 We begin in the name of Allah and send peace and blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. So this session was, I was asked to put together a program for planning for Ramadan and I liked the title, Planning for Ramadan rather than it be a lecture where I talk about the benefits of Ramadan because I firmly believe that if we went around the room and I asked everybody what is a great Ramadan? What should we be doing in Ramadan? I know that everybody in here knows all of the things. We could just go, we could even do a quick round and people say well this and this and this. So this workshop is going to be working on the assumption and it's not even an assumption, it's a firm belief that everybody in here and those watching or watching the recording knows what are the great things that we can do in Ramadan. How we can optimize the benefit of us deriving blessings from Ramadan. So with that we're just going to go straight into planning and I want to share some of the things that I've collected over the years from my work in looking at planning and action planning and specifically because of the work that we do in Theba Foundation where we work with people who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated and the families and people who are affected by incarceration either they're at risk for incarceration or they have family members who are incarcerated. And so a big, not even a big, a critical component of a person gaining their own freedom from prison and getting out of prison and also preventing themselves from going back to prison which is called a recidivism rate is planning and action planning. And these plans are so critical that when they go up for a board of parole hearing and it would be as intimidating as this, imagine you're sitting kind of where you are right now looking at me and there's two or three other people, commissioners, many people who are former attorneys and they're looking at your plan and they're making the determination almost like Caesar, you know how like Caesar would do the thumbs up, thumbs down, they're making the determination, are you suitable for release? And you could have been in prison for 15 years, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years and it all comes down to people looking at your plan and then saying are you suitable for release? So that's how critical it is and so for that reason we've given a lot of time thought consideration development of planning within Theba. One of the things that we brought into Theba Foundation in the planning is a specific course that we offer to our students in prison and just recently about a month ago, well I'll start the story six months ago, there was a university where some of the law students, one of their projects and listen to this, this is how impactful some of these projects that the professors bring into the classroom can be. The professor said we're going to give you a case where a person is working for their freedom, they're about to go up for parole but they're just doing it on their own and so imagine somebody with no law background is going to be facing a panel of attorneys and people who are commissioners within the state and they're making the determination for their freedom and so they give the law students these projects and say now work with this student, help them develop their plan that they're going to present to the board of parole hearings. So she reached out to us at Theba because this person was a student and we sent a lot of information and she said is there anything I can do like another course that this student can do in preparation for that because he still had a few more. I said to have him take our planning course because that planning course will allow him to put everything together in a plan that's actually industry standard so to speak, it's recognized and a lot of the ideas that he might have had here and there kind of ad hoc development of a plan, it's going to give him a formal template and then he can use the words from the language of planning, of action planning and be able to articulate that to the board of commissioners. So he took the course, he put his plan together and he had been in prison over 20 years and then at the parole hearing she said they actually determined that he was eligible for his freedom and she said his planning, the planning course that he had taken with Theba was a critical component in him gaining his freedom. So that's how powerful and impactful planning can be and we've developed some other planning programs as well so I put this short packet together, the one that you have in your hands, those who are watching online, you can just use a piece of paper as we go through things and as you write things out, you'll see that I've taken some, I've gleaned some things from the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the tradition of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and some things from what we learned in modern research about planning and about change and habit change and so forth. So the first thing you'll see on the top of that page is you see that drawing right there? I printed this out from another seminar that we offer as well which is called the prophetic model of teaching and we use that as our cover picture. How many of you have seen that image before? Right there on the top, first page. You've seen it, one person. Okay, for the rest of you who haven't, if you've seen it and you know what it is, don't answer. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was with his companions and he actually don't read the hadith first. If you've already read it, that's going to be skipping ahead. I just want you to look at the image. Alright, so the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was with his companions. He drew a square in the sand. He drew a line from within the square emanating out of the square and then he drew some lines on the side of it. Now, we don't know exactly what it looks like, but this is my interpretation based on that description and in some of the books of hadith narration, they'll actually draw in the book of hadith what they interpreted as well. So I've looked at what some of the hadith scholars have written it as, my interpretation and that's how I've made it. Okay, he said that this is, this is the square around him. Okay, the line going through, that's what I'm going to start, don't read the hadith, but the line going from in the box outside of the box is you. That's a human being. And the line and the square, that's life. That's where your life, you know, the limits of your life. What do you think the lines going out are? Just as a guess. What's that hardships? That's exactly what it is. So let's go ahead and read read the hadith. This is the human being. And this is the square, his inevitable death encircling him from all sides. And this line which is outside the square is his hope. And these small lines are the calamities and troubles which may befall him. And if one misses him, another will befall him overtake him. And if that misses him, a third will befall him overtake him. There's always something coming up in life, right? So why is the line going outside of the box though? After life, it could be after life. His hope, if the line represents his hope, why is it going outside of the box? You said their trials are test are in there. Okay, so now I'm getting some some more insight. That's the beautiful thing about the hadith. There's no one specific answer. So I didn't even think about Oh, maybe it's the after there's some element of the afterlife there. So that thank you sister that gave me new insight. And then you're telling me about, you know, there's no more hardships after death. Anything else? His hope is so strong that it that it goes beyond his limits. Beautiful. I didn't think about that as either. Because if we if we work towards something, even if we aim for the sky, we know we're going to fall below that. But aiming high is going to make whatever we reach that much more powerful, right? So that those are three insights that I didn't even think about before. And we can keep looking for these we can keep uncovering insights. That's why I'm presenting it to you because don't stop at what other people have told you, keep looking and keep digging. So now I've taken this idea and I said, Okay, let's use this as a as a planning model. Let's use this as a planning model. But before going through the rest of it, I want you to take a moment. And now on the second page, it says, if you could have the optimum Ramadan experience, what would it look like? And use if if there's one over there, I'm going to do this as well too. Because one of the things about planning is that it never stops. You can always you always need to revisit your plans. Add to and can you grab me a pen? So now we're going to take about five minutes and people who are watching at home or watching this video, just get a piece of paper or if you're on your phone, you could also do it on the phone or the computer. But there's there's something that's there's a there's a secret with writing things in hands. We don't know exactly what it is. One of the companions came to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And he said, I'm struggling with memorizing your sayings