 that we have, excuse me, the ability to listen to these brilliant Qadis from all over the world who have, you know, so much beauty and melody in their voices, and we can connect with the Book of Allah's Prophet through them. There's apps, there's just so much YouTube free channels, it's abundant, it's everywhere. So if you're, again, at that place where you don't necessarily know how to read very well, inshallah that should be a goal that may Allah, you know, make it easy for you that you become, you know, that you get a teacher that you eventually do that. But in the interim, don't beat yourself up, rather just say, I'm going to still commit to having my relationship with the Qur'an every day, and that means listening to certain parts or surahs, listening to the English and the Arabic, whatever makes sense for you, that's beautiful. And you're fulfilling this wonderful and most important form of ibadah during this month, which is connecting to the Book of Allah's Prophet. So feel good and positive about that, and feel uplifted that Allah has given you that ability to do that. Now if you can read the Qur'an, and if you have ample time to do so, and by ample time, I mean you have free time, you know, and we're now looking again faster, I think, or 15, maybe 16 hours of the day. But the entire day is really available to us when we look at our ibadah. We can do it either during the day, or like the the prophets and the awliya and the scholars before us who maximized their ibadah at night time. And that's the next thing that I wanted to talk about, which is really the sweet spot. The sweet spot of our ibadah is timing. Timing is so essential, because there are moments during the day that we should, you know, that we know that our our du'as are most the jab, they're accepted, but we have to seek out those moments and then know how to again maximize the potential of those moments. So as far as, you know, Ramadan is concerned again, this is just my assessment after listening to a lot of people and just my own experiences. I feel that there's a few tweaks that we can all make to actually improve our overall experience, and those tweaks are simple practical things. Like I just said, as far as the prayer, number one priority. We've got to get better about praying our prayers on time, inshallah, and being in a state of those things. I just feel like that just should be really the habit of every Muslim, inshallah may a lot increase us to do that. But when it comes to the actual fast, that were, you know, when people have a difficult time with their fast, I think that there's usually a few practical reasons for why that is. And this is kind of, you know, my again, assessment that typically what happens is for most people, whether on a normal, let's say, you know, Ramadan where we're working and where we have a lot of commitments, we end up delaying or pushing that point of suhur to maybe about 30 minutes before fajr, you know, or maybe 45 minutes if people are really elaborate with their meals at that time. But it's still not an adequate amount of time to prepare a meal, eat a meal, pray extra tahajjud prayers, inshallah, we should try to always, again, look at that sweet spot. It's a time of Ibada, right? So if you're sleeping because you got to wake up at eight or nine, and then you set your alarm for, you know, four o'clock in the morning so that you can do certain stuff before five, right? Like practically speaking, right, that is likely going to put you in a bit of a rush, okay? Because what you're trying to do likely, again, this is, again, not maybe it doesn't apply to you, but I feel like a lot of people does apply to, is that they're trying to get everything squeezed in into the small pocket of time. And then, you know, after you pray fajr, it's like a lot of people, if they have the ability to, they'll try to get a little bit of cat nap, another, you know, rest before they have to get up and get ready, or they'll just sleep until, you know, maybe 10, 30, 11 in the morning, okay? So in that first scenario, if you're just, again, trying to wake up or take a little bit of a nap so that you can wake up, you are depleted, right? You're depleted because you didn't get enough sleep, you probably slept late the night before, and you know, and then you had to wake up and do all this rush stuff. So your sleep is off, and once our sleep is off, once we are not in a good restful state, it sets the stage, right, for what's to come. Because as I said in the beginning, we have things that affect our mood. Lack of sleep or inadequate sleep is absolutely up there. So a certain foods, dehydration, medication, a lot of variables, right, that can contribute to someone either being in a good positive state or not. So we're in a compounded situation in Ramadan, because we don't have food, and we don't have caffeine and drink to wake us up, and then we're also not getting enough rest. So obviously it's going to impact our experience for the rest of the day if we start off in such shambles, right? So this is why a lot of people get lethargic and they don't have really much motivation. And then, you know, Shaitaan, yes, he's locked up in chains, but people have to keep it real or be honest about, I mean they have to know that despite that, he's still able to whisper and still able to, you know, affect us, inspire us to do wrong. So you see a lot of people because they're so drained and exhausted from the lack of sleep and just really low motivation that they end up, you know, indulging in things because it's just easier to lay in bed and watch a bunch of videos, social media, or Netflix. You see people