 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem We're experiencing, you know, you could say economic growth, wealth is also at an all-time high generally in society. If you take debt out of the equation and deficits out of the equation, people have a lot more materially and yet we're seeing this complete imbalance where maybe people in the past did not have that much money, but also we're not reporting the levels of stress nearly at the levels that we're seeing today. So what is, what is, what's, what's, what's this definition? What's the definition that we can start with for depression and for stress? Well, it's the opposite, you could, you could start with one definition, which is just what is the opposite of, right? Somebody who's stressed out is in a constantly moving state. You literally feel that when stress begins, you feel that constant trepidation, that, that feeling of not being able to control your circumstances and so the worry begins and starts to bubble up. That is generally the opposite of a state of peace, right? So you could define the opposite of that as just being in a calm, cool, peaceful state. Depression is the opposite of feeling happy, right? And again, these are very just limited basic definitions. We're not going to get into like deep mental health analysis here. That's not an area that I would feel comfortable speaking on. But just at a very general level, that would be a way we could define depression. Now, where does happiness and peace originate from? I would, you know, maybe somebody in the audience could share what their thoughts are so that we can make this a bit more inclusive. Anybody have, and again, you know, just whatever it comes from, where does happiness and peace come from? Yes, please. Contentment. Okay. Good. So it comes from, but where does contentment come from? Rememberance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? Allah says in the Quran, that it is in the dhikr of Allah that hearts are finding this, this feeling of being calm and content, and stress, as we just defined, is the opposite of that feeling of being calm and content, right? So a form of peace then is rooted in dhikr. Now, if you go one step beyond that, what is one of the definitions of Islam, peace? There's another definition submission, right? The Muslim, the active form of that is the one who submits. So you link then peace with submission. You can't really achieve a true state of inner peace, a true state of being in a state of salam internally, in a state of being a true Muslim, again, in the reality of the word and we're not talking about theology here, the reality of the word, if you do not have this element of submission, and so then the goal of our religion, one of the higher principles of this religion is peace, and it begins with internal peace. The Prophet SAW said, Afshasalaam, spread peace, right? And we take that as Muslims in one way where we say asalaamu alaikum, but at the same time that there's, there's deeper meanings, right? When you're saying asalaamu alaikum, you're saying may peace be upon you, may peace be with you. There's also an element of us trying to bring peace into our own life. And then when we do that, inshallah, Allah will allow peace to come in other people's lives through certain efforts that the human being might make. So the whole goal of this religion then is the state of peace, is the state of tranquility, it's the state of submission and tranquility and submission come from or sorry, peace again comes from submission. And submission is when the human being, how would somebody define submission? Asalaamu alaikum, please come on in. How would somebody define submission from a spiritual point of view? Yes. Accepting, so submission was defined as accepting as what happened as the will of Allah, Alhamdulillah, right? That's an excellent definition that you and I don't have control. And so if we accept what's happening as the will of Allah, we will start to attain submission. So again, we just mentioned that depression and stress are at an all time high. From a definition point of view, depression and stress are the opposite of happiness and peace. Peace actually comes and again, one of the meanings of the word, one of the meanings of our religion is peace. One of the meanings of the word Islam is peace. And then there's another meaning, submission. So peace is derived from this state of submission. And you just mentioned that submission is accepting that we are not in control, but rather that Allah is in control and not trying to make that decision for ourselves. So is that, is that clear? Is that, does that make sense? Yes. Okay, Alhamdulillah. So moving on, then where is this concept of submission? Where does it live? There is a place where it lives in the human being. Anybody want to take a guess? It's in the heart. Alhamdulillah, it's in the heart. It's in the heart. So submission for the Muslim lives in the heart. If you do not have a pure heart, you will not be able to attain this state of submission. Then you will be in a state of disarray, which again is one of the opposites of peace. And then you will have more and more stress, more and more issues, more and more depression, more and more worries in your life. The root then of all of this, according to our scholars, and this methodology generally is laid out by Mama Ghazali, Hujjat al-Islam, the proof of Islam, Mama Ghazali, a scholar who lived in the 11th century. And he was an amazing scholar, if not one of the greatest scholars, if not the greatest scholar in the history of this religion. And it's laid out in his famous book, the Ahya Ulumuddin, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, of which many of the books, Alhamdulillah, have been translated into English. And he specifically lays out his hierarchy in like book 20, 21, 22. He's talking about, and book one, he's talking about what is going on, what is going on in this inner world of the human being. You have a lot of books that talk about what's going on in society. Mama Ghazali is talking about what's going on inside the inner world of the human being. And so one of the things that he says, as we just mentioned, is submission lives in the heart, that it is a reality in the heart. That if the heart can enter a state of submission, the whole, the human being that enters entirely into the state of submission. In the hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said that in the human being is a piece of flesh. If it is sound, then the entire body is sound. And if it is corrupt, then the body is corrupt. And he said, verily, it is the heart. So the heart is the focal point for us when we talk about stress and anxiety. And so the reason why you have such high levels, if you just, you know, kind of keep with the flow that we're discussing, levels of stress, anxiety, depression, one of the core reasons is because the hearts are no longer in the state that they used to be in, or in the state that they're supposed to be in. What is the heart created for? We know that the heart is created for the knowledge of Allah. Allah says in the Quran, one of the reasons, he gives a few reasons for why he created human beings. One of the reasons why Allah created human beings, he says in the Quran, I seek refuge with Allah from Satan and the accursed, and what created the jinn and the ins, except to worship them. That we did not create mankind and jinn, except to worship me, except to worship Allah. And what does Ibn Abbas, the famous commentator of the Quran, he says, that means, except to know me. That is the meaning of this specific statement. Not just Ya'budun, but this true Ubudiyah comes from this experiential knowledge of Allah. And this knowledge of Allah then lives in the heart. So what are the reasons then that the heart begins to get sick? So you can talk about stress and depression and anxiety if we understand the core reasons why the heart in and of itself is not well, because everything stacks on top. If the heart is good, everything that stacks on top is going to be good, insha'Allah, going to be completely good. But if it's not good, there's going to be problems here. And this doesn't matter, frankly, if you're a Muslim or a non-Muslim, I mean, we're talking about everybody's hearts, right? A Muslim's heart is very susceptible to rust and to getting black. Otherwise, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would not have mentioned that, right? And so it's not that a Muslim is immune to these conditions of stress, anxiety, depression, all of these types of situations. So that being said, what are some of the ways that the heart gets unhealthy or what are the reasons that it gets unhealthy? Mama Ghazali, he mentions that there are four reasons, the four main nutrients that the heart needs in order to be healthy, in order to survive. And if it has these nutrients, again, we're talking about foundational building blocks. Think of these as the core vitamins, proteins, amino acids that the heart needs, right? They're just like as a metaphor that the human body needs in order to function. These will be what the heart needs in order to function. And then the rest stacks on top. The first is knowledge. Knowledge is important for the heart. Why? Because Allah says that He created the human being to know Him. The first ayah that was revealed in the Quran, ikrah, recite, read, because this is a religion of knowledge. Our tradition is a tradition of knowledge. Allah taught Adam, what differentiated Adam, from everybody else, right? Well, that Allah says in the Quran that He taught Adam the names of all things. This is not talking about the names of like, oh, this, you know, your name is Shahriar, your name is Ahmad, your name is Bilal. That's not what we're talking about. These are realities. Allah taught him the realities, the secrets of all things. When Allah's mentioning something that deep in the Quran, don't think about it from our superficial, limited human understanding. Think about it from what's possible and what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said about it and what the Ulama have said about it, right? It's a very deep knowledge that Adam, Alaihi Wasallam was given of the realities of the secrets of the heavens and the earth. And Allah says in the Quran that He gave the human being the trust. He tried to give it to the mountains. He tried to give it to the earth and they were just like, I'm not having it. No way, I can't handle it. No, not for me. But the human being took it on. The human being said, I can handle this, right? And so if, and then Allah says in the Quran, Walakat Karamna Bani Adam, that we ennobled Bani Adam. He didn't just say we ennobled Muslims or we ennobled one religion. We, Walakat Karamna Bani Adam, that we ennobled Bani Adam. He ennobled Bani Adam. One of the ways he ennobled Bani Adam is this ability to get knowledge. That it is what differentiates you from an animal, right? An animal eats, we eat. An animal drinks, we drink. An animal has relations. Human beings are able to have relations. An animal can do all of the things. An animal is, and if anything, an animal is better at those things. Animals can eat more than us. Animals can do everything I just mentioned at more quantities than us. What differentiates us from the animals? Knowledge. So the first, this ability to know, this intellect, something that an animal would not be able to understand, right? So the first major nutrient that Imam al-Hazali mentioned that the heart needs in order to be healthy, and this is where, again, all of the stress and the depression and the anxiety, all of that builds on top of an unhealthy heart. If the heart is healthy, those problems can come, but they won't become in the same way. They will very, you very much have the framework for how to figure them out. But if the heart is unhealthy, then the problems really start to get deep and deep. So the first is knowledge. What type of knowledge is this? This is not information. This is not knowledge about just memorizing a bunch of things, and then, no. That's not the type of knowledge. What he's talking about is what's called ilm tariq al-akhira, that the knowledge of how to traverse the path of the hereafter. That is the knowledge that the heart needs. And if we just reflect on