 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin. Wassalatu wa salam ala as-sharaf al-lambiyyat wal mursaleen. Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alaihi wa sahbihi ajma'in. Allahumma alimna ma yinfa'una wa fa'nabimma alimtana wa zidna al-mannafin wa ba'a. So last week we talked about love and mercy and how it transforms people. This week we talked about how to develop that love. So we talked about, obviously in Islam there's more to just love. There's justice, there's service, there's responsibility, there's seeking knowledge, but each have its own place in the journey. What I was just simply trying to highlight is the journeys that I've seen with people recovering from addiction, people with moderate to severe addictions and how that typically will unfold. So how to find the sweetness in iman. So we said that last week we talked about how to develop that, that last week you talked about how to find that sweetness. Inshallah, this week we talk about how to develop that sweetness. So we said, if three things exist within someone they'll find the sweetness of iman. Number one was the one to whom Allah and his messenger become more beloved than anything else. The second one we mentioned was someone who loves an individual visual and he loves them only for the sake of Allah. So now we established this principle of finding love in these things with Allah in the vertical plane and with individuals on the horizontal plane is what is responsible for developing that sweetness. And of course we wanna make recovery sweet. We don't wanna make it harsh and painful. You know, you see a lot of people with three months, six months, a year away abstaining from their addictive behavior and they're sort of white knuckling it. They're grumpy, they're reactive, they're angry. It just doesn't feel good. In order for recovery to work, the book goes into recovery's gotta be worth it. And one of the predictors of falling off and relapse is negative affect, just feeling not good. And so really success, if you wanna think about it with your addictive behavior, success is in not simply abstaining but feeling fulfilled. Cause when we understand our addictive behavior, it's a symptom of something deeper. It's its own problem. Everybody enters into addiction for different reasons. Some people enter into addiction through anxiety and depression and trying to regulate their mood. Some people enter into addiction through trauma, childhood trauma. And they're trying to regulate their mood or they're trying to regulate their trauma. Some people enter into addiction through boredom. Some people enter in through different reasons but once they develop addiction, that almost becomes its own problem, its own knotted problem. Now what's important is to address the addictive behavior directly and head on with things that have been shown to treat that addictive behavior. And then number two, address the reasons that brought us into that. So when we make these transformations and changes in our lives, our new life has to be worth it. And when we see people successful, that's essentially what happens. Not to say that our life is like totally miserable but those aspects of ourselves that lead us back to our addictive behavior, that essentially is what's necessary in order to change, to break that cycle. All right, so you can think of it as an equation. Developing this love on the vertical plane and the horizontal plane leads to this sweetness, this experience of sweetness. So how do we develop that love to increase that love and then increase that sweetness? So the Ulema talk about three ways to develop this or three components of this. Like for example, Imam al-Khazali says, he says, Imam al-Khazali says, it can be for their Jamal, their Kamal or their Nawal. So you can love somebody or you can love something because of its beauty, its perfection or recognizing something they do for you. So let's break this down. So the first thing, first component that people tend to love others. And again, this can be for helping us love, developing love in both of those planes. So one thing is beauty. So for example, when you think of creation, there's so much beauty in creation. Like if you just look at the mountains or spend time in the mountains. And basically the idea is that these three components, it's something natural within us. It's something natural within us to be attracted or gravitated to beauty, to perfection, to gifts. When somebody does something for us to be to gravitate towards that thing or that person. So when we look around us, you see so many different aspects of beauty like in the moment and just in general. So you look at the mountains, every individual when they come across a mountain, if they see one, it's just this amazing experience. Sunrise, you watch the sunrise. It's an amazing experience. It doesn't matter if you are, you know, the world's worst criminal. If you've been in prison for 20, 25 years and society has collectively agreed, you know, it doesn't matter. That person will still, if they have a chance to see the sunrise, it's beautiful. If you look at the ocean, the way that it ebbs and flows, having a child, there's so much beauty if you focus on that. And again, part of this is focusing on these three components, as opposed to focusing on the glass being half full or half empty. So the beautiful aspect of this is this doesn't matter if you are the best person in the world, if we're the worst person in the world, if we're the most knowledgeable person in the world, if we're not, you know, we don't have knowledge. If it doesn't matter who you are, socioeconomically, demographically, it doesn't matter. You can appreciate this beauty of Allah. We all have access to this beauty of Allah. We all have access to this connection. It's not like we have to be this person in order to get it. You can all enjoy the sunrise and develop that connection. Now, sure there's darkness in this world. Like we said, there's people that enter into addiction in many different forms, depression, anxiety, trauma. So there does exist darkness in this world and addiction is often a downstream consequence