 Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. So we are going to continue on in this series on the obstacles that went on. So far we covered the obstacles of the first knowledge and the second one is the obstacle of repentance, the obstacle of knowledge being just to quickly summarize that when one receives this desire and this yearning to want to get close to Allah, the first thing that we have to do is make sure that we know the basics of our deen properly and we have to make sure that we spend time learning the fundamentals of our religion. Many times we grow up, we are in our 20s, in our 30s, even 40s, 50s folks are in that age group and we may not have correctly learned how to worship Allah and we may not have correct understandings or in terms of our belief about Allah and our belief about the way in which Allah handles His creation. And we may not know of diseases in our heart that exist that will ruin us in this life and that will completely ruin us in the next life if we don't work on them. Those are the three obligatory sciences that every Muslim is required to spend time learning. Your Aqidah, your belief, your Fiqh and the legal code and the laws of our religion in accordance with one of the four madhab of the religion and four within the Sunni tradition that is and then Shia tradition has other madhab. And then to spend time learning how to purify the heart. That's the first barrier. He says the one who does not do this won't be able to properly traverse the spiritual path. They'll just constantly be stuck. It's kind of like a that hamster running on a wheel thinks that's putting in effort but they're not actually achieving anything. They're just continually going and going and there's no real progress that's being made. But the one who establishes knowledge at the beginning of the path and really focuses on crystallizing the knowledge and then implementing the knowledge they'll start to see major gains on the spiritual path. And he'll talk about what some of these gains are in terms of how you identify whether you are progressing to look out for in terms of knowing, hey, am I actually progressing in terms of my relationship with Allah? It's first how much does someone desire to want to spend time thinking about Allah, talking to Allah and doing remembrance of Allah. And that's a very, very important sign. The one who is starting to make progress will see an increase in their desire to spend time alone with Allah or just in conversation with him or remembering him. And the one who is not progressing may be doing all these things outwardly, praying, fasting, et cetera, which is all still good to do and required to do. But they will not want to, they'll just want to love the loving people that always want to be around something, they'll always want to be distracted, stimulated by a television show or by music or by this or that. You always want something in your ears and your eyes around you versus having time for solitude and being with Allah. There's a balance when it comes to our religion, but that's one sign of spiritual progress. And the second sign is that one starts to see their character traits improve, that people around you should ideally start to notice you becoming a better human being if you are traversing the path of spirituality and if someone is implementing the religion correctly. And if you're starting to become a more generous, more kind, more merciful, more helpful, more gentle human being, these are all very, very good signs. And if somehow one is practicing the religion but becoming more angry and intense and argumentative and judgmental, these are signs again that someone's taking the medicine incorrectly. You can take a dose of medicine and if you don't take that right amount, it can actually make you more sick than help you heal, which by religion must be taken from spiritual experts who have thought through the details and given us prescriptions on how to get better, the foremost being the Prophet ﷺ. And then from him we have what's called a senate, a chain. And he taught someone who did the Sahaba, who then taught the Tabi'in, who then taught the next generation, the next generation all the way to the likes of Mama Ghazali, the texts that we're studying all the way down to the scholars, many of the scholars who exist in the time that we live in, who that maybe we've had a chance to benefit from. And as long as someone has a senate, they know that okay, what the knowledge I'm learning is healthy knowledge. What one wants to watch out for is somebody who talks a lot but doesn't have teachers or shew in the path. And then as a result of that, they'll confuse people. The Prophet ﷺ said that he warned us about people worse than the Dajjal, and he called them, they're really not a soup, the evil scholars, the scholars who they outwardly look like scholars. They have the appearance and the approach of the scholars, but all they're doing is leading people astray, many times by their intensity of outward practice, no purification of the heart, constantly telling people not to do this, not to do this, not all things that are maybe beneficial for them, or many times because they are, their character is still corrupt. And so they only do things for the sake of their own status, their own fame, they're wanting the desire to grow, you know, these days, celebrity shapes and this whole thing. That those are signs that if somebody's desire is linked towards that, we want to be careful of learning from them. We want to learn from what are known as the Ölem al-Amidi, the scholars who focus on the hereafter. That is their main focus. And thus, it's not about this dunya and we'll be talking about the dangers of this dunya shortly. I mean, one small example of this, there are a lot of people right now whose entire focus is on telling people that everything that they do that's a religious practice that they don't like to do themselves is not proper. I saw someone the other day, prominent, prominent, quote-unquote scholar from one of the Muslim countries. And it has like probably tens of thousands of people on whatever television channel this person is on. And literally publicly saying that to sit there and make dua after every prayer is an innovation. And I was just completely perplexed. And he said to Bidas, you shouldn't make dua after every prayer, you should just get up. He doesn't mind you talking and going on the phone and doing all these other things. But to sit there and converse with Allah, not permissible. And he had no real proof for it, but just this is the danger of when you don't know proper knowledge. Now you look like a scholar, you have the whole outfit, you have everything, but you are leading many, many, many, many people astray. That in a time when our ummah is facing a mass exodus from our religion, people are not practicing the religion anymore, people immersed in major sin, people immersed in drinking and promiscuity, and all sorts of itna, this is the issue someone chooses to focus on. This is the sign of the Ulema Asu, the evil scholars, and what I also call the scholars of Bahid, the scholars of entire outward focus, no focus on the inward Imam of Azali, heavily, heavily reprimands these people. He goes at them. His whole, this is not the text we're reading, but his Ehia al-Lumideen that he, which is his kind of famous, famous text that he wrote, 40 volumes, is focused on bringing these scholars, telling them to collect themselves. Hold on, focus on what's really important to the people under them. So that's what is important when it comes to knowledge. The second thing is, the second year, there's an audio issue that should be working, inshallah. The second thing is, there's a, the one, one seeks knowledge and now you start to want to repent. We realize how many mistakes we've made, we realize how many shortcomings we have, and then we start to ideally focus on fixing those shortcomings. And so the path of repentance begins, and that's the second big hurdle that we discussed last time. Repentance is composed of three. First is, I'm sorry to interrupt, that you feel remorse, remorse and guilt for what you've done. Number two is that you feel that you just, you make the intention and you start to act of actually repenting to Allah, asking for forgiveness, and ideally with sincerity, with weaving before Him, with crying before Him, and so on. And number three is that one makes the intention to never do that sin again in their whole life, and it's a sincere intention. If you fall back into it, if we fall back into it, it's still considered that we repented, but we mistakenly fall back into it. But if we don't make the intention, we say we might do this again, I don't know really, and that's not repentance, and that is, you can still ask Allah for forgiveness, but it's not a sincere tova, a sincere turning, that back to Allah. Okay, so we'll continue then, inshallah, into the third hurdle. And for those online that are having audio issues, it seems to be worth the time, so I would try resetting your own app or browser. Okay, so the next hurdle that we're going to talk about today is this whole section, which really is like five hurdles. So we're going to break these up into the next few classes, but he's what is calling them the impediments that one is going to face on the path. And the first one, think about these as like your enemies, they're going to come at you, and you now have to actively combat them, meaning a much more active role that these people are playing in your life, and they will be able to actually divert and trick them into traps. Of course, we'll eventually get into the nuts, but the first one we're going to start with is the dunya, the dunya, and everything in dunya, and how this is very, very, very dangerous hurdle that we're going to see. Now remember, a few kind of quick reminders here, what we're going to talk about, the majority of this is not in the realm of haram outright, or not in the realm of it being haram to leave, or a far to follow. This is the path of desiring to draw near to Allah, not the path of doing the bare minimum, and something to keep in mind, because we don't want to confuse our spiritual state, that if we think that something we're about to talk about is completely haram, we'll miss the balance that someone needs to have in their deen, because you don't expect someone who's starting off on the spiritual path to do certain things that Imam al-Qadir is going to do, but if someone does actually establish in this state a complete attachment from this world, he was at a very, very, very high level of trusting reliance in Allah, such that he wouldn't go to sleep at night with anything in his home that he couldn't give it to someone else. Anything, food, anything. There was no idea of storing a bunch of food. There was literally no idea of storing property. That time he was praying, and right after he finished the prayer, he rushed to go back to his house, and they asked him why. He remembered a little bit of, I believe it was money, something from the spoils of war that he had in his house, and he said, I remember that I had something in my home, and I had to give it away to the poor immediately. But this is the station of the Prophet ﷺ. We are not required to this at all, at all. But this is the model that he ﷺ set, and it is a high bar in the sunnah that exists. But the essence of what we're supposed to learn from this is to be detached. There is physical detachment, which is like, I don't even have it at all in the first place. And spiritual detachment, which is, I don't have a desire to have it, even if I have it in my hand, it's not in my heart. This is what the spiritual, spiritual path is all about helping us attain. The way we can combine is really left for like a rare example in our time. It's very difficult to do that, and that's not really what elders are calling us to do. But it is good to know that it exists, and it is good to know that someone who actively reduces their physical amount that they have with the intention to all the sunnah, that they're like, okay, I have 100 pairs of clothes, I'm going to get rid of half of them, and then just get to the level where I have five outfits or 10 outfits. The Prophet ﷺ, they had one or two outfits, one that's it. And it's not like they couldn't have had more. They were getting gifts from the Romans, they were getting gifts from all over the world, the different empires that existed, kind of like something that used to happen back in those times, different rulers would essentially send gifts, especially to someone who is achieving a lot of status like the Prophet ﷺ, but he wouldn't keep gifts, he would just give them away, give them away, give them away. So it's not like sometimes people think, oh, they couldn't