 We're going to continue on, inshallah, and today we're going to be focusing on a topic that Imam al-Haddad stresses is very, very critical, and it's not really spoken of as much I think as it needs to be. It's going to be around the idea of reflection and meditation and the tradition of Islam. So we'll start off with just a quick review from last time, and then we'll go ahead and get into today. So what we spoke about last time is we discussed the benefits of regular dhikr, how everybody should have a, where there were litany or a portion or practice of doing regular dhikr based on the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. And so there are four or five categories that we stressed, and hopefully, inshallah, all of us can begin to implement some portion of dhikr from each of these categories. So the first is for us to start doing, and again this is all with the goal of trying to attain nearness to Allah SWT, that we are on a, hopefully on a path, inshallah, where not only do we want to do the basic obligations, which are of course very, very important. We want to do more than that inshallah. We want to try to get closer and closer, and we want to try to do more and more so that we can, inshallah, get closer and closer. All of this ultimately helps us achieve otherworldly objectives and objectives for this life, right? In the next world, of course, the more somebody plants in this life, the more that they will harvest in the next life. So the more you invest in this life, the more the higher your ROI or return on investment is going to be in the next life. For every bit of dhikr somebody does, for every bit of evadah somebody does, for every good deed someone does, for every sin that someone stays away from, there will be only Allah knows how much he will reward somebody for specific actions that they do, but there will inshallah certainly be a reward if these actions are accepted. And then there are the benefits in this life. Among the benefits of dhikr are the benefits of attaining states of tranquility, states of calmness, increasing your productivity in your day-to-day situations, giving you more focus and clarity, and many, many, many other things. So when somebody begins to align their, when someone begins to align their heart and their objectives with the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, they will begin to achieve these benefits in this life, achieve these benefits of productivity, achieve these benefits of clarity, achieve these benefits of tranquility, and the more someone strays from the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and stays from the tradition of Islam, the more difficulty they'll have even in this life, not only in the next life but even in this life. And we ask Allah for assistance and for tawfiq and for ease and divine, divine facilitation. So the categories there are that we reviewed were to do the sunnah dhikr after each prayer, the sunnah of the car after each prayer, right? So we should regularly make sure that after we've gotten our five daily prayers down that we start to emphasize the car that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us to do after each prayer. So you say astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, Allahumma anta al-salaam, wa mink al-salaam, taba'arata wa ta'ala ta'ala tiyad, al-jiali wa l-ikram, Allahumma anna aladhikrika wa shukrika wa hasni ibaratik, right? Those are minimum we should do that and then we should add on to that ayat al-kursi and we should add on to that subhanAllah 33 times, alhamdulillah 33 times and Allah waqf wa 33 times. That should be like we shouldn't get up from our prayer spot without doing that. And if we do, it's ideally it's only for something that's like absolutely urgent and critical. But if we don't have something that we like absolutely have to get to, especially at the times of fajr, mahrib and isha, sometimes during bohar and asr, the work is busy or we're caught up in things, especially at those moments, we should make sure we sit down and we do these actual things. This brings about two or three minutes to invest after the prayer. You'll get 10, 15 times the amount of return, even in just this world's productivity. Because if you just rush away, you won't feel centered most of the time. The reason why we say astaghfirullah, we're asking Allah for forgiveness even though we just finished praying is because we need to feel centered. We need to feel centered after we, or sorry, not when you feel centered. We need to ask Allah for forgiveness because we weren't centered in the prayer most of the time, right? We were kind of thinking about this meeting and thinking about this situation. This happened much like the lunch and all these, all these thoughts come to our head right when we start praying. And shaytan is a trick. He wants to try to distract us in the prayer. So we say astaghfirullah because y'all lie wasn't really that focused, right? But the more that somebody does the sunnah actions, the more focused they start to achieve in the prayer and the more centered they become as human beings. So that's the first thing is the sunnah dhikr after the prayer. The second one is that the du'as for each, the dhikr and du'as for each kind of daily activity, right? So there's a du'a for waking up, a du'a for putting on your clothing, a du'a for using the restroom, a du'a before eating, a du'a after eating, a du'a for leaving the home, a dhikr for entering the car, and there's many, many, many for traveling. There's so many types that exist, right? We should have a practice where we memorize these. We memorize these. And ideally this is something that we would have done when we were young. But most of us, we didn't, we didn't do it when we were young. Maybe in like Sunday school or something, they taught us this. But we should memorize these. And if we have younger siblings or children, we should try to get them to memorize these at a young age because they're very, very, very short, but they're very potent. They're very potent. Little, you do one du'a and it has immense benefits just by saying, Bismillah, tawakal sualillahi wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah, before when you leave your home, is immense benefits of protection. And for somebody who doesn't do that, they don't have the same type of protection from Allah and His angels. Because the protection and the benefit comes through following the door of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. There's not really other ways that we believe in our tradition that you can achieve that. Allah can ultimately do what He wants. But for us, we follow, we do it through the door of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And similarly with other du'a's, right? So the du'a's for each activity. All of these were captured in. We mentioned a link that we shared last time. It's tinyurl.com slash O-R-A-W-R-A-A-D. All of those, all of the thinker that we mentioned should be in there until I'm going to talk through each of these, each of the ones in that link just shortly so everybody's aware. And then there's the du'a's of the morning and evening. So third category is the du'a's of the morning and evening. That should be like, okay, those are vitamins you got to take. And you don't leave, you don't begin the morning without doing the du'a's that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would do in the morning. Right? Because the morning time is the time when every, everything in creation is always praising Allah. Allah says in the Quran that everything in His creation in the heavens