intellect understands and then the the heart understands so that would be that would be very thank you that would be something that we can very much try to do as as ideally once a week if not you know more often so then he says what are the results of this how are you going to know this is working he says you will feel in yourself a shyness that prevents you from disobeying him and makes you start to exert yourself in the path of deen there will be a shyness that develops inside that like i can't disobey god like how could i let him down how how he's the one who created me he's the one who's given me so much he's the one who who wants so much good for me he has so much love for me how can i disobey him ideally that is like a your ideal type of shyness and the awareness you want you don't want to have the the approach too much on the side of god is going to punish me punish me punish me and your entire view of Allah is punishment it might work for some people but generally speaking you want to have a balance between hope and fear and you want to have this idea though okay i have to be careful what i do not because of anybody in society when this mindfulness becomes a reality the next thing that starts to happen is you stop caring about the opinions of people over the opinion of god the opinion of Allah is the most important it reigns dominant so like what is Allah going to think not what is this person going to say what is that person going to say it doesn't mean we don't care about our reputation communally alhamdulillah that should be something that's important too but you're not doing things for the sake of people whether somebody says what is this person going to say if i show up here if i show up here well how what is Allah going to say how is what is Allah going to think right i remember somebody was telling me that they made a specific choice of something to wear and then they went to this place and at that place and they weren't you know they know that what they were wearing was probably not the best thing at the place that they went to turns out is like the mufti of the masjid or something like that or the scholar and now they're like trying to make sure that this person doesn't see them and add the way home it hit them hold on a second god was watching me the whole time why doesn't matter what this person was going to say god was watching me the whole time i shouldn't have made that choice in the first place who do i care more about which opinion do i care more about that it takes time sometimes your teachers and parents will serve as the means to help you realize it but that's not the end goal the fear of parents and still when we're young in us make sure i don't see you doing this i don't see you doing that i don't see you doing anything haram it's not so that when they're gone we can go and do all the haram it's so that when they're gone and when they're not with us we still remember that god is with us and that transition sometimes is not not always done appropriately like on that specific topic it's really really important if we do have kids or if we have siblings or younger siblings cousins that we make sure that they the fear is for Allah and the love is for Allah and it's not that the fear is for the parents because once the parents just like they go they pass away god forbid or that they are just not with us it's very difficult to inculcate that yes there's a question right this is our marriage not outside the marriage because you will separate us from each other you're scared of the separation of the differences separation is right and i don't know if the word is what i'm asking is that the word the group word is the top word right right right right so the question was and just repeating it for those that are online about about taqwa and and how exactly does this concept of taqwa relate to what we're talking about um and is the root of the word taqwa uh related to this idea of kind of putting a fence around yourself and putting some guard rail so that you don't cross cross the bounds um so essentially uh and taqwa has it's a very very very very very very like it's an ocean of knowledge just to understand taqwa but it is about protecting yourself right and so what we're talking about here the one who has taqwa is engaging in mindfulness one way to translate taqwa would be god consciousness would be a mindful mindful fear of Allah but it's to protect yourself such that just i'll give you one one example similar to what you mentioned it's like in this this pandemic right especially when things are more strict the level of precaution that those who fear getting sick were taking around i have to do this i have to wear a social wear a mask i have to social distance i have to be hyper careful to not go in a situation where there's a lot of people and you know what the rules are and you tread very carefully to follow those rules because if not you could get sick regardless of someone's like views on the pandemic and so on and so ultimately we know it's a test from Allah and it is a sickness and the prophet sallam himself gave us advice on what to do when it when a plague is it comes down that would be an example if you applied that spiritually to haram and to what you're supposed to be doing that would be a way to instill taqwa that i need to make sure the spiritual mask of protection is always on me so there's always one layer more ideally multiple between me and the sin right and so that is the concept of taqwa is treading very very carefully one of the scholars described it they said it's like you're