 Bismillah. We are very grateful to Allah, Lord of the worlds. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon the master of Muhammad and my family. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon the master of Muhammad and my family. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon the master of Muhammad and my family. Thank you. Peace be upon you. Thank you. Thank you. So just a quick apologies for starting a little bit late especially for those who are following along online. We'll usually be starting kind of right around 8.05, 8.10 and we'll be doing Salat al-Isha for those who are joining regularly in person. We're going to pray Salat al-Isha right before the class at 8. And then inshallah we'll be starting. Alhamdulillah. So inshallah today we're going to be talking about probably one of the most critical sections of this book which is about the regular dhikr that a Muslim should be doing in accordance with the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ in order to bring about specific types of assistance or madad in their life. And so for those who are following along in the book of assistance we're on chapter 8 right now. Alhamdulillah. And so a quick review of last time before we get into this topic where we're mentioning last time is the importance of regularly seeking knowledge. And so right now the scholar Imam al-Haddad he's mentioning the importance of regular things we should do either every day, every week, every month but some consistent practice in order to bring about blessings in our life. And so he mentioned the importance of having a weird or a litany or a practice you could say of seeking knowledge last time right? And that was around okay whether it's 5 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day it should be reading some Quran, it should be reading a hadid, it should be reading or listening to some type of beneficial podcast or whatever it is in order. And this is Islamic sacred knowledge which is really focused on bettering yourself and trying to become a better human being. That is ultimately how the human being becomes purified is through knowledge and then applying that knowledge. And those will be some of the most useful moments we ever spend in our life and will they have really, really significant return on our investment if you think about it from a financial point of view spiritual return on our investment when you learn knowledge and you implement it because a little bit of knowledge that you gain in 20 minutes you can apply that for 20 years. And so that 20 minutes will inshallah have been 20 minutes filled with barakah or Allah's blessing because of the fact that you were able to apply that knowledge for 20 years. Example, many of us we learn to pray like fairly quickly I remember my grandma taught us how to pray and it wasn't like it took years, it like took weeks to teach when I was a kid teach us how to pray and for some of those who are probably better students will probably take days. And now but that knowledge we learn how to pray we're using that every single day of our lives inshallah multiple times a day. And so similarly all types of knowledge are going to bear their fruit when they're applied. Knowledge and this is the clear distinction we made last time that knowledge is not information. It's not facts and figures and things you memorize. It's actual information that is applied and then it results and many of the sayings amongst the likes of scholars like Imam Malik, Ibn Anas and others they mentioned that knowledge is a light that Allah cast into the heart by means of which you're able to discern things and you're able to discern realities. And so that was the topic for last time. We won't go into too lengthy of a review but it just kind of emphasize the importance of seeking sacred knowledge and seeking spiritual knowledge regularly. So now he gets into the importance of having some type of practice where we're doing vikr regularly and this has been a really, really, really very like everything Imam al-Haddad is talking about is not focused on like it's not the same thing. It's not always going to be applicable to everybody. It depends on where someone is at in terms of how much practice they have in their life and then they decide okay how much of this can I take on. He's saying here's what a significant percentage of what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and the Sahaba would do and now we say okay this is what I'm able to take on consistently and consistency is the most critical key here especially in our times where it's difficult to be consistent and it's very, very easy to fall off of things. So under that being said he mentions that you and I should have some practice of remembering Allah every day in addition to our daily prayers, in addition to our daily prayers and he says that you should do this for either a determined period of time or for a determined amount. A determined period of time either I'm going to sit for three minutes and just remember Allah. I'm going to say la ilaha illallah or I'm going to say alhamdulillah. You pick a biker that you want to do or he says for a determined number. So okay you say I'm going to do let's say after the prayer where you're supposed to do 33 subhanallah alhamdulillah. Or you say I'm going to sit and just do 1000 la ilaha illallah. And then he says that in that situation it's good to count. You should try to count how much you're doing so that you have a goal. A lot of people are against counting for various reasons but then they count all other parts of their life. So counting biker is one of the best things that you can count. Have a specified amount of biker. So I'm going to have a goal of 10,000 let's say for the whole month. And then you say okay I have to get to what per day 100 la ilaha illallah or whatever that number kind of ends up being. And then that number increases. And what that does is on a daily basis it brings about like it's the spiritual reps that we talked about last time where spirituality is very similar to working out. You have to keep getting the reps in. And you'll never succeed in working out by just doing one set, one time, once a month. It's just not going to really do anything. But consistently if you do a set with 5 reps, 10 reps every single day concentrated in specific areas you'll start to refine the muscle, build the muscle, lose weight, whatever someone's goal is. And so similarly spiritually when someone does consistent at the car, consistent biker they will now have spiritual fortitude to get through the challenges that they have to get through in life and that will be a source of extra spiritual sustenance. So it says here that this should be a consistent amount of biker that we are doing. And then he gets into the essence of biker and he says that know that biker is the pillar