 Bismillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. We are going to continue on this topic and today we are really going to be focusing on the overall cure for our desires. So every human being has desires. A lot of people mentioned this in the Quran. So we're going to be specifically thinking about how do we go about curing these desires. We've been talking in the last like six or seven classes and discussions about specific desires. So the desire for food, the sexual desire, the desire to be right, the desire to win arguments, the desire to be in control, the desire for fame and followers, these types of things. These are all individual unique desires, each of which have their own unique cures, their own kind of prescription that you can get, right? At the same time, what the scholars of Ardine have done, and most importantly what the Prophet has done, he's given us a kind of general over-the-counter type of cure, right? So he said, okay, if you do these three to five things and you do them regularly and you do them consistently, inshallah, you will be on your way towards spiritual success. You'll be on your way towards curing your desires. And those three to five things are very doable. Everybody can do them. And Alhamdulillah, we're coming up on a month, this blessed month of Ramadan in which we have like 12 or so days left before this month comes, inshallah, that everybody's going to have a chance to work on themselves. We're all going to have a chance to work on our desires. So Alhamdulillah, that's a very, very good thing. And somebody says, As-salamu alaykum, as-salam, as-salam. So as folks have questions, come up, just post them in the chat or in the comments or Q&A section and we'll get to them, inshallah. So as we mentioned, some desires are really strong and others are weak. And so our goal is to figure out how do we go about curing all these desires, inshallah. Remember that the goal for the human being is not to eliminate your desire. It's not that you should never desire food or you should never have a sexual desire or you should never desire speaking or this type of thing. No, it's that you and I have to tame the desire and channel in the right direction. So Allah gave us the desire to eat, to eat permissible things, to eat in balanced ways, to eat, Allah says in the Qur'an that to eat halal and tayyab food, to eat clean and pure food, that type of thing. And to give us energy for worship, what he didn't do is he didn't create us to eat. Like you need to eat to live, right? But you don't live to eat. Same thing with all of the desires. So you and I have to have, for example, sexual desire in order to just continue for the world to function and for populations to grow. That desire is there, but it has to be channeled in the halal way. It can't be channeled in an impermissible way because if it is channeled in an impermissible way, then that obviously hurts us spiritually. So the goal is to channel the desires. And remember that you can channel your desires upwards. Your desires can pull you closer. If you use them correctly, you have the right intention. You can actually get closer to Allah swt. Versus what usually happens is that the nafs and shaitan team up to bring us down. They actually bring us down and drag us down. So our goal then is to live this life with this pursuit. One of our main goals in this life has to be, okay, how am I going to control myself? Now why is this important? Think about it. You and I work really, really, really hard for other parts of life. Like many of us will go to school for 12 years to get a diploma from high school. And then another four years for some six to eight years if you're doing a professional degree to get a degree. And then you enter the workforce. And so we spend 16 to 20 years learning waking up every day, eight o'clock or before eight to have to be at work or be at school by seven, 30 or eight, many people. And then they continue that grind for so many years. 16 years, 20 years. And then of course the work that work grind continues for God knows how long. Now that's for what? For dunya, for like, I want to learn, which is a really good thing. Or I want to get money or I want to have a job. All these things, no problem with them, but that's what we do it for. Allah has given us another challenge, which is that, okay, you can also work hard, but work hard for me. That there are people who strive for the sake of the dunya. And then there's people who strive for the sake of Allah. And you can work hard. You and I can become people who work hard for the sake of Allah. That is totally doable. And that's what we should be aiming to do. So why do I mention that? Because this path to taming the desire for the human being is not a path that we can just completely win in one day. No, we have to work hard at it over and over and over again. We have to be consistent with this. So I'm now going to get into, and these are all things. The goal here is to really focus on Ramadan prep. Alhamdulillah, we're just shy of two weeks away from Ramadan. So let's think about this from the perspective of how do we use the skills, hopefully, that we're going to learn today, to then apply them in the blessed month of Ramadan, inshallah. So the first thing that we want to be doing is in order to cure our desires, in order to cure the heart, in order to bring about spiritual success, is the regular amounts of worship and dhikr. We can't have a spiritual path. We can't spiritually flourish if we don't worship. That's just