 Allah SWT has created the human being, one of the most sophisticated of His creation. But in the essence of the human being, He has put a heart, a place where love grows, a place where all emotion resides in there. We get angry with the heart, we get sad with the heart, we become happy with the heart. The heart is really the hub of the human being. And the Hadith of the Prophet SAW that if the heart is sound, then the entire body's sound is true. And spiritual aspect, if you look at it from a physical aspect, the heart pumps blood to all of the organs in your body. So it is the stopping of the blood that human being, the circulation that human being leaves this world. The death of the heart. But the heart needs to be not only physically kept healthy, but also spiritually. And one of the nature of the dunya is that it try to agitate your heart. This is the nature of the world. Try to get you, everybody has a button and the dunya knows how to push your button to get you angry, to get you distracted and not focus. There's a reason why we are here. Allah has put us down on this planet earth. There's a reason. And we have to figure out what is that reason? Why are we here? This is a great question, right? It's one of the greatest questions you can ask. It's at the center of Rumi's message. Ask, where did I come from? Where did I come from? Where did I come from? Where did I come from? Where did I come from? And what was the purpose of my coming here? And where am I going? Will you show me my final destination? Where am I going? Quran asks, where did you think you're going? It's a Quranic question. So the heart plays an important role in this journey. But the heart gets sick spiritually as well. The heart gets depressed. The heart gets sad. This is a time many of our hearts are wounded. This is a time many of our hearts are wounded right now. It's in pain. It's suffering because of our brothers and sisters, not only in Palestine and Afghanistan with the earthquake. Over 2,000 people lost their lives, children, mostly in women, right? All over the world, Kashmir is still the same. The Uyghurs in China are still the same. All of the problems of the world, the heart aches. So one of these scholars, when Abu Bakr al-Razi went to one of the great sheikh and masters of his time, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn Ahmad al-Khawas. He was one of the great Gnostics. And he asked them, he said, how do we heal the heart? Is it a medicine for the heart? Is there an ointment of healing for the heart? Because when you get a cut, you put new sperm and it heals it faster. He said, yes, there is what they call the Dawai dill. They call the medicine of the heart. He said, the first thing in the medicine of the heart is reading Quran with reflections. Reading Quran with reflections. One of the things about Quran, there are many things, but think about a few things. The first thing, it humbles you. That's the first thing. It puts you in your place. You open the Quran and you read al-Fatiha and you want to start. What is the first word? Alif, lamb, mean. What does that mean? I don't know. Only Allah knows. So go with the Quran in humility. The first thing you know, you don't know. You don't know. They ask you a prophet of Allah. Allah is talking to his prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. They ask you about the roof. Say the roof, only Allah knows. I don't know, Allah knows. Allah has given only a little bit of knowledge to us. We only have a little bit of knowledge. So the first thing, it humbles us when you go towards the Quran. The second thing, in the first ayah of al-Baqarah, That is the Book of Al-Rayb. This is a book of guidance. I'm going to give you guidance. Guidance for your life. Guidance for your death. Guidance when you're here in the world. Guidance in the grave. Guidance in the... All of it in the Quran. Guidance in your family life, in your business life. Do you want to be successful in the junior? I'll show you how to do it. Do you want to know? There's nothing that is left in the Quran. Allah did not leave anything. Everything is there. There's a beautiful story of Sayyidina Omar when a man and an Muslim went to him and he said, Oh, you said that everything is in the Quran? He said, of course. Everything is in the Quran. He said, okay, how do you make Thareed? How do you make this food? It's like a dish the Arab used to make. Is that in the Quran? The Quran teaches you that? He said, yes it does. He said, how? He said, come. So he took him to his house, called his wife. He said, hey honey, how do you make Thareed? He said, oh, this is how you make it. This is the ingredient. This is how you cook it. And the man said, no, no, no. I didn't say, you said the Quran. You're asking your wife. He said, the Quran says, fast elu ahli dhikri in kuntum la ta'lamun. Ask the people who know if you don't know. I don't know that, but my wife knows. So I asked her and there's your answer. And that's how the man became Muslim. He goes, really truly everything is in the Quran. So we have the Quran, but we have to reflect upon the teachings of the Quran. At the center of the stories of the Quran is the story of Yusuf Alayhi Salam. And then the story of Musa and Farah. If you look at these two stories, Allah's teaching you the nature of the dunya. There's a Firaam and there is a Moses. There'll always be Pharaohs. There'll always be Moses. This is the nature of the world. But we always look at the Pharaohs and the Moses outside of ourselves. This is where the problem is. Quran is for us. It was revealed for us to weed it, to reflect on it. And this is why Maulana Rumi when he finished the chapter on the story of Musa, Alayhi Salam and Firaam, he realized what Allah is saying. And he told us Musa of Firaam that has the two. You are Musa and you are Firaam. You can be Moses and you can be Pharaoh. And we are. At some point we are Pharaoh, at some point we are Moses. And there