of the spiritual path. There is no real spiritual path without biker of Allah. You cannot really become somebody who is trying to draw near to Allah if you don't remember him all the time. That is the pillar. It's one of the most critical aspects and all of the 5 pillars of our religion are related to biker. Of course the Shahada and you're saying and you're believing in Allah and then the prayer, the whole prayer is biker. Fasting is biker. Zakat is a form of paying and it's a form of biker. Hajj, the entire Hajj pilgrimage is biker. And so that biker is the pillar of the path he mentions. And he says that it is the weapon of the seekers. And here like, especially for those following along online, we do not mean a physical weapon. This is a spiritual weapon that Allah has given the believers that other people don't have, right? And this assists you. So when you're going through difficulty, what does the Muslim do? The Muslim is supposed to Allah says, He doesn't say like when you're going through a difficult time, he says seek help in patience and prayer, right? He's telling us that biker is going to be your companion when you're going through difficulties. It will be your weapon in the difficult times and in moments when you and I need assistance. And then Allah himself praises in so many ways he talks about the virtues of biker. So he says in a famous verse that Remember me and I will remember you. So when you remember Allah, if you remember him for five minutes, Allah is remembering you in a much better setting. And that's amazing because you at an inner at a deeper level, you can't remember Allah if he's not actually enabling you to remember him, right? And then Allah says in the Quran all the time, right? Remember God while sitting while standing while on your sides. Basically remember him all the time. And then he says, Remember Allah abundantly. Like do it a lot. There's no limit to biker. You can do biker all day and there will be no limit. And for the people who taste biker, they taste the sweetness of biker, they'll want to do it all of the time. It's not this like thing. Oh, I just have to do this so that I can fulfill a certain, you know, goal I had set out to do. It's like, no, no, no, they're tasting it. It's really sweet to them. They're feeling the barakah and the benefits of it. That takes time though to be able to get to. And as the scholars will mention, that's not like the reason why you do it. It's not, you don't do it. You do it so you can remember Allah. You don't do it so that you can feel good and feel calm and relax. It's so that you can remember Allah. But those are assisted benefits, peripheral benefits that end up coming. And so he says that there then will be fruits, right? You're planting trees and there's hadith which indicate every time you do certain types of biker, you have trees planted for you in Jannah, as an example. And Allah mentioned in the Quran that a good word is like a good tree, right? And what is a better word than biker? And so you're planting certain seeds, the fruits of which you will eventually get to taste if you are consistent. You can't just do it a little bit, you have to consistently go with it. And then he says you will start to taste the fruits of this biker. And he says those who persevere, you know, with good adab and trying to do it regularly, they will, the least of which, this is a very, very remarkable statement. He says the least of which is that they'll find it so sweet that every worldly pleasure becomes insignificant. That's the least level of the fruits that you'll taste of biker if you do it consistently. That every worldly pleasure, you're like, yeah, this is fine, like everybody chasing after money and fame and this, this and that. And like the people of Allah, they're good with their biker. It's worth way more to them than all of these other things. And this is the essence of what the Muslims have forgotten in our time. We're chasing after everything that the non-Muslims are chasing after. We're following essentially the ideology of consumerism. We're essentially filing many of the ideologies of secularism, of trying to follow many of the ideologies of just postmodernism. And we've forgotten our core ingredient to life and success is not wealth. It's not power. It's not fame. It's not glory. It's not control. It's not revolutions. That's not the core ingredient of success for a Muslim's life. At least not the way if a Muslim wants to live according to the way Allah and His messenger would want them to live. The core ingredient of success for the Muslim is to be immersed and realized in a state of biker. If they do that, Allah will bring about such change through them that no individual could do on their own. Because now Allah takes over your affair when you do a lot of biker. As we mentioned in the Hadith Qudsi, which we started this whole section with, that Allah says my servant does not draw nearer to me except which that I've made obligatory upon them. And then they continue to draw nearer to me with super-argetory actions with Nawafil. All of the actions we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks are Nawafil actions. Start with the basics, then you get to the extra. And you keep doing the extra. And it's Quran. And it's learning knowledge. And it's applying the sunnah of the prophecy of Islam. And it's doing zikr. And it's doing salawat upon the prophecy of Islam and so on and so forth. Until Allah says, until I love them. And when I love them, essentially paraphrasing the Hadith Qudsi, Allah takes over their affair. He now uses them to do whatever He wants. He says, I become the eyes by which they see. I become the hands by which they strike and so on and so forth. So that is the power of zikr. That's what the Muslims used to be focused on. The Sahaba Ikram, very few of them were focused, had very formal outward positions. But all of them, some of them had outward positions, of course, you had to. But all of them were realized saints of God, every single one of the Sahaba. They're the greatest people who ever walked the face of the earth after the Ambiya' al-Alema Salam. And they, it wasn't through wealth, it wasn't through power, it wasn't through fame. It was because they were realized in these realities that then Allah gave them all of that other, all of the success that they got, right? In terms of the way Islam spread through the hands of many of the great Sahaba and Tabi'in and Tabi'in. However, it wasn't through the ways we try to see success in the world that we live in today. So that's one thing for us to just evaluate as Muslims is like, how are we doing with our zikr? Where is our spiritual bank account at? We might be good with our physical bank account or we might not be, right? We might be really concerned about what this person thinks of us and what, you know, how