and the earth is glorifying Him but you don't understand what they're saying. You can't notice what they're saying. There's a whole set of surahs in the 28th just, right? Many, many, many surahs that are mentioning what's going on in the heavens and the earth, the rocks, the mountains, the trees, and so on are praising Allah. But in the morning time, you actually hear an increase in the glorification. And for the one who's tuned in, they might hear more than that. What do I mean by this? If you're waking in the mornings, the birds, the other animals, and we live in a concrete jungle, but if we go outside of where we are, generally speaking, you're hearing birds chirping, you're hearing the animals, you're hearing the dikkur going on. That's all the animals, they're making the dikkur, they're remembering Allah, starting off the day with dikkur. So after we place lots of fajr, inshaAllah, and then we spend at least five to ten minutes making the du'a's of the morning time. And this is the emphasized thing from the sunnah to do in this time. It's greater than most of the other acts of ibadah that we could be doing at the time. Anything, and this is a really, really important realization, anything that is from the sunnah of the probabilism at a certain time, that is after the farth act is done, the greatest thing you can be doing at that time. There usually isn't something greater. So like it would be greater unless someone doesn't know their obligations to spend that time in doing the sunnah du'a's then to read, and even if it's reading and learning knowledge, for example, right? Because at minimum you should, you want to make sure you're following the sunnah. And so that takes place in all other situations, right? If somebody has the option to pray in congregation and we'll get to a whole section on prayer and congregation, the more somebody emphasizes prayer and congregation because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam emphasized the prayer and congregation, over, oh, well if I just stay at home, maybe I can read a few extra verses of Quran and so on and so forth, we'll save this time for the commute. All of that is waswasa because shaitan doesn't want you. He might even come at you with a lesser good deed to prevent you from a larger good deed. It is the one of the greatest sunnahs, the most emphasized sunnahs known as the sunnah mo'akkada of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, for men especially to be praying in congregation in the masjid as many of the prayers as possible, right? And it's a very, very much difficult sunnah to implement in our lives, but at minimum then in congregation at home, if that's not something that we can that we can do. So the sunnah du'a's are the morning and evening. And then the fourth is have a portion of your dhikr, a portion of your dhikr where you do salawat upon the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad. This is highly important. You need to have a door and a source of assistance coming to from the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. You want to make sure you have that door. As it comes in a hadith, whoever prays upon the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, one time Allah prays upon them 10 times. And what if Allah prays upon you once in your whole life, you're sufficient, the type of mercy and blessings and assistance that come. So you want to have a where the salawat upon the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Even if it's just five Allahumma sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the mornings, even if it's just something, just do something. Have a portion of each of these. Each of these has a different light associated with it. All of the lights put together give you your optimal strength as a human being spiritually. When you leave the portions and the lights out, we either leave doors unprotected where we can be in the spiritual realm, we can be compromised and attacked or we leave doors open or we leave a lack of potential for us to really achieve our full spiritual potential. But if you want to achieve your full spiritual potential and you really want to start feeling like now I'm living for why I was created, the majority of human beings today don't have a sense that they're living for the purpose of their creation, which is why everybody starts to fill, everybody has a cup, the heart, the spiritual heart is a cup. Everybody starts to fill that cup with something. It usually doesn't like to remain empty, but the feelings of emptiness, what is the purpose of my life? Why am I here? Some people will fill a chasing after money, chasing after I want to do this, I want to succeed here, I want to succeed here and that's the whole goal. Some people will succeed at filling it with power, I want to run for this position in this position. Some people will succeed at chasing after their desires, going after this girl, going after this guy, going after this. Everybody will try to fill that cup with something, it can't be filled with anything except Allah and that's figuratively speaking of course. It can't be filled with anything except the deen, but everybody will be chasing after something and then the moments of emptiness come and this is at the root of anxiety and depression for most people. We fear, we are a creation. Man was created, man and woman, mankind was created in a state of anxiety and then Allah goes on to say that that he says when you are given, right, or when you are afflicted with difficulty, this person complains and when they have a lot and Allah gives them a lot, they say it's mine, I'm not sharing with anybody. And then he singles out one group except the people of prayer. The people of prayer are not people of anxiety and they're not people of constant worry and concern and they found their purpose in life because Allah says we only created mankind and gent to worship, to worship me Allah says that's the goal of your creation. So you will feel that, you only, you will know when you start to really feel like I'm doing what I'm created to do because everybody knows their feelings of emptiness and their fluctuations of what they go through. It doesn't mean we won't go through emotions, but that void won't be there. You're like, I know why I'm supposed, why I'm here. How effectively I can follow up on why I'm here and really do what I'm supposed to do, that's a different question. That's not easy as always. We ask Allah for Tophi, but you will know when that purpose has come. So then we move on to the fifth category that we want to implement on a daily basis. There's some portion of protection to us. We want to do, we want to make sure that we are going in addition to the prayers that we are seeking Allah's protection. And it's because in the time that we live in, the darker forces and humankind, there's a lot of darkness that's spread. So the dark forces of the unseen like the jinn and the shiatin amongst the human beings as well. And there are some that exist, human devils, people who just wish evil upon you. They are prevalent and more and more prevalent, and they become more and more apparent at the end of times. They don't hide anymore. One of the scholars said that the darker forces used to kind of keep it low, low profile. Now it's said that at the time we live in, they're out and about, and they're actively trying to mess with people who are seeking, who are trying to do worship. And when scholars of spiritual scientists say this, and the statement that I'm quoting right now was from a scholar of spiritual realities, they're not just saying