with memorizing your hadith. What can I do? He said, seek seek help from your right. And he made the sign of writing with his hand, your Yameen seek assistance from your Yameen, your right, your, your, your hand. And he made the sign for, for writing. So there's something about it. So now this, if you could have the optimum Ramadan experience, and this is called the magic wand exercise, we wave a magic wand, we know Muslims don't practice magic. But we wave a magic wand, and everything that you want to happen can happen. So this Ramadan coming up in about 10 days, everything like if you could have the optimum, like no, there's, there's no holds, nothing holding you back. What does that look like? So we're just going to take about five minutes to, to just make a list, write it out, whatever it'll be. Alright, for those who have finished, you can keep writing if you're still writing, but for those who finished, how does it feel if you don't mind sharing, like just how did that process feel? It's like one or two words that describe like how that felt or release anxiety. Okay, how many, how many others felt like that? Like I released some anxiety. Yeah, was it fun? Just to be able to like, have it the way you want it to be? Yeah. Did it feel a little bit freeing? Like you said, release anxiety. So that's kind of like the freeing, like I can just no holds barred, like or nothing's holding you back, you can have it as you want. So, so in that, this is where we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna start with this like, you want to you want to plan it out, how you see the magic wand experiment, if it could be the way I wanted it, if everything could be the way I wanted it. And so a couple of things are happening there. One, instead of somebody telling you how your Ramadan should be, you know what you want in your Ramadan. And you're a bad that is a personal experience, your worship is a personal relationship with your Lord. And so it should reflect that you're not just saying, oh, I'm going to go and get a pre templated Ramadan journal, which they do have them and they're great. But for any of you who have done planning, you know, you pick up any journal, have you found that one planning system that works that's like perfectly templated, and you don't have to change anything? Has anybody found that yet? No, right? Yeah. Nobody's found that. I haven't found it yet either. Because every time you look at it, you're like, Oh, I wish it had a little bit like this over here, a little bit like this over there. So that's the thing about planning. It's very individual specific. And so you want your planning to reflect that and you might have to make your own templates and your templates might change. And so that's one thing that it's a very individual experience. Nobody's telling you what to do. And then also, you are the expert on yourself. You're the expert on yourself. And if you recognize that you're the expert on yourself, you know what you can do, you know what your capabilities are, you know what your limits are. And so you don't need somebody to tell you, this is how your Ramadan should look like. Because you know yourself better than anybody else. There's only one who knows you better than you. Who's that? Allah. Do the angels even know you? These invisible beings that are with us all the time recording. Do they know you? Because what they don't have access to, and I see you're shaking your heads. No, that's absolutely right. They don't know. They don't have they only have access to. What do they write down? Your deeds. Most of what happens in your day are what? Inside your thoughts. And that's where you're alone with Allah. They're not, they're not counting that. There's some scholarly discussion on whether or not that they write down what's called a Azima. You know, before you do an action, you know, it starts in the heart where you get to the point where you say, All right, I'm going to do that. So it goes from just a thought, a khatira, this thought that's being played around in your soul. It's bouncing back and forth. You're ruminating over it. You're looking at it from all sides. And then it gets to a point where you're like, That's what I'm going to do. And so some scholars say that when it gets to that point that that thought actually becomes an action, an action of the heart. And that's what they can write down. And other examples are like, and one of the differences, well, we could go into to that, but just think about jealousy, for example, is jealousy an act of the limbs or of the heart? It's a heart, but where does it show up on your limbs? And so if it's a disease of the heart, and it's something that the angels are going to record, and like the Hadith says, that jealousy will eat up your good actions like what? Like a fire eats dry wood. Whenever you've burned something, you know, if you've been on a camping trip and you bring wet wood versus dry wood, you're looking for dry wood because that's going to burn really quickly. And so that's what the Hadith says, that your, your, your, your, your hasad, the jealousy will burn up your good actions like the fire burns dry wood to give you an image of what it is. And so what point does that jealousy get to the point where it's eating up your good actions? And the angels are recording that because it's a disease of the heart. So some of the scholars said that it's when that jealousy becomes, appears on your limbs and now that the angels are recording it. And others are saying, no, it's actually when it gets to that point where that jealousy is overtaking the heart, and there now they have a firm commitment in the heart, I'm going to do this, or say this, or, or, or something like that. So that's just a little side note about actions of the heart. But at the end of the day, you know yourself better than anybody else, and there's only one, and that's Allah who knows you better than yourself, and he's closer to us than our jugular vein. And where does our jugular vein come from? Our heart. So that's what the ayah is saying. He's closer to you than your jugular vein, because the jugular vein is right next to your heart. He knows your heart, because he's not physically literally in there. We're not, we're not pantheists. We believe that Allah is in creation. Him being closer to you than your, than the jugular vein means he knows your innermost secrets and thoughts. And he knows things about yourself that you don't even know about yourself. That we have yet to uncover. And so going on that premise that we are the experts on ourselves, that's where this planning is very important. Now nobody else can tell you how your Ramadan should look like. So another point too. Some of the things that you may have written are very personal, are very personal. And one thing I want to mention is that the, what we're taught from the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is that we're not to look into the secrets of other people. So we're not to, we're not to spy. We're not to pry into matters. We're not, we're not supposed to even ask too many questions about a person. Somebody might say, I'm not spying. I'm just, but you know there's people who can they just, they just talk and then you walk away and you're like, man, why did I say that? Because they know, and maybe they don't even realize they're doing, they know how to ask the right questions and then they can, they can pull out from you, extract information from you that you didn't want to share and the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, don't do that. Don't ask those too many prying questions. How are you doing? How are things? Mashallah, you know, keep things light. Maybe with your personal friends, you know where you can, where they want to have that conversation go. So we're not to pry. And so from, from that edab or that etiquette and that rules, that legislation of interaction, he said, don't look into the books of other people. Don't look in the books of other people. And in the Hadith narrated by Abu Dawud, he said, whoever looks into the book of his fellow, into his, the Hadith says brother, but we also know that means sister. So his fellow, whoever looks into the book of their fellow, he has looked into the fire, has looked into the fire. So if a person has a journal, they don't have to keep it locked, they don't have to keep it behind locked doors, don't open up somebody's journal. And so this is a personal journal. And somebody, oh, let me see what you write. Or if we ask, unless a person is okay with sharing it. And so that's where I'm now going to, to, to ask if, if somebody is okay sharing, is there something you wrote down here and that you're okay sharing with everybody else here in the world and the world really, because the internet's over there, if you're okay that something that came out of here, that you're planning for it, that you haven't planned for it before, but it was because of this like the magic wand experiment that we did. Anybody have something they want to share? Yes. Complete fasts in a calm and peaceful manner. Mashallah. Anyone else? Wow. Okay. So, so you said that, that you usually count the hours like the countdown until, until the fast is over, but your, your goal is to just savor every moment and not do that. Mashallah. Anyone else? I put one, which is one thing that I would like to do is reach out to family more often. You know, even though it's not necessary, like a, well, it is a form of ibadah, but it's not some that, one that we typically think of in Ramadan. But silat-ur-raham, connecting with family, is a big part of the, the, the deem. And so, if I put that, if I make that intention, that that's my, my part of my worship, especially in that month, and I'm now going to do it on a regular basis. So that's one of mine. And so you see everybody's got something very unique and very specific, and that's the beautiful thing about ibadah. You, you share? Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you. The mode? Yeah. So try to get at least two, three minutes without any delay. Okay, so to try to have two or three minutes in the story that, that he was sharing was that somebody came to the sheikh and he was asked, there was three people, he asked them, how long did you fast? And my, my, my assumption is that they were fasting. This is Ramadan. Yeah. So they were fasting and so the first person said, I fasted till 10 a.m. And then the second person said, I fasted till Vohar. And then he hugged them, the Vohar guy or the other one? The Vohar. Vohar. He hugged the Vohar person. So the third person says, wait a minute, this is, why are you hugging him for just fasting till Vohar? This is Ramadan, you know, till, until Maghrib time. And he said no, he was actually fasting from all of the other things. That's how he got, you know, because we know, we leave food and water, that's the easy part. But those other things, like the calmness, the anger, the, the, and like you said, not being outside of the vikr of Allah, just being in that presence. And so that's where they were, they were, they were guiding. So just, you said your goal would be to have just a few minutes of that. Yeah. And that's, that's a great, mashallah, that's a great goal as well. And so this is the other thing too that we're doing in this, that we're taking the fast to another level, that it's not just leaving the food and water. We're saying what else can we do? The fast is a platform that allows us to do other things and makes it, makes it that much easier. The other thing to consider is that as we're looking at this, one of the goals that we have at Ramadan is that each Ramadan should be better than the previous one. So not just like, okay, because you get to a point in your life where the food and water, that's the easy, right? Who, and I know some people struggle with it, so I don't want to detract from that. Some people really struggle with the food and water. But then you get to a point where you're, you're seasoned, even like little kids sometimes, they get to the point, you know, they've been fasting since they were six and seven. It gets to a point where it's like, all right, I just skipped breakfast and lunch and had a late dinner, right? Especially now as it's moving into the wintertime. So you get seasoned, so it's like, okay, is that where you're going to stop? If you're, if you, if you can shoot a two-pointer every single time, are you going to stop right there or are you going to go for half-core, a three-pointer? And then once you get that, and you're like, every single time, I get a three-pointer, and then you're going to go to half-court. And then maybe from the other end of the side, and then you start doing trick shots, open up a YouTube channel, and then, so we want to make every Ramadan better than the previous one. The other thing, the other benefit of personalizing your Ramadan is that when we get into a routine, we can actually start worshiping the Ibadah. We can actually worship the worship. Think about that for a moment. We can actually start worshiping the worshiping. And Ibn-u-Ata'illah in his famous book Al-Hikm, the Wisdoms, he says, one of the, one of the signs that we do things for other than the sake of Allah, listen to this, the sign that we're doing an action for other than the sake of Allah, is that when we slip on that action, we miss it, or we do something we shouldn't have, that we fall into the state of deep despair. We fall into a state of deep despair. Why? He says, because you were, you were depending on your action and not depending on Allah. You were depending on your action and not depending on Allah. And so we want to, we don't want to give up the actions. We know there's a, that we have to fulfill the outward. But we're not doing the action for the action and it's so important that we have to, we have to get that action because we know we're depending on the Rahmah of Allah. And I'll give you an example of, of where you can look for a, a cue that you might not be doing it for the right reason. So if a person, say for example, their goal is to pray their tarawih every single rakat in the masjid, but they have a family. And you know how hard that is, right? Because somebody's got to sacrifice so that somebody else can go to the family. If, if you have a family and there's a number of people in the house, can everybody get to the masjid and get all 20 rakat and get back home? Is there any families out there? The super families, if they are, I'd like to eat what they're eating for Suhoor. But so you know, so if, if now if a person is, is going to trample on other people so that they can hit their goals, trample on other people so that they can hit their goals, fall short of fulfilling the rights of other people so that they can hit their goals, they're not doing it for the sake of Allah. We have to balance things out. Okay. Now, let's go to the next page. Looking at your list, you got your list. Now that's what you want for the entirety of Ramadan and the beautiful, one of the many, many blessings of Ramadan is that it really gives us, it paces our days. The rest of the year, we're kind of like all over the place, Ramadan. You got to eat here and this is when you don't eat and this is when you break your fast. It really forces us to get into a pace. This is when you're, when you're going to get up. This is when you're going to sleep. You know, you don't have to but is that, is it fair to say that it puts us in that pacing? It really, it forces us to pace ourselves and then as a community. So now that was your, that was your entire month that you're looking at and you're going to break it up over Ramadan. So now you're going to look at your page and break those up into what's going to take you one to two hours? What's going to take you half an hour to 45 minutes? Daily. This is daily. What's going to take you 10 to 15 minutes and what's going to take you three to five minutes? So just kind of break it up by that. Did everybody hear that? I'll repeat it for those watching. So it made it seem easy because you realize that everything is in that three to five minutes, 10 to 15 minutes and it's so easy but we just make all these excuses and we really can get through this and when you were, as you were speaking, I was feeling you were, you were speaking my exact same thoughts as well because I haven't done this before. Like we're going through this all the same together. I put this together but I haven't personally gone through this, this, this packet. And then as I'm writing things out, I was like, huh, everything's in the 10 to 15, three to, in fact, most of it's the three to five minutes. But what happens at the end of my Ramadan? I'm like, I start getting frustrated and resentful and beating myself up and like all this, like I didn't get to everything that I want to get to. Well, what's wrong, Rami? What's preventing you from getting you? Well, there's so many things I'm so busy but then now this is showing me, no, it's actually, it's not that, right? Anybody else have that feeling? And then there's some things like if it's things in the heart, that's not even a three to five minute thing. That's just like a reframing that you're doing in your heart. Like that's just a few seconds or maybe a minute too if you're, if you're really going to reflect on it. Anybody else? Has some reflections they might want to share? It's really it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing, right? Yeah, so I have to, maybe I have to add that. It's of the heart, right? Yeah, I actually in the three to five minute, I kind of like circle those. So I'm going to, I can, that's a good way we can add this. And this is, this is why you see the templates are just, it's kind of a guide, but it's not necessarily like, it's an end all. And one of the things that they talk about in education is that there's two methods of education. One is sage on the stage. And I'm on the stage, so I'm not a sage, but if you have a lot of like, if you think about lecture style, if somebody has lectures for two or three hours, that's sage on the stage. Whereas guide on the side is where you now, it's a student centered model of education and you're just helping the person along and there's not necessarily this like one direction type of, a flow of information. This is something where we're working together. And after learning that concept, when I now look at how the Prophet Muhammad SAW would be with his companions, just with those two statements, do you think he was the guide on the side or the sage on the stage? Both, guide on the side, maybe