 Welcome, ladies. Masha'Allah, it's great to see some of you. I haven't seen some of you in a while. Alhamdulillah. And those of you who are tuning in. So we are going to break soon, very soon for Aisha within the next few minutes, but just to kind of bring everyone up to speed, which is okay, thank you. I go so much on great to see you, Masha'Allah. So we've done, as I was mentioning before, in previous Halaqas that I've done here, we've covered different texts. And last, I think we started in September. So we missed November because of the holiday break. People weren't here, but September and October, we dedicated to starting the reading of a text, which is called The Foundations of the Spiritual Path. So if you don't have it, maybe Mary, would you be able to help me because could you do that? Excellent. We have Mary who can airdrop it to anybody if you have your airdrops open, but it's a PDF. And this PDF, even for those of you who are watching online, it's very easily accessible if you do a search and there's the Aden. So maybe we can type it in the chat for the online folks. You found it? Is it the Sandala one? Okay, great. So Mary has it open. We'll wait for the Aden, inshallah, and then we'll resume. Take them again, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, oh, I don't know if this is necessary, but inshallah, I think for the live stream it is. Bismillah. Welcome back. And I don't know if you had a chance. I know we had to stop for prayer, but if you haven't had a chance yet to look at this PDF, then I invite everyone to please open up the PDF so we can look at it together. And I'm just gonna summarize just the first two sections here that we had already covered in the previous sessions. This is officially session three of Foundations of the Spiritual Path. As I mentioned, we started in September. We had October and then November because of the Thanksgiving break, we did not have a session, so we're resuming today. So with that said, this document, the reason why it is such an important foundational text that I think everybody should be really familiar with is because it just gives us a roadmap, something to work with, some guidelines and principles, some, you know, it points out things that we should consider and think deeply about because embarking on anything serious, you know, requires consideration and planning and thought and that's where if you really think about all the things you've ever succeeded in, likely the ones that you put the most investment in ahead of time are the ones that you actually, you know, succeeded with and you saw through. Whereas the things that you haphazardly started or, you know, rushed into, they probably did not come to fruition or it didn't maybe materialize. So that's just human nature. So this is a roadmap. So what is it? We're gonna read from it here. Sidi Ahmed Zorouq, he has many great titles, Muhtas-e-Unamah is one of them, the regulator of the scholars and the saints, but he wrote the following document and he says that if anybody is asked about the foundations of his or her path, that they should reply, that the foundations of the spiritual path of Islam are five qualities. So this is basically, in order to be on the path, you have to have these five prerequisites or foundations. The first being taqwa, you have to be a person who is mindful of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and he puts that disclaimer privately and publicly. So you have to be consistently mindful of Allah. So everywhere you are, essentially, whether you are by yourself, you are with people, you are at work, you are at the doctor's office, you are at DMV, the post office, you are at the grocery store, you're picking up your kids from school, you're in traffic. We could list on and on and on and on. A person who is mindful of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doesn't stop for anything else. You're always in that, or at least you try to be, you try to bring your mind back to something of benefit and obviously, what's more beneficial than to remember your place and be mindful of God and praise him. Just take it all in because there's a lot of things that we experience in our senses. I mean, if you really think about just how much sensory overload we experience as human beings, especially in today's world with all the images we're taking in, all of the sounds we're taking in, all the conversations we're having, the music, there's a lot, but the soul, as we know, was created to know it's creator. And so we have to force ourselves from those distractable states to try to bring our mind back to what essentially matters. And so being mindful of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in all of those places is really important. And then there's obviously places like the masjid. We're here in the house of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is going to be much easier to do. You're going to hear the name of Allah maybe every few seconds, if you're really paying attention and people are talking, insha'Allah, masha'Allah, the qadi will come, then will come, people are constantly remembering Allah and also just being in this space facilitates that, right? So there's obviously places where it's going to come a lot easier. Can you think of another place where the remembrance of Allah might come easier? Where is it? Excellent, yeah, masha'Allah, the sacred cities, right? Some of us here have, alhamdulillah, been, how many of you have been to the sacred cities? Like you've been on Amr al-Hajj, right? It's an incredible blessing to go there and it's very easy, obviously, to be in those spaces and remember Allah. So there's facilitation for sure. Where else? Where else do you think it's easier to remember God? Maybe even, there you go, thank you. That's the one I was looking to hear or hoping to hear. The cemetery, right? How many of us have recently gone? How many have gone to the cemetery recently? Recently, right? 