 Peace be upon you all, I hope everybody is doing well, again apologies for the delayed start, just needed to get a few technical things taken care of, so inshallah we're going to continue on in this book and we're going to be talking today about the importance of fortitude or which is formally known as suburb also often translated as steadfastness or as patience and it is one of the stations of spiritual certainty that comes after the station of repentance hope and fear which is what we discussed last time and so this is probably one of the most important parts of the spiritual path is for the traveler to have a high degree of patience so Allah regularly throughout the Quran encourages us to have patience he tells us that he is with the patient he tells us to seek help in patience and prayer he tells us that he loves the people of patience and he continues to enjoin and encourage towards patience because the life of the human being is tough the life of the believer is not easy and when something's not easy it requires patience to be able to bear it requires patience to be able to go through those difficulties be those tribulations and sicknesses and things like that or maybe the way that someone is treating us or maybe the patience of refraining from doing something wrong but it's of utmost importance in life to successfully navigate life and this applies to Muslims and non-Muslims applies to everybody you need a lot of patience right they say is the same goes patience is a virtue and so to properly go through the ups and downs of life this trade of fortitude and steadfastness is of the utmost importance and that's why it comes in various narrations that patience is half of faith right like you need a lot of patience when you are trying to apply your faith and there's various other sayings that talk about the virtue virtues of patience but no matter what anyone tries to do in this world you'll never escape some problem or difficulty everybody's gonna have tests Allah says in the Quran that we created you in order to test you and he says that he lists out a variety of different tests that the human being will experience these can be loss of life it can be sickness it can be hunger issues with your wealth and so on and so forth and then he says but glad tidings to those who are patient that those people who are they have fortitude and patience as they go through their tests and difficulties so we know okay i'm living in this world this world is a place of difficulty the next world is a place of ease inshallah if we clear clear the path and and alum admits us into jannah that that's the place of ease it's called paradise for a reason right it's supposed to be easy but this world is world of test it's a world of difficulty it's world of restraint restraining from things in the next world is world of luxury it's a world of desires it's a world of desire meaning we get at we were able to easily fulfill our desires and so on right and so in this world then what's necessary the trade of patience and in the time that we're living in we need a lot of patience but we have very little of it most of the time this is many many times this is due to our expect for instant gratification with our phones we expect every little thing to happen quickly and things don't happen that quickly right things require patience and it's not easy to accept that right but we have to work on ourselves and and refine ourselves to the point where we start to inculcate this trait of patience in us and it comes that the prophet sallallahu salam told us that there is much good in the patient endurance of that which you find unpleasant meaning you are literally reaping good deeds and and attaining states of good just by being patient with that which you don't like and there's going to be times there's going to be phases of life where there's a lot of things that are going on that you don't like that we don't like and then there's going to be phases of life where a lot of things that are going on that we are really like excited about right and this is this correlates to the verses in the Quran Allah says that he alternates between the night and the day he alternates between difficulty and ease he alternates between contraction and expansion in moments of expansion everything's flowing well everything's going well you're happy your relationships are good money is flowing alhamdulillah you're feeling good spiritually those are moments of expansion and they require gratitude and then there's moments of constriction difficulties might come someone might have a test of health someone might have someone in their family passed away someone might have financial constraints or restraints come up someone might have an issue with their job and these times require what not complaining not giving up on life but no they require patience right and the prophet sallallahu also said that patience is the commander of the believer's soldiers meaning the believer has these soldiers inside that that go you know that assist them in the day to day and patience is the head of those soldiers right it comes in narration of Sayyidina Ali radi allahu an that patience is to faith as the head is to the body you couldn't have a body like what kind of body would it be if it didn't have a head right it's the command center the control center the the site the senses are all essentially them for the most part living up in the head right and you don't have a proper ability to function without a head obviously and so he says patience is to faith as the head is to the body right you need patience in order to go through this faith and the amazing thing is that the more someone is immersed in the faith the more patience they need because the messenger of Allah alaihi sallatu as-salam told us that the prophets are tested the most and then those closest to them and then those closest to them right and so when you are in a state of being tested difficult and in a state of difficulty patience is one of the traits that you need to have in order to respond and then ibn abbas radi allahu an that he said victory comes with patience relief comes with hardship and with each difficulty comes ease so there's going to be moments of life maybe we're in these moments now and we ask Allah for afya and ease or maybe we've been through these moments where we're going to be squeezed really squeezed we're going to be going through the thick of problems and difficulties and we're going to feel like there's a hardship that's in front of us that we don't know if we can bear and we can get through those are the moments in which patiently enduring will reap tons of benefits for us because what's happening is you are literally giving your soul a spiritual workout and the soul it needs all types of working working out right so think about it like this we're talking about these different traits now that you go through that we that we need to develop in order to properly travel the spiritual path if someone is working out like we're talking on a physical level now and every day they just do arms right they just do arms on an arm workout every day you know bicep focus tricep focus at some point something is going to be majorly off of balance right everybody like knows that in order to properly work out you have to balance core upper body lower body back legs i mean there's different parts of your of your of your body that you're supposed to be working on there's certain exercises which help you build a stronger body or a more fit body versus other exercises right and the the healthy body and the strong body and the fit body needs a balanced workout routine right you need to basically also be integrating cardiovascular activity and