both elements, there's sometimes where you are, it is the sage on the stage. If you're giving a khutbah, you've got a captive audience, right? Nobody, it's haram to say anything, right? I personally feel that one of the, one of the wisdoms of it being haram in the khutbah is that it forces people to listen. Because if I'm not over here, this is not a khutbah interaction, but if you really, really don't agree with something, you'll say something and leave, right? But the khutbah, for the presence, especially for the men, it being wajib to, to sit through the khutbah and to be quiet, it forces you to listen to the other side, which is a big component of dialogue. Like you really have to learn the skill of listening and just, you know, silently, even if you don't agree with it. So, so you can make changes. So that's another change that we could make. We can say, okay, there's something that's even below three to five minutes. Anything else that's kind of came through to you, through this that you don't mind sharing? You, sir? Oh, wow. So you realize everything one to two hours or more. So what did that tell you? You have a lot of time. Oh, okay, see, that's, I'm thinking about it from me a lot. From me, everything was up at one or two hours. I'd be like, okay, that's not reasonable, right? But for you, you have a lot of time. Mashallah. And that's one of the benefits of being at your age. And one of the hadith is that one of the people who will have shade on the day that there is no shade for anybody, except for the shade of Allah is a young person who grew up in the practice of, in the, in the worship of Allah. And it's a very, very spiritual stage. Some people think, oh, teenage years, you know they're all, no, this teenage years actually are a very spiritual time that's going to determine things for the rest of your life. And so if you're using them in worship, mashallah. So now you just realize if more things are one to two hours though, you have to plan so that you can handle it. And then what it showed for me, when I did this, I said, okay, the things that I have there that are in the one to two hour or the 30 to 45 minutes, I really have to plan for those. And even for the other ones, the three to five minute ones, if you add those up, like I have about a good hour right there in the three to five minutes. And so now you have to say, okay, what's, now we go to the next page and let's actually start with the reasonable limits and constraints. So you know on that drawing that the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, made, there was a square, which is basically like, you have hopes that go beyond your, your constraints, but there is a constraint. So now just, you know, what are some of the reasonable limits and constraints? So now you're looking at hours, beyond work, school, other obligations that you have, how many hours do you actually have? What are some time constraints that you're going to be, that you're going to be faced with? And then, once you're done with those, we'll just take about five minutes to do either of these. You got your reasonable limits in the constraints. Also, what are some of the things that distractors, stressors, personal habits, events that are going to come up that are going to take you away from being able to do what you're going to do? So just take a few moments to fill those two out. Anything jump out at you at the distractors, stressors, habits, events, something that you didn't think about before? Maybe you thought about it, but now seeing it down on paper, it makes you look at it a different way. One of my students, my friends, he started as a student. Now I look at him first and foremost as a friend, Brother Ahmed Adisa. He's in prison. Make dua. He gets out. He has a life without parole. And the two witnesses that put him in his cases with the Innocence Project, the two witnesses that put him behind bars, even though he was on the other side of St. Louis when the murder he was convicted for was charged, he had alibis. He was on the other side of St. Louis. The two witnesses came back and they said they lied about their testimony. And still, he's in prison without parole. So may Allah give him his freedom. I was talking to him and he was, I looked to him for a lot of advice, especially when it comes to this kind of work, planning, coaching. And I looked to him as a coach in many things. And so we were talking about something. He said, Journal about that. Journal about that. And then he told me something very profound which was there's something about when you put your thoughts down on paper, it removes the power from that. Like the power that they hold as long as that thought was in your mind. Once you put it down on paper, it's different. So now with that in mind, as you're looking at some of the things, what jumps out at you as some of the reasonable limits and constraints or the other thing that you don't mind sharing. The intrusive, so having intrusive thoughts, thinking about the past, thinking about the future but not staying in the moment. And that can take up time. Yeah. Because that chews up a lot of our time. And one of the thing, you know, the dua as the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam made was Allahumma inni a'udhu beka min el-hammi wal-hazan. Min el-hammi wal-hazan. What are the differences between those two things? He said, hem are those thoughts and the scholars say one of the understandings is it's the worries about the future and the hazan, the sadness are the worries or the sadness that we feel about things that have passed. So Allahumma inni a'udhu beka min el-hammi wal-hazan. And so if you're seeking if we're granted refuge from that, from worries of the sadness over the past and worries over the future, it allows us to be in the moment. And there's many many descriptions of what is spirituality in Islam. We know what theology is. We know what we have to believe. We know what practice is. That's very determined, right? This is how you pray. This is how you fast. This is how you make Hajj. If you mess up on this, this is how you fix it. Isn't it very specific? There's no wiggle room on a lot of things. There's some that there's a difference of opinion, but the law is very clear that theology is very, very clear. When it comes to spirituality, ihsan, what is it? How do you define the ihsan? In the hadith, it's that you worship Allah as if you see him and that if you don't see him, that you know that he sees you. Furthering along that is that they say that you you are ibn waqtika, that you're the child of your moment. You're in the presence in the moment. If you can maintain presence at every single moment, not worrying about the past or the future or not sadness over the past and future and you can be in the moment, that is that you've attained spirituality. Anything else that you don't mind sharing? Okay. So that quote of life is short, but eternity is forever was kind of like signifies this path that you've been on, especially with the umrah in Ramadan, which congratulations. I know it was hot too, but it was that it's overshadowed overshadowed by the blessings that you experience in Mecca and Medina. And so that gave you a rejuvenated connection to your faith and you hope to have this Ramadan be along that way rather than the previous of oh, let's just, you know, I can do things when I'm older. Let me just have fun right now. Yeah. MashaAllah. So that is, those are things that could come up are our old habits. I'm not going to add that too. I'm going to put that in there. Old habits. So we all have them. One thing that jumped out to me that was at the top of the the distractor, stressor or habits of events is other people. Right? And we know in the Hadith it's clear, like it says, if you're fasting and another person wants to fight, what do you say? I'm fasting. And it's not philosophical. The Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he knows people, he knows human beings and how they're going to interact. And then especially when they're under the difficulties of fasting, right, there's this term hangry. Right? You're going to, your inhibitions are down and you could actually lash out a little bit quicker, even though the blessings of the fasting are there, but then there's the physiological elements of reduced food in your system. And so he's saying, say you're fasting. The Quran knows Allah, of course, he knows us better than ourselves. On Hajj, we're told, okay, you do all these great things. One is, what is one of the other main things that you don't do at Hajj? Don't get angry. Don't get into arguments. And you know, when you get in big crowds of people, especially those of you who have been in Mecca and Medina, right, it will test your limits. Oh my goodness, it will test your limits. I was one time in Kaaba, in Ramadan, and it was SubhanAllah, it was a fast, like, I was going to, I was just going to do a one-night Umrah. My father-in-law was still living in Saudi at the time. So I just took a quick flight and then I didn't even have anything planned. I was just going to like, it was just going to be one night, find a place to sleep. And I wasn't planning on fasting because it was in the summertime. And I was like, I'm going to be traveling. And so, but then I met these brothers