of darkness or difficult circumstances. And this is where people sort of make the mistake. Addiction in a lot of ways is not this hedonism and this pursuit of pleasure. For many people, addiction is an escape from pain. But even then, if we can't, if it's hard to latch on to the beauty around us in this world, there's beauty in the way that Allah designed the system. In other words, even with darkness up and difficulty, Allah encompasses us in the afterlife for it. So when it comes to difficulties, there was a Sahab that asked the Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Sa'd bin Abi Waqas, he said to the Prophet, which people are tested most severely? And the Messenger of Allah said, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, they're the prophets, then the next best and then the next best of them. So even with trials, trials are a part of life. Even with trials, there's a, there's a hikmah in it. There's a wisdom in it. And even when we get tried and we have difficulty, there's a beauty in it in the sense that it makes us stronger. Oftentimes we look back on our lives and recognize that that was important to bring us to something better. It was a training ground to something better. I mean, you go into the rooms of recovery or you see people that have a year, two year, abstaining from their addictive habit, whatever the habit be, and you hear their stories. It's amazing. It's one of the most beautiful testaments to the human condition. It's just, it's really amazing. We know from Hadith that Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam taught us that a man will be brought on the day of judgment who had the most difficult life and he'll be dipped in Jannah just once. It says he'll be dipped. And then it says just once, one dip. And then he'll be asked, did you have any difficulty? And he would say, I didn't face any difficulties or experience any distress. So in other words, in this life, we have the opportunity to make meaning out of our difficulties and focus on the good. And then also have the hope and the promise that there's something better for us, for all the difficulties that they went over that we've come across. So the beauty, the jamaab, the beauty, recognizing the beauty, perceiving the world in this way leads to this love and the sweetness. Then there's the kamad, the perfection. We look at the fine tuning of the world. Our body is a universe in itself. The eye, the kidney, the lungs, the heart, the brain, how everything has to be in perfect balance, the pH of your blood. There's so much that has to be in perfect attunement. You look at, if you run labs on a person to check the kidney, their liver, their breathing, all of it, a physician, they get a sheet of labs. It's all numbers and it's ranges. And there's so many numbers. And the kidneys has its numbers, the lungs have its numbers, the heart has its numbers. And there's a small range. And if those numbers are outside of the range, the body just stops working. It goes, it becomes unhealthy and eventually stops working. There's such a fine tune in the human body and in the universe itself. So you look around you and if Jupiter was taken out or if the sun was a little bit closer, a little bit farther or the moon changed its pattern in any way, there's such an incredible perfection into the way things have been made that it's just amazing. It really is just, it's so amazing to see. And we see this, the heart is naturally inclined to people who excel, let's say sports or arts, people who naturally can create things that are superior or closer to perfection. The whole world cheers them on. The whole world is drawn to them. The whole world loves them. So much so that you have companies that will pay millions and billions of dollars, millions of dollars just to attach their shoe to that person or just to attach a five second endorsement to that person because they know love is drawn to excellence and perfection naturally. And instead of appreciating it, of course we try to monetize it. So when you look at the gemad, the beauty in the world around us, and you look at the perfection of the world around us, that's what helps us develop connection. And then you get to the gifts, the third component because we said beauty, perfection and then the third component of what naturally drives us to loving something is gifts. When people give us gifts, we tend to like them. It tends to develop our love for them. It tends to make us more open to them. And so sure, we can again look at all that's wrong with the world but when we see how it all plays out in the end, the favors are overwhelmingly the focus. The favors and the gifts are overwhelmingly what occurs. So and a lot of gifts in essence are obscured by a sense of entitlement. So when we feel like we deserve it or we earned it, we don't see it as a gift anymore or that it's all right, we don't see it as a gift anymore. So when we look at the world around us or we try to develop that connection, oftentimes it's helpful to recognize that feeling of deservedness. So when it comes to Allah, Allah blesses us with our existence first and foremost. Like there's nothing that we gave in exchange to Him for that existence. We didn't offer anything to Him that increased Him or that benefited Him first and then He gave us our existence. And then before we're even born, He blesses us with parents, not one but two. He blesses us with our sustenance and blesses us throughout our lives. And then again, coming back to the idea that even in the end, after it's all over, we continue to get blessings. We continue to get blessings and rewarded for what we've done, not just the good but abstaining from the bad and just going through the difficulties in life. All right, so what I'm trying to do is just create a taste of how to develop this sweetness, how to develop this love and three ways to focus on this. This conversation can be gone on forever but to be able to recognize how to essentially benefit ourselves, how to take control of our mental and emotional environment and shift it from being something that's just conditioned within us to something where we can now