15 days. Masha'Allah, every 15 days. That's a beautiful, is that your own practice that you committed yourself to, I have to go every 15 days? Allah, that's so beautiful. You know, just, I love that you have a regiment about that because it occurs to me often, you know, as you all, or some of you may know, I've lost both of my parents, Allah, and I've lost loved ones in the past. And I always think of how much we love our family members and the people that we hold so close. But also, I hate to say it, how easy it is to forget sometimes. You know, I punish myself often because one of my intentions of moving to this community was actually to be close to the five pillars where my father, Allah, was buried. And I said to myself, I'm gonna be able to go so much more often because I live close by. But I've failed, I have definitely fallen short. Yeah, no, no, but Sister Mashallah, the fact that you had this beautiful response that was just so, like, confirmed for, like every 15 days, I really take great inspiration from that, may Allah bless you and increase you. Because if we're really honest with ourselves, we're gonna be, you know, forgotten, it's just gonna happen. And I think that's something that we have to come to grips with, that this is the nature of dunya is that, you know, there's, we have sometimes, I think, this over-inflated sense of self-importance, you know, because we're doing things, we're busy. We have positions, we have jobs, we have titles, people need us, people depend on us, people count on us, we have dependents. So sometimes you just have to have that real talk with yourself and say, like all great people, all people in the past, you know, they had their time and then it's over. And then it really matters, right? Like who's gonna come visit? Who's gonna visit us when we're gone? And those are the things Allah will obviously determine that. But I think the cemetery is just another place that's easy to remember God, because obviously this is the final end of our, you know, in this world anyway, in the worldly sense, where we will all end up. So those are places where there's facilitation. But there's also places where it's very difficult to remember Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. What about that? Where do you think it's challenging, more challenging to remember Allah? That would be a very common place that we all go to all the time. Work, right? That's actually a good point. So you could want to be, or you could be thinking of him, but you can't be fully immersed in that process of thicket, right? It's difficult. Our minds can usually only do one or two things at a time. I mean, women, alhamdulillah, we have the advantage of being able to multitask, but even then to concentrate on work and execute properly and maintain a state of total remembrance is difficult. You know, another place that comes to mind, Salmatik, welcome, is the marketplace, right? The marketplace, which is one of the places that we are taught as Muslims try to avoid, you know, to be not the window shoppers that just walk around and waste their day at the marketplace because there's fitna in the marketplace, right? Your eye is overwhelmed, the dunya, which the material world is enticing, it's seductive, and so it actually is a place designed to make you forget about Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Therefore, when you go to the marketplace, you should have a purpose, right? You should seek to get what you want and then get out. And recently I had to go to the mall, and I don't know how many of you are in my generation, but back in the days, the malls were buzzing places, you know? It was so overcrowded and people went there for that purpose because it's a place to just people watch, to just waste your day. And as teenagers, that was like the place to be, you know, every teenager, my generation, we just want to go to the mall. Hangout place, you go from the morning or as soon as you can and spend all day. And it obviously sounds fun when you're in that age, but as you grow older and you realize, you know, what were you really doing there? You were just consuming. You're taking in a lot of things that, you know, whether it was good or not. I mean, obviously it's subjective, but you're not remembering Allah. And then how often times when you're in those places, let's say you're eating, you're going to the theater, you're going shopping, you're likely going to be using the restroom, which means you're not gonna be able to maintain what we'll do. What we'll do is out the door, means prayers out the door. So these are the fitan of these spaces, right? That we have to really think about. And I think as women, you know, we have a lot of purchase power, as they say. We're the, you know, for marketers anywhere, we're the number one demographic because they know we love to shop. So I really think for us, we need to take this message to heart that when we talk about mindfulness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it's going to be difficult to maintain that state if we do not make choices that facilitate mindfulness, right? So if you're going to spend a lot of your time or seek even on weekends, where your weekend is precious time, right? Precious time to really be trying to catch up on things. But if now the weekend becomes the day where you are gonna spend with your girlfriends or your sisters all day, just window shopping and eating, you're likely going to not be doing this, right? Which is what we're called to do, to remember Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So there's many places that we can list. Again, places that facilitate the remembrance of Allah and doesn't, but he specifies that as the number one criteria of being on the spiritual path. You have to be a person who understands the importance of taqwa, who maintains taqwa. And that's how you do it. And it's consistent across the board. Whether you're by yourself or in public, it doesn't matter. You're just a person who's trying to really remember your Lord and your purpose. That's number one. Then he says, adherence to the sunnah in word and deed. So after you've checked that first box, that you are a person who's committed, you truly are mindful of Allah. You put that into practice. Now he's telling us that you also