on the bus and they're like, hey, how are you going to get to Mecca? Because we're all wearing a haram. That's the beautiful thing about like, believers getting here. Oh, you know, it's clear, we're all going to Mecca. How are you getting there? I was like, I don't know, we're going to get a taxi. No, I'm renting a car. Let's go. The other person is like, how are you, where are you going to stay? I was like, I don't know, I'm going to rent a hotel. You stay with me. So then it worked out. But then they decided to fast. So I was like, okay, you know, group think, right? I was like, I'll fast too. But I hadn't planned that. So all I had was like a half bottle of water and a banana that we just bought like 10 minutes before, before Fajr. And it was a hot day. And I did my umrah during the daytime. And SubhanAllah, like by Asr, when Asr time came along, I was, I was looking at people like carrying bags of Zem Zem and I could see the dew and the drops on the bags and I was just looking at it. I could see people in the Saha like doing it though off and they were like drinking Zem Zem and pouring it all over their heads and I was like, that was, it was, but I remember every moment of that day. Like that was my hardest fast that entire month. But I was like, even by the time like I got my, if thought it was in the little airport on the way back in Jeddah. And I was looking at the bottle of water and you know, sometimes they'll have like a leaf with like dew drops on it. And I was like, oh my goodness, like it's, it was really hard that day. Why do I mention that? Oh, because I was sitting there in that state. It was hard. It was a hard fast. And then there's people who want to do will do and they're sitting around the Zem Zem container. Like I'm sitting there in the, and it's marble floor, right? And they got the Zem Zem, they're opening up the Zem Zem and they're doing will do with the Zem Zem and the waters is going everywhere. And then one person doesn't, then another person, pretty soon there's four people sitting in front of me where I'm trying to pray and they're doing will do with the Zem Zem. And I was like, what are you guys, I spoke up out and one of the person just looked at me and he's just, you know, just keep, just keep going. I'm like, okay, I'm fasting. So you know it'll test your limits. One time I was on, it was, this was in Fremont and I was wearing a Koofy. And for some reason, I've had this happen a couple of times. I'm wearing a Koofy, I'm driving, somebody has road rage, and then they tell me, go back to Pakistan. So I've gotten, go back to Pakistan. I've gotten you, you, you're bleeping rabbi. For no reason, I didn't do anything. He didn't cut me off. I didn't go, we were just both stopped at the stop light. And he said, you know, you rabbi, I don't know. And I wasn't mad that he called me a rabbi. I was mad that he called me something. So, but anyway, so one time I was in the car and I was fasting and these two like high schoolers were crossing the street, they saw me and then they called me, like they use a profanity and they said, you terrorist. I'm thinking to myself, you guys are walking in the crosswalk. I'm in my car. You know how Muslims get down, right? I mean, you're, no, we don't do that. But, but if you have that racial understanding of what we're, you're calling me a terrorist and I got a car, what do you think I'm going to do? But I'm fasting and I remember that and I was like, okay, I got to tell him I'm fasting. So I just, I smiled and waved at him. And, and you know what he did? He smiled and waved back. But it was like awkward. He was like, he's like, man, you, beep, beep, beep terrorist. And I said, it was a few moments because there was other things that I could have said or done. And I had to check myself and I said, the prophet told me to say, I'm fasting. He's not going to get that. So I'm just going to wave. And it's going to be like, I smiled. I tried to make it a sincere smile. And then you just see, like there was this like, odd shaking, like, I'm sure in his brain, like all of the, the, the wires are firing. They're like, do not know how to process this. He didn't know how to process. And so his hand came up kind of awkward. He was like, hey, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Like he knew people and how we should respond to people. So other people, kids, school, work, kids, homework, if start shopping, prep, I put down laziness because we all get laid because we have our, we have our magic wand of what we want, but then, especially in the last days of Ramadan. And so the, then now we, anybody else want to share something from reasonable limits, constraints, distractor habits? What's that? Physical tiredness? Yeah. So sometimes we call it laziness, but I'm actually going to be, be nice with myself. I'm just going to physically tired. Office hours, travel, work, and those are realities, right? You have to keep going. So we're not, we're not monks living in a monastery or nuns living in a monastery where we can say like, is actually, is there a female form for monk? Is there? Maybe somebody can look it up. I just, sorry. Random thought. Said monks and nuns, but what, what is the female equivalent of, equivalent of a monk? But we're not in a monk, cut off from, from the realities of life. And we can do everything that we want, all of the worship that we want. Did you guys know there's a monastery? You know that road that goes along the hills from here? Through Sun'ol. If you go from Sun'ol, what's that road? Like you turn off Sun'ol? Yeah. Turn off Niles County into Sun'ol road, but it comes all the way from along these hills. Can't remember the name of that highway. There's a show like Bay Area Backroads. Anyway, they go on. There's a Greek Orthodox, hmm? I think it's Calaveras. Yeah. Niles Canyon or, it's off of Niles. There's a Greek Orthodox monastery out there in the hills over there. Did you guys know that? Yeah. And they, they're living over there, cut off and they don't, they don't even prepare their own food or shop for their own food. They wear on people who are, who are also Christians from their community to bring food to them and whatever they have, they prepare and they share amongst themselves. So there are, there are still monks, monasteries around, and monasteries are mentioned in the Qur'an. They're mentioned in the Qur'an and saying, you know that this is something that was, was, was brought into the faith and, and how, how, and there's a description about it. Okay. So what are some other constraints or, or stressors or distractors? Distraction, probably the big, what, social media. Social media. Yep. Yeah. What's that? The phone. The phone. Yeah. That's what I put down on mine. I was like, no phone, no social. Like, yeah. And WhatsApp is social media, right? We forget that. We sometimes think, oh, it's a communication tool. No, it's become social media. Oh, you put WhatsApp. I'm going to put WhatsApp too. Yeah. What's that? And that archive function is really nice too. Who benefits from that? Just like, you know, there's a archive function on WhatsApp so you can put a lot of your chats on archive. So you don't even see them as they come out. So you can just keep the ones that you want up there at the top, like family and close friends. So, yeah, just archive it. And then you won't get into that thing, but I saw the blue, you know, the blue line so I know you saw my message and you have to respond. I took off that. Oh, you can take that off? I can take that off. Really? Oh, you're laughing. I can't see it. Because you knew this for a while. You can't see it when I see it. Oh, we can't. Oh. Okay. But I want that after that. So you have to give it up? I would have to give up something to get it. Yeah. I gave it up once. Well, when you get it to happen, I just, I had to do it again. Yeah. Oh, okay. I might, I'm going to put that down there. Blue, what is it called? Blue check marks. I'm going to give that up for them. I'm up on. See how it is. Yeah. I'll give out the blue, give up the blue check marks. Okay. So we got the stressors and the habits. Now looking back at your hopes, so we went through like what's what's one hour one hour to two hours, 35 minutes. So you can kind of see, okay, what's likely on a daily basis, what's unlikely. And then you're looking at your distractors. Okay. Then I have to remember the realities. So now looking at your hopes, either putting them in this, this chart, just go back to them, maybe a quick, we can do this quickly and say, what's, what's likely to happen, what's not likely to happen? And it might be everything. If you look at it, right, it might be everything, but there also might be some things that are like, okay, what are unlikely to happen? So let's just take a few minutes to put down what's likely to happen, unlikely to happen, but nice to have. And I have to, I'm going to circle nice to have Brother Shahid, where do you think I got that from? Well, I got that from him. Yeah, because we've worked together on nonprofit projects now for, you know, it's been over 10 years. Yeah. Over 10 years on various projects, a number of projects. And one of the things that I learned from you was that in, in planning, because usually, especially in nonprofit work, people are like, oh, let's do