walking through a like a field of that has you know like these flowers that are like thorns on them it's like you're walking through that and you're trying to make sure that you don't rip your pants or you hurt your legs as you're doing it you're being very careful how you tread that would be somebody who's very mindful of Allah and who has taqwa is very careful how they go about their life because they want to make sure they don't displease God and so just to kind of finish up this specific topic on on this trait of you know when we're when whether we're with raising kids or with regards to younger siblings it's very very important to make sure that the dominant emotion associated with Allah is one of positivity one of love and one of them knowing that he is watching you and that he is with you and that he loves you and you don't want to disappoint somebody you love if you love him and he loves you how would you disappoint them right and it has to be balanced with fear but it should be disassociated from parents I see too often that people are very very careful and what they do around their parents and then as soon as they go to college everything changes because parents aren't there that means that something was wrong in the approach something was wrong in the approach because the the taqwa should have been instilled for Allah not not not fearing parents right and then at some point if your parents find out then you start to change that's not the goal that we want to get to and it's okay it's not easy to do this but I'm just saying that that should be where we direct our approach and so then he mentions that you have to admonish yourself and sit with yourself practically or sit with yourself and have specific moments where you practically instill this as we just mentioned so like the few takeaways from this that I would advise is have time every week where you just sit in a room close the lights and just imagine that you're in your grave imagine death the Prophet ﷺ would regularly reflect on death and he told us to reflect on death in some hadith multiple times a day the believer should be reflecting on death and our times when there's so much hustle and bustle when we even when we get a moment to ourselves we're not with ourselves we're with our phone we're not ever really just with ourselves we have to have those moments where we just sit and think and ponder the deeper things that are going to happen what that's going to do it will start to forcibly instill this shyness and this mindfulness of Allah and then you will immediately notice the effect and the potency or the the of what you just did when you go out to do something wrong you'll be like wait no no I'm not gonna do that anymore because you'll have trained yourself to realize that God is with me and then I'm gonna die right so those three concept of Allah is watching me Allah is with me Allah sees me and then if that doesn't do the job the angels are writing everything down and they're aware and then you pair that with death if somebody does that reflection on death these are spiritual medicines that the Prophet ﷺ gave us that cure the sicknesses that we all have as Allah mentions in the Quran that the heart is sick you have sickness in the heart and the heart needs to be cured and we'll talk about that inshallah uh more more next time yes about the death I was just gonna say remembering death it also makes you not have such long hopes right oh I can be good later I can be good later it makes you want to shape up now if you have things to do it now and not have long hopes this is very yeah and so as mentioned that remembering death will allow us to actually not just have so many hopes especially when it comes to like I'll get to this later right hopes from a like I hope that good things will happen inshallah it's fine but long hopes in this instance would mean that yeah I'll get to this later I have plenty of life to live I'll do good later in life right that is not the way of the Muslim the Muslim is one who maybe we don't always think that we will die every day the prophet sallam would actually one time the sahabah were with him on a journey it's narrated in the ahia the mama khazali that and the book on death that when the the sahabah were with him and he stopped at a point and he went to relieve himself and then he made tayammum and they said why are you making tayammum we'll eventually get to water and it's not time to pray he said look at so-and-so who thinks that he'll live to the point where we'll get to water what if we don't get there right like this was the utmost level of like you got to think that I might not be here and it has to be balanced not so that you're not like completely freaking out all the time right like someone invites you to to hang out I can't hang out with you I'm gonna die it has to be balanced but generally speaking you you definitely don't hang out in a place that's like yeah someone invites you do something haram that you would be like that's not what I want to do but like we have to make sure we have moments in our life because we've gone to the other extreme we don't remember death at all we never see death even in the society we live in they have strategically positioned and mapped out the way cities are structured such that grave graveyards in muslim societies anybody ever goes to let's say turkey you'll be like in Istanbul and then all of a sudden a giant graveyard in the middle of like the market or something and then you'll be walking sometimes another big it just like reminds you and that was and those