 Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Bismillah ar-Rahman Mini buddy Happy Friday everybody, I hope you are doing well. Alhamdulate, sorry for the delay and getting the livestream started. Alhamdulillah, we know that Ramadan is like right around the corner, ans right now we are, it is the 16th of Sha'ban, we have just about 13 or 14 days left of this blessed month of Sha'ban until we enter a much more blessed month known as the month of Ramadan. And Ramadan is a month that is known as a month of mercy, it is known as a month of forgiveness, it is known as a month of Quran, it is known as the month of patience, it is known as the month of discipline, and it's known as the month of spiritual progress. It's a time for us to take a step back and think, how am I doing as a believer? How am I doing with my faith? How am I doing with regards to my relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? And it's a good time because we actually can take a step back, zoom out a little bit, and think through how we're doing, and then we zoom back in and actually work on ourselves. But in order to do that, we want to make sure we've prepared for Ramadan in advance. We want to make sure that we have actually done the work necessary in order to benefit the most from this month. So let's talk a little bit about progress. What is progress for the human being? So mainly what we want to focus on today is the idea of spiritual progress for the human being. So you have different types of progress as defined by society, as defined by Western society, and then of course as defined spiritually, and then there's many types of progress. The common definition of progress in our society is let's say economic progress, technological progress, progress with regards to how we're doing in our career, progress with regards to how we're doing as a society in terms of the services and whatnot that are available. And Hamdullah, those are all signs of some type of progress, but true progress in our religion is about spiritual progress. You could not really progress in any of these categories that I just mentioned, but if you progress spiritually, you are doing really well. And you could progress in all these other categories, but if you have not progressed spiritually, you're not doing well. That's a very basic framework for us to keep in mind. You could see for example in our time that you have people who have achieved the highest positions in society, the president of the United States, members of the United States Senate and Congress, global political leaders, and they're doing well from an outward point of view. Yes, they've achieved a lot of position and power and fame and whatnot, but have they really progressed if basic character traits are missing, if they're not able to control their anger, if there's regular outbursts happening, if they are not able to own up to their mistakes, all of these base traits that we see as baseline in our religion, if you and I don't have those traits, it doesn't matter what position we have, whether we're VP or SVP of product at this company or SVP of engineering. If we snap at people, if we get angry with people easily, if we're rude to people, if we're constantly yelling at people, if we think we're all that, if we think we're the hotshot in the room, if we want to call all the shots, if we have all of these diseases in our heart, none of those titles matter, because those will die at the end of the day when we get buried in our graves. Nobody's about to see, oh, this was your LinkedIn position, like, oh, this was the you were the VP of this institution. Nobody's going to see any of that. They're going to see your name. They're going to see probably like inna lilahi wa inna lihirajun on the grave. And then they'll say the date somebody was born to in the day they passed away and maybe some loving prayer on the grave, right? So all of these outward aspects, we forget and we, but the inward aspects, they remain with the human being. What are the inward aspects? So let's talk a little bit about the Nuffs. The Nuffs is the ego, the spiritual soul. The ego is basically the part inside of the human being that tells us where to focus our desire. That's a very basic way to think about it, right? So you could have somebody who's desiring, always desiring food, always desiring sexual relations, always desiring power and fame. Or you could have somebody who's desiring other types of things. Let's say desiring knowledge, desiring Allah, desiring worship. There's different types of desire, but there are different levels of the ego. True progress in our religion is about how much the Nuffs is progressing, how much the ego is progressing. If the Nuffs is progressing and going from one level to the next level to the next level, Alhamdulillah, that means we're doing well. If the Nuffs is staying at the same place, that's not a good sign. And if the Nuffs is just getting worse and worse and worse and worse and generally just stagnating, also not a good sign. Let's think through what it let's define that Nuffs in a little bit more detail. It's the part in us in the early stages where it commands us to all of our appetites, it commands us to our desires. It's the part that's lazy, doesn't want to wake up for fudger. The alarm goes up and is like, screw that, I don't want to wake up. It's the part in us that is not really interested in learning and working hard and changing ourselves. It's the part in us that wants to just sit back and watch Tiger King documentaries, you know, binge watch, how many ever episodes we can watch and forgetting that there's other work to be done and that time is precious. It's the part in us that wants to just eat, eat, eat. And it wants to eat all the most delicious food all of the time and significant amounts of food. It's the part in us that desires in an inappropriate way, desires the opposite gender. It's the part in us that stirs up our sexual appetite. It's the part in us that wants to be in charge and wants to be the