intentionally make that experience sweet. To do that, it's helpful to focus on these three things. Looking at the beauty in the world, looking at the perfection in the world and looking at the world as a gift and looking at the gifts or acknowledging the gifts for us in this world. Now, the last thing I wanna say before we go to the text is this is on the vertical plane and this is on the horizontal plane. So part of recovery and abstaining is from our addictive behavior is developing relationships. So either we're redeveloping relationships with loved ones that we might have broken the bridges with because of our addictive behavior or we're developing relationships with people who can help us overcome our addictive behavior. So that can be with a teacher, an Islamic teacher that can be with a counselor, a therapist. It can be with people in the rooms of recovery, a sponsor, 12-step programs. People are important in order to make this thing happen. It's important to be able to see people who have made it to inspire us to say, this thing is possible and then look at what have they done to make it because oftentimes it seems like an unbreakable, a problem if we're in it long enough. So people are important and one of the main barriers to developing those relationships is this idea in the rooms of recovery called terminal uniqueness. Terminal uniqueness is this idea that nobody else can understand my specific life situation and that results in just looking at the differences between you and other people. So you go into let's say a group or you're talking to your counselor, you listen to an Islamic teacher that's developing spirituality and connection with you and then there's this terminal uniqueness that comes in with you that makes it very hard to connect or see the commonalities in other people maybe in those groups and those gatherings. So it's this terminal uniqueness is this idea of just focusing on the otherness of you and them and saying, well, they don't really, so if you're in the rooms of recovery, oh, well, their addiction's more severe than mine. And then let's say you find somebody with an addiction as severe as yours and you say, oh, well, it's not severe enough. They don't understand my addiction enough or they have this type of addiction, not this type of addiction. And let's say they have your same addiction, they have the same severity of addiction, then you say something like, oh, well, they're not from the same culture as I am or they're not set from the same background as I am or they don't understand my experience in trauma or they don't understand so on and so forth. Some of that might be true, but if it's completely preventing you from benefiting from anything, then that can be problematic. So you enter into gatherings of spirituality or religious benefit, the same thing may occur. You look at people around you and you're just looking at the otherness there and just trying to find the faults. That can be a really big barrier to progress. Now, of course, once you get over that terminal uniqueness, you're gonna naturally gravitate to certain types of people and that's fine as long as you have some ability to benefit. So you don't wanna be completely uncritical of everyone and accepting of everyone, but at the same time, you wanna have some balance. If you're not engaging in any recovery work and you're paralyzed by this idea that no, no, they don't understand or no, no, they don't understand my situation or they don't understand my people or so on and so forth, then chances are there's a barrier there that's gonna be a serious barrier to progression. But at the same time, you want to not uncritically accept everyone. It's very natural to gravitate towards maybe this person that you can see yourself more in or when they talk, it drives you to action. You get more of a benefit out of it. So even with this on the horizontal plane, if you can look at the beauty in people, if you can look at the perfection or let's say excellence in people, like what they've been able to achieve or you can look at how you can benefit from people, then that can really help. So if somebody's from a different culture or background from you, looking at the beauty in the way that they do things, if somebody has some success in recovery or abstaining from their addictive behavior or transforming their life, really see what is the success here? How did they do that? What are the components that make that up? And then also looking at the benefit. So sure, you will have people that will not be as beneficial as others, but if you're able to focus on the benefit or take what you can and let the rest fly, then chances are you'll be more successful in developing that relationship with people that oftentimes is very important for success because with people comes accountability and structure and energy and a group dynamic that can help us progress more than what we would have been able to progress on our own. Okay, and then the last last thing, and I said that was the last name, but the last thing that's coming to mind now is that when you look at these three things that develop our connection with Allah, recognizing the beauty and creation and perfection in the Creator and the gifts that are just constantly pouring on us. If we feel distance from Allah at some point or if we feel a disruption in that connection, these are three places that we can start looking at. Like what's deficient in my mindfulness of Allah's gifts, his perfection and his beauty? What's deficient in that connection with him? And maybe for many of us who may have grown up with a more critical religion, maybe instead of focusing on the beauty of Allah, it was always God was always brought up, Allah was always brought up when we were being punished or when we were doing something wrong. Like almost as if Allah is this like penalty, like the bringing up of Allah is like this penalty. Like you didn't respect this, you know Allah doesn't like that or why didn't you do this? Allah doesn't like that. So in the Quran, Allah's reward, his punishment is always coupled with his reward. So this over focus on punishment can lead to an