are people who are Pharaoh and there are people who are Moses, right? Reflection on the Quran. You'll realize how the world works. Allah gives us the example of Yusuf, Alayhi Salam. Surah Yusuf is a surah that it's similar to the Bible. It's just a story. We give you the best of the stories. You want a story? Let me tell you a story Allah says. And Allah gives the most beautiful story when the Iranian director made the series on Yusuf, Alayhi Salam and they said it was the most watched series in the history of Persian television. They asked him, how did you do it? He said, I didn't do anything. God wrote the script, I just directed it. And it's really like a script, like a movie script when you read surah Yusuf, Alayhi Salam. But in the surah of Yusuf, Alayhi Salam you see dysfunctional family. You see in the family, the brothers of Yusuf throw him in the well and then they sell him for 20 dirhams, right? These are brothers. Allah is trying to show you something. He's trying to show you something. No, expectation plus reality equals disappointment. Expectation plus reality equals disappointment, right? This is brothers. And this is why one of the Urdu poets said, If love was blood relation, then Yusuf wouldn't end up on the streets of Egypt as a slave boy for sale. It's showing you that there's always going to be depression. There's always going to be sadness. There's always going to be oppression. But what's the way out? What's the way out? We were one of the great shoe of our time. And my good friend who was from Libya at that time, if you remember, now the problem is the Muslim, we just remember only thing that's on the news. We don't remember things that happened like a month ago. When the dam broke in Libya and thousands of people lost their lives in their homes with the flood. And he asked how are the people of Libya? He said, yeah, they're trying to figure out these engineers, they made a mistake and they're trying to figure out if they can figure this out, why did the engineers, how did the engineer messed up that this dam broke the water dam? And the sheikh said something amazing. He said, well, we, he told him, this man who was a scholar as well, he told him, you need to go back and teach them Aqida. You need to go back and teach them Aqida. They should let go of the engineers and cling on to Allah. They should let go of the engineers and cling on to Allah. These times are times that we turn to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. These are the time that we make toba and we turn to Allah. When climate is hits us, we turn to Allah. Anything that happens for the Muslims, it's always there's one way out. Allah only one way out. Allah closes all of the doors, leave only one door open, the door to Him. And if you go to that door, everything will be fine. For as long as we're trying to figure out the engineers, okay, go ahead and figure it out. That's the job of the government. That's not our job. That's not our job. We should turn to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. But the second thing that He said, He said that you have to have your stomach not fall. Like try to keep it a little empty. This is one of, it's a great wisdom. People don't understand the wisdom of this. The Prophet, Sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, your stomach should be one third food, one third air and one third water, right? So you give room. And He said, stop before you're full. Stop a few more so before you're full. Modern science, and this research is incredible, that it takes 20 minutes in order for the stomach to send a signal to your brain that you're full. 20 minutes. So if you stop before you're full, 20 minutes later, you really feel good. But if you don't, that's when you feel like, oh my God, I overate the prophetic. And one of the things that when you look at the history, there's a beautiful story of Saadi Shirazi, about a man who went hungry. He was just, nobody gave him food and he was just testing something. The incredible story, but just for the sake of this part. So he becomes so hungry that after a few days, he didn't have any food. He said, he started hearing, ilham, this inspiration. So Saadi says, the diwara mehroba shomad begush. He said, this ilham was from the mehrab that was in his chest, but it needed emptiness to echo. So he heard the echo of his own truth. We all have it inside, but it's so full, we can't hear it. But if you go in a valley and you shout, your echo will come back to you, right? Your echo, because there's emptiness in there. So just not to eat too much. This is a sunnah of our Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to eat less and so you're always, and Mawlana Rumi wrote the entire Masnawi was inspired when he was hungry. The moment he ate, he came out of the hall and he couldn't say anything else. The third, he said, to do qiyam al-laym and do tadarro, and to do, to weep, to actually cry at night. Get up in the night and pray. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam gave us this beautiful, this is like a formula. A formula. Afshu sallam wa atkim utta'am wa sila al-arham wa sallu bil-layli wa nasu niyam tatkulu al-jannah bil-salam. Spread peace, be peacemaker. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. Be peacemaker, sallahu khayr. Peace is better. What does that mean, peace is better? Peace is better than anything else. Peace is better than anything else. You ask the people who live in wars. You ask them, do you want money? No, do you want wealth? No, what do you want? I want peace. I just want peace, because you cannot do anything when you're perturbed. So the first thing, spread peace, right? And then feed people. It's a great sunnah, and I know people here, and I tend to do that, and they feed people. And then, sila al-arham, it's very important to keep the bond, the kinship, the relationship that are lost, but especially those who have no choice. They're no choice. You don't have a choice picking your uncle. You have no choice, Allah picked it for you. Or your aunt, or your mom, or your dad, or your grandfather, you have no choice. Allah picked that for you. So whatever it is, you have to make sure that you keep those relationships. These are the things that makes the heart, these are the remedy for your heart. These are the remedy for your heart. When you do this action, your heart feel at ease in a peace, and there's a healing for it. So, religion, and then he said, pray in the night when people are asleep. That prayer is different than this prayer. This prayer, everybody sees you. This is an amazing prayer. Juma, we all put on our best clothes. We come here, and everybody sees us. Masha'Allah, it's great, it's an amazing day. But at night, when you get up, right? So one of the things that Sheikh Ibrahim Ali Aqoubi, Rahimullah, the father of the great Sheikh Mohammed Ali Aqoubi, said, he said that it's amazing how people get up and pray in their pajamas. But if you ask them, because there was a man that came to the mosque in Damascus after Fajr, for Fajr prayer, and he was in his night clothes, you know, just like the Arabic pajamas, which is very decent Arabic pajamas compared to the Americans, obviously. And then after that, the Sheikh said, we're gonna go visit a Sikh person in our community. Let's go visit a sunnah. So they all said, okay, and this man said, no, can Sheikh, can you wait like five minutes? I said, why, so let me go change. We're gonna go to this man's house. And he said, you come to the house of God, and you stand in front of him, and you're not embarrassed from this clothes. But yet, you don't wanna go to someone's house because you're embarrassed of this clothes. So even for that, at night, if you pray, put on something, I always tell people, you have a Fajr jubba, you just slip it on over your clothes so you're actually standing in front of Allah. So the night prayer is very important. The reason why it's important, because Allah has put all of these, the blessings, spiritual blessing in the night. You want wealth, you get up in the morning early. That's the thing, you want wealth? So there's three types of sleep, aylulah, aylulah by aylulah, according to our tradition. There's more, but these are the three that our Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us about. One is after, aylulah is after Fajr. That sleep, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said it would bring poverty. If you look at all of the rich people, every, you just do research, and I did that, of the top like 50 people who are the richest people on the planet, they all get up like four a.m., go to the gym before sunrise there at work. They don't sleep in the morning. That early hours of the morning, right? And they work, and they gain, Allah gives the junior, it's a formula, you get up early in the morning, but if you sleep, it doesn't make, it's not haram, but it's just the wealth of the junior is in those hours. So get up early in the morning if you want to be rich and then don't sleep after that, work hard, right? Then aylulah is after before dawn, at that noon time, to do a nap, that's the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said it's sunnah and it's good for your health. It's actually very healthy. Stanford did a research many years ago that if you want to live a healthy life, take a nap in the early afternoon, and I think, and then it will be, you will have a healthy life. And I think the Spanish siesta, the Spanish, they have this afternoon nap, it must have came from the Muslim who, when they conquered Spain for 800 years, that they got that habit. But, and then you have aylulah, which is after, they say it's Asir's time, and that's not good for your health. And we know now with the trees, how they release the energy in the evening and it's not good to be under a tree obviously at night. So, all of these beautiful things, but the night is a place, the night is for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. If you want success, in the Akhara you get up at night and you pray and those, you know, the people they say they didn't have a moment in their life. If you shed one tear in the middle of the night, don't let anyone purchase that from you. Because that's worth more than the dunya and paradise. One tear, one shit, if you tear at night and you get up and there's nobody there because that is a sincere tear for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. That's an edama, that's regret. That's the moment that you're breaking down. And when you break down, the light enters you. And don't sell that moment. Don't trade that for anything. One of the great poets said, he said, don't sell that tear drop that you shed in the early hours of dawn for the Pleiades, for the stars. Because it's priceless. That tear is priceless. So get up at night and pray because those are the moment that you find yourself and you find Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala in those quieted moment that nobody's there. You're not trying to impress anyone. You're not trying, everything is for Allah. This is the moment that you are who you are. And the last thing he said, he said, you have to keep the company of the people of righteousness, good people. That also brings, it's like a healing medicine for your heart. There are people that you sell that are toxic. There are people that are toxic. You sit with them, you feel toxic. All they talk about is the junior, backbite about people and negative. And those are the things, there's homes that are toxic. They're homes that are toxic. You go to somebody's home, you feel agitated. You wanna leave that home because this is a house that always they're backbiting and they're doing things that are antithetical to our religion. But there are places where you go, you feel at home. You just wanna spend time with people. I met a man about seven months ago. I just