so on you need something balanced you need to make sure every part of you is getting a workout spiritually god is going to give you a spiritual workout for every part of you and he's going to give you a workout that gives you traits that will be for every part of your life right because not every season of life is the same the season of when things are easy it's very different than when things get tough it's very different the season of life when you're young is very different than when someone is old when the season of life when someone is in a state of wealth is very different than the season of life when someone may be tested with poverty and so these seasons come in the traits that a law wants us to um uh inculcate they're traits that are getting us ready for all seasons of life right so you sometimes you might not understand like oh my god why am i going through this problem what's going on it's because Allah wants you to develop the patience he wants you to develop the muscle of patience and you'll notice a huge and i completely like um we can understand why it's given so much emphasis in the Quran and in the statements of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and in his example because there's a huge difference night and day difference between people who know how to be patient and between those who are impatient huge difference usually that the people who are impatient with everything and they're not able to bear it they don't have the fortitude it's impossible to be around them when they're going through something because they just are in a completely negative headspace they don't know how to bear it right versus people who are patient they're inspirational they're giving you and they're the ones going through difficulty god forbid someone struck with cancer i've met people like this and they're just in a complete state of shukr and gratitude and just like they they're they're being patient through it and someone else might be like having a small problem with their house and they're just like oh my god it's the worst day ever my sink's not working whatever it is right and just is a completely different mindset that that's and the people of patience they're patient in the small things and then that helps them be patient in big things and then there's people who are um only able to be patient in small things and then there's people who are impatient in both right um so so it's kind of important to keep in mind so we'll get into the four kinds of patients that are outlined inshallah yes patient people can bear bear a lot more yeah because patience is this muscle that people have um and thank you for that point that the patient people can bear more it's like for example someone who's new to working out let's say they're they're trying to do pull-ups maybe they can do like two pull-ups three pull-ups four pull-ups right someone who's like been working out for a while 20 pull-ups no problem right um they can do a lot they can lift a lot more weight because they've trained their body someone else newly tries to lift that much weight maybe they'll do it the first time and then they'll might injure themselves right um so patience is similar that the more someone gets it now it becomes it's called fortitude for a reason you it fortifies you it's your fortress and once it becomes a fortress now some someone is able to handle a lot more and god also knows that they can handle more right and so Allah might give them even more if he wants them to grow and it's all about growth in this world you got like a few decades to grow and then the next life is all reaping the rewards of that so it's our choice right do we want to take on the challenge or do we want to um and we always hope for ease we never hope for like yeah god like give me we don't want that right but it's like when challenges come do we take take it on and embrace it or do we lament over the fact that like oh everyone else's life is so easy and mine is the worst and so tough and then and you know we don't have that that patience with it so um uh the four types of patience that he mentions the first type of patience and if anybody has um specifically for people online if you have questions just start posting them and i'll try to get to them inshallah when we take a break between sections so um there's four kinds of patience the first patience is the first type of patience is actually necessary in order to endure doing acts of goodness right it takes patience to do good things and to worship properly why does it take patience first you need to have enough patience to be sincere in that action right um because it's kind of like this muscle that needs to be developed even getting the himma to do something good um it requires a certain form of patience having the the energy to do that second you need to have the patience to sit through it and learn how to actually do it right like you can just let's say someone learns their entire prayer just through watching a few people randomly at juma on praying um and someone else sits through like a few hours of a discussion or a course or you know a weekend long and i mean the second person is going to properly learn how to pray and the first person most likely is going to miss some things right someone told me the other day that they thought for the longest period of time that in a four raka prayer you only had to you never had to sit in between the two raka that you just had to sit at the end and they didn't know until much later that that was the case and um now they were like reflecting on it and they're like you know hamdulillah i learned about it but it would be uh it takes a little bit of patience to go through the difficulty of acquiring knowledge learning learning requires patience we all know because we went through school right whether university or just you know elementary middle school high school but um it takes a lot of patience to learn and same thing with the religion the only harder part about the religious learning is that you have an extra part of shape like extra shape satanic demonic influence is trying to prevent you from doing it so like as soon as you're about to do something and he's like no no no just go you know you haven't watched the new episode of this show that came out like just go do that and you're like yeah yeah i'll do the the religious thing tomorrow and as soon as you're about you're about to go and go pray isha or go to the masjid he's like no no no no but you got to call this person right like he'll come at you in different ways that um he's not really usually doing for for other types of knowledge so that's the first thing is acts of goodness need patience and what are the two ways to achieve that he says that when you are struggling to do acts of goodness and you're not able to um show the patience necessary to do these acts remind yourself number one of the reward that god has waiting for you uh for doing these things right remind yourself of the reward that oh if i do this i'm going to get all this reward allahu akbar and you kind of remind yourself of that and you sometimes have to remind yourself a lot right like um for example there's a hadith with the prophet sallallahu akbar tells us that when you're walking to the masjid for the prayer um and it could imply the driving and you know scootering biking whatever form of transport someone is taking uh that for each step you take a sin is forgiven for each step you take a good deed is written for each step you take you erase stations and one station in the sight of a lot you're at least taking like if you're walking hundreds of steps to get to the masjid most of the time unless you live right next door to it when you're