many guests attend our weddings and how many followers we have and how many likes we get on an image and all this stuff. But where are we at with the amount of zikr that has been kept for us in our spiritual bank account? I was going to go with you and everything else will not be most likely going with us. So he says the least of which is to find every worldly pleasure insignificant. Then he says the highest of which is to become extinct in Allah. You become, you essentially, and this is not a topic that I have enough understanding of to talk about. So I'm just going to say exactly what he says, which is that you become extinct in the remembrance of Allah. We just stayed called Fana, which is you're annihilated in the remembrance of Allah. And as Allah mentions in Surah al-Rahman that everything is on its way towards this annihilation, right? And so the people of Allah, when they do enough zikr, they all they think about is Allah. Everything, they see everything as coming from Allah. They realize the meanings of la ilaha illallah. We, the majority of us, we only realize the first level of la ilaha illallah. La ilaha illallah has infinite levels. Only Allah knows how many levels of meanings la ilaha illallah has, which is one of the hidden meanings most likely behind why la ilaha illallah is so weighty on the scales on the day of judgment. That just having la ilaha illallah on one side of the scales as it comes in the hadith and whatever else we have, and we ask that it's not much on the other side in terms of bad, that la ilaha illallah can outweigh it because it's unlimited in meanings. So the first meaning is that yes, you testify that Allah is the only God worthy of worship. But then it gets much deeper than that. La ilaha illallah, that there is nobody who's actually acting and doing things with except Allah. La ilaha illallah, except nothing exists in true reality in essence except Allah. And the spiritual masters will go into deeper and deeper meanings. So the more somebody pronounces in their zikr, the more they really traverse these meanings. It's not just like a thing you do, it's now that path you travel. And you're traversing and you're traversing and you're traversing and you're elevating and elevating and elevating until you get to a point, whereas you're just like you're climbing a mountain where you now can see things that other people can't see because you have a view. You have traversed the path, you have climbed the path. And you'll get to a point in the mountain where if you're trying to climb the biggest mountains, let's say Mount Everest, where you can't go past a certain point without a guide. And so in the case, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is our guide. And then there are teachers around that will be kind of spiritual guides to assist people on the path. Not obviously a requirement, but something that will benefit somebody to achieve this state. And so then he says that the most important point is that the people of zikr, they're just like swimming in oceans of tranquility. And that's really what most of the people in the world are seeking today. Everybody wants calmness, tranquility, happiness, and that's what the people of zikr have. And that's what the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam had. He had the utmost tranquility in the most difficult of circumstances. He wasn't perturbed. And he gave us the tools for how to get there. And the amazing thing is we can reach in our time really, really immense stations and levels of nearness that were difficult to reach in past times by doing less because nobody's doing things anymore. There's people doing things, but generally speaking it's way less, right? So this essentially then becomes the desire of the Muslim, that they start to desire this and start to do this. Yes. You could bring that analogy to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, when he went on the mirage, the night journey, as far as getting elevation, where even Gabriel couldn't throw it in no longer. So he would go ahead and ascend it so high so he could potentially get that vision. Right. Right. As Siddharah mentioned, that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and he's the Habib Allah, he is, then we are in his month sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And he had reached the station so high that as we know on the night of Isra'el Mirage, that he got to a point where even Sayyidina Gabriel alaihi wa sallam, the archangel Gabriel, was not able to go past that point, past the low tree of the farthest limit, the Siddharah of the month sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. That was reserved for the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and his meeting with Allah. And Allah, and it's amazing because in that, what did everybody, when you go to see a really, really, really amazing host, right? Someone invites you. A really good host will always leave you with some gift. They won't just let you go. And so Allah on that journey gave him a gift. And what's the gift? He didn't give him, again, not financial gift, but he gave him the prayer. The prayer was directly given to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam on that night journey. And then the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam brought it back to us. Again, the vicar. It's just revolving around this idea of the vicar. And so then he gets into, okay, now how do you go about doing this? How do you go about doing this? And there's a beautiful hadith here. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, Shall I not inform you of the best of your actions, the purest in the sight of your Lord, the purest and the most elevating to you in degrees, best of actions, purest in the sight of Allah is going to elevate you in degrees the most quickly. It's better for you than spending gold and silver, aka spending money, and then meeting your enemy in jihad, right? We'll just paraphrase it for just so it's understood correctly, than meeting your enemy in jihad and fighting. And then he said, they said yes. And he said the vicar of Allah, the remembrance of Allah, that it's greater for you, the most purest. It's greater for you than spending money. It's greater for you than it's most, most elevating to you. And it is better than what is especially, especially in the time of the Sahaba, right? There were various battles that were fought, especially in the early times of the Muslims, right? And that was seen as a very, very big act. You are sacrificing your life. Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is saying here, it's greater for you than that. And then he says that it is the vicar of Allah. Of course, all of those things are portions of vicar themselves, right? And so then he gives us now, okay, now how do you actually do the vicar? He says in order to really realize the benefits of vicar and to have focused vicar, you need to actually have focused vicar time. There is like benefit to just kind of walking around and saying, you know, saying, that has benefit, but he's saying you want to get the maximized benefit, you have to give it concentrated time, right? And he says there what you do is you sit ideally in a secluded place in a state of uddu facing the kibla, and you just focus and remember Allah for a period of time. And again, this does not have to be for hours. This can be for two minutes. It can be for three minutes. But the goal is we have some portion of our time doing it. I remember one of our teachers mentioned that everybody, at some point, you have to have a moment where you just disconnect from everything and you only connect to Allah. You have to have moments in your day where you do that. And ideally, it's moments where you're just kind of in seclusion, kind of things are quiet at the house, right? Whether it's like the early morning or later at night or whatever it is. This is why the nighttime has so many secrets and benefits, right? The nighttime has so many secrets and benefits. We'll have to get to the point later. The nighttime has so many secrets and benefits because of the quietude that comes at nighttime, right? And so he said everybody should have moments if they're just sitting with Allah and in some of those moments, you're conversing and you're making daa. And then in some of those moments, you're just sitting and you're reflecting and you're making dhikr. And you'll get to the next chapter on reflection, right? But that is the essence of what is going to help you and I traverse quickly. And it builds, again, the first chapter was about yakin. This is what builds the internal yakin. This is one of the key ingredients to internal yakin uncertainty. It's absolutely essential to it that you and I need to have these moments where we just sit and we really, because we need to reflect on the meanings. Most of us, we live lives where we just go about the day. Our prayers are just, we just repeat them and we just go about the day to go about the day. Whatever, even if we are doing certain stuff, we're thinking about something else or somebody else or work, whatever it is. And then we don't actually have moments where we really just really think about Allah and if we do, Alhamdulillah, we want to increase those moments. And so again, we'll get to it afterwards, inshallah. So he says that if you start to do this, then what starts to happen is the benefits now start to manifest because somebody is sitting isolated and they're really thinking about Allah. And what happens when we make dhikr of Allah, as we mentioned in the first verse, remember me and I will remember you. Remember me and I will remember you. And so now the remembrance, Allah is now remembering us. And what kind of benefits could somebody be getting? In addition to all of the specific rewards listed, you get this reward for Allah, this reward for Allah, and so on and so forth. And then he mentions again in a bit more of an esoteric way that what ends up happening is now you start to have the proximity, the lights of proximity descend upon you. And somebody starts to get access to things that you don't have access to if you don't do a lot of dhikr. Unveiling and access to what's called kashf and things like that. Again, not something that is very, I don't really quite understand it, so I'm not going to speak about it, but it's something that is possible. If somebody's heart is present, the heart gets into a state of purity where the yakin gets so strong and now they're able to witness things that you and I just, we can't actively see the angels here. But there are people who are able to get access to this for moments of time, where they're able to see access to the unseen realities. But the majority of us, we believe in them. As we mentioned the levels of yakin, as mentioned in the Quran, there's the eye of certainty, the knowledge of certainty, the eye of certainty, and then the Haqqa yakin, the reality of certainty. And you have to progress. And dhikr is the key ingredient to help us progress on those levels. And so the presence of heart is the most critical thing here. We really, really want to have presence of heart. We don't just want to be going through the motions. And the presence of heart then is what allows the dhikr to be potent. There's like, dhikr that can be, of course it's effective, because remembering Allah, but the potency won't be as strong if the heart isn't present. And this is something that's also difficult to do in our times because we can't have our phones in front of us. We can't have Instagram in front of us. We can't have Facebook in front of us. We can't have TV in front. We have to just put all of it away and invest some period of time. And when you start doing that, all of the other distractions become less likable. You're like, I don't really want to do that stuff anymore because what I was feeling when I was doing the dhikr was so much better. And now I would prefer to do that versus the trepidation and the worries I feel when I see this person doing this on social media and this person doing this and me wishing I could do this and this person has more than me and all the weird feelings that come in the time we use ineffectively, dhikr has the complete inverse of that where it's all positivity and it's all cleansing of the heart. So then he's going to get into the dhikr that you want to do but we'll pause here for any questions. Yes. I was just going to mention that it would be probably good to mention that everybody should know but there are circles of dhikr usually every week. So that's a good way to get going because you just sit with the shape in dhikr and I know they have them up the road every Thursday night and then you just sit in a circle and do dhikr for half an hour or 40 minutes or something on a regular basis so that kind of gets you going. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Yeah. Yeah. Alhamdulillah. So there are different circles of dhikr that take place if somebody is local like there's one Thursday night at I think Masjid al-Iman. There's one Friday right after Maghrib at the old lighthouse not far up the street and then there's various other circles of dhikr that will take place. And so it's very, very good to sit because as Allah mentions or as the Prophet ﷺ mentions that when you remember Allah, Allah is remembering you and when you remember Allah in a gathering Allah remembers you in a greater gathering. Allah remembers you in a greater gathering and so that's a very, very quick way to start to see some of the benefits of dhikr is to attend gatherings of dhikr. Classes would be considered a gathering of dhikr but it's a gathering of knowledge, right? Then there's just gathering where you're just saying let's say la ilaha illallah for X amount of times or Alhamdulillah for X amount of times. And then without getting too deep into it there's people who disagree and think that that's not permissible. But for our times they'll still go and watch movies and stuff and then they don't want to do dhikr. So it just really doesn't make much sense. So generally speaking if you can do gatherings of dhikr it's very good. But if you prefer to do it on yourself or on your own it's also totally fine, Alhamdulillah. Any questions? Question? Yes. You said there's a gathering at the old lighthouse? Old lighthouse, 6.30 p.m. Who is the Imam of that dhikr? I believe it's the zikr that Imam Fodeh drama who came a few months ago that he had his students do. 6.30 p.m. Any other questions thus far? Let's see if there are any questions online. Yeah. You were talking a little bit earlier about some of the benefits of consistently doing dhikr and how it gets a little bit esoteric in terms of unveiling and things like that. There are theories that you can share with us some of the optical benefits. For example, this is Dua 4. Alayhi salam. Alayhi salam. This is Dua 4. It's unhygienic at this time to expand this breast. Are these reserved for times where you need them or do you think that you could be proactive with those and save them constantly in order to maybe prevent some of the things that they're asking for in the Dua itself? The question was, are some of the Dua that are mentioned in the Quran specifically for certain situations that somebody is in? The Dua of Musa, or the Dua of Prophet Yunus, and so on and so forth. Generally, the spiritual masters will recommend doing multiple types of dhikr from the Quran for significant portions of the day, or every week. It's not reserved for certain situations. You might not have a distress or difficulty you're going through, but you're trying to express your humbleness before Allah, is one way to do that. There's also forgiveness that comes through some of these Dua's and one not. Somebody might just want an expansion in a situation or they can just keep repeating that. So you're getting the benefit of reciting Quran. So as long as you're in a state where it's okay to recite Quran, it's a good thing to do any of the Dua's that are from the Quran. Or generally speaking, the majority of the dhikr that is from the sunnah of the Prophet's Islam to just do that often and abundantly without limiting to specific times. And then when there are times to do it, it's like the Dua's of the morning, they're best if done in the morning, but if somebody does them in their afternoon, it's still fine. It's just not as potent as a single morning. Let's say Surah Qaf, Surah Qaf is very recommended on Friday, but you can recite it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. You can recite it every day if you want. Does that answer the question? Cool, so any other questions? Okay, so we'll just continue here. So then he's going to get into, and this is the most practical aspect now of this. He's like, what dhikr do you actually do? And he says, be careful to keep to the textually transmitted invocations and prayers which follow the ritual prayer. So it starts with after the salat, right? So now he's going to get into like, and now we're going to list out like five to ten different types of things that we should all be trying to kind of consistently get down in our life. So he mentions first, again, the dhikr that you do after the prayer. What is this dhikr? And then doing. So that's the first dua that is, you should never leave that dua, right? That Allah assist me in remembering you and being grateful and make me amongst the best of your servants, right? So we want to do that all of the time. After every prayer. After every farted prayer, we should do that. Then there's another set of dhikr that we do after every farted prayer from the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, which is that we recite Ayatul Kursi and we do Subhanallah 33 times, Alhamdulillah 32 times, Allahu Akbar 33 times, right? And if somebody you can count that on your hands, you can count it with the tasbih, or Subhanah, whatever it is, but that, those are the like baseline, right? So after we finish the farted prayers, before we make the dua, we say I forgot the first one, actually, you say staghfirullah 3 times, and then you do Allahumma, Alhamdulillah, Allahumma, But at least a portion of that, and then this is now all something that I'm going to share shortly, like a link that we can go to where all of these are you can just download them and read them and remember them, inshallah. Then there is the dhikr, as I mentioned, Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar, and then after that there's a variety of different dhikr for different prayers that somebody can make. So after fudger, if somebody can make a different dhikr, that is not done after dhohr. For example, it's recommended to say Allah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, 10 times after fudger, and 10 times after maghrib. There's like many, many, many benefits to all of these that have been transmitted in the hadith and in the narrations, but for the sake of time, we're just kind of getting into the like, these are what we should do. These are from the sunnah also. Yes. Yeah, let me look up the best translation, inshallah. That there is no God except Allah. He has no partners. His is the dominion and sovereignty. And His is all praise. And He has the power to do all things. So if you remind yourself like all the time, especially morning and evening, Allah has the power to do all things. Everything is in Allah's control. Even if your intellect doesn't get it, your spirit will get it. This is the reality of the Muslim is that we're operating in various different domains than just the intellect. You might not grasp a concept intellectually, but spiritually your spirit, what's called your ruh, your nafs, and your qalb, your heart can understand things. And when they get it, that's when now the intellect might also start to submit. One of the main errors of the time we live in is to intellectually understand things without spiritually doing the work. Hence why there's so much atheism in our time today because there are very few people doing the spiritual work. Trying to grasp with an intellect that's created, that's limited, that barely even understands the functions of the kidney, let alone how are they going to understand Allah if you don't have vikr associated with it. You're not supposed to understand Allah, you just believe in Allah. And you believe that Allah exists. So then he gets into vikr for each activity you do. What does that mean? The Prophet ﷺ was exemplifying this at the at the max level. He was always doing vikr. So there is a vikr