boss and wants to tell everybody what to do. It's the part in us that wants to be famous, wants to have fame, wants to have followers. These are all from the nuts. And you see that as people get older, their desires will shift. It starts a basic desire for food, then it desires for a sexual relation increase, then the desire for fame comes about, right? Then the desire for control and for power comes. And then you have some mix of all of those start to manifest such that you could even have people who are presidents of the United States who are having extramarital affairs. They are having a really, they're on a power trip. They want to be in charge and want to have control, but they don't have basic character traits. So we've seen these in the last few decades. We've seen these types of traits manifest again at the level of a leader. And so you just basically that person is just, oh, when you were young, your folks on one desire, as you get older, you just want all the desires because more is available to us in order to access. And it's true for most human beings, right? As we get older, our desires change, but it's still a desire and it's still a desire that we shouldn't be after. Let's talk, though, about what we, what the nuts really, how the nuts is supposed to progress. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he mentioned in the Quran, there's a verse that says, that he created the human being in a state of anxiety, in a state of worry. And, and then he talks and other verses about the human being that is not any longer. There's no longer in that state of worry or in that state of anxiety. He mentions, for example, that the Awliya, the saints of God, these are known as the friends of God. The Awliya are like this close group of people who only Allah knows really who they are, who are really, really close to God and they're God's friends. And so he mentions these people in the Quran. He says, for example, in the Awliya, Allah, Allah Khufun Aleyhum Wa Laahm Yahzunun. At the Awliya of Allah, the friends of God, the saints, they don't have the fear, anxiety, worry, and they're also not in a straight state of trepidation, constant trepidation, right, of the heart. And so it's this journey, right, for the human being that we start in this state and we're trying to progress to this state of tranquility. Along those, along the journey there, there are kind of like stops, right? You got to take stops in order to get to there and there are certain levels, right? If somebody is like climbing, let's say, or let's use the example of video game, let's say somebody is like trying to play a video game. In the video game, you have like the first level and then you want to, you eventually go on and you get stronger and you get boosts and then you get to the next level and then you eventually get to the, and then finally you get to the level where you beat the final boss and then you win the game. Religion is, you could say comparable, right? In that you and I have a level we're starting at and then we're trying to get to the next level and we're trying to beat the enemies that we have, right? The enemies of the nafs, the enemies of Shaitan and then eventually we want to try to get to the end level where we, quote-unquote, win the game spiritually and that means we've lived a good life and we enter Jannah, inshallah. So from that example, progress though is defined generally as progressing in three ways. Progressing from the first level of the nafs to the higher levels of the nafs, we'll talk about what those are, progressing from a state of regular anxiety to a state of regular tranquility and then progressing from bad character traits to good character traits. That's essentially spiritual progress summed up. If you and I are doing one, two, three, all of those, inshallah, that means we're progressing. If we're not progressing in those areas, it means something's wrong, right? It means that we're not actually applying things correctly and if we don't care to progress in those areas, then okay, that's a whole different question, right? If we don't even want to engage in the game to begin with and play the game to begin with. So each level of the nafs, it has different signs. It has different signs. These signs are manifested in three ways. One is that it'll have different desires at levels of the nafs. Two is the heart will feel different types of feelings and will think about different types of things depending on the level it's at. And three, the limbs will engage in different actions. That's just one way for us to measure it. It's the criteria by which we measure which level of the nafs am I trying to get to or am I at right now? Let's start with the first one. This is known as the nafs al-amara, the evil commanding soul. It's mentioned in the Quran in Surah Yusuf in the chapter of Joseph, alaihi salam. So this nafs al-amara, what is it? It's the soul, it's the evil commanding soul. It's the part in us that at its base level, all it cares about are these base desires. So again, we mentioned desires, what the limbs are focused on, what's the heart focused on? Let's start with desires. This desire, it wants to eat everything that it sees. It has no care for is the food good for me, bad for me, is it halal? There's not something I should be eating. Food is a huge focus for this nafs. It really has high sexual appetite, right? And we see this manifesting throughout society, oh, in this time that we live in, right, that you have apps that you can literally scroll through just to try to hook up with people just to manifest that sexual appetite. It's a very clear sign of the people developing that and the people engaging in that as nafs al-amara, as the tendencies of this lower self, the evil soul that's pulling in. It's the desire to, again, want to dominate other people and say, I'm in control, I'm the boss. It's those evil desires that start to manifest. That's what this nafs really cares about. Its desires are oriented down. Think about this, you can have