afford it, they couldn't, no, no, no, no, Allah offered him everything, but he chose a path of complete humility and detachment from this dunya. And he was trying to teach his umma, this is, this dunya is literally a place for traveling. You're just stopping by, if you go to the airport and you're waiting there for a few hours, you're not going to start to build this and buy a bunch of clothes and do all this, you're just going to have the bare minimum in every suitcase, you have what you need, and that's it, right? So he's trying to teach us to be in this world as a traveler, as a traveler, as a waitfair, right? That's, that's, this is the high bar. It's important to know that it existed. If someone follows that with intention to follow the sunnah, they are following one of the most lost sunnahs of our time, and they will have an immense, immense, immense reward to detach. But that detachment must be coupled with a loss of desire for those things. You can't detach and then be like yearning in your heart that I wish I had that, I wish I had that, I wish I had that, no, no, no. It needs to be gone physically and it needs to be gone spiritually. It's better to just have it leave in your heart and still have it in your hands than to just leave in your hands and still desire it in your heart. That's the goal of our religion is ultimately a station where the heart's pure and is purified of all these extra things so we can focus and direct it entirely on Allah. It's called iqbal al Allah completely turning the heart to Allah. Just focus on Allah and Allah and that doesn't mean you don't exist in the dunya, you're still working, you're still with family, we're still eating, we're still doing these things. But everything is with the intention for Allah and someone is completely inwardly and hourly directed towards Allah and observing that Allah is watching them and in the state of realizing the state when you make that is not just to stay or to claim but to bear witness. And so they're in a state of Shahada, witnessing that Allah, that's it, it's all about Allah. They're in a state of completely witnessing that. That is again the fruits of the gifts that Allah gives somebody when they start to traverse the path and they start to take it more seriously and Allah gives them to be for that and so we'll be getting into that later on. So the first big hurdle is the dunya. If you look in the Quran, Allah really is like always talking in a not good way about the dunya. He's saying this is going to deceive you, this is going to trick you, this is all empty. Even the words that he uses for dunya in Arabic have like big holes in them. Allah says the dunya is al-mata al-gurur. All the key consonants in that have big holes in there the way you spell it. Empty, empty, empty. Like these are the insights that some of the scholars have had about how Allah speaks about the dunya. It's just an empty place. It's the goal is not the dunya. So let's first talk about what the dunya is and then we'll talk about what the word of it is in the side of our word. So dunya you can define it as anything that distracts you from focusing at the heart level on Allah. Anything that distracts you from focusing on the heart level with Allah. Now it is also defined as the relentless pursuit and desire. Desire being the keyword for money, fame, wealth, power, prestige, recognition in the hearts of people and the consequences that result from this pursuit. That's the dunya. Whether someone gets it or not isn't the goal, it's irrelevant. It's the desire to have somebody who like has all of it and desires it. Who have it, but it's just that's it. The whole life focus is just hustling for the dunya. It's all about the dunya. It's trying to make more and more and more. It does it to always dunya, dunya. That is going to distract us. The first big enemy that's going to come and when it comes, it will prevent someone from purely developing their heart towards Allah. It's like they say that the dunya is the east or it's like the west and the west direction, the farther you're going to get from the other. You'll never be able to have both. We'll talk about balance here. But examples of this that are consuming us in the time we live in. So this desire to always follow celebrities and celebrities doing and pop culture and marry this person and this person did this and the royal family did this and all of this, all dunya just completely be the seeker. The traveler and the path should not be concerned one iota about any of these things. You shouldn't even want to talk about that. It will fill the heart with darkness. Talking about people of dunya will have the impact of desiring. Talking about it as like a it doesn't mean that you are better than a person. It just means you know this is all dunya. It's not worth my my conversation right now. I should be focused on trying to do things that are going to be pleasing to Allah rather than talking about you know this person stating this person and married this person and so on and so forth. All the drama that exists in pop culture that's one sign of dunya. Another one would be this desire of constantly trying to become wealthy. Like desiring it really badly. So someone has extra time. Let's say you have a job and Allah hopefully Allah gives us the blessings to all have job that um if someone is employed and then has a job and is able to make ends meet and then they have extra time and their whole extra time is like how can I do this business and this and then the stock market and then it's all about dunya. It's all about now I gotta get into crypto and then no crypto crash because ftx and then so on and so forth and just go go go go go and you're just all about it and that's the focus. Now what am I going to do with my investments? What's my strategy going to be? How am I going to plan out this? And it's just constant constant constant dunya. The dunya in and of itself will distract you from the worship well. I remember one of my teachers he mentioned that if someone has you know we're blessed to have a home if we're blessed to have a home, now let's say someone has like a few homes they buy a lot less than them with wealth and ideally with no loans or interest loans they acquire multiple property. Now they'll have to think about okay renters and then get faucet breaks and then this breaks and I have to go and take care of that and then take care of the wall issue and then take care of this in two houses and then they get a third one. And so you might think that oh I'm gaining my wealth and there's nothing wrong with having investments is not what I'm talking about this is the spiritual path. This is not nothing we're talking about right here is haram at all. If this is simply when someone is trying to be refined spiritually and when someone is trying to make progress but it will distract someone from the time that they could spend on traversing and getting closer and closer. And our goal is we should try to use a portion of our extra time. On extra things we could do to get closer to Allah that's the goal. Comes in the hadith that the hadith would see that my servant is not drawn nearer to me with anything that I love more than the farah and then the obligatory actions or anything that that is more important than the obligatory actions. And then the supragratory actions extra good deeds you start with the farah and leaving the haram and then someone adds the sunnah deeds and the sunnah prayer is and so on and sunnah fasts. And then the extra nawafil deeds the hajjad and salat al-duhaa and all extra extra good like going out of your way to be kind to people out of your way to take care of your family out of your way to wash dishes when when you know you might not want to because you know it will make someone else relieve their duties right out of your way to do kindness and these are all extra good deeds right. And until Allah says until I love them until I love them and when I love them I become the sight by which they see and the hand by which they strike and you could and then the foot by which they walk all of these types of things Allah takes over the affair of that person Allah basically takes their life over for them you're still doing things but everything is being directed by your Lord everything this is Sahih in Sahih al-Bukhari and I believe it's in Sahih Muslim as well so it's a very very important thing to keep in mind so this is the path of trying to attain that state it's called bilaya bilaya path of becoming a friend of Allah or some translated as saint whatever translation makes the most sense to you so the need heart needs to be cleansed the heart needs to be cleansed from all of these things is another one would be example is someone is constantly climbing for the sake of power and control over others and this does not have to be limited to any like outward thing that's linked to money or something like that so you'll see in society that we live in someone may attain a state of great success materially and now what do they want to do they want power over other people they want to run for office you might become a big business person business man business woman and now you're like that's not enough I want to control over and so now for the sake of public service working these days they're doing it for the sake of and that's a higher desire that exists in the dunya than even the desire for money and just I just want to have a bunch of people who I can tell them what to do and it gets even to the level of the person who wants to be on the board of their budget so that they can just tell everybody else what to do and that happens that people are on these positions that's supposed to be positions of service but they're just doing it because they like control and they want to control everybody they want to tell everyone what to do this is a subtle desire it's called the desire for power or the love of leadership it's again from the dunya and then it continues the desire for a lot of uh the followers in fame someone wants to become very very well known so they can get praise from people so people can get come up to them and praise them and and uh that really really uh it's it's it's it gets as subtle as someone desires a place in someone's heart as what the desire for followers become you desire a rank in someone's heart that I have money and now I have more than everything left for me to control I want to know what they think of me and so that our fame and followers that becomes another way of doing it so this is what our society is now everybody is basically doing this everyone wants to that achieve always about lifestyles and bridging famous and so the world is pulling the muslim towards dunya and you're calling us from towards the akhira we choose now what we do and the closer you towards the akhira you have to chase it allow it to give it to be fine but the more prime towards the dunya the farther you get from the akhira that's guaranteed you always get farther the more someone runs towards the dunya and the reason why this enemy is very subtle is because we have become brainwashed in a society that we live in making it seem like this is the whole purpose of life the entire focus of life is this it's totally okay to be successful to grow in your career to all of these things to to succeed from an outward sense but that's not the goal what you when you're with other people what all the time what you pray about often what you the deep down in the depths of your heart really really really want that where you have to try to root out the dunya and we have to try to put we have to ask Allah put the desire for the akhira into the next life actively thinking about the next life and talking about it and saying you know what there is a next life if i'm not achieving x y z in this life Allah will give it to me inshallah if i'm not blessed to have this type of home or so on it's okay Allah will give it to me in the next life the reframe is very important because the brainwashing has been done at the foundation of western society is dunya thought even the foundational books of the society for example adam smith's wealth of nations it's that wealth and it's about power of nations it's about that these the books that are at least i don't know everybody read them but we i had to read a lot of these back in high school and like world history european history you have to read a lot of these books and it was all about frameworks for dunya there was a very very very little that thought about the akhira and on their dollar bill they put like a god we trust and so on but it's pretty much alhamdulillah but it's not the focus that you're not seeing the fundamental building blocks of a society here but in the way the muslim societies were built especially the society