this, the reason why Imam al-Ghazali wrote his famous, one of many of the books that he wrote, but his famous book, Ahia al-Lumuddin, was because at the time that he was living, all of the scholars of the time, most of the scholars of the time were focusing only on the outward knowledge, right? So you had a bunch of people who knew a lot about all the rules of prayer, but why did we pray? What about the presence of prayer? What about khushu, the rules of fasting, but what about the secrets of fasting? What about the inner realities of fasting? What about the inner benefits of hunger, right? So what he did, and what about you could be in alim, but you could have all these diseases of the heart. You could be arrogant. You could think that you're better than other people. That's very easy. That's very common amongst, as Imam al-Ghazali mentioned, amongst a category of scholars he describes in the book of knowledge. But if you had this ability to traverse the path of the hereafter, you didn't care about this dunya. And so you knew where you were going. So that's the type of knowledge the heart needs. Why does it need it? Because the heart knows when it gets sick. Like my heart, it very much knows I got this disease, I had this disease, this problem comes up, it knows it. Now it's up to me, and it'll remind me, it's up to me whether I'm gonna do something about it. Just like the body is gonna tell you, if you have a headache, you're gonna know. If you have a fever, it's going to become clear that I'm not feeling well. The heart, in the same way, is going to tell you when it is not feeling well. And when it's not feeling well, it's certain diseases are starting to manifest in the heart. Example, again, envy, love of the dunya, being greedy, being angry with people, always yelling at people, being arrogant. I mean, the diseases go on and on and on and on. So the heart, when it has these diseases, is gonna be like there's a problem. So the type of knowledge he's discussing here is the knowledge that is actually far than every Muslim to know this knowledge, is far than I mean, to know the knowledge, basic knowledge of the diseases of the heart and basic knowledge of how to purify them, right? Generally done in our tradition, it's tasqiyat, tasqiyat and nafs, tasawuf, ihsan, like these are the methodologies the ulama have come up with in order to figure out how to purify the heart. That's the knowledge we're discussing. So the heart needs knowledge, right? And then of course knowledge of how to pray, how to fast, how to make wudu. These are given, you can't do anything if you don't have those basics down, right? Now one of the problems in our time is that we learn everything else, like we'll learn this coding language, we'll learn C++, we'll learn, we'll study all of these things for the MCAT, we'll study all of these things and that's all good. That's all good in its place. But then, and for ourselves and for our children, but then we don't know like, okay, what's this, why am I feeling angry today? We can't figure that out. That means that we have misprioritized knowledge, that the knowledge we should be learning about first is what is going on in here. Because if you fix what's going on in here, everything that's going on out there makes sense and everything that's going on out there becomes possible to fix. But it is impossible for a human being to fix what's going on out there if the inside is still a mess. And the inside is just a reflection, or sorry, the outside world is just a reflection of the inner world that we were discussing, right? And Imam al-Azali has a beautiful metaphors, we'll discuss those shortly. So the second one, so the knowledge is the first one, the second nutrient that the heart needs. And again, we're talking about why stress, depression, anxiety start and it's because we're not in this state of submission. Submission lives in the heart and the heart, if it's not healthy, won't be able to submit. So what does it need to be healthy? It needs these four basic nutrients to begin with. So we acknowledge one, second is worship. Dicca, that the heart, as we mentioned, we were created to worship Allah and the heart needs, this is the essential vitamin that the heart needs in order to survive. That a heart that does not have dicca is going to feel empty and you and I will feel it. Everybody has these low moments where we're just like, why am I here? What's going on? What's the point of all this? I got everything, I got this car, I got this house, I got this job, I have a family, Hamdullah, like you're just, but something is missing. And what's missing most of the time is that we are forgetting the purpose of why we were created, that all of these are just means, that's it, right? That we don't let our, Allah says, look around, don't let your wealth and your family distract you from the worship of Allah. And it's not, that can be worship, it can be a vehicle, but it shouldn't be the end, right? It can be a means for us to get closer to Allah. So worship and dicca, what is this? This is, it starts with the first form of this is us just establishing whatever form of worship we can do. Look, if you can't pray, like if you're children, if this can be for when you're young, when you're old, whatever, if you're not feeling, like you're just like, I don't want to pray, okay? Just whatever you can do though, you can still talk to God. Like if you've ever had a moment in your life, like, yeah, I'm not gonna pray, okay? Inshallah, you'll get there, but just have a conversation with God. Like he'll still listen to your problems, don't think that you're cursed because you didn't do something. Allah is way beyond that. His mercy is way beyond that. He's gonna call you to him slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, inshallah. It doesn't mean you put the fist down, right? And most of the time, if that's happening with us or our children, it means that we missed one of these components because the desire for prayer should come as something inwardly. It shouldn't always come from the top down. If you can cultivate the right components inwardly, that desire is going to come in and of itself. So yes, you add the outward push, but even if you can't do that, even if you don't want to, we miss fajr, we miss this prayer, we miss that prayer, okay? Whatever you can do. If you can do five istaghfars a day, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, okay? It's all like, the heart got something, at least you give it something, right? Just because you can't have an entire meal doesn't mean that you like don't drink any water. You do what you can do. And so this is really important. We have to put context into the situation that we're in, especially if you are dealing with or you yourself are feeling that you're in this state of being really disconnected. Like if anybody is feeling disconnected, that you can get connected again. Don't feel like you have to rush into everything. You don't have to rush into praying, the hajad praying, all of these, doing all of your dhikr all at once. No, just slow and slow and slow, but just do something, right? We don't leave everything just because we can't do all of it. We just take whatever we can. So that's important. And then you build on top. So once you get that, okay, I'm gonna add one prayer a day. Again, because worship will fix the heart. It's just gonna start to happen. You will start to see the realities because every time you're worshiping, lights are entering the body. There's the seen world and there's the unseen world. And the first few ayahs of the Quran talk about those who believe in the ghaib, right? That those who have a yakin in the ghaib, in the unseen. So what's happening in the unseen, leave that to God, but know that it's happening. He's putting lights. He's putting sakina. He's putting all of these things inside of you when you're submitting to him and praying to him. And that's what's calming down all of the negative forces that are also coming into us. From shaitan, from what we see, from all the music that we listen to, from all the things that we watch, from just being in society, from all the words that we say that we shouldn't say that all of those create darknesses in the heart and Allah creates light in the heart. And prayer and dikker create light and everything else creates darkness, or not everything else, but you know what I mean. This category creates darkness. So to start the conversation about removing the stress and the anxiety, first the light has to be there more than the darkness. It has to push it out because the darkness is what creates this constant movement, trepidation, worry, and this state of heart that is not in a state of peace. Then what do you do? It doesn't just stop with your fara'id, right? That's alhamdulillah, that's amazing. If you can do your fara'id, then you add on the next layer because the heart needs more and more dikker. It needs as much as possible. So then you add on the next layer. What is the next layer? The du'as of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ would do du'as and prayers in the morning time, prayers in the evening time. So you do add on those du'as, if you can. And there's different compilations of these, for example, the word of Latif, of the Mamma Haddad, the famous compilation, seven, 10 minutes to do. But it's all of the du'as that you need for the morning time and for you to have a beneficial day in alignment with the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Those are the du'as that are taken from his sunnah, right? And then there's other sunnah dikkers the Prophet ﷺ would do regularly. He encourages us to yassin surah Waqya and surah Mulk. The Muslims should, if they're getting, again, the building blocks, you've got the prayers down, you have the other adhkar down that we just mentioned, add on these, the Quranic dikkers, right? Yassin, Mulk, and Waqya should be staples for Muslims. That was a staple, that was the staple diet for the Muslims generally. It's staple spiritual diet. Our grandmothers, they always do that. In Pakistan, they have certain books that, you know, the Manzil and whatnot that have the adhkar already laid out, right? So these are the standard adhkar that if you can get, if you can just build on top, build on top, build on top. And again, the goal is not just to recite. The goal is to achieve this state of peace and tranquility and your stress, your problems. You're always comparing yourself to people on Instagram and worrying about what they're doing and thinking about what's going on in their life and why it's not going on in your life and why is this person in this situation and what does this Facebook status say and why does he have more likes than me and why does she get more likes than me and why does this person get more attention? All of those problems, which is without you and having to worry too much about it, slowly disappear because the thicker brings the light and with the light, the darkness goes away. Light and darkness cannot exist in the same area. And these are all darknesses that exist that create this situation. So again, we had knowledge and with knowledge we mentioned and these are the nutrients that the heart needs. Knowledge was the basic fara'id that we should know, right? Of how to do our aksav ibadah of knowing who Allah is, knowing who Allah isn't, right? Aqidah, the fifth Aqidah and the science of how to purify the heart. If we can learn these three knowledges, the heart has now the basic nutrients to start building more. Then we make sure that we have our worship is good. Our basic worship, we're doing whatever aksav worship we can do. Even if we can't pray and we don't feel like it, we just have a conversation with God. We just do something, you know? And then we add on more and more on top of that, insha'Allah. As we just mentioned, the sunnah dekar is the Quranic dekar. So these are the two, the first two. The third is something that comes as a result of these two which is love of Allah. And it's interesting that Mama Ghazali mentions this as a trait for the heart to be pure and for the heart to be sound. Because love is a concept, it's something that's not really tangible. Like you can read, you know, you can read Surah Al-Yasin and you're like, got that