over critical religion and can disrupt that connection with Allah. And then also not having an opportunity to develop that connection with Allah through recognizing his perfection, his gifts, his beauty. So anytime we see a deficiency or a distance, this is one of many things that we can focus on in order to help develop that. I wanna talk a little bit about the text and then we can wrap up. So when we're mindful of Allah, when we're mindful of creation and when we're mindful of our relationships, we can develop an incredible amount of progress. In chapter seven, we talk about becoming mindful. What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is this concept that has been gaining more and more popularity in the psychological literature and the scientific literature. And it's often defined as simply an awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose and the present moment and non-judgmentally to the unfolding experience moment by moment. So it's a type of awareness, a type of remembrance, a type of cognizance and it comes through paying attention. It's a certain focus. Now there's two points here. One is what is the mindfulness? We'll discuss that in a little bit. We'll probably just intro it this session. And the second is why do we care? Like what's the point? What's the bottom line? Bottom line is that mindfulness, base, interventions and addiction have been shown to be incredibly effective when compared to treatment as usual. So in other words, they split up people into two groups. The group that gets treatment as usual versus treatment plus mindfulness attend to do better. And there's a convincing amount of research towards that. And that's essentially the bottom line. So how does that work? So it talks about on the first page of chapter seven that we've been talking a lot about cognitive skills. Like how to think your way out of triggers, emotions. And now we talk about another skill because sometimes it's hard to think your way through an uncomfortable moment or a craving when you're in it. So sometimes thinking your way can help but it might not get you all the way there. So mindfulness techniques rather than trying to change your thinking or come up with alternatives can help us learn to accept and tolerate unpleasant thoughts or experiences or find meaning in them and help stabilize us and ground us through those concepts. And then it talks about on the next page what is mindfulness? So we talked about the definition and breaks up the definition. So the first part of the definition is awareness. And you can read this, I'm gonna highlight some points about it. When you learn to be mindful you become aware of the sequence of experiences you have that led you to your addictive behavior. It's when you learn to be mindful instead of the experience of engaging in your addictive behavior being this jumbled up thing that just automatically happens now when you put focus on it and are aware of what's going on you can separate it out into components and then intervene on those components. And then the second part is awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose in the present moment. So there's an intention to it. So the awareness doesn't just come on its own there's an intention and a will that brings that awareness out. There's an energy and an effort that requires us to be purposefully attentive to the moment. And then it talks about non-judgmentally. What does that mean to be aware of the moment non-judgmentally? Whatever our experience is we are used to labeling things or labeling our experience. So when you feel upset you may notice yourself saying something like I shouldn't feel upset. You label it or judge your experience you automatically say I shouldn't be upset. And that's fine it's what the mind naturally does we often judge our experience we label it as good or bad justified or unjustified given the circumstances. What do you experience and urge to engage in an addictive behavior maybe you judge it feel guilty about it or wish you weren't there. That's a very natural to label evaluate or judge what we feel but with mindfulness you reserve those judgments and accept each part of your experience just to shed light on it you're not approving of it. You're just becoming aware of it becoming curious of it and trying to understand it more because part of the issue is not even looking at the addiction and all the components that lead up to us engaging our addictive behavior. So making the unconscious conscious to give us a fighting chance and give us a target to intervene on as you get better at becoming an observer of your experience without reacting to it in the moment you will gain better control over the way that you cope with difficult experiences. So in essence when we label a experience and we judge an experience sometimes it deters us from looking closer at it. When we have the ability to look closer at an experience then we can break it up into components. And then we also have the opportunity to intentionally label an experience. So now we have the ability to become aware of that experience and label it with something like beauty or perfection or wisdom in that experience or see it as a gift or a challenge. So in other words, we have an ability to pick up on the way we're labeling it and judging it. And now we have a chance to learn more about it and label it as something different that's gonna lead to a different experience a better experience, a better outcome. So being mindful of the present moment essentially allows us to analyze how we're thinking about it and change it to something else. So we can change the present moment to a moment filled with Jamal, Kamal and Nawal. It can be a moment filled with beauty a moment filled with excellence and perfection and a moment filled with gifts. And it's something that comes with practice and something that we can learn to help with not only our internal experience but also in managing our addictive behavior. So with that, Insha'Allah we'll go ahead and wrap up any questions about this part of the text or previous parts of the text then we can do checkings Insha'Allah. Go ahead, go ahead.