desires that are oriented like this way, horizontally and vertically. Vertical, this is a desire we want. This is just a metaphor. We want to have our desires be Allah, Allah's messenger, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that dhikr of Allah, thoughts about Allah, reading, Quran, gaining knowledge. All that sounds like unachievable and whatnot. It's difficult to get us to tilt from this to this. It's not easy, but we have to use spiritual techniques to get us to focus on things that are gonna bring us down to things that are just gonna keep us in one place, to things that are going to lift us spiritually and vertically. So that's a framework for us to think about desires. This desire, these desires will pull the human being down. What are the limbs that engage in? The limbs are going to be driven by the desire that you and I have. So limbs in this case means like what our hands are up to, what our feet are up to, what our eyes are up to, what our ears are up to. And so we'll generally be focused on being lazy, skipping all of our prayers, not really caring about what's right and what's wrong. Maybe constantly eating things or ingesting things that doesn't matter. Like let's say, for example, there's all these studies out there now that show how dangerous smoking we've already known, vaping is to the lungs and vaping is to the body. At this basic level, it's going to be like, eh, well who cares, right? I don't really care, I'm just going to smoke this. I'm going to use my vape pen or whatever it is to get high. All these types of things, this limb, the limbs will be engaged in, right? It's, you know, when social distancing is not in place and when there's no quarantine, it's going to want to walk to places where it can be up to no good, right? Walking to the clubs, walking to bars, walking to places to talk smack about people. All of these types of basic sins that we may engage in, this nuffs at the evil soul will move the limbs in the wrong direction. And so spiritually what's happening is that this person is just going down, right? They're not actually able to progress, but there's a way up out of that. And at the heart level, what do I mean by the heart level? It's what are you and I thinking about, right? So is this heart is basically focused spiritually, the spiritual heart is thinking about like, what's the next thing I can eat? What is the next person I can tell what to do? What's the next position that I can have the most power in and most control over people? And how can I just make a bunch of money? How can I, you know, get more followers and get more people to like me and get more people to listen to me and all of these basic desires. This heart is thinking about that. It's also thinking again, I mentioned about its sexual appetites and how can I, you know, get with this person, get with that person, what can I do, right? And again, you don't have to go farther than like the average American college campus. Like go to an average frat and you'll see all of these desires playing out. That's like the focus point of most of the people in that situation. It's just what they're thinking about, right? Like, okay, this is my next goal. I want to, you know, do this and do that and do this. And the goals are very much goals that spiritually will bring us down. That's at a basic level. Let's talk about the next level is as the nuth starts to wake up. So how do you wake up? The nuth starts to realize life is short. It starts to realize that death can come at any moment and it starts to realize that God is real, that God actually can punish us, that if this is some manifestation in this quarantine situation of a small example of God's what he's able to do, imagine how intense it could get in the next life where there is no time stop to when it ends. It's eternity. It can keep going and going and going. And then you have very real, serious, painful punishments that come up and that can manifest in the grave on the day of judgment in the next life to the point where if we're having a hard time in quarantine for a week or two, three, four, whatever, how many every months we are in it on the day of judgment, Allah mentioned in the Quran that that day for some people will be 50,000 years long. And they will just for the day to start, they will be waiting and waiting and waiting and we will be standing before Allah with no clothing, completely naked, sweat dripping down. And for some people, it'll be dripping to their ankles. For others, we'll be up to our in torso area. Others will be up to our necks and some people will be completely immersed in their own sweat. Just waiting for Allah to start the judgment because we'll know how much wrong we've done in this life. And if we can't even wait a few months, I mean, that's a very, very real situation that's going to manifest on the day of judgment that there's a very long wait time. So we either are patient in this life in stopping ourselves from engaging in sin and not doing things we shouldn't be doing or God forbid, we're gonna have to pay the consequences and be patient when the time to be patient is gonna be over. There's gonna be no reward for patients then. It's your patient until the day starts and then difficulty starts to manifest. So when the nafs and the ego realizes this is all real, this is not a joke. Like there is an afterlife. I'm actually going to be held to account. Life is not just about just wasting my time and engaging in whatever things I wanna engage in, just playing all the time and kicking it all the time and having fun all the time. There's a serious aspect of life. Now it wakes up. When it wakes up, it starts to move into the next category known as the nafs al-lawama. The self-blaming soul. This is the soul that's like, yo, yo, yo, what am I doing wrong? Hold on, I was doing that. I was watching this all the time. I was like talking to that girl or that guy all the time that I shouldn't be. I was eating this, I was looking at this, I was listening to this, right? Like