down, right? You can pray Fajr, but like, what does that mean to love Allah? Well, that's the whole thing, is that the heart is more than just formula. There's something deeper there. This is your love relationship with Allah. That the whole reason Allah created you, the entire reason that Allah created you was that he loves you and he wants to show you how much he loves you. That is, you can generally sum that up. And he wants you to eventually come back to him in this state, knowing how much he loves you and being able to show that, right? And sometimes he shows that with favors. Other times, you know, you're doing something wrong and there's a little bit of, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. It's not good for you. But it's all out of love and it's all out of mercy. And Allah mentions love in the Quran so many times. Allahu yuhib betawabin, Allahu yuhib mutatahireen, Allahu yuhib besabireen, like all these you can go on for the different types of people that Allah loves. Allah has a general love for, for people who are trying to get closer to him and just for his creation in general, especially then for people who are trying to get closer to him. So then what is this love of Allah? This is a deeper relationship. Now you're trying to get it to the state of having an intimate relationship with Allah. That one of the higher stations in this religion is love and intimacy. Where that comes from realizing the, one of the ways it comes is from realizing the bounties that Allah has bestowed upon you. Number one. Number two, it comes from spending alone time with Allah. That if you love somebody, everybody, right, if you have an intimate relationship with somebody, you wanna hang out with them, to see you and them, right? You have that time together. It's no different with Allah. What is the wisdom behind the Hajj prayer? That that was the time that Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would just spend, he would spend like, not just two minutes, five minutes, we're talking three, four hours a night, every night. That was just him and Allah. That was the, it was between them two, right? And that love, that's what keeps you going. It's what puts the, it's what makes this religion actually interesting, right? Otherwise it becomes dry really quickly. And this happens where you're just like, man, I feel like I'm doing it. I'm just not feeling anything. I just feel so dry. I don't know, I'm just like, I love like, it just like quickly go through your emotions and you're just like, okay, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. I don't know what to look at back to my conversation. When you love somebody, it's not like that. You're like, okay, let me just, let me like make sure I'm ready to talk to you. Let's like go out on a nice date. You know, that's what you wanna do. And so in the same way with Allah, when you love him, you're like, okay, now that the time is here, I can actually have a conversation with my Lord. That love is a crucial trait and it's gonna be very difficult to fix these problems of stress, anxiety, depression. If first and foremost, the one who is in the elder one is not manifesting that state of love because it won't then transition to the younger generations, whether that's a parent or anybody else. That love has to be there. And if you and I don't make that a priority, we cannot expect it to just somehow magically appear in anybody else. We have to make it a priority. Absolutely, just for even if like, you're like, okay, like yeah, I just do whatever I can do, but I'm not really into this whole religion thing. But you're seeing your kids getting into states of stress, anxiety, depression, worries, and all of these other things that we're not gonna discuss in today's topic, but we've discussed in past topics of, you know, getting into drugs, smoking, hooking up, relationships, partying, all the things that happen. You have no, we have no idea how commonplace it is in our Muslim community, let alone just in high schools, right? And if just for that sake alone, we should make this a priority. Let alone, of course, for our own Akhirat. I mean, that's obviously the most obvious answer. But if we can't do it for that situation, especially if you've been, you know, like in this state of just like, yeah, I just gotta go to Juma and do what I gotta do and let's say, I'll be okay. Okay, that's not the way that the Prophet Sallam explained it to us, but if that's all we can do, okay, Hamdulillah, we try to do a little bit more just for the sake of making sure that love goes beyond our generation and goes on to the next generation. So those are the three. And then the fourth is actually knowing how to apply this. And this is where Imam Ghazali says wisdom. It is one of the major traits that the heart needs because you can have all of the other ones, but if you don't know what to apply at what time, you won't be able to figure this out. Wisdom is very important. And that's knowing what piece of knowledge to apply when. I'll give you an example. If somebody just entered the fold of Islam, somebody just entered Islam, let's say that they have certain elements. Okay, let's say somebody has tattoos everywhere, okay? Okay, in the Sharia, if you were to look at from the law point of view, yes, that's not something that's permissible. They just entered the religion and it's really expensive and it hurts a lot to get rid of those. Are you, and now that somebody's like, I would be love brother, what are you doing? You're entering the mush, people do that type of stuff. So you have no wisdom or common sense or diplomacy. You just don't know what you're doing. So you can have all the knowledge. Don't you know in this book, it says this, this and this, but you didn't have the wisdom for how to apply the knowledge. Now that brother is like, dude, this is how, come on, man. Like, I'm just trying to figure this whole thing out and you're gonna treat me like that and maybe you drive them away and that's on you because you didn't know what to say. So it's better just keep our mouth shut most of the time. Don't tell people how to pray. You see somebody praying differently. I guarantee you there's an opinion out there that says they could pray that way. Why? Because this religion has multiple madhahib, multiple rulings. Everybody's not the same madhub, right? The different, so know what to apply. And if you, if we're in the category of just, we try to worship Allah and we do that, don't elevate ourselves to the category of being an alem or being an alem who is able to give fatwa and rulings and what, no, okay, just, this is also commonplace. You see this a lot where people will try to tell other people, don't you know, you can't pray like this. That's the mashur of the maliki madhub. You can pray like that. It's completely, completely okay. You're gonna question Imam Malik? No, or his school? No, like just let people do what they need to do. Don't be the police or the police force in this instance. Unless you have the wisdom, then you'll pull someone aside, like, hey, I noticed you're doing something. Is everything okay? Like, is that, I don't know if that's something really that's appropriate. And then they're like, actually no, like, this is the situation I'm going to, they're like, okay, alhamdulillah. You know, that's the wisdom of how to apply that knowledge. That's really important. Because if the heart doesn't have that, it starts to get into corrupt states. Because it can have the other three and then start to think, look at me, I do all this Quran and I know all these things and all this stuff. And it's like, well, yeah, that's fine, but that's not gonna benefit you if you were thinking that about yourself. So these are the four, and sorry, I digressed a little bit, but these are the four nutrients that the heart needs. Then the whole purpose of what, so that's what the heart needs. From there, it's about why, or what are the reasons that we're here. We're here again for three main reasons. One is to ilm, to learn. Two is suluk, to traverse this path of traveling towards Allah, right? This path of knowing how to get from where I am right now and to eventually get to this state where I'm near to Allah. And the third is service. Serving other people, doing dawah, calling other people, whatever form of service we can do, just service. Ilm, suluk, and service. These are the principal reasons that will cure the heart of its problems if we spend our time doing these three. And everything builds on top of that, like our jobs, all this of course is all on top of that, right? But these are all forms that if you are grounded in knowledge, you have the right intention, everything you do can be worship. Your job is a fard because you have to bring in money to support your family, or you know the knowledge of how to work, what's halal, what's not halal, it all comes, starts to come into perspective, right? So these are the reasons, again, the ilm, suluk, and service, knowledge, devotion, and service are the reasons that will help give us the life that it is that we're seeking in order to start building on top to remove this stress. Now, I'm gonna get on this whiteboard here. Is there a marker somewhere here? Oh, right here? Is that okay? Okay, so, oh yeah, no, marker, I got it, thank you. Yeah, so now, one thing that's, I'm gonna pause here. Do you have any questions up till this point? Yes. Should I say it again? Sure. Okay, so I was asking, how can we differentiate the love of Allah and simply the fear of Allah and the fear of doing the wrong thing and our motivation to do good deeds for the Ahirah? How can we differentiate that? So you need, the Prophet Salaam said, that the believer, they have fear and they have hope and they're in balance. So you do need fear and you do need hope. Love is a higher station, though, than both. So when you do things, like, I'll give you an example, if you tell your child, like, you know, if you don't wash the dishes, I'm gonna ground you for two days, whatever it is, right? And they're like, just, okay, I gotta wash the dishes, otherwise mom's gonna get mad at me, like, I'm gonna do it, right? And they're scared of mom or scared of dad. So they'll do that and that's good. You'll still be like, okay, they did what I asked them to do, alhamdulillah. Without you really even mentioning much of them, they just know that you like the dishes done and one day you come, like, mom, I love you so much, I cleaned the whole house for you. Which one would you like more? And just, and then they come and they tell you, I love you so much, thank you for everything you've done for me, I just thought I'd do a little. And their cleaning the house still can never repay all of the things that you did for them, that you took care of them, that you nurtured them, that you carried them for nine months. It can't repay it, but just you're gonna, you're gonna feel great, right? Similarly, when we're trying to worship a lot out of love, it is a very high station that we're just trying to like, I don't, it doesn't really matter to me whether I'm gonna get to this heaven or wherever else. Like I just, I love you, like you did everything. Look at everything that you gave me. You created me, you're my Lord. You created me to worship you. I'm gonna fulfill my purpose by doing that. So that's, it's not necessarily that it's contradictory. It builds on top that if you don't have the fear, you won't be able to get to that, that, that station. And generally in our tradition, you alternate between states where you'll have the state of intimacy and then you'll have the state of awe of just Hashiah, right? And you will go through alternations on the spiritual path of these types of states. But the love doing things out of love is something that we should all want to do. That it's not like, oh, because God told me I have to do it, it's like, I want to do this. And when the heart gets more and more pure, that desire comes more and more. Like why? It's not far to stand for 20 rakat and tarawi. It's sunna moakada, it's highly emphasized sunna. So we should do it, but it's not like, you're not gonna be sinful individually if you leave that just for yourself according to some of the opinions. So in that state, why do we do it? It's out of this like, I wanna get