this, and let's do this, and let's do that, and let's do that. Every Masjid has that, every school. And so he said, okay, let's separate things into, what did you call them? It was, oh, this was the nice to have was when you were helping us with the Salesforce development. Okay, what are options in your, because we use Salesforce to monitor, or to our database, okay, but we have Alhamdulillah over 13,000 students in our database. Not all of them are active, but it's over all 50 states in over 1,000 prisons and you can imagine, we can't do that by paper and pen or even an Excel sheet. You have to use Salesforce and so you helped us a lot in bringing, in developing that more, but one of the key things was, all right, it's, it would be, it's nice to have as opposed to something that's, that's, that's unneeded. So I put unlikely to happen, but nice to have. Another thing that I learned from, from you was, was that when you're looking at the projects, you can have some things that are like, you know, like one to two days, one to two weeks or something, you had something eight weeks or more and then there was a term for the, what was it? It was the, the big projects. What was it called? Epic, yeah, epic. And so just dump it into the epic bucket. And do you know how many things get dumped into the epic project? Bucket? If you just use it in your communities or like, Mesjids or even homes, nice to have, but is it an epic project or is it something that we can get done in eight weeks, six weeks, four weeks, two weeks, a week. So this is kind of how we're, we're thinking. So what are the hopes? What are likely to happen? What's unlikely to happen, but nice to have? Okay. As you're finishing those up, I can see one of the things that jumped out to me is that I can see this is more of a, rather than just two separate charts, it's actually more of like a, like a spectrum. It should be a spectrum. And so I started putting things kind of like, Oh, this is very likely to happen. This is some things are actually on the border. And then there's things that are definitely unlikely that anybody else find that too, that it's more of like a spectrum thing. So I'm going to change this to a spectrum. Unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. All of it. Yeah. Anybody else want to share anything that came out, came to through to them on the hopes, likely versus unlikely. Okay. Now with looking at the hopes, the likely hopes, the unlikely hopes, the reasonable limits, the constraints, the distractors that you went through, that daily, the daily breakdown in terms of time commitments, going back, just look really quick at your optimum Ramadan, the magic wand, that you waved and you could have it as it is. Now go back to that first page and just take a look at that drawing. Again, this is an interpretation of the hadith. We know exactly what the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, did and said about that hadith. We don't know what it exactly looked like, but this is an interpretation of that. But and I feel it's a it's a very close approximation. And I've seen in other books where they have something similar. Sometimes the lines are diagonal. Sometimes that line in the middle actually goes through both squares. But you get the point, the idea. But looking at that image, can you now see yourself as this is yourself in your Ramadan? You can see your likely, like your likely hopes inside the box, the unlikely hopes outside the box. And actually the line, that's a spectrum too, right? There are things that are kind of like definitely in the box, somewhere else. And you see all the distractors that are there. But can you visualize those things distracting you or events that are going to come up from on your path? Can you see that now? Okay. All right. So that was the first time I've ever done this in that form. Hopefully it was beneficial. I feel that it was, I benefited. Does it feel like it benefited in preparation for Ramadan? We have about 20 more minutes, a half an hour before, Lord, but I want to give time for people who want to do what we'll do. The last page is now, now that we got an idea of what our overall Ramadan, what we would like to be and what's likely going to, what it's likely going to be. And then now, what are some of the things that are going to take us off course? And how do we deal with them? Now on a daily basis, one of the things that they mention in the science of the purification of the heart are to do ribat of your nefs with these six things. And what ribat is, is that ribat is a fortress or maintaining a fortress. So think about a fortress out there on the frontier. It's cold. It's lonely. And you're standing there waiting for the enemy and you're protecting your lands. And it might be weeks go by, months go by, but you have to be in a constant state of vigilance, right? You have to be physically fit. You have to be mentally sound. Oh, I sound like I'm doing the Boy Scout thing, right? Any Boy Scouts here? Are you? Do you know that one? What is it? I am going to be what? Physically? I'll be physically fit, morally straight. I'm putting them on the spot. Okay, sometimes I don't even know. I'm supposed to have memorized it. One time I was at a Scout event with my son and afterwards somebody came up to me and said, is there anything wrong Islamically with that statement? I was like, why? Why do you ask? It's like, oh, because I saw you weren't reciting it. I was like, I just haven't memorized it yet. But it's a nice, it's a nice thing. But one of them is physically fit, morally straight, mentally sound. Is that one of them? Or no? Maybe I'm throwing that one in. I'm putting some bidah. And that shows you, I still haven't memorized it. But anyway, you have to just think about you're a guardian. You're at that fortress. You have to be in a constant state of readiness, of you're prepared, of vigilance, because something could happen at any moment. And so this is the idea of ribat. And at the end of, in the, is it the end of Ali-Amaran, right? Those last 10 ayahs are what the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, would recite every night when he would wake up and he would look at the creation and he would recite those last 10 verses. So it's good to memorize those, like the end of Surah al-Baqarah, the end of Ali-Amaran, and recite those at night. And since we're going to be getting up, actually add that in there. Make sure that I read that every night and try to look at the heavens too. So don't just recite them, like peek out the windows and look at the heavens and then recite the end of Ali-Amaran, the last 10 verses. And the last verse of that is O you who believe, have patience, have musabarah, which is facing your difficulties, and have and do ribat, which is maintain this fortress and have taqwa of Allah, those four three things. And so the scholars have said that that state of murabata, of being on that fortress with yourself, are these six things. And they all start with meme in English M, so I called them the six M's of murabata, a model of behavioral change. So the first one is musharata, which comes from the Arabic word shart or condition. So you're putting your goal setting. Now these are on the daily basis. So now you're going to take your monthly overall plan, and now you're going to do this on a daily basis. The preferred time to do this is at the beginning of the day, usually after Fajr. Again, there's not a specific time to do it, but after Fajr. Since we're in the month of Ramadan, and now we're forcing ourselves to get up at the end of the night, if we're not in a habit of doing tahajjud every single night, well now we're up at the time of tahajjud because we're going to eat and make our fast that much easier on us. So we're forcing ourselves to get up at that time. So after you're done eating, and before you, while you're waiting, you know that time in between Suhur and Fajr. So that's another goal. Don't eat Suhur all the way up until Fajr because two things are going to happen. One, you're going to get into that whole debate of 18 degrees, 12 degrees, 15 degrees. You know that fifth debate of when does Fajr come in? It's better to, what I advise people is stop eating at the early time and pray after the later time. And then that'll give you about a good 15 or 20 minutes so that you can do the sunnas where the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would wait in between eating and Fajr and you can do things like this. You can pull out your log and say, okay, today, what am I going to do? I have my monthly goal, but today, what is my monthly goal? And when you're setting those goals, there's four areas that you're thinking of. Staying away from the haram and the makruh, the prohibited and the disliked. Both of those things, not just the haram, we're staying away from the prohibited and the disliked things. And we're performing the fard and we're performing the sunnah. We're performing obligatory things and sunnah. So those are the four that we look at. Of the five rulings of Islam, because everything falls into five rulings, it's either fard, sunnah, makruh, haram, or what? Mubah, permissible, but you see that it's not in there because for the person who's being serious about their faith, you're staying away from even the