 He mentioned a few things in the Prophet ﷺ, he said in a rigorously authenticated hadith of Bazaar, sound hadith, absolutely sound, that your deeds are presented to me, when wajadu khayra hamid tulla, and if I see good, I praise Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta'ala, when wajadu ghayra thalik, when wajadu sharra, astaghfiru lakum wa kama qala alayhi And if I see other than that, or another narration, if I see evil, I ask Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta'ala to forgive you. The Prophet ﷺ is rahmatil ila alameen, even after his passing. According to the opinion of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the Prophet ﷺ passed as a Shahid. He commented to Aisha, on the day of his passing, I can still feel some of the tinge of the poison on my palate that was given to me by the Jewish of Bani Nazir. So he says he was given the honor of Shahada, what does Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta'ala say about the Shahada? What does he say? Walaa takulu lima yuqtulu fi sibali fi sibili lahil anwaat, baal ahya walakila tishgarun. There was a rab'a'a named Samuel bin Yahuda al-Maghribi, his father was from Faisal Morocco. He is a student of Abraham bin Ezra, who is the Jewish equivalent of someone like Imam al-Ghassadi, right, big, big Qibar of the early month of the rabbis. And he died in 1167 in the common era. And he studied Islam, he was raised in Andalusia, and he was familiar with the Tariq al-Tabali and the works of Abu Hanifa and all of the Madahid and the Aqa'id, all of these types of things. And he narrates in his autobiography, he wrote a book called The Time of Yahud or something like that. He narrates in his biography that he went to sleep one night and he saw a dream of an old man with a long white beard sitting under a tree. And he approached the man and the people around him said, this is the prophet Samuel who is mentioned in the Torah or in the Tanakh, I should say. And they started having a conversation in the Arabic language. And Samuel says to Samuel, Rabbi Samuel, he said, didn't you hear what Adonai Ilukhainu, the Lord our God says in the Torah? So what did he say? He says, Nabi Akin lahim mikalaf akhayim komukha, alev yashmarun, that I shall raise up a prophet from among the brethren of the Israelites who is going to be like Moses and you must heed him, you must listen to him. And so Rabbi Samuel said, yes, that's referring to you, that's what I've been told by my teachers, right? This is you, isn't it? And the prophet Samuel, according to his dream, he becomes angry and he leaves. So then he wakes up and he can't explain what happens. He goes back to sleep and this time the prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he comes to him in a dream. We know from the hadith which is mutawatim, is multiply attested, absolutely sound, the strongest type of hadith possible. Daril qat'i, cannot be denied. Man ra'ani fil manami fa qatra'ani fil na shaytanah la yatima ferubi. Or as the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, whoever sees me in a dream has seen me, truly has seen me. Another tradition, man ra'ani fil manami fa qatra'ani haqqah, whoever sees me in a dream has seen the truth. Shaytan cannot imitate my form. And then he becomes Muslim during this time. He wakes up and he says it, shahada, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has power over his prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He can send the Ruh of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam wherever he pleases, in allah ala kulli shaygin qadir. This is totally conceivable for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Who ar-Rahmatu al-mawla, Sayyidi hadid ar-Rahmatu al-Hafid al-Hussaini, may Allah preserve him. He says in the Maulid, who ar-Rahmatu al-mawla, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, is the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The greatest demonstration of Allah's mercy after creating us is the coming of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the greatest demonstration of His mercy. So this is a personal deity, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is a personal god. Aristotle believed that it's impossible for a human being to love God. It's impossible because his justification is they're not of the same genus, they're not the same species. So he would argue that you have a dog, you don't really love your dog. You just say that, but you really love your dog. No, if your dog dies, he might be upset for a few moments or a day or two, but you really love your dog. No, because it's not the same species as you are. He's a deist, right? They believed that the first six presidents of the United States of America were deists, they're not Orthodox Christian, they were not Trinitarian Christian. So basically they believed that God created the world and he's an absentee landlord basically. And we kind of regulated ourselves, right? He created and he let us deal with it, right? The Christian, which is a theistic tradition obviously, basically the greatest demonstration of love by Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is becoming that species. This is Thomas Aquinas' theology, who wrote the Summa Theologica, who was highly influenced by the likes of Abu Hamad al-Ghazali. You look at the structure of the Summa Theologica, you have the first part, which is called the Prima Parse, which talks about theology, then you have the Segunda Parse, which talks about his virtue, theory, and then the third part, the Teresia Parse, Thaksaban Aisa, and so this is the, this is the essence of the Summa, right? So Imam Ghazali, if you look at the Iqya'u-Madeen, and this is a must for everyone to have books of the Iqya' in your house, for barakah and for reading, get books of the Iqya' that Ulama used to say, if you have to sell your Iqya', get the Iqya', you have to sell your beard, get the Iqya', so if you look at the Iqya', what is the focus of the Iqya', right at the center of the Iqya', book number 20, the book about the Akhlaq al-Nabu'ah, about the