closer to God. And that's out of, generally it's out of that love. And we might not recognize it, but there's a part in us that is hoping for that. And that's where that love, we have to feed it and then it'll come out more and more and it'll manifest more and more. Does that make sense? That's a good example, just like a little bit. So we'll continue and then we'll get to the questions after this next section if that's okay. So what happens over time? Human beings, we all have a heart, as we mentioned, right? Can you guys still hear me? So what's possible if you were to just say, okay, this. So inside of every human being, we have this. Now, has anybody ever felt like a void that they just need to fill with something? They're just like, off, I just did this one thing about you're feeling like this emptiness. It could be existential or it could be in a moment. I know I have. And that void accumulates over time. That void is very, very common in our society, especially when people don't have a law in their life or God in their life. This void is constantly coming. Now, what happens? We start to fill this void with whatever we can. So we'll try to fill it with money. And whatever enters the heart, whatever we try to fill the void with is what enters the heart. We'll try to fill it with like relationships with other people, I'm not gonna try to draw people. We'll try to fill it with anything. We'll try to fill it with Facebook, we'll try to fill it with Instagram. We'll try to fill it with cars. We'll try to fill it with houses. We'll try to fill it with status. I'm a VP of product though, look at me. People love that stuff, they love their titles. No, you're a human being, that's like, you are just like every other human being. But your title, it's for you, but it doesn't matter, don't fill your heart with that. That's not the goal of life, to be in the CEO or to be in the status or, but we'll start to fill it. Now it starts with, generally the levels it goes to, we have food, these are the levels of desire according to Mamarazali. Sex, food, sex, wealth, same. Most human beings are trying to do one of these. Either fill all of our time, like foodie, like I just gotta worry about food, right? And that's, enjoy taste, alhamdulillah, sugar and eat, that's great. But that's not the purpose of your life, to just spend all of our time always looking at food. Okay, and then obviously like we know this is very common in our society where everybody just, if you don't feel like you want to settle down with one person, like have one partner, people are just constantly seeking more and more relationships and more and more opportunities to fulfill the sexual desire. It goes on from there, and it's like, well I got that down, now I just want a bunch of money. I want to become, what did they say, rich and famous? Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Like, you should not want that, no. Why, right, cause they're also spiritually poor and depressed, most of them. So it's not rich and famous, right? But it goes to wealth and then fame. I got enough wealth, now what can I do? I want influence, I want power. I want people to like me, like everything I post, and then it goes to power. This is generally the flow of most politicians too. As you can see, those who are in office today, they generally follow this trajectory. And they have a checkbox on all five of these at very high levels. So completely forgot why you're, I mean no sense of why you're creative you're created for all these things. Then you fill the heart with it. Now what happens? Allah says in the Quran, have you seen the one who takes his hawa as his Lord? Hawa is desire. So these are the desires, these are the different forms of desire for the human being, right? And if you take all of these as your Lord and we just mentioned, what was the heart created to do? To worship Allah and to have the love of Allah. Then you completely blacken the heart. And the more and more the heart gets black, the more and more problems start to come in. This can be major, like these are major categories but it can be very subtle. If you're constantly thinking about the warriors and what's Steph Curry doing today and what's Durant doing now and this situation and that situation, that will be the desire that dominates you. If you're constantly thinking about Beyonce, like she's always playing in your head, that's your hawa and that's your Lord. Have you seen the one who takes his hawa as his Lord? If you're constantly listening to Tupac, that's your and that's always what's in your head that you know his words better than the words of Allah and his messenger. And look, we live in society, this stuff happens. It's not like a judgment call, it just happens. But point being that that is what our desire becomes. That's what our Lord becomes in this instance and that's what fills the heart. If you're constantly thinking about what are the people gonna think about me? When I post this photo, is anybody gonna like it? And every time someone likes it, you get a little like, oh, look at that. Okay, that's other people. You're worshiping other people in that moment. It's very subtle. That's why it's not easy to get rid of these issues, but it is possible if we just understand what's going on and what the dynamics are, right? And so if we're worried constantly about other people, what are they gonna think? Oh, he makes more money than me. He used to drive a Toyota, and now he drives a Tesla. I gotta get that too, otherwise, what's he gonna say? What are they gonna say when I go out to their house? What are they gonna, like, you know, aren't they gonna, you know, he got the P100D and I only got the P75 or 85D Tesla. Like, what, like, who cares, man? Just, if you wanna get a nice car, get a nice car and be grateful to Allah, but like, don't worry about what other people think. It's so petty. Every time you do that, you're literally making Sajda to that person. That's what's going on in your heart. The heart is can make Sajda, but it's supposed to make Sajda to Allah. You're making little, little mini random people in your community and you're just bowing down to them all the time. And that's very common, very common in our day and age. It's not a good thing though, right? Where we bow down to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, or we're bowing down to, when now he owns Instagram too, we're bowing down to all these people. You just wanna spend all your time bowing down to these rich white guys? If that's what we do, or Netflix is CEO, because we just wanna watch, that is what the heart is, that's what's gonna happen to the heart. The more and more we try to fill this void with other things. The only thing that can fill the void, and again, this can be more, right? We can put drugs in here, right? Like a lot of people will just smoke their problems away or smoke enough weed to get their problems out, right? They'll drink enough, right? They'll try to have relationships. Whatever it is, I guarantee you that if you are in high school, or if your child is in high school and they're starting to get to that age where they feel like they wanna have a relationship and they might even have a girlfriend or have a boyfriend, most of the time it's because the void isn't filled with something else, with some either attention from parents, with some internal spring that's not present, right? Because the desire for that is a very basic desire. You can get rid of that desire by bringing forth a greater desire. The highest desire, and it's not lower than these, it's the highest one is knowledge. And this is knowledge of Allah. We're not talking about information here. The human being who goes on a path to knowledge, and I believe it's a hadith that promises some said that true people will never be quenched. The seeker of knowledge and the seeker of wealth. And he said that if the human being were given one valley of gold, where's the other one? I got one IPO, I want the next one. Like that's just the human being is just always thinking, how do I get more and more? But that can be in a good way, knowledge, right? Where we, Hamdullah, have scholars in our tradition today who like, that's just their life. They wanna learn and implement and apply. Hamdullah. So these are some of the different voids that we have. What did Allah say? We just explained that knowledge of Allah and love of Allah can literally erase all of these. And if you get that in your heart, the love of Allah, all of these slowly start to erase. And dikker, a little bit of dikker, just like Hamdullah with this eraser, that's what dikker will do. We'll just polish, polish, polish. And we'll accumulate more and more and more. That's what dikker does. Allah be dikker, Allah is that's my inner colub. Imagine that's what's happening to your heart every time, barely in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. Every time you do dikker, polish is happening. But it can get to a point where, and obviously this is just the, but Allah is what's dominating your heart. Allah and His messenger. That's what's dominating the heart of the Muslim. And when that's dominating the heart of the Muslim, all of these other problems start to become much that you can put them into perspective. Because we're relying on Allah at that point, right? We're relying on the teachings of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam at that point. We're not relying only on ourselves or on how much money you're in the bank or how famous we are. We're probably becoming famous. Like half these famous people, the next day some controversy happened, boom, completely down, everybody hates them. Next day they do something again, everybody likes. So people are gonna let you down, but God is not gonna let you down. So that's the void then that needs to be filled. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam also said that the only thing that will fill the son of Adam is the dirt in his grave. That if he won't be satisfied until that fills him inside. So we can either do two, we have two choices. We either take this path of focusing on our desires, accumulating stress, anxiety, worry, but maybe we get a few likes here and there and some money and a Tesla. And that's all we focus on in life. And then we do all that and then we get to the grave, all that stuff stopped mattering and then the dirt of the grave is what fills us. And then other problems. We ask Allah for protection. Other problems can potentially come as a result. Or we focus our life on this goal and clearing all this nonsense out of the heart and letting Allah fill the heart. And when that happens, everything else can come too. Everything good can come, all clear can come, but the perspective is correct. So what are the practical steps then that we can start taking? The first is when this emptiness is coming. The first is just really recognize what is the void that you have? And what is the root cause of that void? Like is it something that happened when you were a kid with your parents? Like did something happen where you just felt like that relationship was never resolved? Is it something that's between you and your, you might be a kid right now and it's between you and your parents? Is it something between you and your siblings? Is it between you and your spouse? Is it between you and other, like where is that void coming from? And that's just the human problems. And then we examine within ourselves, right? What are the different reasons why we may be feeling empty? And if we just use this framework, this framework has been immensely beneficial to me. I'll think like, man, like I just, I didn't learn anything all week. Like no wonder I'm feeling down. Like, and there's an immediate effect. If I just spend like five minutes listening to something, I'll be like, at least I learned something because I know my heart needs that nutrient. Even if I don't apply it right now, even if it just sits somewhere, at least you got that nutrient. We said knowledge, worship, love of Allah and wisdom and how to apply all of those is what the heart needs. So we then identify, what am I doing? What do I fill my time with? When I'm feeling down, do I go order some pizza and start watching Game of Thrones? And you know, okay, Alhamdulillah, it's better