I'm listening to all this misogynistic, profane music and that's demeaning women and yet I have mothers and a mother and sisters. How could I like, how could I do that? Like how could I promote that, right? I'm promoting people who are regularly promoting evil in society and promoting corruption and I'm like encouraging myself to back them up. I gotta wake up a little bit. Basic deeds, it starts to reform. Oh, I'm not praying at all. I gotta start praying. Oh, I'm not waking up for a fudger. This is serious, this is serious. Oh, I'm staying up all night in quarantine and I'm sleeping all day. Hold on, that's not the way the human being is built. I need to wake up, I need to change myself, right? All of these types of awakening start to happen as the soul stays in this category known as the nafs al-awama, the self-blaming soul. And we are in this period for quite a period of time, right? This is the state that most of us are in where we are constantly blaming ourselves regularly and thinking about, what am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing wrong? And keep in mind, this is the self-blaming soul, not the blame everybody else's soul, right? That soul is not a good one to be in where it's like, oh, this person did this. It's because they did this to me in this situation that I'm like this. It's like, okay, there is a reality to our past events in life, but this soul starts to take accountability for what I need to do because you and I are held to account for our actions. So what happens then? It's start the desires for the soul oscillate. Now it starts to go from just focusing on things that we're gonna harm it to focusing, I believe you could say at the horizontal level, just let me just look at like, what's in front of me? How can I progress in life? And it goes slowly, right? To look up towards the heavens and towards Allah, metaphorically speaking, and between going back and forth between the base desires it had at the Amara level and the desires it's trying to have towards seeking Allah's pleasure and getting closer to Allah and trying to fix our life, just at a very basic level. Now the desires will oscillate kind of back and forth. The limbs at this level, we will still sin. Of course, the human being is going to sin, but the sins will decrease and we will feel bad about them. The main sign here is, are we feeling bad? Do we have remorse and do we want to change ourselves? So we may still do something wrong with our hands or look at things with our eyes or talk that smack a lot and listen to all this stuff that we shouldn't be, all these things we may do, but we're gonna start to feel bad. And there is that feeling of when that guilt manifests and it drives us to change and to feel remorse and to actually fix our situations, then that's a sign that, okay, I am starting to progress. The heart is going to think sometimes about Allah, sometimes a lot about Dunya. It's gonna oscillate, right? And sometimes just about silly random matters, but it's a good sign if the heart is starting to have times where it's thinking about God. Whereas at the first level, that heart is the definition of heedless, meaning it doesn't remember Allah at all. Doesn't really realize that God is real. It knows it intellectually, but it doesn't actually practically realize it, right? And this is a very, very dangerous level to be at where the heart doesn't even wanna accept that God will take us to account for our sins or just kind of exclude certain categories of deeds. Like, oh, I'm sure God will forgive me for my prayers, right? It's like, okay, God, that's the first thing Allah takes us to account for is our prayers, according to many of the Hadiths. So that's a sign where the Nafs is just in its laziness. It's saying, oh, I'm doing all this other good. Maybe I give all this charity. I do all these other things, but at the personal level, I don't wanna engage in any worship. So I'm just gonna excuse it. Hope that God forgives me. That's the epitome of the Nafs not caring and just being lazy, right? And then at the other level, you actually have the Nafs being, oh, hold on, no, no, no, no, I'm not praying. I need to work on it, right? That's a good sign that Nafs is starting to change and work on it and work on it. And again, keep in mind, self-blaming. You hear this a lot where people will say, well, I saw all of these, quote unquote, Muslims doing all this silly stuff, right? And they were doing all this wrong. And so if that's what Islam is about, I can't really do that. Hold on, look at Islam objectively. Look at Islam through Allah's Messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and look at Islam through what Allah conveyed in his book. Don't look at Islam through what other Muslims do because Muslims, we're gonna do stupid things. And we have a lot of Muslims right now who do a lot of ridiculous things. Even people who claim to be knowledgeable people and then they'll do like abusive things or they'll go on power trips or all of these, and especially manifest in the Muslim world. You see a lot of this corruption manifest. Don't look at that group of people because God is gonna hold you to account for the objective truths that he presented. And the Messenger of Allah, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was a flawless human being. So we look to him as an example, right? But the self-blaming soul will blame its own shortcomings. Then you eventually working hard, working hard, doing a lot of dikkur, seeking a lot of knowledge, working to help human beings. What starts to happen? The nafs eventually progresses to a state of what's called the nafs al-Mutsma'inna, the tranquil soul. This is the soul at peace. And it's mentioned through the al-Fajr in the Quran. This soul is caring about Allah. It wants Allah to be happy. It wants Allah to be content with it. It wants Allah to be in a state of basically just where God is happy with us. Its concern is Allah. Its focus is Allah. And its orientation and the efforts it engages in in