it just because it sounds good. They're saying it because they witness realities and Allah shows them certain realities. And they have those doors because Allah, it comes in hadith al-olama al-waratha al-anbiyah, that the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets. The scholars of the ummah of this religion have access, some small access, to the knowledges that the prophets of the ummah was given, including access to some of the knowledges of the unseen, and access to some of the prophetic miracles. But that world, generally speaking, they won't speak about, but they give us advice on what to do. They give us advice on what to do. This is what you need to protect yourself, make sure you do this, make sure you do that. Meanwhile, they're very aware of what's going on in these realms. And that's something we have to be very, very careful about. So these five categories, we want to make sure that we get down. We want to make sure that we get those down. So if we go to this link, the tinyurl.com slash odod, awrad. In there, there's a couple of really important resources that, inshallah, everybody can take away and just slowly start to implement. And they're all in PDF format. So everybody, since Mashallah, everybody has a smartphone. You just download on your smartphone and work through it. And so just the ones that I'm just going to mention, one of them in there is it's the morning and evening du'az. It is known as the where the latif of Imam al-Haddad that has the morning evening du'az that the prophet's home would do and some of the other du'az that the righteous would do. That's the morning and evening one. Then there's a whole one in there known as daily, weekly, monthly, dhikr. And it has literally comprehensive dhikr. It's like 600 page book for everything you need to do daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, in different occasions, in different situations, right? Compiled by one of the great scholars of our time, Habib Omar bin Muhammad bin Salim al-Hafid. So a lot of the du'az are in there. You just download that one book and you'll have it in there. Then there's one called the hisbasakran, which is in that link, which is a protection where protection litany, two minutes versus from the Quran and du'az to for protection. Somebody would do. And then there's the where the Imam al-Nowi that we mentioned, that's also in there for protection. The where the Imam al-Nowi is one of the most foremost scholars of this deen. Was a great Shafi faqi, a great spiritual master. And he compiled many of the great books of hadid that we read today and kind of more easier to relatable collections like Reha al-Saliheen. So he had this where that he would do for protection, right? That takes about six, seven minutes to do. And then there's one I just labeled, it's called the sunna du'az for all occasions. And that has all the du'az that you should do for, you know, when you wake up and you go to sleep and so on and so forth. So all the stuff we just mentioned, the four categories, they're all in this link, inshallah. So please do check it out. It is the tinyurals.com. So we'll go ahead and now move on to the topic for today. That was just a review. Just seeing if there's any questions that have come in. Okay. So someone's asking, do you know how, is it possible for you to know that you've attained a station of closeness to Allah? Like if you're following the quran, you're following the sunna, you're following these actions. Generally speaking, we maintain, we maintain states of humility, right? Like nobody should claim a station or claim something. But you will start to know that you are moving and you're progressing through the your yakeen, number one, will get stronger. You will start to feel more certain in the fact that Allah is, is, is manifestly existing and present in your life. You will start to feel that. The second thing that will start to happen is the tranquility, inshallah, will increase. You will be less perturbed because Allah says in al-Oliya, Allah, the closest friends of Allah, la hofun alayhum malahum yaksuna, that they don't have this anxiety or this fear or trepidation. And then the third thing that will start to happen is you will have an increased propensity to want to remember Allah. That's the way that you'll start to know. Do I want to do more of Iqra? Do I want to learn more? Do I want to become a better person? If those three things are happening, and then there's many others, but just those three, you will know and show that you are starting to progress. And the opposite of those three is one is getting way more lazy. They don't want to do anything anymore and they're becoming, their character is getting worse and they generally don't want to be remembering Allah often. That's a sign of perhaps of the opposite, right? Or just that they're going through a rough patch. It's not always, like it's not, spirituality is not like this, right? It's like this. There's waves, there's ups and there's downs. This would happen to the sahaba. There's many hadith that mentioned sahaba. It would have these ups and downs. And that's okay. That if it was all easy and facilitated and upwards, where's the struggle? It is known as jihad for a reason. It comes in a hadith where they said that the Prophet ﷺ said after the sahaba came back from a battle that you have come from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. That he was implying that the jihad where you're actually fighting was a lesser jihad and you have come now to the greater jihad, which is what? The mujahidah against the nafs. Trying to struggle with your soul, with your ego and defeat it and go through and try not to submit to the desires. Because human being, we have a lot of desires. Hopefully that answers the question. What if Allah doesn't answer my imaginary prayers? It feels hard to keep faith. Yeah, I can understand what you mean there. So the Prophet ﷺ told us that a prayer can be accepted through three different ways. The first is that a prayer can be accepted when it is actually answered. Like you make a dua, Allah give me this and you get that. The second is that you will get something greater in the hereafter. The third is that you will inshallah have a tribulation that was coming your way, warded off because of the power of your prayer. So a prayer doesn't have to be accepted. A prayer being accepted doesn't mean that it's answered as yes. Prayer can be accepted in other ways. A dua can be accepted in other ways. And many times the protection and the benefit that you get as a result of you making that dua, it could be greater than the dua that you made. And Allah says in the Quran that perhaps you hate a thing and in it is much good for you. And perhaps you love a thing in it is much bad for you. And Allah knows and you do not know. And this is the old this, if we could just apply this one ayah, we would start to attain the realities of Islam, which means submission. That is this idea that you ask Allah and if he's inspiring you to ask, he wants to give you. It doesn't mean that you're going to get exactly what you're asking for because you have to trust he knows what's best. So you keep making dua, you keep making dua. Allah likes to hear his servant calling. So the one who asks that question, Allah likes to hear their servant calling. It's just the answer is not always yes. Here you go right away. There might be something you're getting that's much better, but you have to keep the eternal perspective in mind. Don't limit yourself to this life, which is 50, 60, 70 years. On the day of judgment, there will be