want to be a person that follows the sunnah of the prophesied saddam in your words and in your actions. You have to be consistent. So some people may have knowledge of the prophesied saddam, seerah of his hadith. They may know certain qualities about him, right? Like if you've read the shama'il, if you have certain knowledge about the way that the prophesied saddam spoke or ate or walked and you know those things, but then in your own behavior, in your own actions, you're not implementing that. That's clearly a disconnect because why? What is stopping you? What is preventing you from applying the sunnah, right? Why is it that you just have that knowledge? And for some people, it's not even that they're not applying the sunnah, but they're actually doing the opposite of what they know, which is obviously hypocrisy and that's, we definitely don't want to do that. If you know that the prophesied saddam did certain things a certain way, but you're going counter to his way, then that's something you need to work out. So that's the second quality he lists. And then he says, indifference to whether others accept or reject one. So being free from the burden of seeking validation from human beings, because it is a burden. It's a big burden, right? Absolutely, peer pressure, capitulating to the norms that are set by society, by culture. You're never, we're never gonna please people if we're always trying to meet the expectations of human beings who are faulted, you know? We are people of flaws and we don't always have things right. Whereas Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he's perfect. So when he sets a standard, then obviously there's no issue there. So seeking his pleasure, seeking his rodah, even if it goes against the people, becomes the way of the seeker, right? That even if I have to not attend an event because I know there's gonna be alcohol, right? I know that my family will be upset with me. They may, excuse me, they may not speak to me. I might deal with certain issues. But I have to draw a line because it's an environment that my Lord has prohibited me from going to, right? That's the believer. They draw lines, they understand boundaries and they don't forsake their principles and values and their faith for the sake of making other people happy. So when you get to that place where you are completely not worried about whether or not people are gonna accept me or people are going to reject me, it's a freeing, you're shedding yourself of the chains. And I say chains because chains are meant to hold us down of the chains of constantly seeking the pleasure of people over especially the pleasure of Allah. That's the third criteria. So again, we're not even yet establishing all the other components. We're just saying, if you wanna be on this path, you have to do these things, right? And then the fourth, he says that you have to be content with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in hardship and ease. Now this is relevant right now because even though we're not directly impacted by the atrocities that we are witnessing, right? We are literally watching a genocide. It is very difficult to watch all of this and then try to make sense of it. We can't and we don't understand everything and that's okay. It's okay because we know that there is the only one that matters is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that he's in control of everything, right? So deferring to the knowledge of Allah, the fact that he is in control is in a way it allows us to not be consumed with things that we can't resolve anyway. We can't answer those questions like why we don't know, right? Why does this have to happen? These are things that humans, you know, we can unravel ourselves just trying to think about these things, but Allah knows and that's all that matters. So to witness these types of things and still find that, you know, contentment, whether it's again external or outside of your own experience or something within your own experience. If you're going through a very difficult time, people go through tribulations, you know, people go through challenges, but to still try to find the points of your day where you are still truly overwhelmed by gratitude to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala despite the hardships, right? Despite the evils, despite everything else that's going on in the world, you know that it's all in the end of the day, it's all good because for example, those who are suffering, we know their end, inshallah. We know that they're with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Those who have been martyred are with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Those who are oppressed are with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Those who are oppressing, we know their judgment is with Allah. So where, you know, if you just really put it, lay it all out and you start to really understand that in Allah's decree and in his judgment, all of it will be resolved, then it just gives you that comfort. So that's just one way of looking at this, but also just as I said in general, in your own hardship and your own ease that you still, you don't turn from Allah because shaitan will turn, will use these types of experiences, human conditions or events to try to turn people away from God, to suddenly doubt Allah, to suddenly call into question, right? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's choice is like why? And this is where people who have no faith, these are the types of arguments they make, you know, who don't even believe in God. They make these types of arguments. So we reject all of that because we say who are we to ask Allah, right? This is his dominion. He can do whatever he wants. And we just, we have trust. That's the bottom line. We have trust. Absolutely. Shirt. Yes. Absolutely. The dreams came, absolutely. Right. No, it's a beautiful reflection. Such a beautiful reflection. JazakAllah, his sister was just, for those who are online, they can't always hear. You had mentioned that the story of Prophet Yusuf alaihi salam and his experience being imprisoned, you know, the scandal that he was accused of, that that gave him time to really just, you know, basically develop this, right? Develop this trust with Allah. And that's what, yes, whether it's again our own personal hardships, that's how we can look at these tests and tribulations as opportunities. So, JazakAllah khairan. And then, you know, similar to this fourth point that he mentions is turning to Allah in prosperity and adversity. So this is more about being proactive that wherever you are, that you have this, it's like a, you know, you're constantly turning yourself back to Allah. No matter what, you don't turn away from him. So whether you're in ease, whether things are going really well for you, or you have difficulty, you're consistently turning, turning, turning. So all five of these sets you on the path, right? Now the question is, which he answers as we go down this document, well, how do I get there? How can I get to that level of certainty, that level of conviction, that level of strength, that level of practice, you know, how can I get there? And so then he goes on to describe what the criteria are. So if we want to get to those five, we have to have certain practices put into place, right? First of all, you have to see the goal in mind. So he says, exalted aspirations. That means you need to be away from the dunya mind, right? Put on your achara glasses, as they say, and start to really look about investing in your salvation and in your future. When you can do that and you move away from just the material world and all the things that people focus on here, and you have a broader lens, a lens that's really looking towards your final destination, and that's when you start to make better choices, right? And that's, I think, pretty true. If you, and that's what happens to people who come to the faith is they no longer are stuck in the now and the here, they're looking at there, right? I need to get to that level. And so you're always looking up and onward, right? Like they say that it's the camel vision. Camels naturally, just the way Allah structured their bodies, they look ahead and up, right? Whereas the donkey vision, which is what we don't want, the donkey vision is what? It's limited and it's right in front of you. So human beings, when we want success, we have a camel's vision, right? So that's how you first start to develop these traits as you need to look beyond this life. Because if you're stuck in the temporal world, then this is all you'll get, you know? We don't want that. We want to move beyond that. And then maintaining Allah's reverence, this is really important, especially, I was watching something recently with, I think it was a video with my son and the speaker said something about God. And my son just was like, how could he say that? He was, you know, this is fitra of children. Alhamdulillah, they're raised obviously in adab and they understand that we should have a decorum, right? We need to know that there's a way to speak about Allah's power. And also, we do not anthropomorphize God. Allah, subhan, that is not human in any way, which possible. There's no human qualities. So when you speak of Allah, if you don't understand that, like, and people, for example, I've heard Muslims say this. If you call upon Allah as the man upstairs because you're borrowing from, you know, phrases from what people say in this culture and film and television, all the billah, you don't say, oh yeah, I'm waiting for the man upstairs to answer my doors. Audhu billah, this is kufr. Who are you praying to? So sometimes we're not paying attention to the words that we're using, the language that we're using. So reference of Allah is really understanding that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is above his creation and in every sense of that word. And that's where even calling into question what we see in the world is bad adab because there's accusations layered in that, right? If you're calling into question, why does this have to happen? Why did Allah allow this to happen? Why is that part of my decree? Why me? Very, we have to watch that. So reference to Allah is there's many ways that that can play out, but certainly in the way that we talk about Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that we understand him according to his descriptions, right, and we don't interpret him in our own personal way. There's this idea of having a personal God, you know, that's very new agey, but Allah is, there's one, right? And he's the only one and he's for everyone, right? And so we don't try to tailor God to fit our, what we want. He is who he is and we praise him as that. So really having that understanding. So that's a second way. So if you really want to get to those first five, these are the things he's mentioning. Expanding oneself in excellent service of others. So khidmah. Very important that we are people of khidmah, of service. Because when you get out of yourself, out of yourself centered worldview and start to really pay attention to what's going on with the rest of the world, then, and specifically people in need, then you start working towards more important things. You know, I was part of a, you know, a healing circle with a group of tech employees earlier today. And you know, one of the brothers he mentioned, they're Muslims, they work for a tech company. So we just came together to discuss everything that's happening. And so he just said, you know, I typically enjoy my work, but I have, I've lost kind of that appreciation or that love for what I do it. Cause I'm starting to see how mundane basically it is. You know, when you contrast it to what's going on in Palestine. So he was just making the point that because his eye and his focus and his attention now is there, all of a sudden, things that were once meaningful to him are not as, they don't have, they hold the same weight. And I think that was a, you know, a good reflection in what we're talking about. Because once you start to zoom out, get outside of what youth always may, you know, think is, or what you may value and think is important and start to scale back and