driving you're moving a fair amount a fair amount of distance to come for each of those things there's tons of reward now someone reminds themselves of that it's an immediate motivation you'll give yourself and your um spirit a motivation oh yeah i should do this this is nice right it's not just so that you can like collect a bunch of you know points and then win the game that's not the but but it does help to have that mentality early on like oh yeah i gotta get as much reward as i can because then it takes you to the next level where you just want to do the worship the way the prophet sallallahu akbar did it because you just love him a lot and you just love a lot and you want to do things exactly the way that a lot would want them done but it takes time to get there and so in order to do that you have to remind yourself of all of these different types of um of rewards and so just from you you remind yourself okay if i do this i'll reach this station right if i do this i will reach this level and so on and and that will be a helpful reminder the second type of patience is required in in if the first type is doing good does anyone have an idea what the second type would be refraining from from evil exactly refraining from sins requires patience especially in this society that we live in it requires a lot of patience why because there's a lot of haram that goes on and there's a lot of there's a lot of um sorry there's a lot of haram that goes on and it's very difficult to stay away from that haram when it's when it's in front of you right if someone is a student and is in high school or is in college the amount of temptations that that they're exposed to in a day are more than the amount of temptations most people throughout history would be exposed to for decades of their life right the types of desires that they're called to everything from smoking and drinking and partying to illicit relationships to and it's just completely normalized and it's becoming more and more normalized that at a younger and younger ages so it and and that's when someone's younger so so as someone gets older more and more desires start to come more and more sins become present in front of them so the um renouncing sins takes a lot of patience and what does it take the muscle of patience needs to be built up because patience at its essence is weight is you're just waiting right you're you're just you're you're at a deep level you have this steadfastness that you're going to wait wait it out right with a state of contentment it's not waiting like just kind of waiting in a waiting room just ripping your hair out like oh my god when is this going to be done it's like supposed to be a peaceful waiting most of the time when you want to satisfy your desire it's immediate gratification it's like no no i gotta do this now oh yeah like uh yeah there's those whole heaven thing and i'm gonna die that's way later i'll do that later what's wrong with me partying right now what's wrong with me doing whatever i want to do and that requires patience there hold on a second and usually the person who's telling you like no no no just wait like Allah has written reward for you just don't do this one thing you just look at them like dude you was oh the religious person here now like the people don't want to be told not to indulge in their desires in this society the majority of people hate being told not to indulge in their desires hate it they're absolutely they will they will fight for every little cause but the minute you tell them you know what uh premarital relationships are probably not a good idea can't you just wait till you're made who are you to tell me to get married it's my choice it's like hold on a second man nobody nobody is trying to infringe on your choice people are just trying to advise you on what's better right but in this society people don't like and so the muslims we get affected by that we're like oh yeah what's the big deal and you hear this often people say nothing's happened to them it's not like the sky's falling on them it's not like a bolt of remember sometimes someone implied who wants to be like not a bolt of lightning hit that person so i should be able to do it too it's like god doesn't give Allah says in the Quran that if we were to hold you to account for your sins immediately there would be nobody left on earth to live nobody could walk on earth but he says i forgive him i forgive much and i hold i just take him take Allah has angels taking notes they're just loading it down he says i'm gonna wait till later and then we're gonna talk about it right and he gives us time to repent and he gives us time to change but the better situation is that in the beginning we build up the muscle to restrain from sin and um there's different types of sin that come at somebody depending on the stage of life that they're at depending on the type of people that they hang out with people who hang out with a lot of very very um let's say wealthy wealthy people and money is this focal point of the conversation it's like what everybody wants to talk about everybody wants to show off what they're wearing and the car that they drive and so on and so forth most of the time people there will struggle with economic sins right lavish exuberance right on one hand overdoing it is not is not virtuous in our religion taking out interest as we know is haram in our religion but most of the time as you get older and older these types of things become depending on the circle someone's in um these types of things become more and more appealing versus like when you're 12 years old or 15 years old no one's thinking about the economic things there's like yeah like i want to have money one day but just so i can buy whatever thing i want to buy not because of some other deep reason to show off and whatnot right so the sins they change the desire changes as someone gets older and as someone um depending on the circles and people that someone um you know hangs out with so in renouncing sins the the way he says to to build this muscle is that you have to just really think about god's reward for leaving them and god's punishment for doing that and um sometimes it just takes some reflection on the actual punishment like hold on a second if i do this this is going to happen and actually being open to the fact that that could happen not like a no no this would never happen to me right how we have to be like no no this could actually happen like a lot actually doesn't like this right and then we remind ourselves of you can also remind yourself of the feeling that you'll have when you sin because you know we all know there's a very specific type of guilt and anxiety that begins not always immediately after you sin but soon after if the heart is at least somewhat inclined towards wanting to change the anxiety and the worry starts afterwards right and um a large portion of the over uh of the stress that we face many times could be because of our sins because we don't ask we don't know that we're doing them or we don't ask enough forgiveness for the sins that we might have done right and so we have to keep ourselves in mind that oh i'd rather just be in a peaceful state that's why the nafs when it reaches a certain level it's called the nafs al muqma inna the tranquil soul because these people are in a state of tranquility because the um darkness of sin is not constraining them darkness leads to terpidity in the heart and leads to anxiety and worry light and good deeds lead to calmness and tranquility and the two don't usually work um uh you you you you need to over overpower one with the other um but obviously the the goodness uh needs to be you know on top but it takes some time and