life is Allah. So it's oriented in this direction, right? Going, focusing on God. And the oscillation could happen. But the nafs al-Mutsma'inna is the goal. And that's when you see this constant, or this movement from a state of anxiety to a state of tranquility. That the more we progress along these paths is when we're going to start to progress. Sin and bad and corruption, etc. will pull us down and increase our anxiety, our stress, our worry. And it won't do it immediately. It'll do it in the moments when the anxiety comes in. And when in their moments of anxiety, you'll see the person who has focused life on good and discipline being much more in a tranquil state versus the person who has not paid attention to it. They will constantly be in the state of worry. That's okay. Alhamdulillah we have a religion which teaches us how to go from here to here and constantly to progress. So, main takeaways for today and what we can be doing. Ramadan is the month of progress. Set your goals, inshallah, in this month of Ramadan to be about progressing from whatever level we might be at that Allah knows to trying to get to the higher levels. Make a dua, since number two, make a dua to God. Ask him, Ya Allah, help me get to the level of the tranquil soul. Let me be among your favorite people who are close to you and let me get to the level of being tranquil and being calm. Because at the end of the day, this tranquil soul is also the happy soul. And what are most people searching for in life? Is happiness. Most people are searching for a state of being okay and calm and happy. And regardless of the circumstances, they're trying to be positive, right? And the nafsil and mu'tama inna, it is the solution for the problems of modern society because most people are not at all in a state of tranquility and in a state of happiness. We are in a state of the opposite of that, of depression, of worry, of anxiety and grief. But alhamdulillah, your religion, our religion has the solution to these issues. But do we look, right? Allah mentioned in the Quran that if, like, do they ponder this book? This book has all the secrets in it, has the solutions. But how many people take this book seriously? Most of us, since Ramadan, it's been on our shelf. Maybe in Ramadan, we'll take it out and we'll read it. Then we'll put it back. Make a sincere intention. The third thing is make a sincere intention to want to change in this Ramadan. And the way to do that, assess where you are at with regards to your desires, with regards to what your limbs are engaged in, with regards to what your heart thinks about. And then assess where you want to be at. And then come up with a plan for how you can get there, right? And a book that I would highly recommend by Imam Zaid Shaker and Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is known as the Agenda to Change Our Condition. It maps and outlines the agenda to go from this level to the higher levels. And it's a good book to keep in mind for this Ramadan and for the situations that we are in. And finally, the more we pray, if we get our prayers right, that's the first step, is dhikr. Get our prayers right, then we add in more dhikr. Okay, we get the prayers right, we add in some Quran. We get, sorry, we get the far the prayers right, we add in Sunnah prayers. Then we add in Nafil prayers. Then we add in some Quran. Then we add in Sunnah dhikr, the promises someone would do. That's the first thing, okay? Let's get that right. That will start the level of ascension. The next major takeaway is, the more we are concerned about learning this religion. That take a step to actually figure out details of what mistakes you and I might have been making in our life and rectify those mistakes. Did I miss a lot of prayers? Did I miss fasts? Did I hurt people? And what's the consequences for hurting people? Do I have bad diseases in my heart? Spend that time learning. And the third step here is make abandon dua. Ask Allah to help you and help me. We should ask Allah to help us go from this level to this level. And inshallah, if we do those three things, then remember, this is a month of mercy that's coming. It's a month of change and it's a month of progress. And the progress is about progressing, not in all the outward means. The more a bank account grows, it doesn't mean we're progressing. If we're rich and famous and all that, it doesn't mean anything. It's about how we're doing spiritually. That is the sign that Allah has examined us and don't be fooled by all of these people that have giant followers and mansions and are living the quote unquote the life, but deep down inside, right? They don't have the same happiness and blessings that our religion provides. And maybe they do and we pray and we hope that they do, but that's not the sign of progress. The sign of progress is what? Getting the ego to progress. Going from the evil commanding soul, right? The next level is what? The self-blaming soul. The next level is the third level of the tranquil soul. We progress to these levels by thinking about what our desires are at, where our desires are focused, what our limbs are engaging in and what the heart is thinking about. And then practically, we do what? We engage in rectifying our dhikr and our relationship with Allah through our prayer and through remembering Him by engaging in knowledge and learning more about God and learning more about our religion and by asking God for help and asking Him for ease. These are the secrets that our religion has laid out for a basic progress from a state of anxiety and tranquility. We ask that Allah facilitate it for you, for your family, for our communities and that He lift this difficulty upon us, upon all of this ummah, upon the entire world, insha'Allah. And we make this a blessed month and we make Ramadan even more blessed for us. Wassalamu alaikum wa bariqa ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa alayhi wa sahbihi wa salam. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullah. Thank you very much.