people who they'll come and they'll get so much reward, so much reward, so much reward. And other people will ask them, where did they get this reward from? Where did they get the reward from? So this is the reward for all that they made that were unanswered. And then there will be people who wish that they couldn't have never had any of their prayers answered because of all the different rewards that these people have got, will have got. And we're taking this from Ahadith of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. So there's realities to these dua. Don't think that even for a moment that you make dua and Allah doesn't hear you. Allah hears everything. He's all knowing. He's all seeing. He hears everything. It's just that you might not get what you are asking for because it's not good for you to get right away. He knows because he has ultimate wisdom. He's al-hakim. He's al-alim. He also is all-knowledgeable. Okay, so now we'll go ahead and start talking about reflection. So this is a very critical topic as you mentioned. So Imam Al-Haddad, he mentions this idea of reflection. So people these days, they talk a lot about mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. The Islamic tradition is the most mindful tradition that there is. The Islamic tradition emphasizes mindfulness at its core in every aspect of the tradition. And one of the ways to increase in mindfulness, what we're talking about right now, is to increase in your reflection and your meditation, which is something that we don't do often enough. And Imam Al-Haddad, he mentions that reflection is the lamp of the heart, the spiritual heart. And if it hearts, the heart will have no light. So if you become somebody who stops thinking and doesn't reflect deeply on things, especially matters of the theme, your heart will not have a light. And you know that if you don't have a light, what's there? It's dark. And then it's hard to see. How can somebody see without a light? If we were to turn off all the lights in this room, we couldn't, we wouldn't be able to see. The heart needs reflection. And it's a lamp to help guide the spiritual heart in the right direction. And as Imam Ali-Radi-Wahwan, who said that there is no worship like reflection, that reflection is one of the most potent forms of worship is what he's implying here. And Imam Al-Haddad also says that know that the state and the soundness of your, or sorry, that the state of your religious and worldly affairs, the things you go through in the world and religion depends on the soundness of your reflection. So how you're going through, what does that mean here? When you feel centered in different aspects of your life, that will come when you have periods and you have a weird litany of reflection. So you want to make sure that you take out portions of your day to reflect. Now in our time, which is filled with phones, filled with social media, with TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Slack and everything else that's just coming in our way and TV and Netflix and Hulu and Disney Plus. And it leaves very little time for reflection if someone gets caught up in all these things. So the first step is we detach a little bit. That's the first step. You won't be able to really become a reflective person and achieve this state of light in your heart if there's too much of that coming in. Because what ends up happening is the transmissions you want need to come from there. There is something called a wadded, a transmission that somebody can receive, a spiritual transmission. When the one who does the weird will get the wadded, as the scholars say. But the transmission we usually end up getting is coming from this realm, horizontal. Phone, usually we're looking down. Allah wants you to look up. He doesn't want you to always look down. You'll notice every device that we have makes us look down. Human being walks up like this. We were the only one who was given the privilege and the honor of walking up like this. We weren't created to do this. It's not the purpose. And so we have to re-center a little bit. Okay, hold on. I want to get the transmission from Allah. I need to really, really think about what am I doing in the worldly plane and I need to reduce that. You want to instead go towards the vertical instead of this horizontal or kind of going downwards. So we have to then have portions of time. We have to have portions of time where we just sit down and we reflect. We have to have those portions of time. And this will increase the yakin as we mentioned in the first class. Yakin being spiritual certainty, this will increase your yakin. And one of the ways in which people of the past would go to know that they're for sure is a creator is they would just look up into the heavens at nighttime and see all the stars and the millions and millions and millions of stars and they would know there's just, this is, there's no way. There's just no way to solve this popping existence. That thought wouldn't even really cross their mind. That's a modern day phenomenon. But we don't, we can't do that anymore. It's too much light pollution. Again, all of the technology, everything, it stops us from reflecting. And so one of the other ways to gauge this progress, to gauge your spiritual progress, is that you examine how much do you really enjoy just quiet reflective thinking time, versus how much do you always have to be on and listening to something and having some engagement with something. If the obsession is always with notifications and always with being on and always with listening to something and talking to somebody, okay, there's work to do. If you're trending in the direction of, you really start to enjoy and you taste the sweetness of quiet time and of sitting and of reflecting and of thinking about Allah and thinking about the messenger of Allah, Salaam, and thinking about Allah's creation and thinking about the afterlife. That's a good direction. That's a good direction. Prayer is not the only thing that the only time we can have where we will turn to Allah. We have to have moments in addition to the prayer where we help achieve that quiet for the for the greats. The prayer was it was their meditative moments. That's what that's what that's that's why they would pray all the time because they were in that state. For most of us, though, that's not the case. We're praying, we're getting the obligation done with and then we need to build time outside of the prayer in addition. The book that we are going through is the book of assistance by scholar Imam Abdullah Alhamdulillah for those who are asking. Okay, so he, Imam Alhamdulillah, he recommends, he says, that you should be reflecting for an hour a day. Now that's really long. So let's just start with five minutes a week. He's here. He's giving you the formula for like somebody who this is what they want to do. This is what they've devoted their life to. But five minutes a day, again, we'll have significant potency, inshallah. So we just start with five minutes a day and the way we do this, we sit and we pick a topic and then we now start to engage the faculties of our inner world. Everybody has an inner spiritual realm inside of them. Most of us have or not in touch with that at all. We're in touch with everything outside. We're not in touch with what's going on inside. The the the Dean of Islam helps you lock unlock rather what's going on inside is Allah mentioned in the Quran that their hearts have a lock on them. When you unlock the heart, you now start to get access to these inner inward realities. These inward realities are