that's where it takes even patients to work on ourselves it takes it takes patients to restrain from sin and do good deeds and to work on ourselves slowly and slowly so that's the second type the third type and this is usually the patients that we are often reminded of um just i'll just finish this point i'll get that we're often reminded of this is patient endurance of unpleasant things right most of the time when we're thinking about patients this is what we're thinking about patients endurance of what things that are just unpleasant this could be um in the form of something that comes directly from Allah and then something that comes from people everything ultimately is from Allah but here so the first type illness and sickness um death in the family a major calamity financially right these types of things they usually come and their tests that we face and they require a certain type of patients what are what are we required to do in this instance if we want to be patient we are required to not become irritated and lose our cool and to not be so annoyed externally or inwardly so that's the inwardly what we're supposed to do we're supposed to retain the state of okay this is not easy i don't love this but i'm going to get through it god is going to help me through it i'm going to seek his help he says what seek help in it he knows we need the help he knows it's not going to be easy but he says seek help in patience and prayer so he said okay it's not easy but i'm going to get through it i'm going to um try not to become irritated and i'm going to try to keep it calm and then the second is outwardly patience requires not complaining to people it requires not complaining to people the patience is essentially especially the higher degrees the patients are nullified by complaining right you can complain to Allah but the minute we like go through something and the first thing we do is we we start um i think it's popular people call it venting but we just start completely just letting letting out about every all the things we hate about that experience or the challenges that now nullifies the patience it will nullify the patience the beautiful patience is when you don't complain or you can mention the difficulty if it's for seeking advice there's written two are different you need advice from someone someone is talking to a counselor or something that you could seek advice from them but um or a doctor let's say that your leg really hurts you don't go to the doctor and doctors like why are you here and be like oh i gotta be patient nothing everything is great but your leg is hurt no you need you tell the doctor yeah my leg is hurting um you know i have an issue i'm really sick and and in those situations obviously that you know it's it's fine but in situations where like you see someone and they're like how are you doing and you just like oh my god life is so bad everything's terrible my leg hurts my head hurts i got a stomach ache you know that that completely nullifies patience right god already knows you're going we're going through those things supposed to be calm through it okay you say alhamdulillah i'm i'm having some challenges right now but Allah is helping me through them and i'm grateful that i'm still you know able to function right you try to look at the glass half full as they say um and so the way to get through the way to get through this yes someone mentioned working on complaining at this something all of us need to work on in in today's society we all have a inclination to complain it's it's very very normalized but it doesn't mean that it's um healthy for us right it usually it makes us dwell on things that we don't need to be that we don't need to be dwelling on so the way to do this one he says is um to remember the importance of accepting god's decree this is Allah's decision for you he already wrote it he already he already made it and you want to just now try to work on accepting it and there's a higher degree of this that eventually is the station called contentment and satisfaction where you just accept what Allah has written right um and then this the other thing you remind yourself is this world is the abode is the place of tribulation and that reminder can't be done enough to the human being because as soon as we get out of the difficulty we're like ah we've got through that alhamdulillah we go back into the state of like just thinking everything's going to be easy but not everything is always easy there's there's Allah may put more and more challenges in our life and you have to remind yourself and train yourself say hold on a second no no no this place is supposed to be hard if it wasn't hard why would there be heaven why would this not just be heaven it's supposed to be difficult it doesn't mean 100 of the time but there will be times when it gets difficult and it gets we and god wants us to work on our religion in the good times so we're prepared for the bad times it's very hard to just work on your religion fresh in the bad times most of the time if that and and that's a good reminder to the believers that right now things around the world are um you know challenging and they're definitely by no means easy like there's a lot of tribulation we know in the end of times things are just going to get worse it doesn't get better from here it gets worse from here and you have to remind yourself that how am i do how would i fit how would i be if the most difficult tribulation of the end of times were to just come what would how would i handle it am i am i am i working on myself enough we'll never be ready fully only a lot can make us ready but will i be at least on the path towards doing that and the fact if we're if we're people who care about working on ourselves religiously it's a good sign if we're people who we don't care ever about working on ourselves that's a bad sign right so we just have to basically we have to ask ourselves these questions when times are easy for us when we have health when we have wealth when we have ease when we have family when we have shelter when we have peace in generally general peace in society how are we spending our time is there extra time spent trying to work on ourselves trying to deep in deep in our connection to god because when things get really tough and there's tribulation and god forbid wars going on and there's there's there's no electricity and there's um there's there's a lack of peace in society and the food is limited i mean what what a good percentage of the world is going through right now there's no time to work on yourself like there's no time to be like oh i'm gonna go and go and attend a discussion on patients or whatever like no one's gonna have time for that you have you're just trying to make sure you're surviving right so you want to make sure that before that time comes and we ask Allah never brings that time in our life but if things get difficult we need to be ready and that's where you prepare right yes i want to ask what is the muslim stance on abortion because you know how that's like that's a tribulation out there right now that society dealing with what is our what are what the muslims supposed to do yeah so that's a something where you want to know you need to know the criteria what's the criteria yeah it's a very very long discussion and i think for this in general the question is about abortion and islamically look in islam we are not like super black and white there's a lot of nuance in islam about about these things and so there's in the hanifi school up until 120 days we don't consider life to have entered that's the first thing the second thing is there's a lot of nuance in terms of if someone is forced or raped or assaulted 