the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam initiated in that he built that you would see the masjid as the centuries for everything and the prayer everything revolves around the prayer time revolves around the prayer time and to know that okay structure your schedule is all enough to do and they still work they still they still have business people they still did everything from an outward perspective that one needs to do but it was the orientation was about how does someone get closer to Allah and so that living for a long period of time it's hard we have to undo some of that even sometimes growing up if someone starts to get a little close to the religion a little close to the to be less interested in going to you know whatever graduate school they originally were trying to go to and maybe less the same exact really high paying job and now people start to say hold on a second they'll start the one ayah in the Quran and use it in the incorrect way of saying don't forget your portion of this world and it's like almost as though someone who's treading the path of the religion is doing something wrong and the balance that we've now kind of shifted the spectrum towards is that we just do the basics and the rest of the time to be focused on material success material gain and usually so that we can become very outwardly successful but there's very little time spent thinking on like how what's the quality of the prayers like what are the what are the extra good deeds that someone is doing beyond the basics how far is someone going what if someone has already been consistently waking up for Fajr when will they add the hajjud in their routine when will they increase the length of their the hajjud that in many parts of the Muslim world people wake up every single day for sixty seven years of it like two hours before the hajjud and they're praying the whole time and doing the Quran the whole every day that's the routine and what's the state of someone like this and they're still working and they're still doing all these things but they've slowly slowly slowly shifted their path to being one where they prioritize their schedule they sleep on time they're not watching a show every night they're slow making sure that their schedule is around preparing themselves for the Akhira they'll give themselves a break and have nice time with people and so on but it's not the whole goal is not entertainment and jest and so on right and again it's important to have a balance because it is tough to live in the world we live in without any form of you know you need entertainment you need some chill time right but Imam of Azali's philosophy or his approach rather is he says if someone is all the way here and this end of the spectrum you want to bring them to the middle you have to pull them here so they come into the middle if you pull them to the middle they'll end up like in the 25th percentile you got to get them into the middle right so you have to pull them all the way here and then they'll eventually balance us that's that's why he calls in a very kind of clear way against something so that someone balances out and so i just want to reiterate that again the approach is not to just like put our jobs and just come and sit and do the thing or all that that's not what we're saying it's about intention and the right intention for everything can turn everything into ibadah intention to work and you work to provide for your family turns your work into ibadah intention to eat and you eat to sustain yourself to worship Allah and follow Allah's commandment in the Quran to eat from Allah's food and that turns into ibadah you intend to spend time with your family to take care of them and to spread goodness and follow the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that turns into ibadah but the one who is thinking about the akhira they're always going to have some intention the one who is thinking about the dunya we're just kind of in like a forget we're forgetting we don't even make the we don't even remember the intention right because we're not thinking about the next life and we're not thinking about the intentions we can make to get us closer so now now we'll think look at a few of the different types of hadith that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said and some of the ayahs from the Quran so the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that if someone loves their life in this world he will devalue the life they meet thereafter and if someone loves their life in the hereafter they will devalue their life in this world and you must therefore prefer what is lasting to that which is leading he's telling us to prefer it he's not saying completely get rid of the dunya he's saying prefer it give it more precedent more of our energy spiritually should go towards things that will allow us to attain the akhira and really really deeply contemplate the fact that it's going to come we are eventually going to leave this place and 50 60 70 years maybe if we spend here will be traded for whatever way you define infinity you can define it in 10 billion years if you want because it's hard to conceptualize infinity but it's all going to be traded so think about the value then of a few minutes here and how much that's going to be worth right you do the ratio 10 billion to 50 and think about the value of each of those minutes and 50 and how many years those are worth in the after-entrance of reward and stations with Allah and that's why because someone can't spend all their time physically doing deeds that's why the Prophet ﷺ Allah knows best that this is one of the reasons perhaps the Prophet ﷺ said the intention of the believer is better than his action or her action because that's all at the heart level you can intend thousands of things in your heart every day hundreds of things in your heart you can always be intending your heart can always be that achieving a state of mercy from Allah and direct knowledge from Allah the heart can be doing things even while you and I are physically engaged in whatever we're doing maybe we're eating maybe we're you know with our family maybe we're cleaning up the kitchen whatever we're doing but the heart is just with Allah and that is the state someone gets to when they purify and Allah purifies them and they focus and they focus we should ask Allah deep from the depths of our heart that Allah we ask that you make us people whose hearts are entirely directed towards you and whose hearts are with you all the time and whose hearts have your gaze of love and of mercy and such that we can attain these states in the best of ways and the great Sahaba said that the servant abstains from this world their heart will become enlightened with wisdom and their limbs and organs will assist them in worship so how do we understand this remember that our limbs and our organs they want to be obeying Allah completely because Allah says in the Quran that everything in the heavens and the earth everything is glorifying Allah but you and I just can't hear it everything around you and there are people who get to a state where they hear and witness every single thing the rocks the trees the clouds the sky everything the cars everything is just glorifying Allah Allah will lift the veil for them and this happened of course to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam but also happened to some Sahaba where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam held a few rocks in his hand and they could hear the rocks making the speech making the speech of Allah and some of the sahaba witnessed it the ones who were in this hal and in this state and others did not witness it this happens to people in our time that even we're living in right now that it happens to people they're in this state they're in this state one of the great this happened maybe you know maybe 800 or so years one of the great scholars of Tareem Yaman said that one day he would go out every night to worship Allah in the mountains he would live and then and there was an area in the mountains where he would go out to spend time in his night worship and so he told his son don't don't follow me when i go at night don't follow me and you know what children do is they usually don't always listen and so his son follows him and he goes and his son doesn't doesn't let his dad know that the sheikh know that he's following him he's kind of boxed behind and he gets to a spot where he begins he says as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu with everything everything all the nature and the creations around him respond wa alaykum as-salam wa barakatuhu and the the speak begins the subhanAllah begins that all the speak begins and it's this immense magnification of Allah it's way too powerful and overwhelming for his son to handle his son collapses in faith and his dad doesn't know that the son is there and so he does he goes and he does all his night worship and then he comes back and on the path he sees his son on the ground he wakes him up and what happened and he you know tends to him and he says did i not tell you that not to follow me he says you you can't handle them your heart is not ready for this you cannot handle what we experience you're not ready for that yet and so then his son stopped following him but this happened there are people who this this thing happened to to and and they're in a complete state of divine witnessing and they've reached these higher stations and while the goal is not to to have all this that happened to you Allah gives it to people when um that when he chooses but anyways the lins and organs they want to be worshiping Allah but the nus prevents the limbs and organs from worshiping Allah ego and so you might have a time where you feel so lazy you don't want to do anything and just like i don't want to pray i don't want to wake up it's cold and we don't just don't want to do it don't want to do it and that's a sign that neither the limbs nor the organs we're not they're not assisting someone in it and then there's a time where you feel like i can do this but there's a part there's a whisper comes internally and you can lay later or you can you can work now and do it later and so on and that's the nus trying to stop someone from doing it the limbs and the organs they're trying to help and the biggest way to help with uh making sure the limbs and the organs are in a state of assisting you in your worship is to make sure the tongue is in check that the limbs and they all call out to the tongue every morning and they say if you obey we will obey and if you ruin us we'll be ruined as he comes in um and one one of the texts and so the tongue the more someone says bad and speaks bad all of these things they fill the heart with darkness and then they impact everything else and it's why the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said the belief the one who believes in Allah in the last day let him or her speak good or remain silent we don't have any directive to speak bad or to speak empty or to speak vain talk but let's speak good positive things beneficial things will remain silent to just be silent and reflective and observe it and so if someone though abstains from the world then the uh the the heart starts to become cleaned and everything you will become enlightened he says enlightened with with the new or what is enlightenment that new or light spiritual light enters the heart and it can become so powerful that it can impact the whole body and then it can begin to impact everything around you the light and then it can begin to impact people around you and such was the newer of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that it was so powerful and everything around him was impacted as long as that person wasn't covered up with kufr kufr is literally to be covered up you were covered up from this light it's such thick thick thick veils of darkness that they'll cover someone up even then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's light was able to penetrate most of those people and so um that that is what the light will do and so it all goes down to the heart which is why he spends this text on cleaning and purifying the heart so he really says the first reason to to detach right he gives incentives that is so that your worship about what you are going to do is correct and frequent and you're doing it a lot and you're doing it correctly because thinking about the dunya always will keep the mind preoccupied it'll just keep the mind worried anyone who's ever tried to pray in between like a busy busy work meetings when you finish one meeting you're about to go to another and you've got to pray you're just it's very difficult to focus you're just thinking about a million things and you're just like