than going and buying a sack of weed and starting to smoke. And even if you're doing that, it's all good. You can still come back to Allah. But the point being that, what are we doing with our time in these instances? And what are we feeling? What is the void that we have and what are we filling it with? If that's how we're filling it with, then we just have to consider, okay, maybe I'll do that one day a month and then the next time I'll just try, even though it might be really hard, I'm just gonna try to turn to God. I'm gonna just be like, okay, I'll get the pizza and not watch Game of Thrones and I'll watch something else. Or I'll watch, you know, I'll try to get closer to Allah after I eat the pizza. You use slow baby steps, but you identify what is the void and what are you filling it with? If every time you're feeling down, you go on Facebook and you think, maybe if I just look at how many people like my photos, I'll feel better. And this is a reality and it happens, it's okay. But then we just say, okay, what can I do differently? Like, maybe deactivating is not the answer for you. Maybe that'll just be too extreme of a push. But okay, maybe the next time you're about to do that, you say, no, I'm just gonna say, Alhamdulillah, staghfirullah, and just turn to Allah. And you don't have to do the specific vickers in Arabic, by the way. Just talk to Allah from your heart. That's how love is cultivated, the intimate conversation between you and Allah. The whole reason why we do all of these abqar are to help us cultivate the knowing how to ask Him. And then you ask in whatever language you want. English, Urdu, Spanish, sign language. You can ask God knows or just don't even talk and just let Him read what's going on inside. And all that's possible with Him. But that's important, right? To be able to have some sense of knowing why this is happening. Once we know and we identify why this is happening, then we say, and I'll give an example, like let's say I have a problem. Let's say I'm feeling a void and I try to fill it with work. This is very normal, especially in Silicon Valley. People try to fill their voids with work and with status. So they'll say, okay, well, if I could just do this, then I'll become a director and then I'll be happy. And then I'll be happy. And then like, now if I just do this, I'll become a VP and then I'll be happy. I may have spent all this time neglecting all these responsibilities that are more important, but I'll be a VP. Okay, but you're still not happy. What's going on? Well, no, it's really the SVP. That's the, if I can just get SVP, I'll be happy. Okay, no, you get that? No, something's wrong. What's going on? We'll try to fill that void with whatever we can. And look, this is the human reality. It's okay, but it's just taking a step back and it's still good to do all those things. We need Muslims in high positions, but they should not be seeking that position. They should be seeking Allah and He puts them in that position, Alhamdulillah. But if you're seeking that and that is your sole goal, that's not going to create health for the heart. That's going to create trouble for the heart, right? And so that's important to keep in mind. So we identify that void. Let's say that's me. Let's say I'm seeking more positions. I want to get promoted and that's my goal. And that's what's filling my void. I could just, I just spent all my time. Now I have to examine, okay, what's missing in my life. Then I examine that framework of what we just mentioned. Knowledge, worship of Allah, love of Allah, right? And serving His creation and wisdom. We mentioned a few different ones. Then I examine, okay, if I'm not doing any, if I'm not spending any time learning and we live in this society where it's like, oh, you go and get a bachelor's degree and you go and you get a master's maybe and then like you just spend the rest of your time after you come home from work in front of CNN or ARY or GOTV and just listening to what's going on in the news and not spend any time learning and the heart needs to learn. So then the problems start then. If we know more about specific political situations and we don't know what's going on in our own reality, there's a problem, we take a step back and then we identify, okay, how do I work on this? And so that's where the knowledge comes in, right? Then we say, okay, how much time am I spending doing Bikr, okay, maybe I prayed today. I prayed one prayer or two or three. Maybe I prayed all five, Alhamdulillah, but was I really focused? No, did I have one conversation with Allah? Maybe the prayer, we weren't able to have a conversation and just go sit in a room by yourself and just talk to God. And it can literally be as basic because this is how the love and the worship is cultivated. As basic as like, hey God, how's it going? I'm good. Today I did this. I need your help here. Could you please help me out? Like just very basic conversation, but it starts the path. And that's what we should be encouraging, especially our kids. That's how we should start encouraging them, right? Just have that conversation with Allah, that you can memorize the duwaz and everything is very important. But you should have a reason for why you're doing that. It should not be rote memorization without having any sense of what we're doing or the purpose of it. Then we create, so we said, like first identify why we're feeling empty. So I said, okay, I'm just feeling empty because I'm not getting what I need and I'm not spending my time in activities I should be engaged in. Maybe it's my environment. Maybe it's the people I hang out with. Maybe it's societal influences. Maybe it's just something that happened to me growing up. I don't know, but I'm feeling empty. Then I identify, what am I using to fill the void? And for me, I said, okay, maybe I'm using my job. I just want to get promoted. I want to get this, I want to get that. Okay, and it'll be different for everybody. Then you identify what's missing in your life. Okay, I'm not learning enough. I'm not spending any time doing dhikr. I'm not spending any time really having intimate dialogue with Allah. I'm not spending any time serving anybody. Okay, so I'm missing all four. Maybe I'm missing one. Then you start to bring slowly, then you create a plan. And now this is important. A methodical plan to bring these into your life and to the lives of your children and your family. That if we can't do, doesn't mean go and read five books a day. Okay, just one book every three months. One book a quarter, right? One book a year, whatever we can do. Just learn a little bit though, right? If you haven't picked up the Quran in a while, pick up an English translation or whatever language you read. Or do Arabic, whatever it is, and just read. Try to understand what's going on. Read it with tafsir, with commentary ideally so you can understand what specific things mean. Because that's important. It gives you the context, right? And then we spend our time or with our family. One thing that's very, I've seen a lot of people do that's very good trade. It's okay, at one prayer you pray in Jama'at together of maybe Maghrib. And then you just read like a hadith book like Riyadh-e-Saleh, you read one, two hadith. Maybe you talk about it for a little bit. And then that's it, go and eat dinner. But something just a little bit will go a long way in our time. That's the secret of the time we live in. Alhamdulillah actually for the time we live in. Because you can do one millionth of what people and what the salaf used to do and attain amazing stations. Because nobody's doing it anymore. And Allah has all these bounties to distribute still. And so the people doing dhikr are getting those bounties. But guess what? There's not that many people doing dhikr. So you can just grab them even if you just do a little bit. And then we create a plan for how are we gonna spend more time with Allah? How are we going to create this ability to love Allah? And this is where we have a portion of alone time. Ideally we can get up five, 10, 15 minutes before Fajr or maybe Fajr is the alone time. Whatever it is that we can do. Or at night time now Isha comes in early. So right before bed, five minutes, okay, I'm gonna go and just gonna go be in a room alone. And just you don't have to pray, just go talk to God. You already, if you already did your prayers, right? But whatever you can do or pray, whatever that alone time cultivates but it's important to have that solitude. Solitude, Mama Ghazali describes in his book on character and disciplining the soul is one of the main ways to get the heart to be alive again. It's one of the main, again, vitamins that the heart needs. And then what else can we do? Peg Allah for help in this time. And don't ever think that somebody, especially your own children or your own family is not going through these problems. I guarantee you, you would be surprised how many of us in this room right now are probably like have had major spouts of depression. I know I have. I've definitely had those moments. I'm just like, what is all this? What am I here for? Why am I doing? Why am I feeling so down? Those things will happen to the human being and it's okay. The Prophet ﷺ there's a whole year and see what I call the year of sadness. All these sad events happen to the beloved Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. It's okay to have those moments of sadness but how do we respond? His way of responding was very different than the way that we're taught to respond in this day and age, right? Which is like, oh, smoke this, drink that, watch this, fill the heart with this. So that's really important. So if we do those four that I just mentioned and then we finally compliment it with begging Allah for help, we will be inshallah in a better place and so will our children. That because Allah says He does not change the condition of a people until they change until they change within themselves, right? That your condition will begin to change when you put in the hard work and the beauty of it is is you just have to take the first step. That just the fact that Allah wants us to even discuss this today and benefit from each other inshallah is a great sign of divine solicitude and that Allah wants immense care for us and immense good for us and so all of these problems inshallah can be solved. I'm gonna move on to the second component of this that I mentioned really getting diving into anxiety but I wanted to pause for questions. If anybody has questions, comments, thoughts, anything to add, concerns, complaints. Yes, Ms. Minna. You said that like attention that like celebrity kids is not something that we should want but didn't Allah, one of his hadith said that I created mankind to be known, right? I was a hidden treasure to be known. So isn't what we're doing like try to like be famous or like be known the same thing as like what Allah does or like what Imam Hussein did in order to like keep this like name going, you know? What is the difference? That's a really good question. That's a really good question. So the question was that if, and you mentioned the hadith, the hadith could see that Allah says I was a hidden treasure and I created this creation to be known, right? For me to be known, for Allah in this instance to be known. And so how do we think about this especially when it comes to being famous and fame and everything? It's a good question. So the first is with Allah, the desire for Allah to be known, that's the process that we just described. That Allah wants us and the best gift that Allah can give and we should ask Allah for this regularly is ma'rifah. Is give us the gift, ya Allah, of ma'rifah, of knowing you. Not just of the earlier levels of the religion but the higher stations of religion being from the Arafin, the people who know you. That's what we want to aspire to and we ask that Allah make that possible for us fi khair wa l-lutfu l-afiyah with ease. That's Allah wanting to be known. He's not asking the human being to be known in that instance. He wants... So when we talk about the attributes of Allah, there are attributes of Allah that we take on and there are attributes that we don't take on. So you can try to take on, for example, the attribute of rahma. You should not try to take on