100% totally fine for them to abort right like these extreme views that people take they're they're not within our religion right that in under any circumstance whatsoever if the life of the mother is at risk you you you prioritize the mother's life right super missable and then there's like a lot of nuance in gray area even within even within that but that would be i think three of those like very clear situations in which in which it's okay allah then also says in the Quran do not kill your children out of fear of poverty right so like we are we would not be permitted it would be considered haram if later stage someone is you know 200 days or you know 150 days into their into their pregnancy and they're like i don't know if i can afford this child i'm gonna abort that would be considered without no health issues or physical complications or whatever else would be considered um right outright impermissible to and same thing we don't have room for like certain circumstances where there's no kind of clear reason or rationale right like it's not just everybody can do it all the time just because you don't feel like having the kid but at the same time it's not as insanely strict as under no circumstance is this allowed there's a lot a lot of gray area and you're talking like 120 days is a long period of time and that's you know that's four months into the into the pregnancy right so um but for the sake of time like and also that's not a field that i'm at all well versed in so i wouldn't feel allah alim like i'm not qualified to answer too too much deeper than what i just mentioned at just at the surface level but it's a good question to ask like a proper scholar um imam zaid you know etc uh yeah but for but let me just kind of get through the rest of the section and tell on patients um is it a question about patience or is it a question about what i just said yeah go ahead yeah no no you want ease yeah yeah so question is is it okay to want ease 100 percent it's it's you're supposed to ask for ease the prophet salallahu alayhi salam told us that ask for afya ask for well-being and he said in adoha when he was being tested really significantly right after the incident of baif when they thrown stones at him and he was um bleeding and they had chased him out of the city when he was just trying to give that word that he said he turned to allah and he said uh that um he basically had a conversation with allah and at the end of the conversation he says that i prefer ease but i accept what what you're going to do with me right and then he also told someone once that they should ask for afya they should ask for afya it's like this all-encompassing word for ease and well-being and health and spiritual health and mental health it's like the one of the best dohas you can make just every day allah give me afya allah give me and my family and my loved ones parents and so on and so forth afya so yeah 100 you should always ask for ease you should never want challenges or difficulties never this is more we're talking now about like when they come here's what to do right or before they come work on ourselves right so there's ways like for example fasting fasting is just a spiritual exercise in patients people you could be in a very good state of ease you know you're going to eat at the end of the day whatever but in the time you're fasting it's patient you got to be very very patient but that develops your muscle watch the people who fast often when difficulty comes they also have more patience because they have the muscle of patience developed right so um but but you don't ever wish for difficulties such that like oh i want to be forced to fast by having no food around right rather you say no no i want ease in my life um and i will sometimes just go through some extra tests some restraint in order to build that build that muscle um like there's people who uh per the sunna of the prophets all of a sudden they just stop they stop eating well before they're full not because they're trying to make life hard for themselves because they want to build their own muscle of patience because they know that the best thing is for for spiritual health and physical health to not be full right um so those types of things are good exercises to do spiritually but you never wish for challenging times or difficult times always you wish for ease and you pray abundantly for it yes yeah good question so when you're when the question was um is there a line between on topic of complaining is there a line between sharing your struggles um for guidance or comfort and and complaining um so definitely for guidance no problem at all if you're facing a problem you need to get someone's advice this could be your your spouse your brother your sister your mom and dad your children's cousin whoever it is right someone in your family or friend you want to get advice you want to get like sincere you sincerely want to get advice that's encouraged in our religion you should get advice from people Allah says that you should make you should do surah from people with counsel you seek people's counsel right um then there's like you need to just vent and if by comfort that's what you mean we don't have much like too much room for that right we're supposed to you have to just have bear the fine line between um discussing it and getting into a very very like overt mentioning of all the problems that are going on because you have to keep in mind that who gave you those problems and then if you really realize that he's listening to you and watching you it's very bad adab and manners to be mentioning all those problems when he's the one who's testing you and you're discussing it with a person instead of discussing it with him so it gets into subtle spiritual like relationship issues right where you where you're you want to deepen this relationship with Allah Allah says complain to me all you want give you the prayer rug here's the said he make as much said to that cry to me complain to me but when it comes to people overall you manifest good when you need advice you go to them when you need a someone to talk to about something you talk to about about something but you just have to draw that fine line between when does it get into the territory of complaining and mentioning the difficulties and the negativity and when do you keep it when do you keep it kind of in you know with you with yourself and this requires a bit of conditioning because most of the time we've grown up in a society where like we were never taught this so it's very normal at the end of the day to mention everything bad that happens that day and everything good that happened that day most of the time people mention everything bad that happened that day so if you just we see it a lot we don't think that there's anything wrong with it right like oh today there was traffic and there was this and the weather was bad and it was raining and it was this very few times will you say will people say you know my car was working alhamdulillah like the AC was working like you know there was no accidents on the road like they're just looking at everything the everything that went well right so in those moments you have to just you have to almost like we spend enough time thinking about what would the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in the sahabah's response be to things and remember there's like a different world view out there that might be very hard to attain immediately but you slowly work towards it rather than us just kind of accepting this world view or this approach today which is one that that um almost embraces complaining like it's very very much at the center of discussion is like negativity uh does