still, I've seen threads where people are still watching Netflix shows, you know, that are probably not appropriate at all anytime, but especially in Ramadan. But where does that come from? It's because, you know, Shaitaan wants you to really not look at this month as being what it is, which is a jackpot, a lottery of Ibada. You know, there's just so much opportunity there. He doesn't want you to see that. He just kind of wants you to focus on what you're not able to do and all the stuff that your nafs is deprived of, right? So it's kind of like, it's an inconvenient time and that's what Shaitaan makes in Ramadan for a lot of people. A time of inconvenience, you know, I don't get to eat, I don't get to sleep, I don't get to drink what I want, I don't get to do this. I'm inconvenienced, but of course, inshallah, their Iman is still there so they persevere. But that, if that's the experience that you allow for, then that's what you're going to get, right? Because Allah swt tells us abdibi, which is, I'm in the opinion of my servant. So whatever we put forth, we will have confirmed upon us. So if we kind of just look at Ramadan as just this month of, I'm just going to, you know, push through 30 days and, you know, go through this deprivation and maybe I'll lose weight. You know, there's some people, that's the silver lining, you know, that it's like a little opportunity to just lose some weight and, you know, or when it was before pandemic to socialize. You know, so we have alter your motives or intentions, right? But if that's your experience, that's what you're going to get. That's it. That's what's confirmed for you. But if your experience or what you expect is greater and you say, Allah, this is a month of immense barakah and I don't want to squander it. I don't want to lose a month that, you know, the people before would weep the moment it was over and they were weeping the whole year until it came back. You know, this will happen, the great people of the past, because they appreciated what it was. They understood the value of this month and we've, you know, we're kind of, like I said, just biding our time, waiting for the inconvenience to be over so that we can just get back to our lives again. That is all waswasa from shaitan. Those thoughts are inspired by Iblis. He wants to strip the beauty and the glory and all of the just amazingness of this month so that you only focus on the physical deprivation that you're going through. And then you, because you're falling into that trap, that's what unfortunately you experience. So then you look at Ramadan as being, here it goes again. We have to fast. I'm not happy. All of it is mindset, right? It's mindset. So changing your mindset, shifting your mindset and saying, I'm not going to squander this opportunity to gain massive rewards with alas Pranthada, to actually really have those spiritual openings that people are writing about and talking about and lecturing about for hours and hours and hours. And there's books written about this, like, I don't want to squander my, you know, opportunity. So what am I going to do practically to not do that? This is where the tips come in. So my advice is to really look at every individual, all of us, we're all different and we all have different needs. So you have to, this is where self-awareness, self-knowledge is so critical. And if you know me, you know I talk a lot about emotional intelligence and the first part of it is self-awareness, right? Self-awareness knows knowing yourself very well. If you're the type of person that is asleep, like you just love sleep, a glutton for sleep, right? And you may very well be. That's just your reality. You love your sleep. It's like the greatest thing to you. You can't wait for sleep. Admit it. Halas, be open and honest. Say, I love my sleep. Okay. So now if you love your sleep, what are you doing waking up or going to bed at 11 at night, you know, because you're reading blogs or reading a book or doing something for fun or amusement? That is not helping you. If you're sleeping late, you're going to wake up in that frenzy and then you're going to have the day that I just described. So you have to be more realistic and say, because I love sleep, I need to work with my body and train myself to adapt to a maybe less sleep-dependent schedule and I need to start working on that. So what am I going to do? I'm going to be smart and I'm going to maybe push my sleep or, you know, sleep around 10 o'clock maybe. If normally at 11 I'm still groggy and it's just not enough for me, then let me sleep at 10. See what happens. I make that one adjustment. Now look at what, you know, you might think it's a loss because I know I'm a woman, I'm a mom. I know how amazing the night time is, okay? Like when the kids are in bed and the house is quiet, trust me. Like many of you, I'm sure, I covet that time. However, if it were to impede my spiritual practice, I certainly would abandon it. I would give it up and that's how you have to look at it. Like that one extra hour where, yeah, you could maybe be doing something that you want to do, your nuffs wants to do something, whatever it could be. How about you just give it what it wants, which is the sleep, right? And then wake up earlier than what you've been waking up. Like that, you know, four o'clock or four thirty, I think a lot of people are probably, because Fuzzer comes in around five, so maybe four, ten, four, fifteen people are waking up. But what do you think would happen? I present a scenario to you if you slept a little early and then you woke up a little early because you're adjusting, right? You're adjusting the sleep. Now