for when you wake up in the morning. Alhamdulillah, Al-Lili, Ahyana, Ba'da Ma'amatina, Wa-Layhi-Nashut. There is a vikr for when you use the restroom. Bismillah, Allahumma, Al-Nia'ud, Al-Qubtib, Al-Khabai. There is a vikr for when you leave the restroom. There's a vikr for when you put on your clothes. There's a vikr for when you eat. There's a vikr for after you eat. There is a vikr for when you leave the house. There's a vikr upon entering the house. Every activity you can do the Prophet ﷺ has a vikr for it. And this is the beauty now. The important thing in our time is the one who does this is in a special state of protection. And the one who doesn't is leaving themselves open to the unseen dark forces. And this is very real in our time. The scholars mentioned and I remember just two, three months ago, one of the great spiritual masters of our time mentioned that when you do not do these basic things that you and I you know, like when you're sometimes especially if you're raised in a Muslim family, you might be eating and if you don't say Bismillah, Shaitan's going to eat food with you and you kind of like, do you think it's a joke? Shaitan's going to eat my food. You're like, no, it's real. 100% real. These things are actually real. They're the devils and the jinn feast on people who are not in a state of presence. And that's the essence is if you are not present, you are absent. And if you are absent, you are a target and you are a target for unseen realities and we ask Allah for protection. But Allah gave us what to do to get protection. It's all there in the sunnah of the Prophet's Islam. This is what you do. And the Prophet s.a.w. didn't like, he's already in an amazing station. He's doing this so he can teach us. He's doing this so he can teach us. And so these are things which when we're young, like kids in Islamic school or Sunday school will learn all these du'a's. But maybe we didn't do that. So we learn them as we get older. We should make, we should learn these regular du'a's. There's books. One of the books I would recommend getting is the Ad-Kar of Imam An-Naui, the Remembrances of Imam An-Naui. It has all the dhikr you're supposed to do every day and week listed out. This is what the Prophet s.a.w. would do. There's also like a, I think a book that you can download even an app for. I think Fortress of the Muslim. What is it? Host of the Muslim. Yeah, like Fortress of the Believers or something like that. It has a lot of the du'a's you're supposed to do for every day activities. Nobody has different opinion on those du'a's. Everybody agrees that those are good du'a's to do. So these now are fortresses for the Muslim. They give you an extra type of barakah and assistance in your life and in that situation that you were in. So you do the du'a before eating. Your food has a barakah in it. Yes. Yeah, the name of the book is the adhikar the plural of dhikr. Adhikar Remembrances by Imam An-Naui. Did you get it? Should I repeat it? No. Remembrances. Remembrances like Remembrance Plural by Imam An-Naui. N-A-W-A-W I And if you go to Okay, so I think this will work. Let me just confirm. If you go to tinyurl.com It's definitely worth it. tinyurl.com slash awrad A-W-R A-A-D tinyurl.com slash awrad I just compiled all the stuff I'm talking about. It's all in there in pdf format. You just download on your phone and just do it tinyurl.com slash awrad If somebody could test that out and make sure it works, because it works for me, but Obviously it'll work for me. It's just in a Google drive. tinyurl.com slash awrad A-W-R-A-A-D And so I'm going to talk through what some of these other ones are, but they have the daily ones the weekly ones, the monthly ones, and all the things you should do. There's a lot of stuff and now I'm going to talk through where each of them are. We don't have to do that every single day, for example. So these are these Sunna's Duas, the probabilism we do again, they're critical for presence and they're critical for protection against disease and protection against tribulation, right? So somebody in order to really have the most potent protection against tribulation and difficulty has to be doing all these. And then now when difficulty comes, okay, now you say this is like I am really, really being tested, right? But if we don't take the means, that means that we didn't take the means, right? So now like if somebody doesn't ever eat healthy and work out and something happens to their health, it's our own fault. But if somebody does all the things and now something happens to their health, that's a different situation. So it'll help you and I assess a little bit more, right? When we say la ilah ilah anta subhanak, the glory be to you. I am the one who messes up. I'm the one who is of the wrongdoers. And so when we don't get on these things and when we stray from the Sunna's asalam, we now leave behind these extra types of protections and sources that will help us out. So that is the first one is after the prayers. The second one is the card to do every day. The third one is, by the way, did the link work? It works, right? You can see the PDF is downloadable. Okay. The Sunna do'az of the morning and the evening. These are also essential. These are like probably amongst the most essential. Prophet as-salam and the sahaba and the salaf, they would do these every day and they wouldn't leave these. That it is a do'az where there's do'az of protection in there. There's do'az for barqa in your day. There's a certain portion where you're residing in Qura'an and much more. And so the easiest compilation at least that I found, there's many compilations of the Sunna do'az. If you just google Sunna do'az of the morning, you'll come back with like 20 do'az, right? There's many, many do'az but there's a compilation also compiled by the author of this book, Imam Al Wil Haddad, known as it's al-Wird al-Latif. It's in that link. And that is it takes about like 10 minutes to do. But when someone is after your practice, it takes like 7 minutes to do, right? In the morning. At least in the morning. If someone can't get to it in the evenings, at least in the morning starting off your day. And it's ideally done at between after fudger, ideally after fudger. But if somebody like, you know, maybe you went back to sleep or just too tired, okay? When you wake up, but sometime ideally before lower time. And that period of the morning is the best time to do that. And if you've still missed it, you still do it for the sake of protection. So it starts off with the 3 Qul's 3 times each. Then you start to seek refuge from the shayateen, right? Then they get into verses of the Quran that are specifically meant for protection. And then when you reflect on those verses they're about like jolting you and me awake to Allah ask in one of the verses do you think we created you for no