impossible. Now, I'm going to talk about the basic level, and then I'm going to talk about what we should aspire to. At the basic level, in order for us to get in control of our desires, for us to not be angry all the time, for us to not lose our cool, for us to not let lust overcome us or overpower us, for us to not always feel the need to listen to something or feel the need to look at something or look at things that we shouldn't be looking at, we need to do the basics. And then we start adding more on top in order to help control more and more parts of us and channel them in the right direction. Basics are the five prayers. Now, all of us, we struggle with that, right? Many of us, we struggle either with doing the prayers or with focusing and paying attention to the prayers. So our goal needs to be, how do we come up with a program for ourselves, especially this Ramadan that, okay, I'm going to get on the five prayers. I'm going to make an intention to pray five times a day this Ramadan, and I'm not going to miss the prayers. And if after Ramadan or outside of Ramadan, I struggle with fudger or I struggle with something else, I'm going to make an intention to really, really prioritize my fudger. There's many ways to do this. Anything human being wants to prioritize, you can prioritize. Don't let anybody ever tell you, oh, you can't do something. You can do anything you put your mind to. And I'm not just saying that. I really, really, that's a hundred percent fact because if somebody had a flight early, early, early in the morning at five a.m. or four a.m., even if the flight was at six a.m., they would get up at four o'clock, they would get up at five o'clock and they'd be at the airport on time to catch the flight. But when you and I have this kind of flight that we're going to be, that we're going to have a spiritual flight to the heavens at fudger time, we don't join that, right? Because we just, our nafs is lazy and which desire overpowers us at the time? The desire for sleep. The desire for sleep overpowers the human being when it comes to waking up for fudger or when it comes to praying another prayer. The desire to say, I'll do it later. I want to do this instead. I want to read this instead. I want to watch this video instead. Those are the desires that overpower us during certain times. So the first thing we have to do is establish consistent worship there. It's doable and we need to believe in ourselves. We need to know that Allah would not have given us the worship to do if he didn't believe, if he didn't know that we could do it. We just have to put in the energy and inshallah Allah will take us the rest of the way. Now, once we've established, and this is a big deal in and of itself, once we've established the five daily prayers and we want to get more spiritually advanced and we want to start controlling the desires at a deeper level, then we need to do the following. We need to start adding in the sunnah dhikr, the sunnah dhikr that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would do regularly or he would encourage us to do, of which there are three things that I would recommend that if somebody wants to flourish spiritually, I'm not just talking about get by anymore. You have somebody who gets by, let's say like you're planting a garden. Getting by is like you got the dirt in the garden, you got a couple like weeds growing, but somebody who's flourishing, they are gonna have, be planting flowers and flowers are gonna be growing, they're gonna want fruits, they're gonna want trees that eventually lead to fruits. That's the type of stuff they're gonna want. So spiritually flourishing, the goal of your deen and my deen, the goal of this deen is to flourish, it's not to just get by. We have too many of us who just want to get by and as a result, we end up giving in to the whims of this dunya and of other people's values and whatnot. But if we realized how much we had, how much Allah has given us in this deen, SubhanAllah, we wouldn't want anything else. But how do we go about doing that? So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam regularly would encourage us to, first, do du'as, that they are known as the du'as of the morning and the evening. The person who does the du'as of the morning and the evening, the sunnah, the du'as of the morning and the evening, will have tremendous success, inshallah, in their life and any of their efforts that they try to do that day. It will also help us control our desires. It will help you with anger. It will help you with sexual desire. It will help you with desire to eat all the time. It will help you with desiring to drink or smoke or be in an impermissible relationship. All these things, these dikkers, they are a car, they help us control that. Why? Because they are light. And light, what lights do is light actually penetrates, it can pierce darkness. You can have a room that's fully dark. Let's say this room was dark. One candle could light up this whole room. You and I, you all have candles of light inside of you or more powerful than candles, frankly. You have beans inside of you that are just waiting to be opened, but the access has to be open. The access is open when one does regular amounts of dikkers. Somebody asked, what do you mean duaz? What are the duaz? Yeah, that was a great question. So, a couple of specific duaz. You can literally just, I would do two things. You can Google morning and evening duaz, the sunnah morning and evening duaz. And there's little books that are