you wake up and you are not rushed. You have an hour or more to prepare your sahur. You have an hour or more to actually pray some tahajjud, read some Qur'an, or listen to Qur'an while you're preparing stuff. You have ample time. Then you have an hour or more, like I said, to get everything in place, either for yourself or your family, and then to slowly wake up the members of your family so that they can join you in the meal. And everything, the tension is, there's no tension. There's no rushing. There's no crazy madness and yelling across the hall, like, how do you happen to do this? You know, sometimes people, because of time and just that anxiousness, they let all of that, they invite all of that in, that negative energy. And then again, because we're rushing and we're not sleeping enough, it just kind of sets the tone for the rest of the day. But the opposite can happen. When you plan and you prepare and you maximize your worship for nighttime, because you're doing it to fulfill the sunnah and to, you know, please Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, you want to be in that easy state, you will see the difference. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala will inshallah facilitate your day for you. Time is a creation, right? We should know that. That time is something Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala creates and he can stretch time and he can decrease time. And that's why a lot of people have that feeling that in Ramadan, time is stretched, right? Or when you go certain places or are you're in the company of certain people, you feel like there's this stretching of time, right? That is a, that's a reality. When time is being stretched, that's basically Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala's barakah in that moment, in that gathering for you. So you have to believe that when you, as I said before, prioritize the worship of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala and make him, like the objective of pleasing him, your number one priority, and you start to plan your day and make those little tweaks, you don't think he's gonna repay you? You don't think he's gonna reward you with ease in your heart, with rest in your body, with strength to endure the fast? Of course he is, because he sees that you are saying, Ya Allah, your priority to me, you're more important than anybody else and I'm going to even give up my nighttime, whatever, you know, leisurely activity I normally do. I'm gonna give up these things because I want to have a beautiful, peaceful, calm state, calm heart when I'm in the remembrance of you and I want to ease into my prayers. I want to fulfill the sunnah of doing tahajjud prayers, because this is, again, the Prophet ﷺ every night. I mean, when I think of the Prophet ﷺ who had Jannah, he's guaranteed, he's the beloved of Allah, but yet he felt compelled, he felt compelled to stand up and pray tahajjud every single night, and until the point where his legs were swollen, you know, I mean, it's just really sad that we, and may Allah forgive us, because we don't, we fail, we fail a lot, you know, we fail to see how important it is, but here he's teaching us that he's, you know, what was the answer when Aisha, you know, saw his feet so swollen, and he said, should I not be a grateful servant? Right? I mean, this is the perfect answer for all of us. How are we displaying our gratitude to Allah SWT? Where is the gratitude? Where is the proof and the sincerity of the claim of gratitude to Allah SWT? If we can't prioritize Ibadah to him, and what we're talking about, if you're looking at time, I mean, if we're being honest, prayers in and of themselves five minutes max, because most of us stand and we'll do the shortest surahs we know, because we got something else to do, so we're looking at 25, 30 minutes that you're spending on your prayers, and that, even that, it's not good quality. This is where we also have to come back and question our claims, right, of, of sincerity, because, you know, as there's this, let me pull it up, there's an ayah in the Qur'an, all those parts that it says, in Surah Baqarah verse two, sorry, verse 243, he says, indeed God is the possessor of bounty for all people, but most people do not give thanks. You know, when I contemplated this ayah, I just was like, Sahfirullah, we all assume a lot of good things about ourselves, and I think we all want to assume that we're grateful to Allah, we want to assume that, we want to make that claim, because we are doing what we should be doing, you know, inshallah we're fasting, we believe, we have, you know, certainty of faith, so Alhamdulillah, those are all great signs, but I think when I read this, and I, that last part, most people, you know, for us, probably not to say that, I think it's really a way, a challenge, you know, for, for all of us, or we should see that as a challenge to whether or not, you know, to ask ourselves whether or not we fall into that category or not. You know, that's how I'm looking at that ayah. I'm looking at that ayah, like, yallah, I have, I say I'm grateful to you all the time, Alhamdulillah, I probably, I mean, we all do it, right, inshallah, we all say, inshallah, Alhamdulillah, we're constantly praising Allah, but Alhamdulillah, if it's a big part of your vocabulary, and the way that you speak, and it's like, uttered very frequently, you know, this is the time to question, are you really in a state of gratitude, if you can't wake up when our beloved Salam would wake up to the point where his legs would get swollen, and I'm not saying to stretch and make your tahajjud, you know, a painful