graveyards might be five six seven hundred years old right so they're not obviously gonna have moved but in western societies they don't even want to call it a graveyard they call it a memorial park so that you try to completely disassociate any recollection of death and then they put it in the most random obscure parts of of the society so it never comes to you so everything that you remember is dunya dunya capitalism consumerism consumption so on and so forth because if you remember death you might stop consuming we might stop consuming things hold on a second what do I need all this stuff for in the first place but that goes against the framework they have in the society they don't want to do that they want you to to consume and otherwise their whole system breaks down so it's very much like the way we live is not the way that the people of the past used to live so you have to do things to in your time very specifically methodically that maybe the people of the past didn't need to do because they just live this every single day so I'll just mention does anybody have any questions about this I just want to get through like one short section and then we'll finish in sha Allah then you would have questions though on this concept or on what we talked about last time intentions questions on mindfulness hopefully it makes sense and so then the last piece that we that that would be advised is when you actually get to talking to yourself right you actually like start to hold yourself to account and there's whole books written on how to take yourself to account it's called it's called the the eventual state of mohasaba where you actually start to know that I got to take my so you take yourself to account before Allah takes you to account as the saying goes and so you sometimes actually have to say to yourself again very very practically why did you do this right don't you know this isn't okay you admonish yourself and you again your your your husband or your wife or someone might hear you like what the heck are you doing in that room over there like who you talking to no one else here just i'm talking to my notes you got to make it a read and i'm not and i mean this in a not comedic way have to make it enough someone is treading the path of spirituality they have to make this stuff not be so weird and they have to actually realize that these are the things that are going to benefit us in life that i actually take myself to account at least once a day before i go to bed i recall and then i take myself to account why did you do that why did i why was that why did i miss that prayer why did i pray so late laura was in at 130 why did i pray at 458 right before us or came in what was that why did i do that you take yourself to account and you remind yourself remind yourself next time don't do and you and and then what the sahaba would do is they would put rewards and punishments next to it right so if you did something wrong i have to give away $10,000 and that would be like an intense example but i got to give away $50 every time i say a curse word your nuts won't want to say curse words anymore because eventually your bank account will go dry right and you'll have to huddle yourself to account i have to give $100 you start and you start upping the into the bounty and the intensity when you start to get closer and closer to doing it so say every time i miss fudger fudger is $500 i gotta give away you won't miss it unlikely right because it's so much that you have you have to and you hold yourself to account for that right or every time i have and that's why i mean giveaway like in charity or something right every time i look at something impermissible and i don't lower my gaze i have to go and do the thing i hate doing the most clean the dishes or clean the bathroom or something whatever that thing is you don't like doing the chore you don't like doing you put yourself and you won't want to do that sin anymore this is the level of taking yourself to account right this this links then it starts to foster this state of morakaba and the state of vigilance inside of us so that would be something inshallah that we aspire to do so then the next the next section that he that he mentions and um is is on the inner and outer self and there and we're this is a very very quick section tell that for those coming for isha we're we're praying at nine that that's okay um but if you guys want to pray please feel free to go ahead he mentions the inner and outer self and here he says that the this is now an entirely new topic so we moved on from the the first one just to clarify anybody have questions about this one okay he then goes on to say that you have to improve your inward aspect until it becomes better than your outward appearance your inside has to be better than your outside and he said the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would make a dua that yallah make my inward better than my outward and make my outward virtuous not that we don't have outward we should be people who also follow all the outward sonnets but he said make my inward better than my outward and so there is a shift you'll notice in the people of spirituality that inward is the goal you do not want to be somebody who prays fast gives a god gives charity does all these outward acts and you were just a jerk something's wrong spirituality has gone wrong it didn't work or you just get angry all the time didn't work whatever we were doing didn't work because the inward was not purified the inward has to be purified as we engage in this spiritual process and so