prepared, like not books, I should say a couple pages, that would give you all the duaz the Prophet's home would do in the morning and the evening. So, for example, he would recite, qulualawahad, qul'awdubar al-falak, qul'awdubar al-nas, three times each. There are certain verses of the Quran that he would recite. There are certain duaz, like the duar ab-e-awdubiqum and Hamza at the shayateen until the end that he would recite. So those are some examples. There's also a compilation. So some of the scholars have gone and taken all the duaz from different hadith. They compiled them into what's called a litany, basically in English, it's called, it's called a weird in Arabic, which is a compilation of different duaz. So one that our teachers have told us to do regularly is called the weird al-latif, right? So a weird al-latif, the weird al-latif is the morning and evening duaz that we should be trying to do every day. That's an example for the person who asked the question. So, and someone asks, how can I become a better Muslim? Yeah, so we're definitely, it's a great question. We're gonna be covering that throughout this discussion, inshallah. So the goal of becoming a better Muslim is achieved through controlling your desires. That's one of the main ways. Because Allah says in the Quran, He emphasized, he says, He actually tells us, this is the criteria for success. He says successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who doesn't. So the one who purifies themselves, meaning the one who cleans their desires, they will be successful. The one who doesn't, they are gonna be in trouble. And you and I know, even in this world, when we follow our whims and whatnot, we get in trouble. So the sunnah duaz, first thing, then there's sunnah Quran that the Prophet's son would read regularly. We should read the following surahs regularly. We should read surah Yasin in the morning time, ideally after Fajr. If we really, again, we're talking about trying to attain higher ranks of spirituality. We are no longer just talking about the basics. Five prayers are basics. Alhamdulillah, we gotta get those in. Now we wanna attain the desire. We don't wanna be people who burst out in anger. We don't wanna be people who are, our sexual desire control us. We don't wanna be people who just let something else control us. We wanna control our own desire. So now these will help us do that. Surah Yasin in the morning and find a surah that you prefer to read in the evening time. So surah Thulmulk is sunnah to read surah Thulmulk before sleeping or anytime from Isha until sleep, ideally. So that those would be what I would recommend. Is Yasin in the morning and Mulk in the evening. Once one has that down, also add in surah Thulwakea, the 56 chapter of the Quran. Surah Thulwakea, the event, recite that or listen to it if you can't recite, but ideally you recite and or listen and add that after Mughra. So those are the three. If somebody can do the sunnah Duhas, surah Yasin and Thulmulk. And it sounds like a lot, but when someone starts doing it consistently, it's like you could just go on a walk and you can get it in. You can just, it's five minutes that we give up on Instagram or on TikTok or on reading the news and we can get these Duhas in. Five minutes here, 10 minutes here, five minutes here and we will, boom. We will feel it. You will feel so good. You'll feel so good. You'll feel spiritually light. You'll feel happy. You'll feel a certain type of darkness removed because these Duhas are very, very, very powerful. And this is why they are the first step. They quiet your mind and they quiet the senses. It's surah Yasin, surah Mulk, which is the first surah in the 29th chapter, surah Mulk and surah Waqaya, Waqaya, W-A-Q-I-A-H in English as the transliteration, surah waqaya. Those are the three that I would recommend reciting or listening to regularly based on different hadith about them and then the Duhas, the sunnah Duhas. So that's the first step, okay? We got that down. Now we go into the second step. So we get the worship and we get the worship and now we go to the second step. And Hamdullah we're coming upon the blessed month of Ramadan. The second step can be facilitated for us. So what's the second step? The second step is controlling our food intake. It's actually hunger and fasting. It's amazing that Allah gives us a command, right? Qutsi ba'alekum assayam, kamakutsi ba'alekum, I'm in qablikum, that the fasting has been prescribed for you. What is a prescription? You get prescriptions when you need a cure for something. Allah prescribed fasting for us to cure the heart. Look, if he didn't make us do it, I mean, how many of us would do 30 days of fasting in a row? Like, never we wouldn't do that, right? Like that's a lot. But Hamdullah Allah is giving, he's like, you've got to do this now. And Hamdullah, Muslims from all over the world, no matter how much we're caught up in other stuff, when it comes time for Ramadan, we will do our best to fast. So fasting helps a lot. What does fasting do? Remember, these are all unseen things going on. So what we're talking about now is like these spiritual cures, these are not happening, you can't see them. It's not like when you apply an ointment to your face, you got a pimple, and it goes away. That's not how spirituality works. It's Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, that one of the first few ayahs of the Quran is that this is a book for those who have no doubt, those who believe in the unseen. Belief in the unseen is