reason, right? And you read that every morning and you're like okay I was praying for a reason, right? Like there's some depth there's a deep wisdom to my life. And so those are the du'a's that we should be, we should at minimum if there's anything in addition to the du'a's after the prayers that we can take away or these morning du'a's. Because these will be the ingredient to facilitate all of the other things that we want to start to do. And it will allow us to achieve success in your job, in your career, in your family life, in whatever challenges you're facing because in the du'a's you're asking Allah to assist you in every aspect of your life. And you're saying the words that the Nabi alaihi salatu wa salam said and what better way is there to start off your day in the way the Prophet ﷺ would want us to start off our day. So that's the third category and that's in the link that tinyurl.com. That link, it's there as the where the latif. Different spiritual paths have different ones to do, but that's like a very, very strong general one to do. And then we mentioned already the fourth category you mentioned already was the surahs that somebody should try to recite every day or every week. Every week surahs al-kaaf and every day ideally yasin, wakya and mulk that they work their way up to that. And then we're kind of getting to the end. I know there's quite a lot here. So the goal is the link is tinyurl.com slash a-w-r-a-a-d tinyurl.com slash awrad a-w-r-a-a-d and that will get you the link. I'll just post this real quick. So then there is so we got the morning du'az we got the du'az after the prayers and then we got the du'az that you do with each activity and then just kind of to wrap it up the surahs that we should be reciting often and then there is a regular weird of salawat that he says everybody should have. Salawat upon the Prophet alayhi salatu was-salam. He says adopt a weird of prayers for the messenger of God salallahu alayhi was-salam for this will be a connection between you and the Prophet as we know through various hadith that when you say as-salatu was-salam alayka ya Rasulullah comes in various narrations that he responds Allah returns his soul to him and he responds and with your name and in some narrations the name of your parents right and then it will be a door through which assistance, spiritual assistance, spiritual lights and assistance flow to you in abundance to you from various aspects but specifically spiritual assistance from the Prophet alayhi salatu was-salam so and he mentions in a hadith that the one who says one time Allah prays upon him Allah sends his mercy and blessings upon that person ten times and so if you say ten times every morning that's a hundred prayers that Allah bestowed upon you one prayer from Allah your life you're good you don't need anything else in your life Salawat always upon the Prophet al-Salam there's so many benefits of Salawat we won't get into all of them but in this month of Rabi al-Owal especially it's a good month for us to do a lot of Salawat and especially on the day of Friday and the night before Friday so we do a lot of Salawat and that opens up access to lots of nearness to Allah and his messenger he says that the most beloved to me and the nearest and sitting to me are those who do the most Salawat upon me so on Yom al-Qiyamah you're not going to want to be near anybody except the Prophet al-Salam not your CEO not your father, not your mother not your son, not your daughter, not your brother not your sister, not your cousin, not your best friend not your homies, nobody the only person you are going to want to be near is the Prophet al-Salam because he is going to be that is his day that is the day where the Prophet al-Salam is going to intercede for his ummah that is an amazing day and it's also a very terrifying day but the one who does the most Salawat upon the Prophet al-Salam and don't think of this spatially like how many people could ever fit near there's billions of Muslims, what if everybody does think of it just like this is the realm of Allah as many people as Allah wants could be near to the Prophet al-Salam on the day of judgment and so that is the next thing and then the last one that we should do is everybody should have a specific weird of just protection what does that mean? there are specific du'as that the righteous have compiled where you do a certain order of invocations from the Quran and from the Sunnah of the Prophet al-Salam that are just for protection and what that means is because one of the oliyahs he said or one of the righteous they said that the sheyatin in the end of time are brazen and they are actively attacking versus in older times they would passively be doing it so when someone opens up a door they go after them in our time they are actively seeking people who are doing good one thing to remember as you do more and more good you open yourself up to more and more haters in the spiritual realm because they're like whoa this person before was like barely praying sleeping through fudger smoking doing all this stuff and now they're like doing whoa now I gotta we were giving our sheytan an easy time we're chilling now they wake up okay now I gotta get to my assignment and now they want to actually mess things up and so they start to attack more and now they're on the offense offensively going after us so the weir the protection protects us from that amongst those the ones that are in the link that we just mentioned there is a very very powerful one that many of our teachers recommend doing the weir of mama novi also mama novi the great great muhadith and scholar and chaffee fiqh and one of the greatest scholars has ever produced he had a weir that he would do every day and it is very potent for protection specifically against protection from the unseen realms from sheytan and jinn and now this might sound I remember when I first heard this I was like what are you talking about like I can't I don't know what you're kind of tripping this sounds way too much like what do you mean there's gonna be this is rare very real as you start to go through the path and as I even talked to like some of our teachers they mentioned like how real it is when the jinn and the sheytan start to mess with people and it's not a joke and many of the diseases that we have could have been warded off or the issues we go through in life could have been warded off had we done and stayed upon the path of dikker and so the weir the protection is really important the weir the mama novi it's meant it's there it's it take that one takes about seven minutes it's a little bit on the longer side there's another one that takes 30 seconds to a minute that I would recommend everybody does it's known it's in the it's in the link also it's called the hizbah sacran by the great imam abu bakar a sacran he was one of the