limitless. They're limitless. So the potency of your actual vicar, when you sometimes you feel like you do vicar alhamdulillah, you just kind of repeating the words. The potency of the vicar and the impact of the meanings of the vicar will depend on how much figure you have. The figure is reflection. The vicar and the figure are both needed. They're needed in conjunction. So then he gives examples of what do you actually reflect on? What are you supposed to reflect on? So we're going to give a couple of categories here. He says first and foremost, reflect on the wonders of Allah's creation and how he created this earth and the universe and from that gather the attributes of Allah. You see something beautiful in Allah is the all majestic and most beautiful one is one of his attributes. You see something very, very intricate. The intricacies of a flower and the way that it was designed in Allah is the fashioner and the designer. We marvel over the gadgets and some product designer, somebody made them Allah is the ultimate designer. And so this now increases your awareness of the different attributes of Allah. The second thing is to reflect upon the favors of Allah. And Allah mentions in the Quran, that remember the favors that Allah has bestowed upon you. Always just telling you to remember the favor. Even if you had a really rough life, don't think about the bad times. Reflect upon the favors because there's always more favors. If you were to enumerate the favors of Allah, you couldn't. If I was to start counting right now, Ya Allah, thank you for my eyes and for the my eyelids and for my ability for me to blink my eyes and for the ability to fluid to lubricate my eyes. So I don't always have to put eye drops on for the ability for me to breathe through my nose and for you to give little nose hairs to catch the debris. So I don't end up getting sick and for you to give me a tongue and for you to make the tongue moist. So I don't always have to be drinking water and for you to give me teeth for me to chew my food. I could just just this part of your face you could reflect on and say thank you to Allah for all the favors for hours. And you still, unless somebody was like very, very well studied in all the details there and from a biology perspective, we still wouldn't really know all the favors that we got. Just from a few of the faculties that we have. As it comes in a narration that one of the people of Bani Israel that he's asked on the day of judgment that Allah is saying enter jannah through with through my mercy. And he's saying no, no, no, Allah. He had worshiped Allah for 500 years and all 500 years he had spent worship of worshipping Allah and he said no, Allah. I want to enter jannah through my deeds. Allah says take out the scales. So bring out the scales. He says put his deeds on one side. Put his deeds on one side. He says now put the blessing of the eye one eye on the other side. He puts the blessing of the eye on the other side. The blessing of the eye outweighs all the deeds that this man had done for 500 years. And now Allah has taken him away to hell. He says no, no, no, Allah enter. Let me enter jannah by your mercy. By your mercy. He says okay, take him to your jannah. You don't want to enter through your deeds. You do the deeds till you get to get the mercy. He is a Rahman of Rahim, but he's given you and I so many favors, so many favors. And so we have to thank Allah. This deen is based on thanking Allah. The Islam is the core aspect of Islam, is gratitude. Core aspect. So we have to reflect. Imam Hattat says hahan, the nehma, the or the blessings that Allah has given us. And he says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, all of the good things that you possess are from Allah. You couldn't get any of them on your arm. If you ever attribute something good to yourself, catch yourself a little bit. Like I couldn't have actually done this if Allah didn't give me the himma and the energy and the ability and the thinking and the eyesight and so on and so forth. It's all ultimately called Allah. If any of you have ever been sick, if any of us have ever been sick, we know like we're out for a day where we can't do anything, especially if we are like a serious sickness. So who gave you the energy? Who gave you the fact that your kidneys are working or your liver is working and your large intestine is working, small intestine, all of this is from Allah. And so he says to reflect on the favors of Allah. That's just inwardly than outwardly as well. The ability to breathe air, Alhamdulillah. The ability to breathe recently, Alhamdulillah, we had rain and hopefully we get more and more at the same level of rains every single week until we're out of this drought. But just the blessing of rain. If the rain ceases, who's going to get rain? Where are all these scientists going to find their rain from? They're not going to make it in their laboratories. Nobody can give the rain except Allah. And the rain is withheld because of our sins. So we thank Allah for the rain in order to get an increase in the of the rain, in order to get an increase of the rain. Because Allah says, لَاَنْ شَكَرْتُمْ لَاَزِيْتَنَّكُمْ If you are grateful, I will increase you. If you are grateful, I will give you more to be grateful for. But if you complain, Allah gives you more to complain about. It's a very, very simple metaphysical equation. So when you reflect on the favors, it engenders gratitude. And then the gratitude engenders thanking Allah. And then that gives you more favors that you keep being more grateful. It's this amazing virtuous cycle. And so the people of Allah, they're just always in a state of shukr. What's there to complain about? What's there to be negative about? It's another sign that you are not progressing in the right direction if you're always looking at that glass half empty and not ever counting blessings, right? Oh, why did this happen to me? This always using the word if you're using the word colloquially, this sucks. Everything is always saying that that's not a good sign. Because everything is from Allah. How could you say that? Allah is watching you. You don't want Allah to hear you say that. He is the one. He is your Lord who gave you everything. Don't use the tongue that he gave you to say something that would displease him, right? So then the third thing he says is reflect on yourself. Reflect on yourself. Or sorry, the before reflecting on yourself. Reflect on Allah's complete awareness of you, which we were just getting to, right? Allah says in the Quran, we have created mankind and we know what his or her soul whispers to them. And we are nearer to them than we are nearer to him or her than their jugular vein. Allah is nearer to you than consciousness itself. If your jugular vein is cut, you're out. That's your consciousness. I mean, your physical manifestation where consciousness is stemming from. If that's gone, you're gone. Allah is nearer to you than that. He's nearer to you than consciousness itself. So that is the other thing that we want to reflect on. And we want to have this internal awareness. Allah is watching me. Allah is that will help you in your life and also keep you. Okay. And you have to reflect on it for periods of time. So you want to just sit with this idea that, okay, you read this verse of Quran and he is with you wherever you are. And God sees what you do. And then you just sit with it for five minutes. What does that mean? And that will hit that that will engender a feeling of shyness inside of it. Allah sees me in everything I do. And the next time, until I can guarantee