it comes in a hadith i believe in the collection of my muslim was sitting on the authority of sin abu harayah radi allahu an that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said barely Allah does not look at your appearance or your wealth but rather he looks at your hearts and your actions he is looking to see what kind of traits does this person have on the inside and so the ultimate assessment for how we're doing should start with an inward assessment where am i at in the state of my heart and start to reflect and so what we just talked about the the first concept really links to this because when you start to reflect that Allah is watching me that's not to say like Allah is watching me to like see am i looking fly today and that's not what you know it's Allah is watching me like what's going on in here what what am i thinking today what am i what am i worried about today what am i stressed about today it will start to have an impact on all of these different areas and so we know the very very famous hadith as mentioned often where the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned that in the body is a piece of flesh and when it and i'm paraphrasing here when it is good the whole body is good and when it is corrupt the rest of the body is corrupt and verily it is the heart and so the heart has to be purified in order for you to live a sound life and we know that Allah mentioned in the Quran that يوم لا ينفع المال ولا بنون إلا منطا الله بقلب سليم is that the verse right that you that that is on that day neither wealth nor children and this essentially meaning all the other things we care about wealth stocks money investments houses cars status followers fame none of it's going to matter it will be irrelevant once your diet's gone none of it matters إلا من اطا الله بقلب سليم except the one who comes to Allah with a sound heart with a purified heart and so Imam al haddad is encouraging us that if you want to tread the path of spirituality the goal has to be a pure heart you have to get that right and you have to always assess yourself how am i doing with the purity how am i doing the app the two easiest ways to measure that practically speaking that i would advise by Imam al haddad and the scholars your desires and how much you get angry those would be like two very easy ways to assess how we're doing desires this goes to the desire for the sexual appetite the desire for food the desire for money the desire for fame there's a whole bunch of desires that the human being has that the four or five that i just mentioned are some of the chief ones how are we doing are we desiring god more are we desiring these other things more and then the anger is really really important in this instant because the one who cannot control his anger of a very very difficult time actually um being able to become pure not that the muslim doesn't get angry but we don't lose our cool we have to know how am i doing with regards to to this and so he says practically three things beware of what you if you are doing in secret if what you were doing in secret were to become exposed to the people would you be ashamed because it means that you're not emphasizing the inward enough if you think you're doing something in secret and all of your friends and the people in your circles and at the masjid and so on and so forth were to find out and you would be like hi i'm pretty ashamed about that that means that something's wrong because if you were focusing on the inward you would not really have much to be ashamed about right and if you were you of course you you know we were all works in progress but that is the the person who is focused maybe you look the part outwardly but then in on the inside a lot of stuff's going wrong she one of the chief problems in the muslim world today lot of outward emphasis on islam very little inward emphasis and so you generally have a type of harsh strictness that's forming without the loving mercy and the actual implementation of some of the most critical aspects of the dean and then he mentions don't do anything in secret that you wouldn't do in public hold yourself at minimum hold yourself to that equal standard i'm not going to do anything in secret that i wouldn't do in public that starts to inculcate again this trait of of vigilance and then it also starts to make the inward more of an emphasis and so the most and then finally see how much you care really and we again this is the reason i merged these two together because they're very much linked how much you care about what people think about you versus what god thinks about you and just put that on a scale and just be honest with yourself how badly do i care what everybody on facebook and instagram and so on and so forth thinks about me how much do i care and then how much i'm posing and trying to show the best side of myself and then where is my inner work to polish every aspect of myself to show god that i'm that i'm good right because he doesn't look at the forms one of my teachers mentioned that one time he was like got like a scratch on his car and he was like i got a scratch on my car and his mom was like if only you cared this much every time you got a scratch on your heart you'd be such a better person she didn't say the last part but if every time you got a scratch on something instead of if only you cared you know we got a scratch on our floors or some new thing that we have or we drop our phone if only we cared every time there was those scratches were coming on the heart what kind of people then could be aspire to to be and so