essential part of our religion. So believing in the unseen in this case is you knowing that there's unseen effects to your law. There's unseen effects from your prayer. So Allah says, for example, in the Quran, that prayer prevents you from lewdness. It actually restrains you from inappropriate behavior. You're about to do something inappropriate, you pray. The spiritual effect of that will at least reduce the amount you are gonna do, inshallah, ideally, if the heart is in a decent enough state. Either way, it will always help, inshallah. So hunger and fasting does the same thing. It builds a spiritual discipline. For us, we might be like all the headaches and I'm tired and I feel good. That's there, but in reality, there's something else going on. There's something else going on spiritually. So there's two ways to do this. First, the outright days of fasting, of which we have Ramadan coming up, and of which we should try after Ramadan to have a regular amount of fasting in our lives at least one day a month we should try. So now the problem is three days a month, the three white days, or different hadiths say Mondays and Thursdays, but at the very least the three white days, meaning the days of the full moon, 13th, 14th, and 15th of the month. But at least once a month we should try. So we can keep it up a little bit. We keep it, just one day I'm gonna not eat, right? A little, I'm just not gonna eat, right? I'm gonna skip, you're basically skipping one meal, but it's still, it's an amazing thing to fast. What does it do? For all the things you and I have been doing that whole month, it will purify them, inshallah, internally. That should be our intention. Because again, all we collect so much darkness on the internet and talking to people and just our own souls, the stuff we think about, the stuff we look at, like there's so much darkness. Fasting cures it, purifies it. So you do, you're doing your worship and dhikr, now you add in this next ingredient. Okay, so now you're starting to make this beautiful spiritual, all these beautiful spiritual ingredients that you're gonna make eventually a recipe to help you with your spirituality. The one you're not fasting though, the sunnah is still to restrain your food intake. So it's not about always fasting. Most of us, we can't fast all the time and we actually shouldn't fast all the time, right? But we can, after Ramadan, we can control our food. We can stop a couple bites short and this has amazing spiritual effects. And we should try to have a day where we do the following three things in order to ascend to higher stations of spirituality. Again, talking here about somebody who wants to control their desire and achieve states of good character, righteousness, talk about these types of things, not just like I'm getting the basics in, right? Person who's content with the C in the class, that's fine. But this is the one who wants the A in the class, who wants to really crush it. So hunger means just, okay, I'm gonna reduce, if I eat this much of a plate of food every now and then I'm gonna eat this much of a plate of food, I'm gonna eat half the size. Just because it will help me control my nuffs. The more you are hungry, the more the nuffs gets into control. And again, I'm not talking about like starving ourselves or anything, I'm just balanced levels of you limit the food intake. And at the very least, if we can't limit the quantity, we limit the deliciousness of the food. What does that mean? It means don't let your nuffs eat everything at once, unless it obeys you. Your nuffs is like an animal. If it obeys you, I don't know how many folks have pets, but like I recently got a little kitten, very refined little kitten and I've been having a lot of fun with him. And he, when he does a good job with something, learn something new, plays, no, we give him a little treat, right? But not every day. And there's certain treats he really, really likes. So like when he's been extra good on that day, he gets like the treat that he really likes and he sometimes just takes it from us and runs away with it because how much he likes it doesn't let us feed it to him. Now, if you give your nuffs is like an animal. If you give your nuffs everything it wants, anytime it wants it, it's just gonna rule you. You are not going to obey the nuffs. Yes, sorry. Somebody asked a question, what is the nuffs? My apologies, I should have clarified. So the nuffs is the lower self, the ego of the human being. The lower self, the nuffs is the part in us that brings us down. So there are levels of the nuffs, but the basic translation is a lower self or ego. And when it's impure, it teams up with the devil. It teams up with shaitan to basically mess us up, to get us to fall into sin, to get us to do silly things, that's the nuffs. So the nuffs has to be tamed in Ramadan, shaitan is gone. We know that, the shaitan are locked up, but the nuffs is still very much there. And so fasting actually helps to tame the nuffs. That's the goal of fasting, to tame the ego, tame the lower self. It calls you to your lower part. You have another part inside of you known as the spirit, the root, the spirit is the higher part in you, okay? And someone mentioned that this is a little bit hard to understand because your ego is your identity. So that's a really, really good point. It's not exactly like that. So that's why the ego translation is probably not the best translation. Lower self is probably the best transition. It is you, but it's your lower tendencies. You