this, if somebody sits with us and reflects on it, the next time you're about to send the verse will come in your head because you already built the spiritual muscle and you trained yourself to implement the meanings of the verses. The Quran is not just something that you read and go through it, cover to cover without reflecting. It is a book of reflection. It's a book of Reflection. Allah regularly asking in the Quran, do they not reflect? Do they not ponder? Do they not think? So then the next one is Allah wants you to reflect on. We already mentioned looking inside of yourselves. Look then reflect on the author of the book. Somebody asked, sorry, is Imam Al-Haddad, Imam Abdullah Ibn Al-Haddad. Okay, so the next one, and we're going through verses that he's listed right now, the next one he says is reflect on this world and how quickly it withers away. Because Allah says in the Quran, the life of this world is but distraction and play. And the last about is indeed the real life if they but knew. And that's, for most of us, that's just a verse. We just we can hear it. Okay, it doesn't hit that doesn't hit the heart, but the heart that's awake and it's alive. It realizes, oh yeah, this is literally just play and distraction. Okay, somebody gets into the world, they get a position, they make a bunch of millions of dollars in a company, they become really, really successful. They have a fancy LinkedIn title, they become a doctor, they get all this respect, so on. So they get, they drive a Ferrari. Okay, what then you're going to go in the grave? The world is just going to wither away. The whole, all the Ferrari will go, it will be in a junkyard at some point, the title will go, all the money will be gone, all the good food and everything else all going to be gone. Everything ultimately will end up where? Everything is perishing except Allah, everything. But that's where we need to reflect on, because where we love this world as Muslims these days, we're in love with the dunya. We follow the dunya, our malls, we spend so much time in the malls, the malls of the Muslim world are nicer many times than the Masajid. It's a big, big problem. There's probably some warned us that this was coming at the end of time, that his ummah would fall in love with the dunya. Generally speaking, the Muslims were like, okay, like I'll engage with it to the degree I have to, but they were not obsessed with it. This was not their sole purpose in life. And they certainly did not compromise their character, their morals, their values for the dunya. I'm taking out this, I'm going to take out an interest, interest loan, so I can drive a fancy car. How? How are we going to answer to God? It's something he warned so sternly against, oh, I wanted to drive a beamer. It was a flight theory that I had to get it, but I took a 5% APR out to get that, right? Like, these are the, this is this comfortable level of the dunya. So when you reflect that this is all going to wither away, it's all going to go. Now this reality starts to sink in, oh, okay, so I should live for not this world, but for the next world. I do what I got to do in this world, but I live so that I can achieve what I need to achieve in the next world, inshallah. And then he says that you reflect on death. You reflect on death as the next one, right? If you want to reflect on the fact that this world will wither away, it makes you start to have a love for the hereafter. There are people who they literally long for the hereafter. They love it. They love the idea that I'm going to leave this place, and I'm going to go to a eternal abode, and they actually imagine that the reality is at that. So we want to get there, inshallah. And Algan, I'm just giving like the specific examples that he gave, but we should, we take them away and then we have to actually go and implement them, inshallah. And then he says reflect on, on, on death because, and, and, and if you will be in a state of regret when it comes, because once the angel of death comes, and he doesn't come, the angel of death doesn't come at the time you want them to come, doesn't come when someone is 75 or 83 always. The angel of death can come. We all know many of people have been 14, 12, 17, 18, 23, 28, 35, that the angel of death has come to them. Their cause of death might be some disease or whatever, an accident, whatever it is, but it was the angel of death coming. When the angel of death comes, that's it. There is no hand. Can I go back? Can I just want to, I got to pray? It's it. The angel of death is there. So you reflect literally on the moment the angel of death is going to come and take your soul. You reflect on that moment. And you think, what am I going to be? When that email gave me these days, the massage, it sends out an email or that announcement has made a juma so and so has passed away. We're doing his or her janaza. When that's sent about you, reflect on that. That's going to be your name, my name. At some point, everybody will die. Nobody, nobody, no creation lives forever. Even the angel of death will die. Allah will, Allah, Allah will directly take the soul. Everybody perishes. And so we reflect on that, on that idea. And then we get into the reflection of what Allah has prepared for each of the groups that he has split up into groups. And this is going to be really, really helpful because when you reflect upon what the people of goodness, you read the traits of the people of goodness in the Quran and then what reward they're going to get. And then you read the traits of the people of wretchedness and what punishment they're going to get. You won't want to kick it with the people who are not, not up to good. You just won't want to, if we all are works in progress, but you won't want to actively spend time with, with, with, with yourself when you see those traits and say, I want to work on them. When you see it in other people, you'll say, I probably shouldn't kick it with that too much. Right. And that will now start to have, make you love the people of goodness and righteousness. Righteousness, as Allah says in the Quran, to be with the most truthful ones. You want to be with good people. Companionship and company makes everything. It's critical. And you want to spend your time thinking about watching, reading about good people as well. If we're spending all of our time, what is this celebrity doing? What is Kim Kardashian doing today? What are we, who are we thinking about? Why are we, why do we care so much about what this celebrity or this celebrity or this person of Dunya, we should know more, way more about the righteous of the Ummah and the Prophet and the first most important in the Prophet's As-Salaam than we do about any person in Dunya, this TikTok person, this person, this YouTuber. We know way too much about other people these days and not, and we're following too many other people. We have to be careful to not follow them into hell because if somebody is teaching something that is risky and that is, if what they're spreading is façade, spreading trashy music videos and bad language and so on and so forth, we just based on the descriptions that we read. They're not, it's from the description. Allah will judge as He's going to judge, but from the descriptions they're not people we want to be associated with. So we have to be careful how much of their, their, their philosophy and their views we let into us, right? And the same goes for politicians and all these other categories. We have to be able to discern who's good and who's not and we have to know the traits of the people of goodness. We have to know