that kind of help a little bit yeah and then definitely when you're seeking the advice of like a therapist counselor um you know psychiatrist psychologist might be someone spiritual giving advice a teacher or whatever in those instances even more so you can mention of course the difficulties that you're going through right okay we'll keep going uh inshallah so the um third type uh there's a question about for the person who just asked about your permission from your husband can you clarify what you're referring to the question online um if you're referring to yeah just ask just clarify what you're referring to inshallah um so then the the third type still within the patient endurance of difficult things is patients that that you have to endure from other people what does that mean like someone's really getting on your nerves right and we we all have those people in our lives and we hope we're not the people who get on other people's nerves there's a patient that's required there you could lash out and just flip on someone completely right you could curse them out you could punch them in the face all the things the nufs wants to do get angry or completely just um say all these things to them but that's not patients right the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told us patience is to keep it cool is to not engage right it's to walk away Allah says in the Qur'an when the ignorant one addresses you just say peace like i'm out right when when people who are ignorant are trying to poke at you and get at you but that's hard to do especially if you have a personality or what's called the irasable soul that the soul that inclines a little bit more towards anger is is a bit more um uh you know present right usually people who are very like type a this part that is is a bit more active in them and it's very difficult to walk away from conflict or from when people are messed because you're just like whoa you're talk who you're talking to you know you people tend to get very quickly riled up and um in those instances we walk away right and you have to condition we have to condition ourselves um to uh to walk away so in that instance you remind yourself what of the reward of restraining anger of restraining the anger and the reward of um not speaking out or lashing out at somebody right not loose loosening the tongue because the minute the tongue gets loose um it's very hard to bring it back in and you also remind yourself of the reward of good character that the prophet alaihi salatu was salam told us that the people who are nearest to Allah on the day of judgment are the people who have good character the people who have the best character that the nearest are nearest to him on nearest to the prophet salallahu alayhi salam on the day of judgment and the people who have um the best character and obviously if you're close to the prophet salallahu alayhi salam you're close to God right so the importance of trying to keep good character um cannot be emphasized enough and so when did that come someone comes at you trying to poke create problems some this includes people at work that includes if it's your manager it includes um you know difficult personality in a community obviously includes that one family member that everyone is like oh no they're here right it includes all of those people right every difficult person we might have in our life we just have to be patient through it right and endure enduring difficulty is part of our religion it's not supposed to be a walk it's not supposed to be a walk in the park it's not look at the seerah i was just this occurred to me like yesterday morning i was looking at the seerah of the prophet salallahu alayhi salam and just reading the section on the when he fled mecca and it was like people might know this story right with that when he's then the day he decides that he's giving the command to leave mecca and to make the hijrah he all the koresh are surrounding his house outside ready to do what assassinate him and he leaves in the middle of the night in front of them and Allah has him say a certain ayah from surah yasin that basically makes him invisible he leaves right in front of them he tells Sayyidina Ali to stay in the bed so that they think someone is still there and then he does what he goes and like imagine if mecca is here and medina is over there in order to avoid being traced he's with Sayyidina Abu Bakr he goes that way and then this way and then this way and this is a crazy strange route with people covering their tracks behind them in order to flee to medina and of course they still almost catch him in the in the cave of Thor of Arithor where Allah then you know has a spider web emerged like basically out of nowhere and a bird's nest emerged out of nowhere and that they don't see him but I was just thinking like that that that's like and then this is the desert right the heat of the desert is is is they're experiencing the heat of the desert it's not like they have a ton of provision and food and water and so on and that's a it's a very difficult thing like even if you just think about like the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam even though he's the best of human beings think about him in Sayyidina Abu Bakr city as human beings having to flee their town because they're about to get assassinated run and go take a very crazy route go and hide in a cave stay in a cave for a few days like think about how difficult that must be from the most basic human needs perspective all the way psychologically to how much they love their city of Mecca that like how difficult is that and this is the greatest person to ever exist in the universe ever in the universe the multiverse how many ever verses there are is the greatest person that ever exists and he went through so many so many challenges right it was not easy it was not a walk in the park the lives of the Sahaba were not a walk in the park it just wasn't easy but they endured they went through it they sacrificed and so we just have to remember when people are making things difficult or when we're dealt with a difficult situation who are our role models right and if they these are our role models then we'll be like I want to be like them I might not be there yet but I want to work on myself right to be to try to be there so that's the third that the third type of patience the fourth type is patiently renouncing desires that someone has patiently renouncing desires and so these are the things of the dunya that the soul inclines to that you want to actively try to renounce this this is like going above and beyond to say you know what I know that I really like I thirst for power a lot of a lot of people love power and control and being on top and telling other people what to do and whatnot that's a desire inside of the human being it's one of the worst desires to desire power right such that so much of the point where people would like try to overturn a whole election for that and that happens they're all around the world they have coups and whatnot all because of what the desire for power people die all these difficult things happen because someone just craving power the people who patiently endure you know what I want this but I'm going to work on myself to this point that I don't want it anymore that I don't desire it anymore because I know that Allah doesn't like people who desire xyz right power is an example um exuberance and wealth is an example doesn't mean it's a bad thing to have money or to want money or good salary and so on but to be addicted to money to do anything to do anything by any means necessary to get as much money that becomes a desire right that we're following fame followers the