that's that's an important trait or an important trait to inculcate inside inshallah and so the last thing that will that will kind of end with is just avoiding being with people who are not emphasizing the inward you want to generally speak speaking try to make sure that you spend time and company and you learn from people who have an inward component to their religiosity and to their religious practice because if every single thing is about the outward something is off there you have to make sure and then the second thing is to understand how their character and your character are improving as you spend time with them the more you spend time with people of knowledge the more your character should improve because you'll have be observing their character but if they don't have good character they weren't people of knowledge to begin with because knowledge is something that actually translates into action it's not just facts and figures that we memorize and so one of the other ways that the scholars mentioned to help emphasize the inward to help gain this practical realization that Allah is always watching me and to become somebody who's treads this path of purity as you spend time with good people spend time I'm going to I'taqollah and Kunu Ma'a anybody know the rest of the verse Kunu Ma'a Saadiqin that those who believe have Taqwa of Allah and be with the Saadiqin the people who have attained the highest stations of Sifq be with good people basically that's one of the ways to help us attain the state of Taqwa and so if we're always hanging out with people who are kind of pulling us away from the Dean then we start to slowly improve this okay I'm going to spend one if I hang out with people three times a week and all three are from people who are kind of pulling me away one of those hangouts I'm going to make with somebody who pulls me towards the Dean and then maybe the other two I'll get to it and then eventually two of those hangouts I'm going to make with people who pull me closer to Allah and then finally I'm only going to hang out with people who are at least not taking me away and ideally pulling me closer right and you do so again in a balanced way where you don't make people feel like they're terrible people and you can never hang out with them and because you're so righteous and so on and so forth that would mean something else is wrong with the inward because now the trade of arrogance disappeared and so it's a very very careful path to tread but the rest of the the the topics that we'll be talking about we'll all have this framework on emphasizing the inward as a means of then purifying yourself and then inshallah those trades will manifest on the outward so inshallah we'll go ahead and end here if anybody has questions for those online if you have questions just put them in the chat anybody has questions we'll do a five minutes questions that won't end but it can be related to this or anything we discussed you know so far questions okay I'm gonna see if any questions online I'm gonna just give about a minute for those online to have questions I just want to hear two of them okay any more questions questions sisters anything yes question there's no such thing as a as a bad question Bismillah good questions so the question was in the first class of the second class we talked about anxiety and how those who have a strong yakin a strong certainty and in Allah that they generally will have they won't be people of anxiety right their anxiety will reduce the proof of it Allah mentions in the awliya Allah at the awliya of Allah that they neither fear nor grieve or they don't have this this this kind of tense anxiety all the time they're generally not people who are stressed out so the question was how do we kind of grapple with that but people who are naturally disposed to something it's an excellent question so a couple of things one someone might have a specific test that is not always going to fit within like a parameter right let's say you have a general rule and then there might be somebody that their main test they could be people of faith but they just get depressed a lot they could actually be getting tested with that they could have significant amounts of hasad on them let's just say Allah protect all of us but that's a very very real thing where now anxiety starts to come because of these outward elements so that might be like a isolated time where someone is being tested with something and now god wants in those moments of anxiety for them to turn to him always because the ultimate goal is not even that you're in a state of peace the ultimate goal is you're always with god and turning to god in every single second that's the goal you always want to be turning to god and sometimes the most difficult circumstances will drive the human being to god the most but generally speaking and uh this is at least the way that i've understood it allahu alam that the more somebody has an inner yakin and this is not always that someone is articulating and always talking about religion or someone is showing that their faith is strong but deep down inside and only god will truly notice they actually have really really firm faith they are people of firmness they have a when you when we make the dua you know the one who's turning hearts make my heart firm in this deen they are generally people who are not phased by things and so the the one the one thing i would mention here is we might just not have seen people in our times or in our societies who are even at this station it's a very high station we talk about yakin