the traits of people of goodness. So now it's about how do we practically implement this, right? And so the goal really is to just do this a little bit every day, take one of these topics and just sit with it. You can do five minutes for a week, Friday, after Mughra, I'm going to do the reflection. You just pick, just start very small, but you'll see the benefit. Put all the technology, everything away, sit in a room, take a topic, a verse, and you could pick any verse with the Quran. The ones He, Imam al-Qadir is giving you categories of examples of some of the more critical topics. Any verse in the Quran could be reflected on for centuries and we still wouldn't gather all the meanings. The Quran is that potent of a book. And same with the Hadith of Prophet ﷺ. If you pick a verse and you just sit with it and reflect and reflect and let the meanings come. Just let the meanings come. If we had more time, we would do that like as an exercise today, right? But then there would be a lot of what they say awkward silence. You need those moments in your life is just a lot of awkward silence. It's you and Allah just reflect and let the meanings come. And then the meanings will give you himma to change your life. They'll give you himma to change your life because it'll become a reality. Oh, this world actually isn't that big of a deal. It'll actually sink in. Oh, I probably really shouldn't look at this image. Like this is how serious it is for the people who look at bad things when Allah commands you to lower your gaze. Oh, I really probably shouldn't say this word that I'm about to say or curse at this person or listen to this, whatever it is that we're about to do, right? Because the reflection will have given us that potency and that ability. And so ultimately the purpose of all these audaad that we've been talking about, these litanies that we've been talking about, these practices, these spiritual practices is presence with Allah. That's the state you want to achieve. So this idea of mindfulness and this meditation that we do, Islam has a big, big, big aspect of meditation that the scholars of this tradition would spend large portions of their night meditating, just meditating, reflecting. And you could see the effects of that meditation on that when you see the light that comes with that. But all of the purpose of all this is to attain a state of presence. And he mentions, he mentions that you, if you aim for it and you do what you are required to do, you do what he is laying out and you do what, of course, what Allah and His Messenger have laid out, you will start to achieve that presence. And you can get to a point, he says, you can get to a point where if you achieve the foundations of perseverance and outward devotions and you keep to a strict minimum of things you will do no matter what situation you're in, right? You can get to a state, he says, where there's people who are so present with Allah that they have to, they have to actively try to be present with people because they have achieved this state of complete presence. They're like someone is taught and they're like, oh, they're so present with Allah. They have to actively try to be present with people. There's people like that who still exist on this earth today because they consistently implemented everything that they were supposed to implement and to follow the sunna of the Prophet's sun through and through. So that's what we want to try to do. And whatever portion we can take, it doesn't mean everybody has to do all of it, whatever portion that we can take. And then he finally says, if you cannot do all of the above, he kind of gives us a little warning here, a little heads up, if you cannot do all of the above and you are too engrossed in the dunya, right? Because really he's saying if you can't do any of the above, it means something in the dunya is more important. He says, okay, that's fine. Give your Lord an hour at the beginning of the day and an hour at the end of the day where you sit, you make dua, you do dhikr, you reflect and ask forgiveness. And it's related in one of the traditions that Allah says, give me an hour at the beginning of the day, an hour at the end of your day, and I will take charge of everything in between. Right? So there's these shortcuts. If you can't do all the, okay, you do a little bit, okay, hour at the beginning of your time, you sit, do some dhikr. And at the day, whatever portion if you can't do an hour, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. But he's saying start your day with Allah and your day with Allah. And inshaAllah Allah is the one who then as a mercy for you and me will take care of what's in between. Of course we still do the prayers, not that you don't pray the prayers in the middle of the day, but that you're not spending a significant part of your time throughout the day, right? Okay, I'm going to take out time to learn and take out time to reflect and do dhikr. I just, I forgot to do everything except my basic prayers. This is now about, he's saying, okay, Allah will take care inshaAllah of what is in between. And as it is said, it is related, Allah says, son of Adam, give me an hour at the beginning of your day, an hour at its end, and I will take charge from you for what is in between. And Allah will tell an angel, erase what is in between, as he mentions. So this is Allah's graciousness to us, Alhamdulillah. So again, just to kind of quick review, there's different ideas of different topics that we should reflect on. We should regularly try to take out time and know that when we reflect, it gives you a light in your heart and that light allows you to see by it, the things are discerned. And you can, it can help inform the decision that you were going to make. And so reflect upon Allah's creation, reflect upon Allah's attributes, reflect upon the favors of Allah to engender a state of gratitude, reflect upon yourself and what's inside of yourself to engender a state of humility, reflect on the fact that Allah is watching you to attain this, this state of vigilance before Allah, reflect on the world and it quickly withering away and it will allow you to obtain a love for the hereafter, reflect upon the nearness of death and the reality of death, and it will allow you to hasten to do good and reflect upon the people of goodness and the reward that they're going to get and there are people of evil and the punishment that they're going to get and you will want to associate yourself and inshallah with people of goodness. Those are the categories, some of the categories that are listed out and then we pick others and we sit with them and reflect on them, inshallah. So we'll go ahead and end there. If there's any questions then inshallah we can take questions. How often are these sessions? These are once a week on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Pacific. Yes, good question. So the question was when it comes to reflecting on death and it comes to reflecting on the dunya and that it's perishing, how do you find a balance between you know kind of just completely giving up meaning this is all going to end anyways and that actually exerting yourself and working and so you do that by studying the seerah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and looking at the example of the sahaba. The sahaba all were people who had realized these realities that are being discussed but they all work tirelessly throughout their days for whatever work that they had to do for their families of course for the ummah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and trying to advance what