the attribute of al-jabbar. All compelling one. That's not an attribute for you and me. Or the attribute of Allah having his kibriya of being the all great, of the all proud. That's not an attribute for the human being to take on. Maybe in very specific small instances, but generally that's not our attribute. So there are attributes or the attribute of samadiyah where Allah is self-sustaining without any need for food and drink. We take on a small portion of that in Ramadan and we can barely get through the day, right? But that's Allah. He doesn't need sleep. He doesn't need, right? At al-kursi, he doesn't need food. He doesn't need any of these things. We don't try to take that on. So in the same way, our desire is to know Allah. It's not actually to be known. That's the first thing. That should be where our heart's directed. Now, when it comes to the question of what about where the grades of the past wanted to make sure this tradition was spread, that was their name was detached from it. So it's not that I want to be known, right? It's that all of the sahaba, they did not want leadership positions. They didn't want it. What the Prophet ﷺ said, it's a bad sign if you're desiring a leadership position. That if you want to run, I want to do this, I want to read about the seerah, they would nominate each other. They'd be like, ah, ah, ah, ah, you can do that. The sahaba that gave fatwa, for example, only all of the companions were really learned, but like eight or 10 of them gave fatwa. Now these days you can go learn for like two, three, four, five, six years and you're giving fatwa, fatwa, askmufdi.com, like you can just fatwa all the time, right? The sahaba are very careful and they didn't want their name to be known. So you don't want to be famous. It's actually seen as something blameworthy to seek fame. It's seen as a lower desire. But if you're doing the right thing in this religion and Allah wants to elevate you and elevate the religion, he will elevate you. So for example, Imam al-Haddad, one of the greats of this tradition, one of the great scholars, Imam Abdullah ibn al-Aliwi al-Haddad, he lived in the 16th, 17th century and in Hadram al-Yaman. He desired always, he begged Allah for obscurity. He begged Allah for obscurity. He didn't want to be known, but he was just, Allah made him known. Now his litanies are recited, his Adkari Kampala recite all of the world, his books are widespread, his books are translated in English and Malay, all these languages. He didn't want to be known at the time. Five, 10 people would attend his gatherings. Now millions and millions of people have benefited from his work. He didn't desire to be known. He begged Allah for obscurity. Because he begged Allah for obscurity, Allah wanted him to be known. That's what we want. We don't want to be. And the reason is, if you imagine a plant, a human being is compared to a plant a lot of the times in the Quran and in our Islamic tradition and in the metaphysical tradition. A plant cannot take root until it is deeply rooted in the soil. And what's going on in the soil is everything is hidden and obscure and unknown. So the human being spiritual realities cannot take root until you are completely obscure. That you ask Allah, Ya Allah, don't even let me think like I'm anything about myself. Let alone other people think something about me. Then you're deep rooted in the soil and now all of the stuff we talked about starts to benefit you. Because you're actually rooted in something. If you were the whole time and you have scholars like this and the Prophet of Islam described them, he called them, these are known in our tradition as Ulama Asu. Evil scholars that they want to learn so that they can be famous. Ooh, bad sign. It's a hadith where those will be the first people that are thrown into the Hellfire. The Qaris, the Quran reciters that recited Quran so that people could applaud them say masha'Allah and so that they could become famous. And the same thing with the scholars. So that's actually that hadith in and of itself shows us the detriments of seeking fame. Because you should have sought rep memorizing the Quran for Allah's pleasure. But you actually did it so that everybody could be like, wow, look at you and give you all these nice things and make you, you're well known and you're the most famous person. And now that was your intention. There's a big problem. There's one thing if that was your intention there's another thing if you did it and Allah just gave all that attention to you. And that's a fitna. That's a big test. Ask anybody who's a person of knowledge and who's in that position. It's a huge test. They don't want that at all because it brings a bunch of issues. Does that make sense? Any other questions or shall we? Okay, Alhamdulillah. So stress and anxiety. So it's all of this is very much linked but one thing that's really important to understand. So if we, the human condition Allah talks about in the Quran how he created the base state of the human being. He'll tell you like khuliqal insana da'ifa that we created mankind weak. We created insan weak. And he also says in one of the surahs of the Quran he says khuliqal insana halua that we created the human being in a state of anxiety. So it's a really important to remember he literally created you and me in that state the very base natural state that we come into this world we're like crying we're in that state of anxiety, right? And that's normal, that's okay. But then Allah tells us how to get into a higher state. And he says in the Quran in the same surah, right? What is the description of these people who are in the state of anxiety that when they're afflicted, they complain. When something bad happens you believe this happened to me there was just so much trouble today there was so much traffic and oh my God, I can't believe it. This guy at work did all this stuff or just complain, complain, complain, complain. It's so hot today, I can't believe it. Like we're just, right? And that's the state. One of the signs that you have this inner anxiety is you're always complaining as Allah says in the Quran. And then he says, and when he's given good he holds back. No, mine, mine, no, no, I'm not gonna give it anyway. I'm not gonna share, why would I share this? Well, what, what much of these money? Who cares? I'm not gonna give you that, it's fine, it's mine. Just the state of holding back, right? And then he says, illa al-musallin, he describes the exception to that. He says, this is the normal state that most people are in. But you don't wanna be a follower, even this age of followers. You wanna be somebody who's leading, who's showing people, okay, no, this is how the Prophet Sallam did things. He says, illa al-musallin, except the people of prayer. So the first category of the people who are not in the state of Halua, and this links to everything we just discussed, and Halua is anxiety, is the people of prayer. But what are the people of prayer? Anybody? Who are the people of prayer? Is it just like, if you prayed five times today, can we be from the musallin? Sorry? What was it? Khushua, right, subhanAllah, right? That people of prayer, that Khushua is there, so the prayer is actually having an effect. That you have these traditions of the sahaba and the tabi'een that they're praying, and literally like a wall will collapse in the house, and they're just completely in the prayer, and everybody else runs out of the house, they come back to them, they're like, why didn't you leave the house? He's like, what happened? I don't even, I was completely, I was in, I would have somewhere else. What happened? I don't even know what you're talking about. Or that one of the sahaba that they had a bow that came and was stuck to their leg. And they said, wait till I enter prayer, then you can take it out. I'll be, I'll have my spiritual anesthesia kicking in. He's just like, then you can take it out, because I'll be in prayer, I'll be in a different world. So then you can take that out. These are different realities. We have a hard time understanding these realities because of the earlier thing that we were mentioning that we've brought this, made this religion all about the outward. There are inward realities to this religion that we should aspire to. The people of Ma'rifah, of Nosus, of the Adifin, they're in this state. When they're in prayer, when they say, Allah Akbar, they toss the whole dunya behind their back and then they come into this prayer and there's them and Allah. They're not thinking about, you know, how much traffic is there gonna be this woman for lunch? All the stuff that crosses at least my mind, right? They're not thinking about that. They're in a completely different state. So these are the people then that anxiety is not gonna faze them in the same way. The second thing, so that's the first, right? The second is, what is the state then that Allah describes of calm people? He describes in the Quran. There is a category of people that are completely calm. He says, Inna Al-Oliya Allahi La Khofun Aleyhim Walahum Ya'sunoon La Khofun Aleyhim Walahum Ya'sunoon At the Oliya of Allah, they don't fear, they don't grieve, they don't have this state of, what's going on in the beginning? That's what anxiety is. It's this constant worry because you're in control. What do we say in the beginning? Submission. If you are in a state of submission, you won't need to be in control. Then when you're in a state of submission and Allah is controlling, you can attain the state where you're not in a state of worry or anxiety. So then he also describes the people who are calm Alabi Dikr Allahi Tatmain Al-Kulub as we mentioned that verily in the dikr of Allah does the hard find rest. So you have this state then of anxiety where we begin and this state of calmness, which is where we wanna attain the Oliya, the Wilaya. And dikr Allah tells us then there's a path to get there. So it's very simple in one way. And I'm gonna get back up on this board that if you and I begin in the state of worry and anxiety and we're trying to attain the state of calmness Allah says the people who are not in the state of anxiety are the Musallin and the Oliya are also in that same category. So this is that state of Wilaya. Okay, so there's a lot up here. So let me just explain. So we were mentioning, we started in the state of anxiety, right? khulqal insana halua. And then Allah says that the people who are not in the state and the people who are calm, right? Inna al-Oliya Allahi lahopun alehim wa la'un yaktanum that the Oliya of Allah, the Walis, the saints in our tradition, the saints, they're not in this state. They're calm, they're tranquil. And then he says, Alabi dikr Allahi Tatmain Al-Kulub that dikr brings the hard to rest. And then we also mentioned one of the ways that the part, what one of the ingredients the heart needs is knowledge, right? And then Allah also makes it clear that his love is essential. So these are the ingredients to get on this path. When you have these ingredients, the problems that we face become, we're able to put them into perspective. Then there's another layer here where there's levels of the nafs. Allah describes in the Quran, different levels of the nafs. He describes what's called the nafs al-amara, nafs al-amara thum bi suf, the evil commanding self. That is the first level of the nafs. That is the nafs that all that thinks about is food, relations, power, that's all it cares about. And it gets, if you like say one thing it'll just lash back out at you and gets angry. Most of the people in society are in this state. Now the Muslim, the interesting thing is that the success criteria for Muslim is not a master's degree or a PhD or whether you're a senator or a congressman. It's actually whether you've attained this state. This is the ultimate goal of the Muslim. And if you're in any other worldly position but you don't have this goal, we're missing out, right? You go from the nafs al-amara, the evil commanding soul by doing knowledge, by sorry, by learning, by doing enough bikr to what's called the nafs al-lawama. So Allah, this is mentioned, nafs al-amara and surah Yusuf. And then this is mentioned in la aqsumu bi yawm al qiyama wa la aqsumu al nafs al-lawama, right, surah al qiyama. So the nafs al-lawama, the self-blaming