look at a broader picture of things. And then especially, as I said, in the context of those who are struggling and going through hardships, it puts your own priorities and perspective. So Khidmah, that's the benefit of it. If you're out there serving, working with people, whether they are, you know, the poor, feeding the poor, or you're working with children, or you're working with people with special needs, or you're working on the front lines and trying to, you know, maybe working with, you know, in this case and social justice sort of causes, or you're working with the elderly, whatever group or demographic you're working in, when you start to take the focus off of yourself, your self-interest, the things that you hold dear, you start to realize that maybe what you hold dear isn't as valuable, right? And that's a very important perspective, because sometimes we are so inside of our own selves that we don't really think about what else is going on around us. So Khidmah is really important, and there's, again, many ways that people can be in service, but just making that part of your life that you actually wanna help people, that you actually wanna be a do-gooder. You know, you wanna go out there and change the world in your own small little circle. It doesn't have to be these massive ripples, you know, like sometimes we get in this black and white kind of thinking where it's like, if I'm not making a massive impact, then what's the point? But maybe you don't realize the impact you're making, you know, and there's that butterfly effect, which I think is a really good analogy. That the butterfly effect is that the wing, you know, the wing not span, but the, what do you call it? I guess flapping of a butterfly can actually affect global weather patterns, you know. And yeah, like tsunamis and other things. And, you know, these are just ideas, but that we shouldn't trivialize small things that actually can make large impacts because we just simply don't know what is, it's like a domino effect, right? And I think that's the purpose of it. Like you could, you know, be, you could do something that you think is insignificant, but maybe the outcome of that insignificant act is actually quite extraordinary. Because if you're nice to someone, for example, and you impact their day, and they are able to take that energy and come out of maybe a depressive state, maybe come out of, you know, because you were kind to them, you showed them kindness, compassion, then maybe they can do something transformative because of that single interaction, right? And that's why a smile is considered charity, right? We have all of these principles in our faith and many stories of things that we would deem like, oh, it's just no big deal, that wasn't a big deal. But then you find out maybe later that no, that single moment, that single interaction, that single exchange actually was the ripple effect that led to this, that, or the other. So the point is, is khidma is something that we have to bring back as a practice because part of Western culture that's so toxic is this idea that we're just, you know, that we just serve ourselves. And I posted on Instagram, I think it was earlier today, or maybe yesterday, I can't remember, maybe it was yesterday, a video of this woman who she basically, you know, at 38 years old has decided that she really wants to have children and be married and she did this whole interview and I think even wrote an article that where she stated that she feels like she was cheated out of, or she was cheated by feminist sort of ideas because she lived a very self-serving life and she realized that that's just not very fulfilling. And a lot of people are waking up to that but you, you know, we wanna be mindful that this is just part of our deem to be people of service. Like it's, it shouldn't, we shouldn't have to, yeah, we just have to go back to the basics. So he mentions that as a practice and if you look at all the profits, they were shepherds, they took care of, you know, a lot of the time they gave them very specific roles of caretaking and then eventually they want on to become profits. So it is very important that we inculcate that even in our young children, in our homes, not have, you know, roles, for example, for children that are very one-sided, you know, so sometimes in households, in many of our cultures, you have girls learning how to serve guests, how to make tea, how to even prepare certain things and the boys have no idea how to do any of those things because that's considered girls' work. That's not prophetic. The prophet said I'm mended his own clothes, he washed his own dishes. He was very, very an active participant in the household. So it wasn't so gendered, these things. And that's also because he was in the service of people. So that's the third point. And then fulfilling one's resolves, this is really about being a person of follow-through. If you're gonna say you're gonna do something, this shouldn't be just lip service, be a person who's actually, you know, who has integrity, who has, whose word means something, whose character is, you know, is proven in action because it's easy to say things. That's the fourth quality, you know. And then the fifth he says is magnifying one's blessings, gratitude, which is, you know, we've said it before but it's always good to remind ourselves gratitude is not just a verbal process that's actually one of three components of gratitude. Gratitude actually has three parts which is in the heart, on the tongue, and then with the limbs, right? So shukr al-qalb, shukr al-lisan, shukr al-jawara. These are the three manifestations of gratitude and above all is the last one. Gratitude as defined by our teachers is when you use the blessings of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala for that which pleases Him. So you use your physical body, your skills, your blessings, your wealth, your health, your knowledge in a way that is pleasing to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. That is actual gratitude. And if you don't do that, but you're just like al-hamdulillah all day long, that's not