they were doing. So it's not that the reflection on death means that you never go to work and that you never are excited to succeed in your career or that you are excited to see your family and so on. It's that when the reflection of death kicks in that when you are about to make a decision that's the wrong decision or get overly caught up in something like example here would be you get a job offer and it's like a really lucrative job offer but part of the job that the source of the income is from you know alcohol or some or weapons or interest right and you're like okay I can make a lot of money so most people they they'll they'll they'll make their job offer choices on the money and there's a good opportunity or whatever but if you've reflected enough on things like death it kicks in now the spiritual endorphins kick in and you're like oh no I can't mess with that I'm going to die anyways why why would I get caught up in something like this right so it's not that you have to be in a state there are people who are always in the state where death is at the forefront so they're like okay I can't make any decisions that are poor but it's that you remember throughout your day when you reflect enough on death it will start to become enough at the top of your mind that throughout your day when you're about to do something or say something or hurt someone's feelings you say you know what I could die or they could die I better be careful right I should I better be careful before I yell at this person or say this of this person or give the fight with this person because I love them especially for our loved ones and maybe they won't be allowed right but it's not to create a state of like morbidity inside of us where we're just really really down all the time because that would stray from the sunnah of sallam an increase in salawat coupled with this inshallah should should be good right so you do a lot of salawat allahum sallam sallam Muhammad and you will get the the assistance for how to implement some of these things in in your life this is why mama hadad spent all the chapters before this majority of them talked about thicker because the thicker comes first and it helps you get the structural setup to then be able to implement the thicker if that makes sense if somebody does it without the thicker they won't be grounded they could write and this is why uh the grounding is so important in doing what is in the sunnah and practicing that is so important is that does that kind of make sense no questions all right let's check online real quick somebody asked what is what is sufi what is what is the so okay so uh sufi ism or the so ism is the science of uh the practical science that was termed in our tradition for attaining the realities of what's called ihsan so in the hadith jibreel the jibreel islam came and he asked them he asked the prophet sism what is islam and prophet sism said islam is to believe in or to the arid shahada to pray five times a day to fast the month of ramadan and he listed out pillars of islam he then asked what is iman iman is to believe in allah in his angels in the books and he listed and day of judgment and so on and so forth and he listed out uh the beliefs the core beliefs of iman then he said what is ihsan he said ihsan which is translated as spiritual excellence is to worship allah as though you see him but if you do not see him know that he sees you okay so the scholars all their terms that were come up to help you achieve all these realities the realities of islam the fik that you and i follow the fik of prayer and so on and so forth helps you achieve these realities iman the belief that you and i have the term that came to be known for that was akida akida the creed that somebody has you follow a certain creed and you will learn these basic principle beliefs and then to achieve the idea of being able to worship allah as though you see him but if you don't see him know that he sees you comes through what the term that was coined for that the term that was uh coined for that throughout tradition was sufi was the soul and so the the sufi for the one who asked the question is the one who implements that science of purification in order to begin to uh uh in order to begin to try to have a more realized spiritual experience and relationship versus just following the first two without the third the third is the highest station the series station of spiritual excellence unfortunately in our time um uh people have really disparaged the term and they made it seem like it's it's a it's a deviant belief or deviant understanding that's the farthest thing from the truth there is not a single uh concept in the tradition that we benefit from today that is a pure concept except that those who have been in the chains of transmitting that concept have been from the people of the soul and these were excellent people and there were people of virtue and people of practice and people of worship and people of scholarship most and most important so for this someone who asked that question okay any other questions and uh any other questions here I was reading or do translation there was a word in there long be yeah I'm sorry I don't I don't know what that word would be in order to for the one who asked that question okay inshallah we'll go ahead and end with the prayer yeah that you allow us to be grateful servants yeah we ask you allow us to implement the realities of thicker and thicker in our lives yeah we ask that you pardon us yeah and give us forgiveness yeah and give us stations of nearness to you yeah we ask you yeah that you take off that you take into consideration all the difficulties that people might be going through that you remove their difficulties yallah yallah we ask that you grant us everything good that your beloved sallallahu alaihi sallam ask for yallah we ask that you grant his nearness to you and nearness to your beloved sallallahu alaihi sallam yallah allow us to get closer and closer to you through him yah arham ar raheem yallah yallah allow us to achieve stations of nearness to you and stations of knowledge of you yah arham ar raheem yallah we ask you yallah that when we are about to pass yallah that you inspire us to say that you allow our graves to be filled with light and that you allow us to cross that they allow us to cross the surat that the surat on the day of judgment with complete ease and that you allow us to be resurrected in a state of calmness and tranquility on the day of judgment not in a state of anxiety that you allow us to reflect on the hereafter and focus on the hereafter more than we focus on this life that you allow us to realize that there is an eternal life in which we will live in which we will inshallah have families and we will be together yah arham ar raheem yallah that's more critical and than this life yallah that is far more important let us reflect on this and let us realize this let the realities of this sink in yah rabb yallah we ask yallah that you allow us to be in jannah for those a lot as an umma with the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam let us be with prophet sallam let us be with the companions and the righteous and let us be with the nib'een and the siddiqui and the shukr and the sallim yah arham ar raheem we ask you for protection from everything evil that he sallallahu alaihi sallam ask protection from wasallallahu sallallahu alaihi sallam and we ask that all those who are depressed or oppressed or sick that you cure them and that you relieve them and that you give them pharaj and that you give them relief yah arham ar raheem yin