can, through spiritual nurturing, you can train it, you can train this part of you to become better, to become, right? Just like you and I have moments where like we really, you know, you ever do something you regret and you're like, you know that, someone tells you like, you know, that wasn't you, like I felt like that was just like a different part of you. And you're like, yeah, that was like really my, you know, my, the part of me that I wish didn't come out that much. If we ever have an angry outburst and we do something else, that's because the nuffs can pull you down. But sometimes you have the higher aspects of you, right? Like your, your higher angels and people call it in this culture. You, you know, you're so generous, you see someone on the street, you help them out, like all these amazing things. There are parts in you that are bad and there are parts in you that are good. The nuffs you can essentially say in the early stage of spirituality, it's the part in you that's bad. But slowly through training, the nuffs can become good. Well, it can become trained to be good, if that makes sense. So it's not exactly one's like only one's identity. There are many parts to one's identity. Think about it. If you have different parts of you, this is one part and then there are higher parts of you. And then there are kind of the like medium parts, right? Everybody has different aspects to them internally. So the goal with hunger is to cure, cure oneself through limiting the food intake. And that gives clarity and that allows for an internal purification to happen. So hunger and fasting. Then the third one. The third one is moments of solitude. Moments of solitude. Why is this important? The desires many times get stirred up inside of the human being because we are always around people. Always, we're always stimulated. And if, you know, in COVID, we haven't been able to be around people. Many of us, you know, Hamzallah, that's a test and many of us have not been able to like hang out physically, but we're still always around people digitally. We're always around something or another, some show. There's always something in front of us. In order to spiritually progress, the human being needs moments of quietude, solitude. What is the proof for this? That the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he had a long period of meditation in Ghar-e-Hirat before the revelation came. And many of us, we know the story that he would go up there to meditate for long periods of time. And Sayyidah Khadijah al-Kubr al-Radi Allahu Anha, our mother and the wife of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, she would bring him food or they would meet halfway for him to get provision and food and whatnot. And he would go back up to meditate. And it was in one of these nights that he was meditating, the beautiful night of Laylatul Qadr, where Allah then says that, in Nanzanahufi Laylatul Qadr, that then he sent down, right, the Quran and Jibril al-Alayh As-Salam came to him and this famous verse was recited, Iqra, that recite. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, I don't know how to read, slash recite. I don't know how to, and the Jibril al-Alayh As-Salam did it again. And then he hugged him and shook him and this whole intense event happened, this spiritually powerful yet really intense event after these periods of meditating, right? Because that was the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is showing us, and Allah is showing us ultimately that this is the way to attain spiritual openings. You wanna get higher levels of spirituality? Obviously there's no prophecy in Nanzanahufi Laylatul Qadr, that's not what I'm saying, but you follow this example. You have moments of silence and solitude. Doesn't mean you go off in a cave for like two years and you don't do anything else, that's not what I'm saying. But you gotta have moments like at least five minutes a day where it's just you, no device, no nothing, just you and Allah, that's it. You just sit there and you think, or you go on a walk and you just put everything away and you just think and or talk to Allah. Why is this? Because the senses have to be quieted in order for your thoughts to actually come out. You and I have so many thoughts. We have so much stuff going on. All of these different things we're thinking about and whatnot, in order for us to succeed in life we need to have times where we just hear the thoughts. This one's worthless, this one's important, this, this, that. And then you just have moments of calmness and you just let everything process, okay? Everything's processing. And then you have that moment of time where you just talk to Allah about whatever's going on in your life. This can be after the prayer, but I'm mentioning like ideally in addition to that, right? So we're talking about solitude in addition to the time just after the prayer. So have moments where it's just, and this Ramadan, make it a goal. At least five, 10 minutes. Ideally, the best time that we could do this is the time right before iftar. If we're not busy with food prep, if we try to prep our food like an hour in advance, 30 minutes in advance, go and sit for five, 10 minutes in a place quiet just you and God and just make the law and talk to Him. You will see amazing wonders and those will be the best five, 10 minutes of your life for that period and you will want to do it even after Ramadan. Because intimacy with Allah and this love, you remember you and I have a deep desire to love and this