desire for followers these days and and fame is big everybody wants to be famous everybody wants everyone to follow them everyone wants people to um uh have this like a significant amount of awe for them right that's a desire people who are people of spirituality they are they don't want to be known they just want to do their thing right and Allah knows who they are so these are examples of um uh of some of the desires and then of course there's the basic desires which are linked to the sins the the desire for the the sexual desires the desire for um doing something else haram and impermissible and so so that would be another type of um of patience that that is important and it comes from one of the great people of the past that to abandon a single desire is of more benefit to the heart than a year's portion meaning that if you can abandon a certain desire it's actually really good for you um because you can do all this worship but if you're doing worship and you're just thinking about the thing that you desire the worship is not as beneficial right versus um this there's a there's a trait called zohud uh asceticism that it's it's good to try to inculcate to try to eat the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam again you read these stories and you're just like dude they had how many clothes two or three pairs of clothes total they could have had all the clothes they wanted they could have had the kings of and the princes of rome and persia and all these places bringing them gifts they could have had all of it and they would have looked nice and why why didn't they want it what was it about them that didn't why would they not want a big everybody everybody these days wants a humongous home why didn't they want a humongous home like why because they actually were just like i don't need it and it's not like it's it's inherently bad or a sin or something to want a huge house but like they were just like that's a desire i have no need for oh too much food no need for too much meat no need for too many too many clothes no need for too much luxury no need right they just were like i'm gonna because it was inculcating and building this huge muscle of patience and they were setting the example in the bar we don't have to um try to do the same thing but we at least have to know that's a pot that's something that's possible and it's praised and it's and it's virtuous so um inshallah with that we'll uh and yeah that's a really good point right and maybe that's actually the point that he's trying to make that i missed here that if you if you leave these desires and you're patient through these desires you will attain a state of spiritual contentment and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that the the person who wakes up and they have enough food to eat that day right and they're in a state of safety and security shelter right they have their needs they have their needs met and there was one other um basic need um you know that i'm forgetting right now that it was in the hadith but it's like they have everything they need in the world and everything in it just and sometimes you just have when you're going through like we're just not able to focus on all the good that we had to take a step back and be like you know what a lot like what i have today my organs were working fine i could have had a liver issue it was great everything was working my kidneys were working my eyes were working i didn't have a random nerve pain i didn't have an issue with my leg you just count and at some point once you like count 10 20 blessings the problem we were thinking about is going to go away because we're just like in a state of expansion and gratitude at that point so um i wanted to get through one more section but because we started late and it's mugrib will probably end here but there's two questions we'll answer i think mugrib just came in um okay so the question is it haram to have a surgery to stop having kids without husband's permission um yeah that's a that's a good question so in general um if there's like some abusive or situation like that going on uh it would be the answer would be different versus if it's just like everything is normal but you don't want to have kids anymore then you would need to discuss that with your husband yeah that that you would not just be able to go and do that completely on your own but if it's a different type of situation then it gets very very nuanced and i would need like a lot more information and probably need to consult with like a proper scholar before we could answer that but to just completely cut that off and to have a surgery to do so without any consultation or discussion um that would not be advised no okay are there questions what is the best zikr for patients oh that's a really good question um so there's two types of zikr you could do there's zikr that you're reminding yourself and then there's zikr that you say outwardly outwardly doing a lot of salawat number one and a lot of istighfar number two will help you with patience allah masalli ala sayyidina muhammad allah masalli ala sayyidina muhamma salawat help with everything everything any problem you're ever going to just do a lot of salawat upon the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam you'll be good because you're directly connecting to the greatest of creation salallahu alayhi wa sallam the second is do a lot of istighfar istighfar astaghfirullah astaghfirullah astaghfirullah allah says that and the prophet sallam tells us that it relieves anxiety and stress and problems and issues and opens things up right and um so you do a lot of istighfar and that will be another form of zikr when you're going through patience then there's certain names of allah you can call on if you're going through a big problem so if you're going through a lot of pain and you want relief you call in allah by the name allah tif and you say allah tif allah tif allah tif you're calling upon him by the name oh kind and gentle one and that will be a means of relieving difficulty um and then there's the verses from the quran that you remind yourself of that um allah says for example that when they are tested they say when a musibah comes that from allah we came into allah we will return and most of the time we only say that when um someone passes away but but allah is saying no no and any difficulty any musibah comes they say this and you remind you say make that a zikr you're reminding yourself came from allah i'm going back to allah i can do this i can get through this right and allah will help me get through this so those would be a couple things that would be um that would be advised yeah uh was there did you have another question yeah yeah definitely um yes it's an islamic concept uh imam aghazali has an entire text on the types of souls you have what's called the uh khua gadabiyah the irasable faculty which is what i was talking about you have what's called the um the appetite of faculty the khua shahwaniah you have what's called the um uh the sage the sage soul and then you have what's called the faculty of balance and justice and those are the types of faculties that someone has each person has certain and those faculties when they're balanced and and and in a complete state of balance and properly controlled you attain a state of being a perfect person which is only the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam completely attained this state um each person then can be inclined one way or another way right and so yeah we do have that inclination the inclination of sainab abu bakar siddiq generally speaking was very different inclination of sain al-omar al khabin al khattab radilahu an right and different