i gotta do this i had responded this message and you're constantly in this state of it's very difficult to be present it's why the at the the ideal situation someone does a little warm up beforehand you pray the sumna prayer it's a warm up and that you then when you enter into the farth prayer you have that time of five six four whatever minute someone does it to just really be focused and present and those few minutes of deep presence will completely transform the next few hours you have until the next prayer comes that that's the goal but constant thinking about the dunya it's always going to get in the heart it's always going to get in our minds that's going to prevent us from being focused and while being focused in prayer may not seem like the the goal that's like the number one goal that we have spiritually hopefully it's very high up there it will completely transform someone's spiritual state because the prayer is the sila it is the connection the salah is the seal at the connection between you and Allah it is what furthers the connection between you and us and Allah and what deepens it and so when someone's focused and understands the meanings of what they're saying or strives to understand them and then is trying to think about Allah witnessing them praying and that they are standing before Allah they start to taste the sweetness of the ibadah and with every the speak they'll feel every sajdah they'll desire to stay in it long they'll desire to stay in the sajdah long the prophets of Allah pray a lot at night and that's when he was long sajdahs because when he's praying in the masjid keeps them at a level everyone can manage because not everyone can handle the long sujud and the long surahs and so on and so forth but the one who loves it they're like they're in the complete state of ecstasy complete bliss and so that is the goal the prayer then transforms someone and it's the the main meditation the muslim needs is the prayer you might do other forms of bigger spiritual routines to practice to get to the state where in your prayer you are really focused but really at the end of the day that is the main meditation that will help someone really really really relax anytime they need to do something enter the state of prayer at some of the sahaba some of one of them had to have their leg amputated like wait until i go into the prayer and then do it and it was their anesthesia they didn't need anesthesiologists they just they went into the prayer a lot but and they're completely focused and they're in a completely different hog and state and then they did whatever procedure that it is that they needed to do that's a don't try this at home but that's not our state of course um but that we that that they were so present we can't we just have to know that these things exist so we can hope for just some small portion of them and even that will have a met's effect on us and on our uh and then the time that we live in so that's the really the main goal is so someone can begin to really feel worship and that's why it's important to have times of our of our of our year and of our days which is take a break from the three or four days in Ramadan maybe in the last 10 nights someone takes you know if you're working take pto go out of office and just focus on a lot and you'll see an effect the first day all the stuff from the last many many many everything will still be in your mind but then it'll just start to slowly leave and slowly then you'll just be able to direct yourself towards that line it's just those little boosts they they they seem little but they're worth they're very weighty if Allah gives them a stofi they're very weighty in his eyes and they will give us the himma to keep going for the rest of the time and so that's why it's important to have periods of time there maybe it's an hour on friday um it's friday at Juma it's okay we ideally focus on the after we usually can't do it the whole day because in society we live in most people are at work on Friday but an hour at the end of friday the last hour between hasra and maqrib someone just says okay i'm going to use this time for dikker for salawak and Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam for pulman and for just reflecting on the after and you'll see a little bit of effort and the whole week inshallah will be illuminated will be illuminated and that's it's a practice we should all consistently do is read surah khaf on friday with reflection so at first just get into the habit of reading and and it might take 20-25 minutes for someone to get through the surah in arabic but if we can couple that with reflection and reflecting the whole surah is calling someone away from dunya and calling someone out towards the afterah and when someone reflects on the meetings and so the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that the one who reads this on friday will have a newer a light from one week until the next and there is a benefit in doing that and so you you and i again we want this light the second thing he says is okay so you detach so you can focus on your work he says the next reason to detach is because it actually makes your work more valuable and more weighty in the eyes of Allah so the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he says that two cycles of prayer rakatain from an alim a learning person whose heart is detached is the heart of a zahid are better and dear to Allah than the worship of all worship and the time eternally two raka might be difficult to to conceptualize two raka from the skull of the inward sciences was completely detached from this world are weightier in the eyes of Allah that all of the you can think perfunctory worship that everyone else essentially is doing and that's that's how weight these that the people were really present to us we look at that and they're doing it everybody else is doing you don't see them in this like completely kind of system not like in the state people think oh they're internally they must be so focused now they look like everybody else but they're just come in a different world when the prayer time when the when the prayer enters when the prayer enters some of them when the it's mentioned about say that Rahim al-Islam and some of the righteous that when the prayer came you could hear their heart from miles away that's how significant it was and many of the others that they had all of these that there is like it's like they would start to sweat right during the prayer time came and they would feel the immensity of what they're about to do and so and it's mentioned about the Prophet sallallahu sallam that when he was with his family he was like anyone else with his family he was with them he was among them and he said except when the prayer time came in and then it's like you didn't even know him and he just was completely absorbed as the adhan has gone off it's time Allah is calling me it's time for me to answer to the call of the Lord of the universe of the earth i mean it's a very significant thing and they have realized how significant it is and they had attained what's called mapifa of Allah complete notice of Allah so first out that the work that they do is going to be way more weighty than the quake that i got him that are relating in our money right which is really quickly super fast that we do right it's going to be worth way more and so we just have to strive to get there and one of the main things that blocks us is our attachment to this dunya is our attachment to this uh this dunya and so Allah says in the Quran that for the akhirah we will bestow it on those who don't desire either exaltation on the earth or corruption meaning that Allah will give it to people if someone is not here seeking fame and prominence and again dunya in this sense Allah will give them the akhirah but he says here desire right the key that mama was always going to highlight is Allah then says another ayah that if someone desires the harvest of the here after we shall give him or her we shall give them an increase in this harvest and whoever desires the harvest of this world we shall give them some of it but they will have no portion of here after again about desire and if they desire the hereafter Allah says i'm going to give it to you if you want it you really focus on it if you desire this world yeah sure it's not difficult unless you can have as much of dunya as you want you have nothing of the hereafter no portion and again it goes back to desire and Allah here when he's listening to these ayahs he's really showing us that it's not about that leaving the dunya in terms of materially you just leave it it's about not desiring that's the goal and then he says whoever desires the hereafter and strives for it with the effort required while they're a true believer wahu and mu'minum that for such their effort is favorably received this is again from i believe this is in Quran and so again Allah is calling someone to desire the hereafter all of this is at your heart level what do you everyone should ideally have moments of their day or their time or they're just like i can't wait to meet you i cannot wait to get out of this place not in like a morbid way but in like a i'm excited i'm excited like this place is full of fitna and tests and tribulations and i'm here for one year and i'm going to serve you and i'm going to do my best to be your slave but i'm yearning yearning yearning and that is this desire and this this um that kicks in for somebody who uh if Allah gives us that blessing to want to yearn and to want to um so in mama was already said that the notice that the emphasis here is on this desire is on this desire so it's not about abandoning all possessions because he says it's worse it's better for someone to have things and to be like detached from them than to not have things and just to be so attached to it everybody else has if only i had this and they're living a very simple life but they're just like oh my god only i had the big house and then i had this car and i had these uh this technology and this phone and so on and they're just desiring all it means they might be outwardly in a state of difficulty or financially but it doesn't mean that they've attained this state of detachment from the dunya versus there are people who have been blessed let's say with you know abundant wealth but they really don't care it like comes into their hand and they're just like okay give this to the poor give this to the poor give this to the poor i've one of the great scholars of our time uh and he passed maybe 20 years ago Habib Abu Qadir al-Saqaf when he brought that he one time a man came and they gave him a gift a bag of one million riyal he was in Saudi Arabia so they did one million riyal that's equivalent of roughly 350 thousand dollars just cash he just gave it to the sheikh to the sheikh man and then the person would he would be driving his driver and he goes there's a widow here going here there's orphans that live here go to this house go to this house and they went all around all around and they just gave money again until at the end the whole bag was completely empty and it was said oh Allah that Allah their witness was completely empty he just gave all of it away i mean thousand dollars i'll keep like you know 200,000 riyal for me and my family i'll give the rest away you know like you could have said i mean that's a lot of money in a million riyal that's you could do you could buy so many things with that you could buy house you could buy this and you could still give some portion of it away right most people wouldn't even think about giving anywhere they're like all right this is nice great time to invest time to do this kind of thing he was just he was like i'm not even going to go in the path of keeping some and giving some i'm going to go on the path like Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddiqui that when he was when the Prophet's song called for for for charity for donations to to to to help strengthen Islam and Sayyidina Omar that he came and he said here's the half of everything i own everything imagine taking everything you have everything in your bank account whatever other your car the worth of it just cutting all of it in half and saying half of it is completely going to donation and i'm keeping 30 percent and so that was a very good thing and Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddiqui said yadusulullah here's everything i have everything everything and he was asked what did you give for your family like he said i'd like a line as messenger he was in a state of complete to his like i'm gonna this is his messenger so i know a line his messenger will take care of my family and he said that's what i left so he was in need of just everything here you go peace be with