religion is about love and Allah has a deep love for human being. One of His name is Al-Wadud and the most loving is one way to translate it according to the scholar. So that's that love that you and I have that Allah has for us that we cultivate for Him in these moments alone, in these moments of solitude. So a couple of ways, you can be physically alone but not actually if virtually you're still active and everything. So I recommend visual stimulation, have moments. We need to go on cleanses ideally but at least every day have moments of the day. A couple of hours or something like that or a couple of minutes, whatever we can manage, put away all the devices, put away the music, put away all the things that can stir up desire. It takes one look at something impermissible to stir up a desire, you get excited about it or one song of something that's gonna bring out the bad part of us and boom, now the desire has stirred. It was dormant and it stirred. You need moments of solitude in order to be able to quiet the senses and to be able to actually think and to be able to progress spiritually. So we have worship and dhikr is number one. Number two, we have hunger and hunger, hunger slash fasting. Number three, we have moments of solitude. All of these are from the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Many of these though unfortunately are forgotten sunnahs. Many of us focus on certain sunnahs which are amazing but we forget some of these like crucial sunnahs related to worship and we have to bring these back inshallah into our lives. This can also be though taking some time to go on a walk, taking some time to think, like it just, it means not being either with people or with devices. That's probably the best way to put, it's one way to put it in the time you live in. Have moments where you're not with people and not with devices and you just have time with you and God and time to think. The third, the fourth one that that leads to is we need to also have moments of silence. What does that mean? For somebody like me who talks a lot, it means just zipping it up every now and then, right? Then why is it? Because the part of us, it likes to talk. Then again, back to this nuffs, this lower self, the nuffs likes talking. It likes talking about itself, likes talking about it's accomplishments, like the oh look at me, I did this, da, da, da, da, da. And then it likes to everything from talking about itself, to posting about itself, to trying to get everybody to like itself, to like it's in it, all those things, the narcissistic attitude, they all stem from the nuffs, right? Moments of silence will help with that. We need moments where we just, okay? Yeah, we're just gonna try to like think that I'm not gonna talk. Meditation is a big, big, you know, it's important, it's a big part of our religion as well. Meditating, it's, you could basically say, meditating and reflecting. Allah describes many parts in the Quran where he encourages us to do tadabur, which is like a meditative reflection, a deep reflection. So have moments though, in order to do that, unlock whatever you wanna get, you want to have moments of silence, okay? Again, not all the time, you don't need to be just be quiet, but we need to have moments of silence, inshallah. Somebody asked a question, that's a good question. Let me get to that just in a sec. So a little bit more elaboration on the nuffs. I'm gonna get to that just a second, inshallah. So then the fifth part of it is night worship, or you could say like not sleeping all the time, not oversleeping. What does that mean? Once you have the basic worship down, the hardest, for example, prayer for most people is fajr, because fajr requires limiting sleep. And the nuffs, again, the lower self, the part in us that pulls us down. The nuffs, the best way to think about it, is the nuffs pulls us down to our worldly tendencies, to our haram tendencies, that's the nuffs. And I'm not gonna get too into it, but you have stages of the nuffs so it can eventually get to a point where it's perfected or close to perfected and it can actually pull you up. But in the most of us, it's pulling us down towards bad thoughts, anger, overeating, sexual lusts and desires, always wanting to be right, trying to have so many followers, trying to be in charge, trying to be in control, trying to be the big man or big woman in town, trying to just like run every desire you can think of, negative traits that we have come from the nuffs and the nuffs being out of control. And Allah says that controlling the nuffs though will help us, it will actually allow us to achieve a state of success. So hopefully that kind of clarifies that a little bit. It's, and I'll get to the second part in a second. So reducing sleep and night worship. The goal is you wanna slowly reduce the amount of like indulgences that one gives oneself. So like if we always sleep through fudger, we have to have days, of course, ideally every day, but we have to have days where we wake up for fudger, because otherwise the nuffs thinks it's, you and I start to think that, oh, it's totally fine. Like what's the point? I'll just make it up and I don't need to pray because I wanna wake up at eight o'clock and fudger comes in at six o'clock. So like that's two hours of sleep. Well, if you and I were to wake up for that prayer, we would actually feel a spiritual benefit from it and we would actually have more energy than we would had we slept through it. It's hard to understand until we start to implement it. Same