comportment, the character of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, because this is the book, Aisa alaihi salam is a messenger of God who was sent by Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, run a pure heart, and when the light of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala reflected from her, reflected from his heart, this is Bazali's mirror Christology, sometimes called his mirror Christology, when it reflected from his pure heart, those who did not have a basis of Sharia, they mistook their reflection for the essence, it's like someone who jumps into a lake to grab the moon, it's a reflection, it's not the moon, so the Sharia is absolutely fundamental, so we have to be, God was asked to talk about how to find a middle path to be balanced, to be balanced means you balance obedience and knowledge, we learn from those who came before us, we take heed from those who came before us, that many people have a lot of obedience to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, but they don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it, there's no knowledge, why are you doing this, I don't know, I was told to do this, these people focus on worth of praxis, and you have people who have a lot of knowledge, and they can pontificate on a soapbox for hours and hours, may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala save us, especially me, but they don't have obedience to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, so what happens then, you know where comes the heart, the heart becomes hard, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala refers to a group of people in the community, after that your hearts became hard, like stones, or even worse than stones, or like a donkey who carries books on his head, you don't get any knowledge, you don't get any benefit from their knowledge, there's nothing in the heart, the heart is very important, that's why this this concept of ihsan, and the technical term for it is to solve, that's a technical term for ihsan, and this is found in the Qur'an, this is found in the hadith, it's not taken from Hinduism, it's not taken from Buddhism, it's not invented in the third century. This is what Al-Junayt said, and he's mentioned in our creeds, Imam Al-Aqqani mentions him, even Asher mentions him, all our knowledge, the knowledge of the Sufiya, is based, is tied to the Book of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala and the Sunnah of the Messenger Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, what is Sufism, what is Tasawwuf, what is ihsan, cultivating prophetic characteristics, to be like the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. How do we do this? I was again asked by Sidi Asif, practical advice, how do we cultivate prophetic characteristics, the best thing we can do is sit with Ulama, sit with the Ulama, there's many in this area, just sit with them, be in their presence, you might say I don't benefit anything, they speak over my head, just sit with them for a minute, when I was overseas I sat with a great scholar, and my Arabic was terrible when I got there, and I wanted to get up and leave, and another brother said, don't just sit there, just listen, just sit down and listen, I said I don't understand, and my book at the Maafah him too, I don't understand anything, it's okay, just one door, if you don't, if you can't listen, one door, just watch him, watch what he does, a picture is worth a thousand words, sit with the Ulama, there's angelic presence around them, this will affect your state, one glance of an an'ana, these things are real, Sheikh Abu Bakr bin Sadim, he said that these people from the city, they're filled vessels, they're filled with all these ideas, and they want to sit with me, they don't come as empty vessels, so they come and sit with me, I'm losing my voice so that means I should be quite a whore to go over my time, I'm in with this inshallah, so they sit with me, and then we go back and forth about an issue or something, and they leave and they don't benefit one an'ana from me, but then a better wind will come, who's an empty vessel, who doesn't even know that he's not supposed to urinate in front of me, he'll urinate on my thigh, and I'll give him one nudrah, one glance, and it'll change his life, don't underestimate these things, don't underestimate sitting with the Ulama, this is the best advice I can give you, to have a nearness to Allah SWT, to be near to Allah SWT is to be like the Prophet SAW, he is the epitome, he is the epitome, he is the standard of our spiritual tradition, there's no such thing as a Sufi without being a Muslim, it's like saying I'm Jewish but I'm not a rabbi, it doesn't make any sense, the Prophet SAW, his character, his sira, his sunnah, is the basis of our spiritual tradition, to be like the Prophet SAW, to draw near to Allah SWT, and to purge ourselves, see what the Ulama, and take from them as Qab, they have prescriptions for diseases, that they'll give you, and you'll do them, and this is a process, via purgativa, the Catholics call it, and they took from us, to empty the nefs of terrible attributes or traits, and then after tahliyah there comes what, tahliyah, ornamentation of the nefs, a change, right, this happens to habitists, right, you do things for a while, and it becomes woven into your very nature, but you have to be consistent, the Prophet SAW said, those beloved actions of Allah SWT, are those that are little, but they're consistent, are consistent even if they're little, and then after that you have tahliyah, you have theophany, you have openings, you have futuhat, this is proven and tried over time, this is not some sort of mythical idea, this is something that's proven over time to work, sit with the Ulama, this is where it begins, you cannot achieve this without being with Ulama, that's my, that's my spiel to use a Yiddish word, thank you for listening, I'm sorry if I'm voice is incomprehensible, and I apologize to the Ulama for going too long, As-Salaamu Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi wa-Alayhi