that then that wasn't he wasn't attached to the to the and again we're not required all we are required to do is what he's like god stupid five percent it's all the farthest and the more someone does the more they give the greater it is but you're not required to get 50 or 100 percent or even 10 percent someone is just we should just try to give a little bit more every year than the 2.5 percent in saadaqa and the extra things inshallah so now he's going to give us a little bit of like okay why is this dunya so bad and how do we understand it this is where there are people that talks about in the Quran that there are people of insight they have a kind of like a different lens of how you look at things so we have like what we see and then if imagine that we were really really really blurry blurry eyed and we like did not have good vision or we couldn't see things correctly and then we just like got glasses or or contact lens or something like that and then now all of a sudden we can see clearly so the people of basira of of of inner sight they are people who see everything clearly and so he gives this example that imagine that there's you go to a restaurant and you see a that the chef is preparing this like absolutely delicious meal fine five-star meal Michelin restaurant halal well and it says it's all it looks great everything is great in it and just like all the organic food he's using great things in it and then you're so you're there and you you and me are there and we like we see someone doing this and then there's someone who that just he takes a nice big spit and he just spits in the food he's completely spits in it okay just i don't i don't want to get too into detail but just a really disgusting spit and he just and then he blows his nose in it also and i apologize but this is his example not mine and uh except in michelin's restaurant i added that and so then and he spits in and so someone else sees that someone in the in the room watching it they see that and everybody else doesn't see it so everyone else is like oh look at this dish it looks so good and you can't see it i was gonna notice that you just mix it up with the food now the person who knows that what someone just did that the chef just just made this meal and then it was just disgusting things just put inside of it they're not going to take any of it they'll be offered it like no no i'm not having no it's so good look at how nice it looks and just i'm not with it not trying to touch that and but everybody else will be so indulgent in the meal because it looks so nice because they don't know the reality of it the people who are detached from this dunya the dunya is this meal and it has this disgusting these disgusting things in it that's what that's even worse than this example that we just gave all the filth that's in the dunya spiritually they'll harm someone so they don't they just like yeah i'm not i'll go somewhere else for what i need but i'm not really into it but they're just gonna kind of detach from it but for the vast majority of people who have no idea they're just like chasing it and like losing their life over it and just just fighting for it like you see like i'm you know like um now it's all online but back in the day on black friday right the day after Thanksgiving literally people would the stores that open at like 6 a.m and people would run into the store and like fight each other and trample each other so that they can get a laptop that was like you know 150 dollars and usually it's like 200 dollars they would just fight just over and they're doing essentially it's just dunya right and so the person who's like i am not into it they're not going to touch that and they're going to be grossed out by and they'll be kind of like really odd do you know anyone else see that like anyone else see that what just happened am i the only one who saw that and so that's where the people of Zohar they're just like yeah i'm detached from that i'm not trying to get into it but Allah he tells us this that in the Quran he says that you have this intense intense love like you love it you want it so bad Allah says you just it's a deep desire embedded deep inside of the human being to want this place and so when something's deep embedded someone you got to work to get it out it has to be extracted extracted it has to be been cleansed and cleansed and so that's the dunya he says the haram in this life is like the same delicious meal but now someone actually puts like poison in it and so one person sees the poison they're like uh no that's gonna kill me and no one else sees them put the poison in that's like haram right so that's that's the part of the dunya that would be impermissible for someone to take any part of this life like all the things that Allah has made haram for us whether it's to eat things he's made it haram to drink or to look at or to speak of or financial transactions and so on that will literally kill someone spiritually first in this life their heart will die and then the next life because poison will literally kill someone and poison doesn't always kill you immediately poison can kill someone over a period of time potentially right depends on on it so so that's the haram but the dunya is it's not going to kill you that's just gross just absolutely disgusting and so no one want the they they that's how they see it and it's mentioned in the narration a lot it doesn't give this world the weight of like the wing of a fly not just the fly the wing of a fly if you look at a fly and then you look at the wing of the fly it's like so small Allah doesn't even care but the dunya as much as the wing of a fly it's like this doesn't care about it and if he did he wouldn't give as much as the wing of a fly to the disbeliever to the one who doesn't believe in him but he gives the ahkara and many Muslims we get confused in this time we live and we're like hold on a second why are the Muslims struggling so much and then you have all these other countries like the Zionists and all these people like they just have all this power and then all these corrupt people who don't even believe in Allah and then those who are doing the harm to the Muslims like the the the Chinese government and so on why are they in all these positions of power and they have all this wealth we're just like confused and hold on a second how does this matter because if Allah doesn't care about the dunya he's just like you can take it because his punishment and reward are going to come he gives people a long leash and then he seizes the tyrants and the oppressors and the one who are doing all these things but to the believers he says okay it was it was a it was a tough a few decades and how it's all going to be easy for you now eternity i've given you complete bliss and ease and that's why the dunya is the prison of the believer you feel a sense of kind of like you know like uh trapped i can't wait to get out of this place because it's there's there's there's so much fitna and so many different difficult things that are going on and um but for the people who are doing all these wrong things Allah may give it to them and they don't turn to Allah they don't ever it's like their own he was given all the wealth and he had all the power and he was so arrogant and now i mean eternal damnation completely he was even made an example and his his body was wrapped and he's like in a museum so people can look at that how the way he passed away and that he's just completely ruined in this life and the next for what for 20 years of being the the the highest king of egypt or the highest king in the land like what's the big deal right but that was the the trade-off that they make so someone's success in this life has nothing to do with other Allah loves them or not zero zilch nothing nothing and that's a prosperity gospel type of brainwashing that's gotten into the the minds of people and to the muslim sometimes where we're like we don't understand why someone who's not a believer or someone who's doing a lot of wrong and corrupt and so on why they're giving things because we think the reward is coming in this life sometimes Allah may give someone reward in this life but most of the time the reward and the patient the test is reserved for the next life yes the question Allah does want good for someone he gives them sound understanding of the deen he gives them understanding of this religion if he wants good for somebody that's what he gives them and you'll see in the Quran the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam is not commanded to make an increase for many things he's not commanded to make an increase for dunya he's not to make dua for an increase in these things but he's asked he says that Allah asks you for an increase in knowledge because knowledge is this weighty thing that's just like you learn and implement and it's a light and you implement it and it just keeps growing and growing until it has a huge weight inshallah on someone's scales and it will benefit them in this life and be the next inshallah and so really though at the end of the day the goal is balance and so you start and we're just going to kind of give three steps to how we achieve this balance state and then inshallah we'll go ahead and wrap up with questions the first is that someone focuses on getting rid of the desire this is primarily done by reflection it doesn't mean someone has to physically leave all these things you reflect on the world and its lowliness and the metaphor that he just gave us really reflect on it let it sit with us for a period of time like okay that's how gross it is do i really want more of it right and you reflect on it and then you reflect on now all of it will go away as Allah says in sort of the way we have that it's like the the vegetation which just kind of turns yellow and then it just blows away i believe that's the right example i was given just kind of blows away you see like the vegetation which we don't see much because we live in an urban area but if we do see it it's like it will go from being nothing into something nice and green and luscious and then eventually back into something dry and then it may just wither away right that's the done yet we'll just go away it'll just go away so all of the accomplishments and you know the things someone puts on their resume and so all of it's just going to go away it's it's good to do succeed and have good intentions to do so but at the end that's not the goal someone must desire to focus on Allah and it comes when there's Allah will take care of all their goals focus on Allah in the hereafter your goals and your life will be taken care of focus in the dunya and compromise the deen for the dunya and your life to your self and you'll you'll get what everybody what everyone gets a lot of hard work and toil and struggle required a little gift if someone puts in all that hard work allow me give them but what is it what does it matter at the end of the day the desire is that someone shouldn't want it if you see someone super well deep okay great you have an s class okay nice great like it doesn't matter i you have what you need okay if you want a nice car and your intention and is to then use it to praise Allah that you want to be able to be thankful to Allah okay but if the desire is okay i gotta say about this much money and do this and then i'll take a haram loan and then do this so that i can have what everybody else has or so that i can have the nice clothing or the nice watch or the nice purse or the nice bag and just fit into the society where it's like just that uh the label will make something $5,000 more expensive even though it's the same thing again that it made in very similar places so it comes down to the desire of someone and so for some people the desire will go away by thinking about how lowly this place is but the practical step to remove the desire is to slowly reduce the amount that we have slowly reduce the amount that we have so every now when you and i are about to go buy something that you don't need and really like think about how much we need if we're about to go to the mall and go shopping for something chances are we don't need 95% of things we're about to purchase we just might need like one thing okay maybe we need a new shirt for or a new pair of shoes or something like that but if we already have 10 pairs of shoes is there a way to make it work with the 10 that exist do we have to get the new color that came out do we have to get the new brand that came out do we have to get you know like the the new the newest thing that's in trend now everything that's in trend now used to be in trend like 20 years ago and it's just like coming back and everyone who kept this those old things they can use them again and they're like it never went