thing goes for reducing sleep slowly in order to increase our night worship. One of the most important prayers one can do in order to become closer to Allah in order to get spiritually close is the tajjud prayer. Allah says in the Quran, he says, that was the problem to do tajjud and that the more you do tajjud, probably some will attain a very specific station because of the prayer of the tajjud. The tajjud is to pray before fudger anytime, ideally really anytime after Isha until fudger, but generally speaking the last one third of the night, call it two hours before fudger. That can be one minute before fudger or it can be literally two or three hours before fudger. So that is the most important aspect of this. So in order to try and control our nus, night worship starts to become a more and more important aspect of our life. So there's a spiritual effect, reduce the sleep slightly. Don't like never sleep, but don't oversleep all the time. We have to have moments where okay, I'm going to do a little bit less sleep so I can get up and worship a lot because that's what the son of the prophet is someone. He wouldn't sleep for mamosah the night. He would sleep worship for one third of the night, one half of the night many times. So that's part of us. If we want to attain closer stations, that's something that we will do. No, no problem at all to the person who mentioned that. May Allah bless you. So hopefully that clarifies a little bit. In Ramadan, and I think we'll try to end with this. In Ramadan, what happens? We reduce our food intake because we have to. And then many of us reduce our sleep intake. I was just thinking about this other day. I was like, oh Subhanallah, like waking up for work and everything is going to be tough in Ramadan. But Allah is actually setting it up. So say, okay, you pray faster in the day and He wants us to get up and pray at night to pray tarawih prayer ideally. It's not far, but it's a very, very good thing to do. And automatically in Ramadan, then the spiritual cure starts to happen because, Subhanallah, Allah already knew it was good for us. So you and I start to sleep less because we have to wake up for sahur. And that's early as it's very, very early. And then we wake, many times we might go to tarawih or these days we might pray tarawih at home because of COVID. But either way, you know, we have a less period of consistent sleep. But that actually might, it might hurt physically like you wake up and you're like, oh my God. It's so early, it's so cold. I don't want to be up right now, my head hurts. You don't want to talk to anybody at sahur or seri time, right? But spiritually there's some effects happening, effects happening. And the people who miss out on this, they miss out on the spiritual effects. They say, oh, I'm just going to eat everything at night and just like, so I can get a good night rest and they'll eat it like right after Isha and go to sleep and not wake up at sahur. Well, they miss the spiritual effects, right? If somebody was passing out and they told you, hey, you come to this spot and you wake up at this time and you'll get a million dollars. Let's say coming to the masjid or you come to some place and everybody comes to get a million dollars. I guarantee you 99% of people would not miss it because they want the million dollars. And so you come every day and you'll keep getting a million and they'll keep coming, right? Because for money, most of us, there's never enough. But first, then we're like, oh, I just got to do the bare minimum. Well, now we need to call ourselves to have higher aspiration, higher motivation, higher himma, make this Ramadan Ramadan where you try to discipline yourself. You try to tame your desires or you try to go above and beyond just the basics. Okay, you're gonna do the basic fasting. Allah-u-Akbar, that's already amazing. But do more. We're talking about this next week, Inchallah, but we'll try to do the fast of the eye, the fast of the mouth, the fast of the ears, meaning you stay away from haram inputs in all these areas. Try to lift yourself up and remember that all of these things we mentioned today, the eight things, regular amounts of worship, regular amounts of dhikr, especially the sunnah dhikr by the car of the Prophet Sallim, regular amounts of fasting and hunger, regular amounts of solitude, regular amounts of silence, and regular amounts of extra night worship. All of these things will have such a powerful cure and impact on your heart. You do this consistently for a year, you won't even know that you'll be completely a different person because it's such a consistent effect. It's a light that purifies the heart, that illuminates you, that makes you into a very, very much a human being who's focused on good character, who's focused on the presence of Allah and who's focused on trying to be present with Allah is what I should say. So let's try that this Ramadan, inshallah, and inshallah we will pray and hope that everybody has a very, very blessed Ramadan. If there's any questions now, please feel free to post them. Somebody said, are we allowed to watch Netflix during Ramadan? I mean, I would, I'm not gonna answer like whether it's not necessarily allowed or not. I would stay away ideally from Netflix and from television in Ramadan if you can. If it's really difficult, if somebody really feels a need to like, they have to watch it, then don't watch anything that has like naked images, that has shooting, that has violence, that has blood, that has curse words, that has