soul, this is the nafs that's like, shouldn't have done that. Why did I drink that? Or why did I smoke that? Or why did I look at that girl? Why did I look at that guy? Like why did I do that? Shouldn't have done that. You start to blame yourself. You can be in the stages for years or eternity, your whole life. These stages can exist forever. It's not that it's like a video game level where she just gets to the next level in a couple of minutes. May Allah salallahu alayhi wa sallam. And then the nafs al-amara, that's the oliyya, serene soul, right, surah al-fajr. Inna irji illa rabbika radhiyat al-mardiyat. That ol tranquil soul. So the tranquility is the opposite of the inside. And Allah in the Quran tells us how to get from this problematic state of anxiety, stress and worry, to this ideal state of tranquility. And this is where happiness lives. This is where all the good things live. Because people, these people are very happy. They're just completely calm, happy people, internally. And they've achieved this state through knowledge, enough thinker of Allah and love of Allah. Now the interesting thing is you have to keep working hard. Now what you were doing when you were here is not going to work. You've got to add more. You were praying the five prayers here to get to here, now you've got to pray way more. You've got to add more, you've got to learn more. Up here, you're talking about different type of thinker. You're talking about contemplation, meditate, different types of things, right? So what somebody is doing up here is going to be very different than up here. But it's important to know the level. And then on here, and sorry, I wish I had another color, but this is the same color. Sin brings you down. You might be up here and then you do enough sin and you can go back down into here. Toba, what does toba mean? It means to turn, literally, to turn you back around. That Allah is a Tawab, right? The one who's turning back regularly towards you. So toba will help you turn back around. But the sin, and this is where it's important for us to just identify, right? What are the things that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing, okay? I just make a list. Eyes, I'm looking at things on Facebook or Instagram or when I'm walking that I shouldn't be looking at. I'm looking at people I shouldn't be looking at. I'm not lowering my gaze. Whatever you're doing, identify. Ears, I'm listening to music that's acting me negatively. And remember, every time you listen to a rap song that has a lyric about misogynizing women and doing this to this woman and doing that, your heart is literally getting black, black, black. You're just coloring it. And you're just putting images of those things in your heart or shoot this person, shoot that person, all these different images that come. Same thing, then just examine all your limbs. Tongue is the one that most of, I know I struggle with. Most I backed by this person, say something we shouldn't say. Maybe we lied. Maybe we got angry at someone. We just went off on them. Maybe we'd cuss somebody out. But we just, it's very actually, again, clear. We just have to identify. I didn't list everything I, I missed the eyes, which are very important. But just think through, okay? What am I doing? Am I walking to places that are haram that I shouldn't be going to? And again, we have to know where we're at. That if you're just starting off in the journey, look, and you're still struggling with certain haram things, it's all good. Don't trip, don't worry. You can still climb on this path and just slowly, slowly. You cannot get from here to be super welly in one day. It's just not, that's not how it works. So don't expect then yourself or your children or anybody, if you've been spending 20 years and somebody else is like just starting, don't expect them to just jump up and understand everything right away. It's going to be slow and it's going to be methodical. And then we just have to work on these things. These are the sins between us and Allah. There's another category of sins between us and other people. Let you cheat at somebody, stole something from somebody. Then we have to work on those as well. But those, that's the path generally, that if we follow this path, the anxiety, we start to now build the foundations for how to get rid of this. The anxiety and the stress. And as we mentioned earlier, when the heart has these, the heart is now in a state of elation and happiness. And the people up here, depression, anxiety, stress, if they do come, it's again a very different type. And it's not the same type that we are going to experience. And so just never give up or think that this is not possible. No, it is possible. Allah created you for this. He wants hair for you. He wants good for us. He wants this for you. And He wants you and I to do the work to make it happen. All of the inspiration to even do this work, the Himmah, the help, the motivation, it comes from Him. And so the whole thing then, inshallah, is just about turning back to Him until we get to this higher state where Jannah is and then we go back to Him, right? Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'u. Inshallah, we'll stop there for Isha. I believe it's Isha'aqama. And then if anybody has, I have a few more things, but we'll just, after Isha, if anybody has questions, we'll come back for some time for questions. I apologize, we didn't leave time. Wassallallahu wassalam wa barak. Alaa sayeduna Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wassalam. SubhanakAllah. Wa bihamdakunashadu Allahi la ilaha ila ala astaghfirullah. The question takes it to all of us. What do we want? So the question was, how can we take what we've discussed and apply it especially in situations for people at home if they're in a void and then they're spiraling and then that negativity creates a difficult situation in circumcense, for instance. It's a really good question. And there's, I definitely don't have, you know, a definitive answer there. I think a few things that have worked is build a human relationship before anything else, right? So like these are all principles that will make sense for somebody who is somewhat prioritizing even a portion of their life towards spirituality. If that's not the case, the job of the person who is doing that, it's their job to take these principles and figure out how to make them relatable without mentioning something that might turn the other person off. For example, like sometimes people are just turned off by religion. They're like, ah, they had a bad experience. They don't want to have anything to do with it. So you can't mention that like these are things you need to do according to the Quran or according to the scholar, according to that situation because they might not be receptive. You have to figure out how can I get the message across to them in a way that will speak through my actions first. So the first step in that is developing a relationship with that person, right? And obviously I'm sure you have a relationship in this case, but having enough of a conversational communicative relationship where it's like the doors are open. If the doors are closed, then the main thing that we can do and that we should still be doing regularly is making a button to offer that person that the door opens, right? But if the door is closed, if the door is open, that relationship of just like first validate that like you love them and you're there for them. That's really important. And it's like, it doesn't matter how bad it's gotten. You're not, it's like, I'm not judging you because you're in this situation. I love you. I'm here for you. And I'm just trying to like figure this out on my own, you know, and I know you are too. So like you kind of let that phase go for a little bit, a little period of time. Then you add on the next phase on top, like, hey, I got your back. Is there anything I could do to help? And when they ask you, what do you think I need to do? Now you start peppering in some of this. It's a process, right? You're okay. Have you thought about this? Like I've noticed that, you know, what's going on? Like, why did you, why are you feeling this way? And then they start to mention, you know, this circumstance happened. This thing happened at work. I broke up with my, you know, broke boyfriend or broke up with this, whatever situation you don't say, oh, don't you know it's Haram, that boyfriend? No, you just listen, listen. Okay, okay. It's gonna, you know, now the heart is broken. Their heart is broken. So you're not gonna be able to, you're not gonna mend that really easily. Now you try to figure out, okay, how do I apply some of these principles? Hey, one thing that really helps me is like, sometimes I just like talk to God. And I just like, you know, I know you're not really trying to pray, but I just talk to him and that helps. He's like, okay, I'll try that. Or like, hey, there's this Sura that's, that like I listened to on YouTube the other day and it really made me feel calm. Oh, sure. Can you send it to me? And just very small things, you know? Very minor, like, and the knowledge piece, like, oh, I heard a lecture on YouTube the other day. Just do it, keep it like five minutes, 10 minutes. Nothing big, right? Check it out or check out this podcast and maybe you can listen to it on BART. Like whatever little things are on your way to work, whatever it is, right? That you can do. And then you just slow, slow, slow, you do that. And the inshallah, the door will open and then really begging Allah. So one of the things that I forgot who mentioned this, one of our teachers mentioned this though, that 80% of Dawah, 80% is begging Allah for help for that person in the night, in the middle of the night. 20% is the talking. So the Prophet's Islam, his Dawah, he was all night, crying, yeah, Allah, help my, help my, help my, help my, then he would go and he would call, right? But that is Dawah. It's when you really care so much that you're sacrificing your own sleep and everything to beg Allah for help. And why are we mentioning that time in the night? Because that's the time that's known, right? That Allah says in the Hadith Qudsi that I come down in no anthropomorphic physical manifestation, but to the lower heavens in the last third of the night. And I ask, is there anyone who needs anything that I may grant it? Anybody who has done something wrong that I may forgive them? So the needs are answered. So if you couple that, inshallah, with this, hopefully the process gets started and then there's a ton more that could be added to that, I'm sure, that I don't know, I don't know. So I'd be curious to learn from you all and from what you've benefited. Is there anybody else who wants to add what's worked for them? Please. So adding to a little bit of what she asked, and you answered recommending, the surah is really great or this lecture is really great or talking to God and stuff, but what would you say, and this might be a little bit complicated, but whatever you say is best. So what about people, shaytan gets in your head sometimes and it becomes hard for people to crack open the Quran or listen to a lecture or even talk to God and it becomes scary for some people and they're very rejecting. So in terms of that, what would you say? How do we approach people in that situation? How do we help them? Because that's a little bit harder than people that are more accepting. Right, right, that's a really good, that's a really good question. So one thing is that's where the humanity before religiosity comes in, that you showing that person through your character that it has nothing to do with this religious, maybe that's what's driving you, but for them you're just there for them as a human being and you can talk to them, don't mention the Quran, don't mention religion, don't mention dhikr, don't mention any of these things, but show them so much through your character that you're there for them, that you got them when they're crying and they're down, you pick there to pick them up, when they need to ride somewhere you're there, when they're down, you'd bring them their favorite burger, like whatever they need, you have their back and that is you applying religion and it's you applying the sunnah or the Prophet's as-salam, and then