gratitude, right? That's just you saying things on your tongue that are not manifest in your limbs and that's the lowest, or if even at all a manifestation of gratitude because the munafir can do that, right? And in fact, the hypocrite is the worst because they say what's on the tongue that's not in the heart. So we wanna actually make sure that we're repeating it on the tongue as much but that our actions are actually reflecting it. So staying away from the haram is a no-brainer, right? If you're a person of gratitude to Allah, you don't fall into haram. If you're a person of gratitude to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, you think about your, like your day is informed by the most important things that we do, prayer, you're plugging in everything else around those things because you realize that that is the greatest form of gratitude is when I pray to my Creator. My body, I could be running marathons, I could be saving lives, I could be working for this, that or the other, I could be doing khidmah, but if I'm not using my body, right, in the worship of my Creator, then I am not showing gratitude, right? Because there's nothing greater that we can do with our physical body than to worship Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. Everything else is secondary, right? Think about that. And that's why it's interesting that, people who try and there is a form of I think cognitive dissonance because there are people who can be strong in their faith in terms of feeling faith, but then they make excuses for why they don't do certain acts of worship, right? And you have to kind of call into question like, what's that? Well, that's what it is, there's a disconnect there. They have to be reminded that you could be strong in your faith, but if you're going to not pray your prayers because, oh, and I had someone, I remember a while ago, they were a medical doctor, and this was kind of their dilemma that they have, actually I've had two people, ER, not ER, EMT, a medical doctor, and both of them had sort of the same question, which is, I have really difficult schedule. Sometimes I can't even predict what's gonna happen. I have to go into emergency surgeries, I have to do this and I have to do that. And so they kind of excuse their prayer because, well, I'm saving lives, and then you have to say, well, okay, let's kind of gain perspective here, right? Yes, it's important to save lives, but you have to be, you have to figure out a system, and if it's as simple as even in the surgery room, pulling aside and making your prayer because prayer is in and it's gonna go out, then you have to make those decisions because by Sharia, a person even on their deathbed is not exempt from prayer, and to me that's pretty profound because if there's ever an excuse for someone to be not praying, it's a person dying actively, but if they have awareness, even if they can't make, I mean, it's not required of them to make Wulu necessarily, but there's Taimum, if the prayer comes in, you have to pray, right? So that's why I feel like having this understanding is really important that to be a person of true gratitude to Allah is to understand that there's no greater objective every single day than to make sure you are worshiping him as he deserves to be worshiped, then everything we do on top of that, all of the other good deeds that we do, whether they serve other people or ourselves, alhamdulillah, marhaba, welcome, but it comes after our prayers, right? And so that's how we really, truly show gratitude to Allah. And so then he goes on, and now he's giving more detail about each of these, and he mentions these as points of focus for us to think about. He says, he whose aspirations are exalted is raised in rank. So this is really great because Allah's plan is telling you if you raise the bar for yourself basically, raise the bar and start to think about me and pleasing me above everybody else, I will as a reward raise your rank, right? And I mean, I can tell you in my own experience, I absolutely remember experiencing that when I started to come to practice Islam, I actually thought it was odd how I was suddenly being treated with more respect by elders. People were asking me as though I'm some authority and I'm like, wait what? I'm like, I'm a teenager barely, I don't know anything but because they saw the seriousness with which I took my life because I decided to wear hijab, I decided to start becoming a practicing Muslim, suddenly they saw me as a person of importance and it took me some time to kind of understand but I remember reading a very specific hadith that said whoever pleases Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala before people, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala will be pleased with them and he will make the people pleased with them. And then the one who pleases the people before Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, they will never be pleased with them and he will not be pleased with them. And that just was kind of like wow because I saw that in my own life. I decided because when I came to the faith it was not popular, it was not trending to be a hijabi or to do these things. It actually was the opposite. I had many, many people telling me no, no, no, no, no don't wear hijab, what are you doing? Why would you do that to yourself? You're so young, how are you gonna get married? Nobody's gonna want you, nobody's gonna look at you. So it was a choice that I was like well I can listen to these people, right? And be afraid and let that fear dictate or I can say but wait a second, Allah said I have to do it. So I have to do it, there's no choice there. It's a difficult choice when you don't have support. And here in America, yeah? Hamdullah. Yeah, yeah this was for me in college and but this is true, like Allah will make it easy for you. He will raise you in ranks. So sometimes we think like oh I'm gonna, people are gonna mistreat me, people are gonna not but actually the opposite happens because you're with Allah. So it's like it makes sense when you think about it. Like how, Allah will give you