process, but I'm saying just the fact that we don't think to do it, or we don't prepare ourselves to do it, we don't, you know, plan around these things, should actually, you know, make us, you know, really question our, our, our, the sincerity of that claim of gratitude, right, so when you wake up with ample time, you will see the ease, I promise you, if you give yourself a little bit more cushion in that time of sahur, and you, even though you're going to be groggy and it's going to be difficult for you, you will see the difference, and also just, I mean, I'm not a medical expert, so I'm going to put this out there, but you can do this, search yourself on the benefits of sleep training, because the idea that we need eight to ten hours of sleep has been questioned, it has been refuted by people, and there are many people who actually, very much like what the prophesies said on this habit was, you know, that sleep, sleep is done in cycles, right, we call them sleep cycles, and you can cycle through your sleep so that you do it in a way where you're waking up at the end of a deep sleep REM cycle, instead of interrupting that, which is what most of us do, we interrupt a REM cycle, and that's why we wake up heavy and not able to push forward, but if we make these adjustments and learn about sleep training, we can actually learn to wake up in a time that it will not, that we will benefit, that we won't be, you know, lethargic and slow and run down, but we can actually wake up, we can, we can be alert, and then what we do is we, whatever sleep is lost, we compensate for that later, which is the practice of the prophesies said, I'm right, he would practice, or he would have Kailula, which was between Doha and Asir, so he would worship through the night and then he would make, you know, whatever he lost, he would make up for it during the day, so these are all very practical things that we can do, adjustments just to again facilitate the fast experience, because if you wake up and you have nutrient dense food, rich foods that are really just, you know, you know, going to nourish your body and have lasting, you know, effect for that, for the day, inshallah, you'll see that your levels aren't spiking all over the place that make you, you know, hungry and just angry and all those things that people experience, so you want to look at being responsible with what you're eating and then also timing yourself so that you're allowing yourself to pray, those sweet, that sweet spotter of tahajjud prayer, and open your heart to Allah SWT, you know, create a space. I actually, I created, here I'm in my office, and right behind my screen we've created a little Mosalah area, and it's just, I love it, I'm thinking honestly of keeping it throughout Ramadan, because I didn't realize how much I needed it, just to have a space that's dedicated for prayer in the house is really special, and then a friend of mine, she gifted me, let me grab it real quickly. She gifted me this prayer outfit, and it's so beautiful, but I never, I mean I've worn them before, but I've never had one quite like this, so it comes in this cute little bag, okay, and it's like this nice, I don't know the material, but it's just really soft and pretty, and it's a huge prayer outfit, but it's very fancy, and masha'Allah, I just love it because it puts me in the right state of mind to worship Allah SWT, and I'm telling you, these things have an effect, the space that you're in, like this whole, you know, Feng Shui or Marie Kondo, all these people, what are they tapping into? They're tapping into this idea that the spaces that we create have an effect on our mood and on our states, right? So when we create beautiful spaces where we can worship, and we take the time to wear something like that just puts us in a state of, I don't know, I can't explain it, but it just makes me feel like I'm doing something special, although I know I'm doing something special, I think the mood that putting this, you know, just wearing it as opposed to standing what I used to do before, I had a shorter like jersey material one, but you know my pajamas were, bottoms were showing because it didn't fully cover the whole body, so you know, kind of, I mean it works, you pray, you do, it's functional, but this is elevating the experience, right? When you actually put all that effort into making your Ibadah beautiful and sweet, you have to believe there's going to be an effect on you, on your heart, and Allah SWT, like I said, is going to reward you, so that your experience throughout the rest of the day is just facilitated, and Alhamdulillah, like this is our fourth fast, I think, I, you know, just my own experience, Alhamdulillah, from the beginning so far, I haven't had any issues at all, like I don't even remember honestly that I'm fasting, because I also try to keep busy, which is another tip, you have to stay busy, a lot of people ask me, like, Allah SWT, you're doing this and doing that, you're doing so much, but that's because I'm aware of myself, I know that if I don't regulate myself and work on projects and teach and try to offer, you know, whatever I can and do more outreach, that I will fall into my own nefcy behavior, and so this is self-awareness, I'm very aware of myself, so I have to keep busy, I have to have to be moving, and like you know, I said, Dawa is in my blood, so doing any form of Dawa to me is, it just re-energizes me, it charges me up, it gives me that motivation, that's me, so all of us though, have our own unique outlets, right? But we have to believe that Allah SWT will facilitate our experience of Ramadan, if we prioritize Him and His