out of fashion anyways but if you're constantly trying to keep up with everybody it's just always buying and put your hopes and account for those things and it will impact the heart it sounds kind of trivial because in the grand scheme of things you're like what's the big deal but it is not it is a big deal because these little things they add up to clouding the heart and so as soon as we're about to get the next new thing it's called a little bit of zoho it doesn't mean someone leaves it in time to reduce it by 1% 2% do a cleaning of the closet and we give away something that we like with the area let me give this to the poor they could use it more than me it's going to give it away just a little bit and that will detach from the heart detach from the heart so that's the first is reducing the desire the second is take yourself to account for how much time we spend on doing things that are in relation to the dunya with no intention to the after this is important to act with so we make a little schedule for the week and we're like how much time do i am i sending entirely focused on things of this world that are not going to benefit to me in the after and it's a good thing if we have 50 50 and it's better if we have more time for the next life and it's even better if everything we do that we're doing for this life is with the intention of trying to please Allah that would be the next step someone tries to slowly reduce it and what do i mean here if this is like all of the frivolous things that we talked about the constant climb for wealth and for power and for fame and the gossip and the lehu and we talk about celebrities and and and obsession with sports and sports players and all the sports and oh this person's greatest of all time is the goat and all this nonsense it doesn't even matters who cares they can kick a ball around that's great but what's the big deal at the end of the day right like is that really what we want to spend our time and again not how long we're talking about spiritual aspiration at this point what if someone can take good from it they can be like wow this person devoted years and years and years of their life 12 hours a day to mastering something so that they could finesse it so they could play a game at the end of the day which might be shooting something into a book with nets or kicking something into something with a net but that's what it and how much time am i spending on trying to master my relationship with Allah and so if someone can derive benefit from that alhamdulillah we derive benefit the wisdom as it comes to our narration is the lost property of the believer that's the lost property of the believer so we try to derive benefit from okay um like a like a master musician or master athlete they'll spend insane amount of time like Kobe Bryant would wake up we already practice practicing at four before everyone and so that's like two hours before fudger and we can't fudger again to finesse a basketball which is you know he was good at it everything but how much time then are we spending on things that will benefit us and that's as important here we're not saying that we leave anything i find that we do it just needs to be with the right attention and then third hitting we do is we gradually once we take ourselves to account reduce the time that we're spending on things that will make us attached to you and reduce the time that we're that we're thinking about them and that we're spending on them and if we're constantly engaged in things that we'll bring about in a magnetic pole and you'll know you have a magnetic pole if your dreams are impacted and if it makes you ever miss the prayer those are the two biggest ways that the prayer would come first if something makes us miss the prayer that that means we're really we're like the addiction is strong you could say so for even at work sometimes and we miss the prayer out of like a oh i don't know if you pray because there's people here or they're looking or they're this or my boss doesn't want my have a meeting in and because of that we miss the prayer that's okay we have work to do we have to find a way to recalibrate and five minutes to pray even though we have other obligations because then the intention for doing the work for the sake of Allah can't be done if when Allah commanded something we we don't get do with and and same thing would come for anything else that we're really like attached to and we're so into something we're watching on television that tv that the prayer time comes and we just it passes that's now the dunya the enemy of the dunya has manifested it's distracting us it's calling us towards the wrong thing it's calling us towards the wrong thing and the more and more of this that gathers on the heart the more and more that it will become a big deal and ultimately what could happen and in chela will end with this and then and do questions ultimately what could happen is that somebody will minimize all these things entirely and that's what's happened now in the vast majority of the muslim world and amongst the muslims is it's like these types of things are just not if we don't even consider like trying to focus in prayer is a far off thing about because we're not even praying we're so focused on the dunya and on competing with others and on being like everybody else and on and so on and so on and so on that it's like we don't even consider doing anything good and you'll go to certain parts even of the muslim world unfortunately where you'll be like you know in the marketplace or something and 80% of people are just still busy with what they're doing and you have very few even though the masjid is like right there here if the adhan goes off we're like oh where do i pray i gotta find a fitting room somewhere like a parking lot or something you gotta find like a creative place to pray because there's not always massaging there there's massages everywhere it's right there and at least okay the women might have an excuse that perhaps they're not praying but the men have no excuse and you're like what is everybody doing what the obon and it's just the priorities have completely flipped completely flipped and that is a very dangerous sign is when this stuff all becomes so trivial to somebody that they're like oh that doesn't matter what's the big deal what's the big deal and that means the heart is really really layered on with thick thick thick fails so the first sign is it's a good thing if we're even able to consider these realities and these concepts that we even um we're not there yet but that we at least give weight to them i'm like okay i want to get there the danger is if we're like this doesn't even matter who cares and what what i'm just going to do it everybody else is doing and that is the disease which the prophets of us i'm told us will come at the end of time that our nation will be the love of dunya will be in the hearts and we'll just follow what everybody else is doing and so ultimately we now have work to do to clean our heart and ask our love to purify us from the attachments we have to this world perhaps because of what we will be in the societies we live in in the types of brainwashing that's been done and to reorient our attachment to Allah and the more and more thicker that we do the more cleansing that we do the more that we focus on shifting the desire over to Allah and spending a few minutes a day maybe after our prayer or in our prayer daily we're just direct our heart towards Allah iya cannot do what iya cannot say you you you you alone we ask you are our goal you are everything and we ask Allah to remove everything else that inshallah they'll give us the tofiq and so this is the um the first big uh kind of enemy that human being is going to face along the the spiritual path inshallah so with that if there are any um questions or clarifications um yes we do it now the same thing online if you have any questions you're supposed to okay yes good question okay so the question is that when it comes to repentance and one of the uh that requirements repentance is to make the intention to never do something again like to leave that sin off um but we have a kind of inkling feeling that it might happen again right like let's say we miss a prayer we miss fudger or something like that and if somebody uh feels like okay you know what i might this might happen again that's a really good question so your intention should be when you are in that state that you are going to put your trust in Allah that you won't miss it again if it happens like yeah you know in the back of your mind you could slip up any human being even the most righteous person in the world who's not a prophet who's not protected could slip up and Allah could make them slip big time and it's they could slip right and that's it's not that we are protected from slipping up when we make repentance it's that we are really convicted in our heart that i'm not going to do this again so let's say one morning someone misses fudger and they're like y'all and they feel bad about it and they're like yeah Allah you're really trying to get on this and they're really they repent you pray your miss fudger your miss fudger raka and then you uh your miss fudger too raka and then maybe you'll pray two extra nafila of toba of asking Allah for forgiveness of repenting him and you say Allah i really don't want to miss this again please help me let's say now that person dies that day not forbid but they pass away they will inshallah not have the sin inshallah will be forgiven and they will have the intention as though they were not going to commit that sin again but if someone misses it and it's just like oh yeah again tomorrow whatever it's just completely chill about it just like okay i'm gonna do this they'll go about my day or just worse not even gonna do it it just like it keep happening one day in my life i'll do it all right and that person dies the two states are very different so when you're thinking about living for the akhira you want to see it as though okay if i were to god forbid pass away today what would my state be do you make this sincere intention as though you're not going to do it again but this is where your reliance can't be on yourself and your efforts you have to in that repentance shift the reliance to Allah and say Allah i can't do this clearly you know i can't do this because i keep like struggling with it so now can you just take care of it for me and you kind of do like a pass over to him and i'll just take it just take it from me and in that if the conviction is inshallah sincere that at some point it might not happen the next day but some point within maybe that week or that month the tofiq will just come and then you might not misfire ever again and you're like that person might not ever misfire again or ever again in their life and so it's it's kind of like the the goal is you knock and you knock and you knock right you keep repenting and repenting until at some point Allah's door just opens and he's like okay you you really put in the effort i i got it i got i got you from here i'm gonna take it over is that does that make sense so it doesn't negate the repentance it's like what i meant when it comes to forgiveness is kind of like this lazy like what the other the second example of that stop for a while i missed it okay whenever if i do it tomorrow it's fine you know i don't i never i don't even set my alarm i'll just you know if i'm gonna wake up i'm gonna wake up it's like kind of like that and that's that's that's not repentance that's like uh kind of like you're just faking it that makes sense but the sincerity if it's there you'll know you'll feel it because repentance is toba which is to turn to Allah you will know if you're turning if you're at least attempting to turn questions i'm just just saying any other questions here yes so you talked about i'm doing like you know you know we have to make money you know like how are you going to do those things with the right attention right so that you're not going to overwork you know like the line right we're like here working the whole day you're not praying at all that's like a lot like you need to do too far a little direction but i guess like you know intention wise we're just like how do you kind of you know i've heard that i think you also mentioned it too that possibly like even if you were doing something right and it's not direct you know salaf that's with the right intention right maybe you know you're making money so you can you know have the space or time to then you know eventually it's time for ala salam right so i'm kind of curious how how we approach you at least happen to you every day right with the right intention yeah good question so the question is for those online that um how do we do things that