that. So that's the first thing he mentions and he says Allah maintains the respect of he who preserves his reverence. So when you are really careful to speak about Allah only in the best way possible to make sure that you're using, just to be so attentive to how the speech that you use, the descriptions that you use, the way that you praise him is all very cushioned with adab and with consideration and with careful language because you don't wanna say anything, right? That would in any way be deemed as disrespectful. You're taking so much care, right? Then Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala will preserve your respect. It's just this beautiful reciprocity that we just have to appreciate like our Lord is so generous because you think like, I'm undeserving when we are, we don't deserve anything from, I mean, I mean, I'm speaking for myself but if you really think about how generous Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala is with all of the blessings he gives us and then on top of that, he rewards us in this way. You're just like, wow, Allah Hu Akbar, indeed Allah Hu Akbar and that's why he deserves so much praise. So these are the rewards of doing these things. He who services for others is ennobled by it. So when you become ahadama, ahadama, then Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, because we think of services like, oh, you're lowering yourself. That's a very nafsi and sometimes, I mean, it could be cultural because people in some cultures look down on people of service, right? Like to be in the service industry is deemed like low tier but actually in our tradition to be in service of people is a very high maqam. It's a beautiful thing to do and the best people are those who are in service but are not known to the people, you know? Like the, and I know because for those of us who've been in Mecca, Medina, how many times would I, I would honestly, I would sit in front of the haram, whether it was in Medina or Mecca and I would just watch the cleaners and be like, they are probably the most not lucky but fortunate people on the planet, right? They're wearing their outfits, their uniforms and they, they're cleaning garbage but if you're really, truly looking at them through the proper lens, you see them as, my God, you're above all of us. All day, what are you doing? You're serving the house of Allah, the sacred house of Allah or the Prophet's license mosque and you're cleaning up after the hujjaj, the people who've come cleansed from these places. You're, you're, I mean, it's just an incredible lofty position, right? And what are we doing? We're chasing people who are, I mean, I don't know but if we don't know people but if we look at the foulness of the society around us, likely we are in the service of a lot of foul people and if you look at the people in our politicians and the people who have a lot of wealth and power and who are in a way over us, right? These oligarchs and these other people, they're not the best people. These are people who are morally, in many cases, bankrupt people and yet we serve them in our own ways. We work for their companies. So it's like, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, I'm sorry, but a hadam of, of, of deen and of people of, of Allah is far better. So that's a beautiful, again, quality. And then he says, that which he resolves to do is assured continual guidance. So if you're going to be a person of follow through then that's one of the benefits is that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will continue to also follow through with you and give you that continuous guidance. And we need, we need to, we need to understand that our guidance is something we have to ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la for because it's not guaranteed. This is one of the traps that we can fall into as believers is that we think just because we've entered the faith and we've taken on the practice of the faith that it's going to just carry us through to the end. But that's not necessarily true. We have to obviously continue to invest in that and continue to follow through in our actions and continuously ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la for guidance. Like really genuinely like Allah guide me because I could be those diluted people who think I am on the right course but maybe I'm going this way or that way and I have no idea, right? And that's certainly the experience of some people that they think their, but their own nefs deludes them. So we don't want that. And so that's why continual guidance is such a gift. He who deems blessings to be great by his own eye has shown gratitude. And he who is grateful ensures an increase in blessings from the giver of gifts according to the promise of the truthful one. And this is again, I'm sorry, no. I'm sorry, I'm thinking of another. That's the verse of, I mean the hadith about gratitude. The one who doesn't gratitude, great. Sorry, the one who is not grateful to people is not grateful to Allah. And then the other verse from the Quran is, So if you are grateful, then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will increase you in gratitude. So this is where again, just being a person that's constantly magnifying your blessings, willing to see the good in everything. I mean, if anything bad happens, like I used to do this as a practice, I still do, Alhamdulillah, I still do it. If I stub my toe, if I cut my finger, if I am in pain, the moment it happens, I force myself to say, Alhamdulillah wa shukrullah. Because yes, I'm in pain, but that pain was a reminder that I'm human, that I'm mortal, that I will have an end soon. And I want to be grateful. I don't want the pain to blind me from the gratitude that I should feel, right? So I'm going to be grateful by just remembering that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, despite the experience I'm having in this moment, right? Because it's not, I mean, if you think about stubbing your toe, that's a very difficult pain, you know? Or recently I was praying Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and this was, you