met him. I didn't even know his name, nothing. He just walked into my work. And I didn't know who, I didn't even know if he was, what language he spoke. He came to Salam, I didn't even know. I just wanna sat next to him. And then we started talking. And he's the closest person right now. And I get, I have to see him every week because he is just a good person. He's a beautiful man. And it gives you that energy that is positive in tranquility. I saw in my heart feel at ease when I see him. And it's like a medicine for a whole week. Just a moment with this person. He's a beautiful man. He's one of the immigrants from Afghanistan that was left as hometown and came. So these are the things that they teach us. And Khawas was one of the amazing people. He has mastered the spirituality and he gave us these advices and the reason why these work because they have tested it. These people would never give you advice unless they tested it and know that these things work. I'll say this, I'll say this. May Allah forgive us. All praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon the messengers and upon his family and companions. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you. The gift of the heart is incredible. And the gift of the night is incredible. Most people, they don't know the power of night. And this is why even in the Western culture when they want to leave God, leave religion, what do they do? They stand up and dance all night. They don't do it in the daytime. They do it at nighttime. Because there is a power in the night. There's a man, there's a true story whether you wanna believe it or not, it's up to you. He said he dressed up, took a shower, dressed up at night and he was going to a concert club party and he went. Anyways, he went in a club party and it was very crowded, too crowded, the dance floor. So he left the dance floor and then he went and this place is like two, three stories. And he was from the second story, he was looking at the dance floor. And sometimes players and coaches are different. The coach sees the bird's eye view, the player sees the bee's eye view. It's different. So he said I looked at him and all of a sudden he said the music just disappeared. I couldn't hear the music anymore. Like literally just faded. And I saw all these people dancing and they looked very ridiculous without. And he said I heard something. He said I heard, and this is when there's fitra, there's purity in you. He said I heard something that said this is not why we're creating you. We didn't create you for this to dance like monkeys all night. You should pray. And he said to himself, he said, I said to myself, pray? Why would I pray? This is called dilemma. Everybody will go through this. Well, you come across how you solve this problem. And he said, I said to myself, you're stupid. You're asking me to pray in a club, right? I came here for a different reason. Why would I wanna pray? And he said, myself told me, because you have wudu. You just came out of shower. You're pure. You still can pray. Pray your aisha. I said, it's two o'clock in the morning. Nobody prays aisha this time. If you hear that story, like you would weep. And he said, at this time when I was like literally confused, something inside of me pushed me to the corner and I found a spot and I went and I started praying. He said the moment I said, Allahu Akbar, he's a Muslim guy obviously. And he said, everything disappeared. And he did his prayer and he left. He said, I left that and I never went back, right? Years later, he said, I never went back. But everybody would get a calling. Those doors are open because the night, Khadabdullah Ansari, the great commentator of the Quran and the spiritual master, he says, Shabhiz ki ashighan bashab raz konan. He said, get up at night because the night is a time that lovers communicate. Lovers, they only do it at night. They communicate at night. They do razz. You know what razz is when you tell your mysteries and your secrets that you can't tell anybody. You can't tell anybody. Those are the time that changes people. Those moments in the night that changes people and that brings the heart to life, that heals those heart. If you don't do it, then the heart will get agitated. Then you will behave in a way that you will regret, right? You will behave in a way with your family, with your friends, with your loved ones, with your community, with your society, with your teachers, with your children that you would regret. Because you didn't put the right ointment of healing on your heart and your pain and your suffering will make other people suffer. So no matter what happens, we always have solution. We always have solution to the mysteries of the hearts, to anything that happens to us. So may Allah give us tawfiq and make us amongst the people that we put the ointment of healing on our hearts, inshallah. And become amongst the people that on the day of judgment, Allah is pleased with us. And the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, is proud of us on that day when he sees us and we stand in front of him with Kaldan Salim, inshallah, when hearts that are pure, inshallah, wa ta'ala, inna alhamdulillahin ahmadu wa nastayna wa nastaqfirum. Wa na'oodu billahi bi shururi, anfosina wa min sayyati, a'malina, man yahdihi laa fa laamudil laa man yudh lalfa laa hadi ila wa ashadu an laa ilahi lalawah adhihu laa shariqa laa wa ashadu anna muhammadin abduhu wa rasulahui. Awadu billahi min as shaitanu jim ismillahi rahmaan raheem. Ya ayyuhu al-lidhi na'amalutta qullaha wa ta'ala fi qurana ma jid ilna allahu malaykatu yusalluna al-nabiyya yuhu al-lidhi na'amalutta qullaha wa qul qawla nsadeela yusleh lakum a'ama lakum wa yakhfellakum adhunubakum wa man yotia allahu wa rasulahu fa qatfaz fawda n'adima a'aqala allahi subhanahu ta'ala fi qurana me jid ilna allahu malaykatu yusalluna al-nabiyya yuhu al-lidhi na'amalutta sallu alayhi wa salli mutaslima allahumma salli ala sayna