we basically have to do to live in this world like we're working we have intentions to succeed in our career we have intentions to succeed financially to save up money to buy home save for um you know for college for our children and so on and so forth and how do we do these things though but with the right intention first of all if someone hasn't cured of that just let me know because i don't i don't have to cure but what i've heard our teachers say is there's a few aspects to this first is um that your intention from the beginning you set it for ala and then there's going to be a test of that sincerity of that intention so the intention you set is like okay yalla i'm doing this for your sake because i have to so it's it's everything a man for a man who is responsible for his household it's hard to work if you don't work you are committing sin you must work and provide for your family there is unless someone is physically capable if a woman does it it's charity for her family she's not required to provide with charity but for a man it's far it has to do it and the intention can be made for both that they are attempting to do good for their family so you start off by setting the intention that yalla with this job i am intending to fulfill my obligations that you made i am the caretaker i have to provide for my family i'm doing this um and that i'm making the intention to to provide for my family and to assist um and so on so you start with that intention and there's a lot of other intentions you can add in there um there's actually a book called the book of attention that was written by one of the great scholars i don't know if it's available uh any more to order but it has all these intentions in it including intention for when you go to work and there's like 15 things that you can intend every time you go to work that will turn your work into yalla like when you speak to someone you speak to them with kindness when someone is backbiting like at work people talk a lot about other people you avoid it you like try to change the topic so now you're guiding them to good and yours to preventing yourself from you do all these things and you make the intention that your work becomes a tarbiyah for you a spiritual purification for you kind of like a rearing for you now you are testing and then you might make the intention that yalla i'm going to work and if you if i have a good job with plentiful money i'm going to try to give a lot inside the gun and i'm going to try to give a lot and charity now when the time for charity comes the intention is tested so the fundraisers here and the or you see some launch good campaign or something like that you're like yeah i could give but like i really want to get the bmw so i'll give next time right now the intention wasn't sincere you're really just doing it because you wanted this thing of the dunya and but if someone is like i know bismillah here's a thousand dollars two dollars whatever money they can afford to give to them and that's a good thing we need that we need that in our community we need people to build institutions and you know mashallah there's a lot of big projects that are going on in our communities and finances are needed for that right but the intention has to be for more than just accumulating things so that's one the second is when a transaction comes when it comes time to engage in any transaction so beginning with the work that you choose there should not be haram in it the the work the risk source shouldn't be haram and you may get an offer from a job that has risky finances and haram and there's another one that has like it's pretty clearly halal and the sign of doing it for allies that you're going to take the halal the sign of doing it for the wrong reason is you're like all right well it's another 20k more let me take the the haram right so that's the second thing the third thing is when someone has the opportunity for free time you take advantage of it and you try to do some extra things for in terms of service to your community to your family or extra ibadah so what do i mean by free time we all have time um i mean most companies you there's there's times where things are a little bit slow right if you're working i'm assuming tech right i mean there's other industries obviously out there forgive my lack of um that diversity and that understanding but that assuming there you have your downtime let's say on friday everyone is like by four o'clock everyone's locked up right now you have time and you're like i i could just do more work and try to be like the a the a player in the or i could try to be the a player unless i decide uh what am i going to do if you have obligations like if your employer is like yo you got to finish this by five p.m on friday then you got to finish it you have like an obligation to your employer that's religious obligation as well because you have to get something submitted but if you have nothing to do and you're like okay i could go and sit and read some Quran and do some salawat or i could keep working or i could just take a break from all of it and go watch a movie right you now the person who's doing it for the sake of Allah they're like okay Allah you gave me a job that has an extra time i'm gonna try to use it a little bit not that much 20 minutes here 30 minutes here to to worship you right and i'm gonna make sure that i structure the time such that if especially as someone becomes more and more um if you have a handle over their schedule as they kind of gain more years of experience block off a little more time after salat to read some Quran to do a little bit extra it's not just like quickly pray and back to everything like a little bit more and then the fourth thing that someone would do um when it comes to making the intention to to financial gain and so on is that if it comes they spend extra time praising Allah so shukr is a key part of this path you have to make sure that you see the source of it is coming from Allah so Allah gives you the ability to to gain you say okay Allah thank you so much and you actively every day without forgetting you try to make sure you either pray to raka of a thank you of shukr or spend 10 um you know do 10 alhamdulillah from the bottom of your heart really thank you Allah thank you so much for these blessings you never see them as coming from your own skills or your own hard work that that kind of concept nothing comes from your own self because you didn't have health or eyes or nose or ears or brain or nerves if you didn't have all the gifts Allah gave you couldn't do any of these things you see it as coming from Allah and that now will be a means of achieving um gain in your spirituality through the work such that Imam al-junayt one of the great scholars of the spiritual science he said one of the greatest scholars of our religion he said that there are people who are working but fully they're in stores at the time they have a lot of shops he says they're in stores in the marketplace but but they're but they're like one of us they're they're like the spiritual travelers they're just like the people who are practicing the spiritual path because their intentions are in the right place and they have a time where their heart is with Allah does that answer the question there's nothing wrong with goals and all these things are important we should succeed we should do well we should grow in our careers we should financially succeed and all these things but at the beginning when we're striving to do it we gotta spend some time on the beam and and shifting the the direction of the heart to not be towards dunya and we know when we're going to access when the like 60 hour weeks 80 hour weeks start kicking in if we're like at a crazy job and it's just like yo i gotta find something else because this is just like you're losing sleep you're missing prayers because the work is just so intense and it's like no no but it's only going to the IPO and the shares are just constant just and that we know now we've gone to access okay question online please explain more on buying you on the buying new things so what we mentioned about buying new things is that someone who's trying to achieve a state of purifying their the heart you slowly reduce the amount of things that you accumulate because you remember two things one that the more stuff you have the more you have to account for a lot we'll ask you about everything that you've done that we've done in our life and about everything that we own and all the wealth is to ask you what i gave you well what did you do and so that's the first thing you have to remember that the second is that you remember the effect that constant acquisition of things is going to have on your heart and spiritual state it doesn't benefit you if you don't need it and especially if you have like 10 of those other things like 10 pairs of shoes and so on and you just want the 11th one as we give an example because usually i just want it because it's a nice color from the one who's trying to travel the path there won't they'll just you know what 50 bucks i could give this to someone needs it or like i could save this for someone right they'll try to limit that same thing with like dining at really fine dining extensive restaurants that would be considered lavish if someone does it very rare in a blue moon and expenses it to their company or something it's fine but if they uh if you're on a business trip but if otherwise if someone like is constantly just i gotta get the you know spend a hundred bucks per meal per person and eat at the fanciest restaurants you're just kind of wasting money away that would be something you avoid because yes while it's money i've given you it's pretty hard to justify spending so much money on on food that doesn't even fill you up and you have to eat when you come home because it was barely any food but it looked nice um and and then you have to you know give account for that so okay another question online was there any questions another one how to stop wanting more uh wanting desiring more and being content with what i have now so contentment comes from spending time counting your blessings and then actively engaging in sugar for those blessings so if you for example go it go around your house or your apartment wherever someone lives and just look at everything that you have starting from like the fact that you have running water a good percentage of the world does not have and you may have something that facilitates your life like a dishwasher alhamdulillah for that that you have a stove that lights up and you don't have to do hard work to light up a fire alhamdulillah for that and you have a fridge which keeps things stored and you don't have to um that you know always go and find things and you have room to store your food you start with those things you said alhamdulillah you literally just go around and you look at all of it i said alhamdulillah alhamdulillah and you won't even be able to get past like one or two rooms without feeling really content and then you can go into your closet and you say this alhamdulillah alhamdulillah and you just continue and then eventually content of the the um the contentment will sink in because someone is in a state of um that uh gratitude and isn't the concept to spend per your means of course excess is bad yet you stand for your means but you don't um again we're not talking here by the way about things none of these things we mentioned are far off this is simply a goal for someone who's trying to travel the spiritual path that you stand for your means but you don't go to excess and you try to have extra go to those who might need it but you're permiss permitted to spend for means as long as you are grateful for it what someone what dunya will do to people who are addicted to dunya and you can happen to the muslim is that we'll spend for the dunya and then we'll think we did it oh look at me i got this and i got this and you'll see a lot of people they're just like bragging about their cars and bragging about how many homes they have and bragging they're just like it's like kind of like a very subtle brag like oh yeah and then my property in tahoe like it's just you know it's doing well like how about yours and you're like i don't got anything you know like there's a very subtle like kind of extra like hump bragged and that's that is arrogance that comes from having a lot of dunya that means the dunya is not for the sake of a lot that means they're just they love it they love talking about but if someone is like okay i'm just like i have a few homes and investment properties and i'm going to use the extra rent that i get to try to support orphans and muslim causes and so on and do a portion and a portion for your own needs that's totally fine yes