great imams of the city of hadramot also from the same lineages that imam al haddad descends from and it is a specific word where you have your site itohorsi and the fatihah and a few of the other verses of the Quran and then certain duas that are meant for protection and it's tried and tested for protection and so these are things we don't want to take lightly if again if we can start to get to a point where we do a little bit of the last protection we do the du'as after prayer most importantly and we do the morning du'as we're going to be in a really good state we'll have taken what we need in order to traverse the path right and so once somebody starts doing them you'll start to feel the benefits and if you don't do them you'll also know what's going on like you'll feel it and there's many others powerful ones hizbah bahar is another really powerful one maybe you'll talk about next time that's by the great imam abu asan ashadali but absent of us literally praying all the time doing things all the time these little things one minute here five minutes here like all of us can spare five minutes we can all spare ten minutes that's like ten scrolls or ten images somebody looks at whatever the right phrasing for that it's just a little bit of time someone spends it's like a third of a show we give up half of a TV show I'm going to give up one episode and instead I'm just going to sit and do these protection doors and it will make me closer to Allah it will make me closer to the sunnah of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and closer to the Prophet's Islam and it will protect me in my life and it will give me barakah and openings and sakina and tranquility and all my problems will start to get like a lot of benefits will come through little little little things that's the most important piece here and if somebody does not have time to do these or they can't learn them then listen YouTube is abundantly full of of these doors when you're getting ready in the morning getting dressed or ironing your clothes or make up whatever somebody is doing just put it on YouTube and just listen to it and you'll memorize it eventually right which is just try to have it somewhere playing listening some format because we just want to make sure our life has an abundant amount of vikr of Allah this is the key as he mentions of the seeker it is the key of the spiritual traveler it is the weapon of the believer it comes in a hadith of the is the weapon of the believer Allah mentions vikr is one of the main ways you're going to assist yourself is one of the greatest acts in the sight of Allah and so to recap the vikr is that we want to do kind of on a practical perspective is the doaz after each prayer the doaz for each activity going to the restroom getting dressed eating drinking drinking water and milk leaving the home wearing clothing there's there's abundant doaz that I'm not getting in the car or your camel if you have one just kidding and so the abundant doaz for these types of different activities that we might do and then there the sunnah doaz of the morning and the evening and then there are there's the protection doaz those are and then the salawat those four or five categories we already covered last time or two time two classes ago the surahs we should recite from the Quran but if somebody starts to get on the path and they do what we're mentioning little bits little bits that Imam Haddad is mentioning inshallah they'll be in a very very good state so we ask that Allah facilitate that for us and then He make it easy for us and then He make us people of vikr and people of vikr and people of shukr and people of nearness inshallah Alhamdulillah so if anybody has any questions we'll take two questions and then we'll end doaz for protection protection and then the fifth one is salawat upon the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam yes good question the question was is there any preference to do vikr in Arabic so vikr is at its most potent form is in the words that Allah revealed and in the way the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said it but the meanings you have to understand in your own language so like la ilaha illallah in Arabic we might not kind of understand but when we reflect on the meanings that will be in our own language but the actual kind of benefits of protection from my understanding and if someone please correct me if I'm wrong but from what I've understood from our teachers and the kind of the creed of Ahlul Sunnah wa Jama'a is it comes when you do it in the way that is revealed by Allah so you recite the Quran in Arabic and that's where the spiritual benefits of protection come so I'll just remember in one of the verses of tafsirah surah ghaafir I believe that it's mentioned it's one of the surahs that begins with haameem all these different hadith and narrations that just talk about the protection benefits of just saying haameem like 7 times for example in one of the bikrs they'll say haameem 7 times and that has a huge benefit of protection but like there's no translation for haameem you just say hmm that's not really going to work so you would say that for example in Arabic but then you reflect upon the meanings and that's the next chapter is reflecting on the meanings in English if that makes sense and then if somebody can do it in Arabic and they have like time and they just want to read it in English often just to like make sure they understand what they think that's amazing, that's like you get the reward for seeking knowledge then and so you get the reward for bikr and seeking knowledge does that help? any other questions? any questions online? any other questions? Malik, you got a question? yes so here it feels like time moves really quickly especially for those of us who are working families have you noticed any changes or benefits in the way that you experience or others experience time when you especially stick to like the morning and the evening dhwas or anything like that so the question was that time moves really really quickly especially in our society so is there any specific benefits that might come or is that people notice benefits people notice benefits of doing certain bikr especially the dhwas of the morning that probably some would do in terms of expanding time and alhamdulillah definitely there's places of bikr so if you go to a place like madina or makkah you'll notice that like in a few hours you can get a million things done because time there expands because it's all bikr going on so when someone does bikr it comes in a hadith where he said that the morning time has barakah for my umma some of the commentators say it's because he was sallallahu sallam was born in the morning time and so there is a special barakah that comes after the time of fajr and when someone does 7 to 10 minutes of bikr bye