when the moment is right, you pepper in and it doesn't have to be religious, you just pepper in a little bit of advice, like hey, maybe you're feeling really down because that person hurts you like 10 years ago, maybe we should go seek some counseling, that's all coming, ad-dina nasiha, the Prophet's as-salam said that the deen is sincere concern or nasiha meaning advice, it doesn't matter whether you cloak that advice as oh, this is a religious principle or not, he also said speak to people where they're at, don't speak to somebody who will be turned off by religion about religion, you just whatever principles you can apply and that's where character comes in, that good character and showing people, it's interesting, in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, Islam spread through the miracle of the Quran, the rest of the Muslim world, many parts that did not have the ability to understand the Quran in its revealed language, it spread through the character of the Prophet's as-salam, where people went, these merchants would go, they would have such amazing achlak and people would just think, I wanna be like you, so you show them and they're like, well, something's working for you, what is it? And it might take six months, it might take a while for them to observe this, but like, you're just, something's happening with you, you're applying everything, your character is improving and your character is manifesting in a way that's starting to bring light into your life and it'll slowly bring light into their life without you ever having to mention anything, you'd be surprised how many people have come into this religion and nobody did dawah to them, they just saw somebody who was so, they were just like, what did they say? Prophet's as-salam, they said, he doesn't have the face of a liar, that's one of the statements that was said to him, that he just, that's not the face of a liar, what he's doing must be haq, right? And you still have people like that today that they're just so luminous, so your goal then is to be that light, to be that luminosity in somebody and or sorry, in your own self and then help bring it out without mentioning anything, just be very subtle, diplomatic and figure the situation out. Does that hopefully, other questions? And did you, do you have a, okay, okay. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. Anybody else have anything? As-salamu alaikum. Alhamdulillah. The anxiety happens in a house because of this kid feeling very distressed to the parents, what should we do? Should we educate the, you mean give the knowledge to the parents first or give the knowledge to the kids? Or, I mean, it happens a lot, it happens to me actually, I feel very anxiety and distressed with my parents back then when I was still in a school age, I mean. I don't know, I'm not, I try my best to look for those knowledge, but somehow nobody helps me, so what should we do if it's happened with our kids? That's a really good question. Thank you. The question is basically that this anxiety, it kind of trickles down. It could be happening from the parents, it could be happening with the whole household. In general, you have this work, the household is a stressful, anxious one. The child growing up in that household will have extremely high levels of anxiety and they won't be able to explain it. And sometimes health problems, all these things can result. So one of the things that can help, inshallah, is it depends on who's more receptive. So there are some parents who again, have zero receptivity to religion. Usually it'll be one parent. And may Allah help us if it's both. Usually one parent is receptive and one parent is not that receptive. So whoever is receptive, yes, they need to learn what it is that our scholars have taught us, right? What Imam al-Azali was mentioning about, hey, you implementing knowledge and love of Allah and Bikr, not in your life only, it's just you just have to start with yourself. You start with yourself, then you help other people, right? So you start with, okay, how do I fix this situation? Then now I can help the rest of my family and you bring them along with you, right? But if that person and that parent is receptive, then they're the ones who are taught. Sometimes though, it's impossible to get through to the parent. So you'll get, no, I don't believe you, I know that is making sense. This is just how things are. They'll come up with whatever excuse is possible to not accept that advice. And that's where again, the subtleties of what we were mentioning, you won't be able to like, this is a very like kind of academic discussion we're having. It's not that simple. Obviously it's not just like, oh, identify this, this and this. I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna go up to the highest levels. It's not like that. You have to think that how do I help this child or this parent, this student, whatever situation they're in with the problems and the unique problems that they're facing. So you take the principles of what we've been discussing and you say, hey, like, oh, okay, I noticed that, you know, you're really struggling with your anxieties really being triggered by a lot of Facebook and Instagram use. Like it seems like you're constantly worrying about other people think, like, why do you feel the need to go into that? You don't mention at all, like I think your heart has a void and maybe you're feeling, you don't have to mention that because they might not be receptive. Why do you think you're doing that? Is everything okay? Like why do you always feel like you need to do that? I think that's kind of messing up. And you can show them, maybe they're receptive to academic knowledge. So you show them a study about how Facebook is detrimental to your nerve connections and how it's breaking, messing up your brain. I mean, there's all these studies now that are done how it's addictive. Maybe that's what you do. But your intention the whole time is to just get them off that addiction, get them off that void that they're trying to fill with something else. And with the parents, it can also be done in a similar way. If they're not receptive to this kind of religious advice, if they are receptive, then the goal becomes, okay, now you just have to bring it slowly into that household where it might be 20 years that household hasn't heard of this at all. Now it's one person's job, your job or somebody else's job to bring that in. Be like, hey, not like I learned this, but you live it. Has very little to do with learning and a lot to do with living. If you just learned 20% and then you lived all of it, alhamdulillah, that's much better than learning all of it and not living any of it. When you live it, they start to see the change. And then the amazing thing with light and with goodness is it's very, what's the word I'm looking for? It spreads quickly, it's contagious, it's very contagious. People really want to be somebody who has that calmness and that's why you have all these people, they have these self-help books, everybody wants to be like that. So people will see that and they'll see something. And the other thing that's really dangerous to be careful is if somebody's doing religion wrong and then they do all this religious stuff and then they're just like a terrible person, they're always yelling, they're mean, they're aggressive, they're angry, they have problem and they're corrupt. And then it's like, well, this clearly something's off here. And then they don't want to go to religion and then that person messed up religion for the rest. So it gets to a very subtle point. So in summary, basically, if the parent is receptive, you start with the parent. If they're not receptive at all, you start with one parent who is, nobody's receptive, you come up with a kind of a diplomatic tactful approach to figure out how do you cultivate this without actually mentioning what it is by living the principles and having the character to show that this is how we're going to bring about this specific change. Is that, does that help? Come to the left, come to the left, come to the left. And then one point I just wanted to mention and we were mentioning earlier about what are the goals and we were saying that the goal of life is not to necessarily get a certain degree or to get a certain position and whatnot. That doesn't mean that those things aren't good. Those things are good, right? Like we should want to succeed in all aspects. The Muslim is successful in their deen and in their dunya. So like we should want to aspire to high levels, become very learned people, get positions, get a master's degree, a PhD, whatever it is. But that's not the goal of our life. There's a big difference between like, yeah, I'm doing something because it's gonna help me achieve something and like this is what I worship. The two are very different. We just have to distinguish. The problem is, is we've gotten to a point where we are focused entirely on that sometimes and we forget the deeper purposes. But that's not to say that you don't have a portion of your time where you are spending like, yes, you wanna be successful, you wanna be somebody who's able to have the intelligence to actually understand what you need to do to bring about change, help people, help yourself, whatever it is. But that's not the sole purpose of your existence. You understand the higher purpose is Allah but Allah will inshallah be happy with somebody who's also doing these other things in order to get there. So that's just something I wanted to clarify that did not, we don't wanna go to any extremes. The Prophet's system said, the extremists will perish, the extremists will perish, the extremists will perish. In Hadith it's mentioned in the Al-Hiyallu-Middin. So you never wanna go to extremes. Balance, ummat and wassata, we are a middle nation, a balanced nation inshallah. So we should always keep that balance in mind. So pardon if I said anything that may have led to any understandings of one way or another. Any other questions, comments? InshaAllah we'll just end out with a prayer inshallah. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen. Wassalaatu wassalaam wa ala sayyid al-mursaleen Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala Ali wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi. Wa ma ftahalena fatuha al-arifin wa fiqnat wa fiqsa al-iheen. Allahumma ya Allah ya Rahman ya Rahim. Rabbana taqabal minna innaq anta sami wa al-alima tuba lina innaq anta tawab al-rahim. Rabbana atina fiddun ya hasanaat wa ma fil-akhirat ya hasanaat wa kina aza banna a'ar. Ya Allah, ya Allah, the one who owns peace, the one who owns tranquility, ya Rabb. We ask that you bring tranquility into our hearts into the hearts of everybody, ya Allah. Ya Allah, into the hearts of everybody who came and who's watching and who's trying to benefit, and who's just in this ummah of the Prophet ﷺ. Ya Allah, bring tranquility to our hearts, ya Allah, into our people, ya Allah. Bring tranquility in this age, ya Allah, that's filled with anxiety and stress and difficulty, ya Allah, and remove our sadnesses and remove our problems. Allahumma ni'awd bi kamman hamli wa khazan. Wa na'awd bi kamman ajli wa l-qasal. Wa na'awd bi kamman ujjubni wa l-bughal. Wa na'awd bi kamman khalabat tadani wa qahri rijal. Ya Rabb, al-alameen, remove our problems, remove our stresses, remove our worries, remove our anxieties, and be gentle with us and allow us to get on a path, ya Rabb, al-alameen, where we seek you and seek your love, ya Allah, and try to get closer and closer to you, ya Allah. And you are the one who loved us, ya Allah, first, ya Allah. So let us fulfill that and try to love you in whatever way that we can, ya Rabb, al-alameen, ya Allah, and make our hearts pure and purify our hearts gently fi khayr, wa l-lut, wa l-afya, and we ask that you reunite us, ya Rabb, al-alameen, in this life and in the next life with the Prophet ﷺ, wa alayhi wa alayhi, wa alayhi wa alayhi, wa sahbihi wa salam, and resurrect us with him, and bring us into Jannah for those that are with him and with his blessed companions, wa sallallahu wa sallam, wa baraka ala Sayyidina Muhammad, wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa salam, al-alameen, ya Rabb, al-alameen. JazakAllah khayr, JazakAllah khayr.