permissible things. But how are you staying away from the permissible things? Through intention. So instead of just drinking a glass of water, you make the intention, I'm doing this to keep my body healthy and alive. Bismillah. Now you get the reward of a fard. When you stay away from the haram, you, even though you stay away from the haram with an intention, when you go to sleep, you make the intention, I'm going to sleep because my body needs it. And especially at Ramadan, you need to say like, okay, I need to do all of these things, but I need to take a nap. I might need to take a nap or I need to get some sleep because you could, like you said, Leila, you could pursue things aggressively, right? Because everybody knows what happens. You guys call it post-call, right? The medical field, post-call. What about post-Qiyam? What does your post-Qiyam day look like? We know what the post-Qiyam day looks like because your body needs to recharge. It's like, okay, you're not going to give me sleep. I'm going to take it from you. And so you keep that in mind. Like, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to give my body sleep. I'm going to give it food. I'm going to give it water. I'm going to give it a break even from worship because I don't have to constantly be in a state of worship. I'm going to do some, maybe some, some permissible something just to kind of like, give me relax, like some self-care. Ibn Abbas, radiallahu anhu, the cousin of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the, who was a young sahaba, Sahabi companion, and he is a scholar even from a young age and he was called by the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the hibir of the scholar of this ummah in his, in his majalis, in his gatherings of ilm, every once in a while he would stop and he would say, bring the poetry. Let's just recite some poetry, just kind of like, now let's, let's take a break. So you do have to put that in there too, like how are we going to take a break? But you're staying away from the haram, the makru, performing the farb and the sunnah really quickly, you know, when you think about your, your optimum Ramadan, we also have to look at, did I, did I include all four of those things in there? Because usually when we think about prepare for Ramadan, we're just thinking about the worship and the ibadah and the, the farb and the sunnah of it. But are we including the other things as well? Staying away from the haram, staying away from things that are makru, working on relationships with people, bettering our relationships with people. So we set the goals at the beginning of the day, then there's mujahada. Mujahada is that you're exerting your strength, you're working your best and you're, you're making sure like, okay, I'm going to start my day and I'm going to do my best. And so like the story that you, that you mentioned earlier, the, the, the, the person who got to 10 a.m. with a full fast and then somebody to dohar with a full fast. And we know that, we know when we're at our best and we know when we fall short, but we just constantly, we're, we're trying to exert ourselves to do mujahada, which comes from the word jihad, which not all jihad is military, right? Hey guys, I know the internet's out there, memory.org, pick it up. You guys know memory? I'm going to ask Manir to cut that out. I don't want to give them free, free advertising. So mujahada is, is exerting your strength and then muraqaba is self-monitoring. You're watching yourself. You're watching yourself as you go through the things. And so you're monitoring yourself. Now on this one, this one is very key because our nefs, ourself, inclines towards monitoring other people. We love monitoring other people. You know how that saying is, do you point one finger at another person? Right? How many are pointing back at you? Four. They say four, right? But it's like, actually two people, two are, depends on how you point, but it's usually three are pointing. But that's, it's symbolic of what we do as human beings, we're naturally inclined to notice the faults of other people and to not notice our own faults. And we're even reminded to this in the way Allah has created our physiological responses to things. There's things about ourselves that we're okay. Like if you pick up a cup and you drink from it and some of your saliva gets on the cup, you're like, oh, no big deal, right? But if it's somebody else's saliva, automatically, ew, right? So even at a physiological level, we're created to be more disgusted by the faults or by the attributes of other people than we are of our own attributes. Part of that I think is also a, it's just a protective factor, right? People in the medical community would know that because if you have, if you have some disease that you want to prevent the spread of disease, well, in some of those things, you don't, you want to have that. So that's like a protective factor. But there's a lesson that we can learn as well that we're more inclined to forgive ourselves before we forgive others to notice the faults of others. So it is a shift. We have to shift, shift to say, okay, I want to monitor myself more than the faults of others. It doesn't mean that we don't notice because we have to, we live in a world where there's other people, people do things, they make a mistake, they harm us, we might harm them. So we do have to have some monitoring of the world around us, but we want to make our strength, our self-monitoring. Muraqaba. What did you do? What did you think? When that person said that, what were you thinking about? And then to also have a self, a self that's critical of yourself. So Allah swears in the Qur'an by three nefs. There's three souls that Allah swears by. He swears by the souls, the human souls, three of them. One of them is what? Ammaratun besu. Sorry, I just showed you say swear by. But he mentions in the Qur'an, three souls. One of them is Ammaratun besu. That the soul that is inclined towards evil, that is pushing towards evil. What is the other type of soul? Lawama. Lawama. This self, critical soul. And then the third one? There is the mulhima as well, but you like in the word, in the Qur'an. Because there is the ilham, and so they're mulha. Thank you for mentioning that. So there is, there also some people say there's actually six types that are mentioned in the Qur'an, but three that are literally mentioned is the Ammaratun besu, the soul that is inclined towards evil, the lawama, the self critical, and then the mulhima inna, the soul at a tranquil. And so, but which one of those does Allah swear by? Lawama. He swears by the self critical soul. So think about that. We've all been in that situation. Why did you do that? You're talking to yourself. Why did you do that? I shouldn't have done that. That's not what a good Muslim does. That soul that allows you to have that self critical application against yourself, Allah is swearing by that soul. So, you know, give yourself a pat on the back. Alhamdulillah, it's better than being Ammaratun besu. The other thing to remember about those, at least those three and JazakAllah Khair, Brother Sahir, there are others that are implied as well and mentioned in some of the books. The nefs, I'll say SubhanAllah. The Muraqaba, the critical soul. Oh, this is what it was. Some people think that those are actually three separate stages of your development. Like you can have, like you're at an Ammarat. You're just a bad soul. And then you're a self critical soul and then you're a Mutima Inna soul. And it's not that. Your soul could actually go through all three elements of those in a single day. In a single hour or even in a single moment. You can have an element of your soul that's Mutima Inna and an element that's Ammaratun besu and an element that's that's Lawama, self critical. Think about this. For people who maybe did not pray five times a day, it was difficult. And then you had to exert some effort and then it became normal. So you went through in the prayer those three stages. But then even the presence of prayer, maybe you're distracted and then you start working not getting distracted and then it becomes natural. And then your level of focus on the prayer grows. And so you can constantly be going through those three stages even in just one aspect of worship. Or let me give you another example as well. Do you know people who do not pray, do not fast, but they will never tell a lie? Some people who might not even pray but in business dealings they are honest as to no end. And then there are people who pray five times a day and at the first line of the prayer and they're up at the edge of it but you don't want to have any money around that person. Is that an exaggeration? There are people like that, right? So when it comes to the prayer that person might have itminan that tranquil soul. And so their soul is not repelling them from performing the prayer. But when money comes up, all of a sudden their nefs are moderate and besu. Oh, let me see how I can get one over on this person. I can come up, let me get some money. So it can be all of those levels. You want to be monitoring yourself. And then at the end of the day, you do what's called a muhaseba, a self-evaluation. Now you look at yourself so you can have a journal, 30-day journal. Doesn't