relationships that almost rules out like most shows that are out there. But if there's something that isn't, that might work. But I would try to fast from TV, from Netflix, from some aspects of social media, at least the like dangerous aspect of all we do is scroll and just kind of keep going, the kind of scroll of death or whatever it's called. We just, I would try to stay away from that, yeah. But it's not like, as long as what you're watching is okay, it's technically okay. But if it's going to hurt you spiritually, it's gonna hurt you spiritually. And for the person who wants to climb in nearness to Allah and again, we're talking here now about higher stations, but everybody can do this. Allah gave all of us the capability to do this. They will use all their time wisely, but they will try not to use their time in things that are going to be quote unquote, waste of time in Ramadan. Because you're in Ramadan, you're in a state of fasting, you're in a spiritually blessed month. So we should try to be put on in our time, we should try to learn. If we can't do that, we should try at least not to do something that will drag us down, inshallah. And somebody mentioned Ertugol. Mashallah, yes, Ertugol, I've heard a very, very, very powerful show. Yeah, so maybe that could be one that could be a spiritually uplifting, documentaries, type of things. They could be fine if one needs to just do what they need to do. Everybody's in a different state. You know what I mean? Like sometimes you're just so finished, you just gotta get through the day and that'll be all the different kind of schedule for yourself and different things you do versus when you're like, are in a good zone, you can do extra things, you can do some Quran, you can do some bikr, you can like help somebody out. In those moments when you have that Himmah, that energy, don't let Netflix or anything bring it down because it'll just make you stay sedentary and do that. But in the moments where you're just so finished, you can't do anything, okay? There might be some more room for this stuff but in Ramadan, we should try to limit it either way, yeah. Okay, cool. So we'll do one more question just cause we're here at Muqr time, at least where I'm at. If anybody has a question, please post it, insha'Allah, question related to desires or to Ramadan or to anything else. Insha'Allah. Alhamdulillah. All right, not seeing, someone asked me what I do for a living. I work in tech startup for a living, yeah. All right. Not seeing anything else. Okay, alhamdulillah. Okay, so insha'Allah, definitely next week, I think it's gonna be our last week for this specific class and we're gonna focus it all on Ramadan prep. So insha'Allah tune in, we'll do next week, Wednesday, 7 p.m. PST, try to keep it to about 30, 40 minutes, focus on Ramadan prep, insha'Allah. And is there a book or anything that explains what Nafs means in Islam? It's a really good question. The book I would get, there is a book called The Beginning of Guidance, The Beginning of Guidance and it's translated in English. I would get that book, is that that will generally explain many of these concepts we're talking about, many of which are pulled from that type of book. Masha'Allah, someone says I'm deaf. Is it okay to put Quran, even if I don't hear it well? Allah bless you and may Allah reward you for enduring what I can't imagine how much himma and resolve that takes. It's totally okay to listen to it, to look at it, whatever you are able to hear. Yes, that's a great idea. Putting Quran on loudspeaker, somebody mentioned if they're not able to hear fully, is a totally great idea, totally allowed to do, as long as you're not doing it in a bathroom or an unclean place, otherwise it's totally good. And even if one can't not, if you can't read, if somebody can't recite, it's good to listen. If someone can't listen, it's good to recite or to just look at the words. Just looking at the Arabic words has a powerful spiritual effect and make the intention that one day I wanna get to the point where I can do this insha'Allah. Okay, cool. So don't see any more questions. So if there's nothing insha'Allah I'll end with a short prayer. Bismillah. Alhamdulillah. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alaihi wa sahbihi As-salamu alayhi wa sallam Wa bi-na'atani fiddunni hasinatum Wa bi-l-akhirati hasinatum Wa bi-na'atani aadabunnaan Rabbanat qabbil minna Anakanta samir al-alima Tuba al-inna anakanta tawabir raheem Ya Allah, ya Rahman, ya Raheem Ya Raheem, ya Raheem, ya Raheem Ya Allah, please, ya Allah bless this remainder, Allow us to reach Ramadan and please bless the Ramadan of all those people, ya Allah, that are here, all the Muslims in this world, ya Allah, all the Muslims in our area, ya Rabbil Alamin, ya Allah, all the Muslims, ya Allah, who are struggling with their Deen and all the Muslim Ummah, the Prophet of Islam in general, ya Allah. Make the Ramadan easy for us, ya Allah. Make this Ramadan easy for us, full of khair, full of light. Allow us to tame our desires in this month and allow us to turn our fair over to you and allow us to not be worried about anything, ya Allah, and remove our stresses and our depression and our anxieties and our difficulties and our problems, ya Allah, ya Rabbil Alamin, ya Allah, we ask you, ya Allah, that you gaze upon us and that you draw us near to you, ya Allah, Rabbil Alamin. Wa Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, Badabah Salam, corporate dialog with our friends, adhesive, Thank you, elderly,謝 devastated