pleasure above everything else, including ourselves, so sacrificing our time at night and committing to a serious regimen where we sleep enough so that we're not in this totally demoralized, just unmotivated state when we wake up, rather we wake up with like mission, I have a mission, right? And you know, there's other like little practical things like making wudu with cold water, you want to wake up, you know, you don't want to rub your eyes and like, you know, or just like making sahud and eating in that state, no, we got to be like present, you know, like, I'm awake, Allah, I woke up, I abandoned my bed because I love to please you and I'm going to now, you know, create a meal or prepare a meal so that I can nourish my body and the body of my family or their bodies and I can, you know, we can fast because we know that fasting is something that only you know the reward of and it's for you and you're so pleased with it. That's the kind of attitude you have to have, right? But if you don't have that, as I said before, then your experience will be confirmed based on what your attitude is. So you got to be very careful about your mindset. Okay, I'm going to take a quick break and look at the comments here. So Nadia's saying sometimes I feel that because I have so many prayers to make up from the past, I rushed to get that number down before I die. It may not be qualitative prayer because I'm just so anxious from the few thousand prayers. You know, Mashallah, thank you for mentioning that Nadia. First of all, may Allah bless you and reward you for doing for committing to making up your past prayers. That's a beautiful reflection of your Nia and your state. So may Allah increase you in that. But remember, you know, this Dean is a Dean of Yusra, Nia the Prophet, I said, said that the Dean is easy and we're the ones that actually complicated. We humans were the ones that make it harder on ourselves. So you have to dial it down a little bit if your experience of prayer is anxious and you're not really feeling like good, then you need to make some adjustments. And that maybe is, you know, where you look at how many prayers you're making up every day. Is it like, you know, is it too much for you? And because given your other commitments and other things, and inshallah, if you have the Nia and you're working towards that Nia, you have to believe with certainty that just by having the intention and making the effort, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will reward you whatever your Nia is, whether or not you accomplish it. That is just a promise. Your intentions are driving the reward that you're going to get. So I know we're very sometimes qualitatively wired to think of in numbers. I'm sorry, quantitatively, but we're talking about quality, quality Trump's quantity when it comes to our Ibadah. Okay, it's very clear. We should try to strive for the best of worship, not just, you know, a number. And if you feel like you're doing multiple prayers during the day, then maybe you need to commit to just doing one prayer that you're making up with every prayer, or, you know, kind of tweak it a little bit, but just have that trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that you're going to be rewarded for your intention, regardless. So I hope that answers your question. So we are past time. I'm sorry. I just noticed that I went over. I apologize for that, but I thank you for sticking around. Are there any questions before we end? And again, we'll be doing these throughout the month of Ramadan possibly if they if the feedback is positive. And I am able to then we'll continue afterwards, but we have a few more sessions. So I'd like to just keep the same flow. And you guys are always welcome, like I said, to come and join the conversation or talk or ask questions or comment. I actually really appreciate the feedback. It's helpful, because then you don't feel like you're just talking to yourself. But if there are no other questions, then we'll go ahead and end this first session. And I really again, appreciate your spending your afternoon with me. There's so many things that could be happening or that you could be doing. But I do appreciate that. And I hope to see you on the next or next Monday. Also for any moms in the room, if you have children 10 plus, I am going to be doing purification of the heart, inshallah, Tuesdays and Thursdays from the same time five to six, you can find that information on the MCC page on Facebook or their website, MCC East Bay, and sign up, inshallah, we're getting a lot of great, I mean, sign ups already, mashallah. So it's going to be a full class, but I'm really excited. I love to teach children. So I'm looking forward to that. Zora, John, yes, the class will be same time next week five to six. And I'll try to end on time. Forgive me again for going over, but please join us. Let people know it's open to everybody. It's not just the MCC community. Anybody can join. Mashallah. And thank you. I mean, I mean, why did my mail reward you as well? Thank you for being here. Again, I'm very grateful to all of you for spending your time with me. Oh, this is the part of online stuff that is like afterwards when you watch the recording, you're like, Oh, my God, because I have like a bit of OCD. So I'll see like things that are off. And I'm like, Oh, wish I could go through the camera and just fix my hijab. Oh, yeah, it's mashallah. Happy to see you. I miss you. I miss my crew from, you know, where? Mashallah. But it's good to see you, sweetheart. Thank you again, ladies. I will end in Dua. Inshallah. SubhanakAllah. I'll end in Dua. Inshallah. Peace be upon you.