good question so um question is focus on salah and we'll have positive outcomes on your life so how do we do it um so actually what we're talking about today will be the one of the first steps is to direct the heart away from the dunya one of the reasons and so you start to reflect on the meanings of the motions in the prayer that's the first thing the scholars recommend because ali has a separate book on this called the inner dimensions of worship of the Islamic worship and it talks about step by step each meaning of the prayer and what the inner meaning is so for example we do the takbir the ahram allahu akbar the scholars will recommend that when you do the allahu akbar you are tossing everything that's not allah everything that's the dunya behind you you're literally that's the motion you're tossing it and you're just directing yourself entire so you began in the salah with this motion of allahu akbar all of it's gone except allah then with the allahu akbar you reflect on the fact that allah is greatest and everything else is not and it's worthless and so you you you reflect on those meanings then you get into the the fana and you remember that you're as you're glorifying allah you remember the significance of that then with the fatihah it's very important for all of us even if we don't know arabic or we don't have the intention to learn that we just at least learn the meaning of the fatihah seven verses take us like a few hours to learn we spend 20 minutes a day and one week will know the meanings of fatihah and so now with the fatihah you are you contemplate each verse as you're reciting and you try every time a fat comes from shaitan or from your nus or about this thing or that thing you have to do you just negate it no back to focus and you just out of the dimension on your back to focus back to focus and you just continue to focus on the fatihah and then same thing with the with the the the rest of the salah that each meaning each motion has a meaning so the motion of standing is the meaning is that you are standing before allah and you imagine as though allah is completely watching you and you're standing in a state of kosho and humility before him you kind of in almost in a state of like how do i stand before my lord with everything i've done and you stand for him and then the motion of bowing is as though you are that i mean you're you're humbling yourself before allah and then when you're prostrating that should be a state of like complete need from allah i just need him completely i have nothing else to turn to that um and i only a lot can assist me with whatever it is and even so each of the it's the steps of knowing the meanings of the words it's the steps of um that knowing the meanings of the motions and then reflecting on those as you go about it it's as you go about it yeah the name of the book is inner dimensions of islamic worship and it will walk through the inner dimensions and the the meanings of the prayer of the fasting of the zakat and of the of the hygiene or anything kind of talk about and if maybe there's a few other um aspects of worship which we'll talk to and it's i think there's actually even a pdf that's really solid online for free that should be used download agree does that help yeah question i will point do you disconnect from dunya but try to focus still have generational stability yeah so it's yeah good question so it's not about disconnecting does not mean leaving especially in the time that we live in it means changing the desire so if your intention let's say is you allah has blessed you with certain skills and a certain life ability to gain a certain type of livelihood that would be a means of immense good for your children and for their children and so on right and to start a business or whatever type of thing someone can do you and it's as long as it's permissible and it's halal does not get in the way of your core worship you continue to do it and you use it as a means of drawing your near to Allah your business and your dunya success can be a means of drawing someone near but the subtlety is if someone doesn't spend enough time doing the acts of purification of which three if you do these three every day and you continue to try to build generational stability and intentions inshallah at some point the balance will come so the first and the migratory prayers are kind of that's standard right that's the table stakes you do every day someone should strive to stay away from fajr until shuruq in the state of thicker from fajr until sunrise doing thicker and that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that you will have your dunya will come faster to you than the people who actually go out and start working for it so you actually have the success come too faster but you're in a state of remembering Allah reciting Quran doing this another as a consequence the second is you have moments throughout your day where you sincerely spend time in the lap you sincerely spend time in the lap and kind of like not super quick but a little bit of prolonged conversation with Allah this could be while you're driving while you're on your way to work or commuting whatever it is someone is just talking to Allah that will build the connection and third is you actively seek Allah's forgiveness from the sins that you and I are committing and from the attachments that we form so you can continue to pursue the path of everything we have to do gain wealth and so on but it it's all cleansed because you're doing a lot of thicker and you're doing the thicker at the special times that the scholars emphasize the special times a lot because for those people who are really busy if you take advantage of a few times time right before fajr the time after fajr and a some short time between us and maghrib ideally right before maghrib a little bit after isha 10 15 minutes here and there and you'll have a lot of barakah in even your attempts to attain the generational stability the goal though is not disconnection meaning i'm out i'm just going to leave it there's a small percentage of the umma that did do that but that's not what the promises i'm kind of told us to do i think we'll do one more question and um yeah and so for the requirement for paying zakat is 2.5 percent yeah yeah no worries good question the question is on fatihah and on tajweed in your salah so fatihah is one what's called one of the wajibah of the prayer meaning that um uh if you miss the wajib or you don't do it at all um or you essentially do it incorrectly then your prayer would be weak it would not be fully valid and any wajib that's missed at least in the Hanafi school you have to do the sasabu the the uh two sasadahs of forgetfulness so um when it comes to tajweed yes at minimum we have to try to strive to have correct tajweed for the fatihah and for the few surahs we do in the Quran after the fatihah that is a that that also actually should would be added to the far the ayin knowledge is that when someone is learning it would be obligatory tajweed is not difficult when it comes to these types of things to to learn of course for the one who's a hafid of Quran and is like really trying to get to the final levels of tajweed it can become quite difficult and there's a lot of different um kind of practice that they have to do but to learn the basics of the tajweed and to make sure at first someone's not pronouncing words that are meant to be said one way as another way so um for example if someone is is instead of saying uh the vast majority of scholars said you have to make sure you say like um but um but if you're so if you're just saying like you might you might say like you might not have learned tajweed you might say something completely incorrect thinking it's right okay the pronunciation is off the meaning would be changed that needs to be worked on tajweed is one of those sciences which if you can spend time maybe 20 minutes every few days with like an online Quran teacher and they don't charge much they're usually in somewhere in the Muslim world like in Pakistan or somewhere else um there's a bunch of different websites that offer it and they'll just go over the basic make sure that we're bouncing on the back and on the palkala letters and that we have the right pronunciation at least of the fatihah and a few surahs and we just strive to get there it's if you don't have to spend all of your time trying to and you get kind of worried or scared that i'm not doing enough but at the same time if we learn Quran from someone who is not Arab speaking and who didn't know tajweed at all we should we should probably revise it a little bit because a lot of the other cultures have kind of mixed their pronunciation of things into the pronunciation of Quran so for example in Pakistan you'll see often that instead of saying that like like they'll say now it's fine if you if you um say someone's name like that but if you actively replace all the thaz in the Quran with a sa that's a problem right it's not it's not um someone but most people will know that if they've read if they're reading the Quran or they've had a chance to learn from someone but we just have to kind of work on those things so it's kind of like a it's actually a really good reminder thank you for mentioning that and it's something we should strive to do if we're getting on the path i remember one time someone told me that they're like you know spirituality is not about sitting and doing you know a lot of thicker and drinking nice tea and all these things and then trying to attain these states it's like real spiritual work is rolling up your sleeves learning your tajweed properly getting your basic knowledge down and um then you can have the tea and stuff but you know but really really striving to do these these fundamental basic things and the nuts won't like it because you're like ah come on this is what the third graders are doing back in the Muslim world it's like they're teaching this stuff in elementary school but it's okay we might maybe we never learn like i had to review i review my tajweed when i was 22 22 years old i was sitting with the teacher younger than me in Pakistan correct correct me my mistakes and i would get so come on dude another one this time and he was and then my wife was like he's your teacher and i was like but is he really he's so much younger and then i had to come down and learn and so you have to kind of strive to do these things and it's a good reminder for all of us that we should we should strive to review the so i know it's getting late um i think we'll go ahead and end there um and uh and we'll pick up next time inshallah just uh in the is the pronunciation of what a law lean versus what a law lean okay an issue no no you need to pronounce pronounce it correctly according to the um to to the tajweed so the law lean the pronounce with a law is the for the majority of the scholars that with the correct pronunciation it is like a really minor speed over it in Hanafi do you recite surah fatiha behind the imam or not um most of the Hanafis will not with so when the imam is reciting out loud they won't recite and when he sighed when when like obviously Isha or Fajr or or grip but when the imam is um doing it silently like in bohar asir they also won't recite but they'll reflect them when they're saying but in the other schools you do recite so it's a difference and there's a mark along with him the me and that you forgive us and that you pardon us and that you purify our heart and that you allow us to achieve the state of tranquility and that you remove the love of dunya and the love of the world and the love of fame and the love of wealth and the love of power and the love of of all the things of this world that you hate you're moving from our hearts that are hard to be directed towards you stop letting us think about the dunya so much let us focus on you and worship of you and let us see everything is coming from you we are a bit out of me and let us be focused on directing my heart towards you yalla we ask to give us sincerity and to and and to feed and following the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam and attaching my heart to you and to him sallallahu alayhi wasallam to the righteous of this umma yalla we ask you yalla that you allow us to follow him firmly in every which way inwardly now would lead be khaydam ab of al-afya and we ask you for everything good the prophets of all aslam ask for our new ask your protection for everything evil that he asked protection from when he asked that you remove our tribulations and our problems and our calamities and our anxieties and our worries and the true cleanse us in khaydam ab of al-afya and sallallahu alayhi wasallam and abu alayhi wasallam sallallahu alayhi wasallam inshallah we pray for your safety