faculties they had to control different traits and they had to have different traits sometimes sain al-omar radilahu an would have to um hold back right he was very very intense and sometimes sainab abu bakar siddiq would have to manifest some more intensity because he was a very very humble and um he would often be weeping right and so there was the different people are inclined towards different types of faculties there's also what's called temperaments which we have which we believe you know it's a concept that we've embraced in our religious tradition that people have different temperaments as the choleric temperament the um there's four types melancholic choleric flagmatic and um sanguine and there's different different traits that people inclined towards and you'll those map well I don't know if you've heard of like the Myers-Briggs personnel but those map very cleanly to like the Myers-Briggs right and so you'll notice that different people have different types of temperaments so they have to they're more inclined to do something than someone else they might you might even met people like they don't really ever get angry and you're like some I might be someone who like could easily get angry and I maybe like to argue and all these types of things so I might my battles will be different than their battles right yeah um the four types or yeah you could read there's a book called the temperament god gave me I would read that book um it's written by a Christian um but it's an excellent book we share the theories with with you know this is like a universal temperament theory there's books in Arabic I'm sure but I'm not familiar with them and then no it's like even outside of faith traditions temperaments are um kind of accepted in the like personality psychology community you could say right like people inclined towards certain temperaments but imamo gazali would weave the temperament theory into his teachings and then link them very specifically to Islamic concepts yeah yeah we believe it's not like astrology like you're a capricorn like we don't believe in any of that but you know this we we completely would would would believe with yeah right yeah oh those are yeah usually like um there's they see personality traits or not they see personality traits but those those concepts are very much linked um as well yeah yeah yeah yeah no I'm just we'll do this question we'll pray Maghreb people have other questions we can resume after Maghreb briefly yeah yeah yeah so you so any desire you give up so there's like two parts to this so the question was that we talked about desires what if someone has a desire for a certain type of food if you give that up will you be um kind of rewarded and whatnot any desire that someone gives up they're building the muscle of patience and they're restraining the nuffs because the nuffs is the the governor of desires it's like the one that's calling you to all this including ice cream including french fries of which I like a lot including you know all these other things that you know the nuffs never inclines towards like spinach you know just doesn't right um maybe some people's nuffs does like I like balik sometimes but not not that much um but it doesn't usually incline towards that right so any desire you give up you will be rewarded for now the thing to keep in mind when it comes to desires is there's not it's not a requirement so there's desires that are required that you can't act on sexual desire that that's that's outside of marriage it's haram to act on eating pork and drinking alcohol and eating meat that's not slaughter properly would be considered of course pork and alcohol majorly haram to act on other meat and slaughter would haram to act on right um the desire for uh you know fame and um at the cost of your religion it's the haram to act on the desire for wealth not haram to act on necessarily but could become haram if you pursue impermissible means to get the wealth so just about now but there's some people they want to go to a state of spiritual elevation mama haddad is like a spiritual master so he's trying to give us the traits of you want to be like amongst god's friends and god's olia and spirit the saints yeah they go a little bit above and beyond to the point very above me on what they will say you know what i'll give myself ice cream today but that means for the next five days i won't get ice cream right like they will risk because they said my nafs wants ice cream and i got a discipline my nafs because today it's ice cream tomorrow it's this you know and then and then and then wednesday uh the nafs likes to sleep and it will sleep through fudger like the nafs just takes and takes and takes so there's a discipline required to to give it up but when you do something you know eat something good you just the way to counter it you just you just shook her you say yalla thank you it's delicious you just really express a lot of gratitude and you don't give it yourself every time right but there's some people they'll be like and if you read the books of the of the of the spiritual saints the the types of stuff that they they would like give up certain things completely just they totally find the eat but they like you'd see that they almost never ate meat because the meat meat is a is a delicacy they'd be like no no no i'm not gonna eat meat i would eat meat once a year on eat right so it's not required but you can do it it's in line with the sun now the prophecy some didn't eat meat much right so there's things like that that you can do to kind of refine further but it's at much like hired levels you could say it's kind of like extra credit refinement these are nuffil deeds these are supragatory deeds they should not be taken um as anything else that makes sense yeah so you don't make anything haram as a good point Allah made halal on your other people but you can restrain from something for your own spiritual benefit without you don't make it haram on yourself it's not that you never eat it but you reduce it a lot or you say i'm just not i'm gonna just for the most part exception the few times a year i'm not gonna engage in this right but yeah if you were to completely say it's haram if someone were to say meat is haram that would be haram just to do that right but if someone's like nope i'm not the prophecy some is recorded to barely have ate it i'm not gonna eat it much i'll eat it once a month that would be in line with sunna if that makes sense yeah so with that we'll pray maghrib and then it will maybe sit for a brief minute yeah yeah please go ahead there's nothing that sahaba permissively yeah the sahaba ikram they would like for example i mean they would give up a lot of what was allowed to do um for fear of falling into what was not allowed to do right so you'll have people for example they'll like they're just never gonna they'll never watch tv they'll just they won't have a tv in their house they'll never watch tv why not because all tv is impermissible but the vast majority of tv and netflix has haram that creeps into it and then next thing you know and then the show just shows up out of nowhere and then boom boom boom and you're watching something haram and they're like i'm just gonna stay away from this completely or social media does i'm gonna never sign on social you never have it right it doesn't mean someone who has social media is doing something haram but it's more likely that person is like i'm trying to draw five barriers between me and the haram i'm not going to do it that's a very praiseworthy thing that no one everyone's not required to do but it's it's good good to all right so we'll go ahead and uh anybody has questions after just come and we can do