and these stations of yakin and attaining the station of haqal yakin that these things that i mentioned the Quran these aren't just like things that are passed out like willy nilly or easily generally speaking you would have to meet an arrived spiritual master to know somebody who is completely in a state where anxiety never phases them or stress never phases them the rest of us we're going to face this stuff we're always we're going to have moments of stress and anxiety our goal though is what practical steps do we take from from the Quran and from the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam his outline to calm us down that barely in the dhikr of allah the hearts find rest so do we turn to dhikr of allah do we turn to the dua where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam gave us allahumma ni'audhu bi kamil hamni wal hazam na'udhu bi kamil ajee wa qasab na'udhu bi kamil jubni wa buqal there's a whole dua specifically for anxiety and stress and worry that somebody has in grief and so that's the kind of measure but it doesn't mean that there's not a higher station out there you could be a person who you and i might think we have strong iman but we're faced by anxiety it means we've not kind of started to get where we want to get to right because the ultimate stations of yakin yes the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and the the proof for this and we'll end with this inshallah is that when saidna wa bakar sabiq and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam were in the cave and they were hiding from the Quraysh as the Quraysh were trying to assassinate them and they were chasing them and they hid in a very very small kind of area where the Quraysh were walking and then we know that the spider spun the web such that it looked like that place had been there nobody could have entered that area and saidna wa bakar was in a state of worry he was in a state of worry even though of course he has strong iman but he wasn't worried for himself he was worried for the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and of course his iman is still not at the level of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam but what then did Allah do the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told saidna wa bakar and Allah mentions this in surat suratobah i believe right that um la tell tell your companion la tahsan don't worry Allah is with us and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told saidna wa bakar that he asked him if they look down they're going to see us he said oh Abu Bakar what do you say to somebody that they are two and Allah is their third Allah is the third that's with them it's it's he was completely calm even though of course if your life is about to potentially go and you're being on the hunt for you know you're getting assassinated it rightfully makes sense to be in a state of worry but the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who has achieved the perfect state he's the perfect human being who's achieved the perfect state of iman he wasn't worried and Allah said la tahsan inna allah ma'na and then the verse after that that Allah sends a sakina Allah sends a tranquility right and then the tranquility calms them down so there were many times where the Sahaba in battle as they're facing the Quraysh they are it's not easy they have anxiety but they're turning to Allah and as they're going through their process Allah is sending tranquility and and ease and then that anxiety ends up being a means for them to get closer to God but there's always work to do to then achieve the more higher states of yakin that never really stops um what we're mentioning here is just to kind of like easy bullets that he's laid out so we understand you know what the higher stations are that we can that we can go to and so inshallah we'll go ahead and and let me just make sure nothing uh yeah yeah uh can i'm gonna actually pull together in like a document can i give that to you or do you want me to just relate it right now yeah the the dua is so dua that we should read every morning and every evening can you translate that yeah i need to um just do your best after course yeah that all i seek refuge in you from grief and anxiety and from motherliness and from uh being overpowered by debts and from i think something along the lines of from being um kind of overpowered by other people yeah that would be the the translation it's a very very famous dua yeah yeah if you just google hamli wal hazan dua or come up inshallah but don't take your deen generally from google okay so inshallah we'll go ahead and um and and end Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Alhamdulillah by that you forgive us and that you pardon us and that you increase us in yakinah that you increase us in certainty and you increase us in tranquility and that you remove our anxieties remove our troubles and you remove our worries and inculcate us in a state Allah that we remember you in all of our moments and that we realize that you are with us and we realize that you're watching us yallah make us people at taqwa and make us people in ma'rifah and make us people who are trying to aspire to get closer to you and pardon us for our slips and our misgivings and our bad thoughts and everything that we do that you are just pleased with we ask you for everything good that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked for and we ask you for protection from everything evil that he asked for protection from us sallallahu alayhi wa sallam abu alayhi wa sallam