have to be a template and start up at the beginning of every day. Set your goals. Throughout the day you're striving. Also throughout the day you're monitoring yourself, you're policing yourself. And then at the end of the day, you do a muhaseba. And so usually this, you can do this after Asr. After Asr is a good time too, or maybe even after, you know, in the evening in Ramadan, wherever you can find, you can break away and find five to ten minutes just to evaluate yourself on that day. How did I do? And give yourself, you could even do a grading score, one to three, one to five, one to ten on each of those items. How did, how well did I do on this? How well did I do? And then after you self-evaluate, you do the muhaseba. And this also comes from a hadith. Take yourselves to account before you're taking to account. Hasibu an fusakum, like take yourselves to account. And then once you've got that, then there's a muaqaba and the mua'ataba. The muaqaba is where you give yourself a consequence. And the mua'ataba is where you self-reprimand. The muaqaba though, it has to be, it has to be mentioned that it can only be something that's in line with the Islamic law, with sharia. You can't do something, you can't punish yourself with something that would be haram. So you would do something like Imam al-Ghazadi mentions, if you did a sin with your eyes, well then take your eyes away from something that it likes to look at. So if there was something you like to watch, you can't watch that anymore. No privileges for you. You lose your privileges, but you're doing this to yourself. Or somebody ate something haram, and so the consequence would be, you're not going to get that treat. You have to almost treat yourself like a parent would to their child. Or maybe you do something haram and yeah, you don't get that cup of coffee. You know, if you really like coffee like I do, right? Punish yourself with, you're going to skip coffee. You get a consequence, your decision. So you do a consequence, and again, everybody knows what like, actually I was speaking with one of my students who was in prison and he said, what did he do? Oh, he really liked a TV show, but then he had given himself a goal and he fell short on that goal and he said, well you're not watching that show tonight. And he said, actually you're not watching that show until you get that as a habit. And guess what happened? He said he got it as a habit really quickly, but he did it to himself. And you have to stick to that, to the limits. And then the mu'ataba is the self reprimand where you just, you reprimand yourself for that, for that action. So these are the six IMS of Muraabata, like Sheikh Mohammed Mouloud says in the Matarat Al Qulub, muraabatan nafsabisittin. Do robat of your nefs with these six things. I want to leave the last five, 10 minutes for any questions. I'm glad I was able to get through everything. Hopefully this is something that can help us have a better Ramadan and make our Ramadan better than any previous Ramadan. And I know it's going to, it's given me, it's taken something that's like, I generally keep things like out in the, okay I want to do this, I want to do this, but now it's down on paper, makes it a little bit easier to handle. Along with any questions, if you don't mind mentioning maybe something, or if you could email this, like my email is not up there, but just rami, r-a-m-i at tabafoundation.org, if you don't mind doing this. If you could email any ideas that you have of how we could develop this further. So if there's anything that you see that we could develop this, and something comes to mind, or maybe it's not now, maybe after Ramadan you try this and you say, oh you know what, I think we could add this or that. This is a work in progress, and I want feedback from how it lands and how we could develop it. So any questions before we end? In the back? Okay. So the question was, excellent question. What's the difference between Mu'aqaba and Mu'ataba? So the Mu'aqaba, because they are related, like if you get, you know, if you get chewed out by your teacher, or you get held back into from recess, those are both consequences, right? But the Mu'aqaba, the Mu'aqaba is something that you do to yourself, or could even be leaving, like it's an actual, like a punishment, like in that one case, the person skipped the TV show that he liked watching. So that's your consequence. The Mu'aqaba is something you're telling yourself, you know, you look in the mirror and say, why'd you do that? Or you're just talking to yourself. It's the self-talk. So maybe that's one of the things, it's self-talk, where it's just a verbal or it could be a mental reprimand to yourself, as opposed to the Mu'aqaba, which is something like a consequence. Does that answer the question? Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Well, what would you say? Because I was thinking about that, we need, we don't have that much time, but what would you say? What's like a quick advice to distinguish between the, especially since you're a professional in the mental health field? So the question is, so in the self-talk, the self-reprimand, because if you say like, okay, you messed up on something, you did something that you shouldn't have done, or you didn't do something that you should have done, right? You messed up. And now you're going to be self-critical of yourself. The fear is that if you're too self-critical of yourself, you could actually go in a downward spiral. You could like, isn't that, that's correct? Like you could even, some people can actually get into a state of depression if they have too much self-critical talk. And so the question that Summer asked was, how do you, how do you balance between having that self-talk be positive as opposed to the self-talk or that self-reprimand be something that could be negative? And so I asked her what her advice was, and she said, so one of the things that they do in therapy is as the person, if they're having these self-critical thoughts, check the facts. What's a fact versus not a fact? What's some of the evidence behind it? And then what are some of the causes of having that thought? And what's, so what's causing this thought? And how can you use this thought to make a change for something better, right? Yeah, it's kind of like when we do like check the facts, it's like, okay, let me think about it. Is this actually true? And if it is true, then like what are the things that you can do to change it? And if it's not true, then why are you having it? Oh, okay, so if it is true, let me just write that down. So yeah, you do check the facts. And so if it's not true, then what do you do? If it's not true, then you're kind of like, where does it come from? You're noticing where it's coming from. Okay, where it's coming from? And if it is true, then like what can you do to, because there's something clearly that you're not happy, like you're doing that you're not happy, so what can you do to change it? Kind of more like action-based. Yeah, so it's action-based. Okay, did everybody hear that? So you'd like check the facts. If it's not true, where is it coming from? And if it is true, what can you do to change it? One thing that comes to my mind too, even when we say not true, is some things you, when you're examining the evidence, say, okay, at what level? So say for example, somebody put a goal that, okay, I'm going to do this many, like as of Taraweeh, or this many pages of the Quran, and then they don't do it at the end of the day. And now they're like, they're going to start self-reprimanding themselves, and they're like, you're lazy. Okay, that's now a general thing. You're lazy. You're just a lazy believer. You're a lazy Muslim. You could do better. One thing that comes to mind is that one of the students asked our teacher, Murabat al-Hajj, he said, how can I be a person who's not lazy? I don't want to be a lazy Muslim. He said, perform the fard, and you're not lazy. Do the fard, and you are not a lazy Muslim. Now that reframes everything, right? Because we set the bar, if we put the bar really high, and we don't hit it, we're like, I'll wear a lazy Muslim. But he's saying, look, the bare minimum, it gets you out of that thing, you know, that level of being a lazy person or kesal, as it's mentioned. So when we check the facts, we actually have to also examine that evidence. Like you said, where is it coming from? And am I even being, am I being fair with myself? So that self-critical, so that's an area where you can develop somewhere. Take this mu'ataba, mu'ataba, and run with it. Like develop a model of healthy mu'ataba for the Muslim. Masha'Allah. So you said that when you notice that self-reprimand, that you try to distinguish what's actually true and what might be trickery of the shaitan. Because he is, he's a deceiver, and he will get there in very, very deceptful ways. So, and if it is from the trickery of the shaitan, you ignore it, but you also, at the same time, you have shukr, thankfulness, that you were able to go through that process. Any other questions or? Okay, jazakum Allahu khayrah here the adhan. Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar. And we'll end right there. SubhanakAllah. Wa bi hamdikana shahadu an la ilaha illa Al-Ainat. Astaghfirullah. Wa Laitoobu ilayk.