know, sometimes things happen and we just have to, Allah is the best of planners. I, my desk that I work on, I had my prayer rug laid out right next to it. And Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, I think I did two things, it was kind of funny. I got up to pray and I didn't realize I put it way too close to the corner of my table. So I got up and I think I hit my elbow with one and then I hit something in the moment of prayer. I was like, so internally I was like, okay, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, my nafs needs to, you know, it's some breaking. Sometimes, you know, we need those nafs breakers. But I had to say Alhamdulillah because I'm praying, you know? And even though it hurt, and it's, you know, those are very startling, shocking pains. We have to be willing to just see beyond the moment and see the bigger picture, which is, Alhamdulillah, I have a body, I can go up and down, I can pray, I'm very grateful to Allah to be in my home, to be able to pray at home. I mean, these are all things that in those moments you have to reflect on, right? And that's what exalting your blessings is, is stop focusing on the negative, that one single negative and try to look at all the other things. So even in your personal, in our personal relationships, in our personal experiences, if you have a bad meeting with your boss, you know? It's very easy to whole drive home to be seething and angry and upset and not to say that, you know, those emotions, we should just suppress them. Maybe you need to feel those things, but if it carries on to the point where it's like now you're state for the whole day and then you're coming home and you're just angry and now you're gonna blast at your children and your spouse and, you know, you're just in a bad sour mood, that you have to snap out of. That you have to awaken to and say, you know what? Yeah, it was a bad conversation and maybe I have my own, you know, legitimate grievances and what have you, but at the same time, Alhamdulillah, I have a job. You know, maybe my boss wasn't in a good mood. Just start to get out of that negative state and the way to do that is to exalt your blessing. So this is a very important daily practice that all of us have to do and do consistently. So now, just in shala in the time, I know we're a little over, but I wanted to at least introduce the next five because what he's doing in this document is laying things in this very, logical sort of order, which is the first is the foundation, then how we get there and now he redirects us to the things that we should do in order to have good conduct in the first place because the five things that we just described are the prerequisites of the former five, right? But how do we even get to having exalted aspirations? How do we get to maintaining Allah's reverence? How do we get to being people of khidmah? How do we get to being people of follow through and gratitude? Well, he says those are also five things that we need to do. So it's again, really nice organized structure and he says, first of all, if you want to do this, you have to seek sacred knowledge, right? Because you can't just come up with these ideas on your own and that's where I think in the information age where there is a lot of people and there are people who are very smart in many respects, right? You could be a person who did really well academically, maybe you're street smart, maybe you're confident in certain abilities that you have, but if it starts to, if you start to think of yourself as being also able to just figure this all out on your own in terms of your spiritual practice, that's very dangerous. That's what we would call delusion because it's delusion. It's your own deluded enough because we need spiritual guides, right? It's the same as if someone is like, let's say they're good at reading and maybe they have certain skill sets, but then they think that they can take on something because of those skills, right? Like, or let's say you can hammer a nail, you know, and you're pretty good at hammering and you can use certain tools, but now you want to go and you want to build a house all by yourself. It's premature, right? You might have certain skills on certain things, but to take on a massive undertaking, like building a house based on limited ability and skills is delusion. Whereas if the person said, you know what? I like to use tools. I'm comfortable with certain tools. I have experience doing this, that or the other, but, and I would love to build a house, but I'm gonna work with a contractor. I'm going to be an apprentice. I'm going to watch and observe. I'm gonna go on the construction site and learn on the job. This is the least showing some humility, but for some reason, again, because of the times that we live in, some people just think they can approach Islam with I can open up the Quran and I can just interpret things for myself. I can read the hadith and I can decide and cherry pick what I like and what I don't like. This is very dangerous. Very, yeah, it's very, yeah, sure. No, no, no, please, no, no, Bismillah, go ahead. You're so sweet, you know, if it's relevant to this point, I would love to hear it. Yes. Right, sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you do? Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. No, I'm laughing because that's obviously, it's just so, it's a sign of everything we're talking about, about just the confusion and how much is out there and how it's so hard to navigate, but that's actually a good example of why it's so important to have, to understand who are the valid sources, right? And so, because it's a free for all, right? And social media and the internet has kind of leveled the playing field where anybody can just now go and say, oh, I'm a knowledgeable person, I'm a sheikh, I'm a sheikh, I'm a mufti, I'm a this, I'm a that. We have to have discernment and discernment tells us, well, there's criteria for who is really a valid teacher, which he's gonna get into, by the way. That's why this document is so important, because he actually helps you to know who to stay away from, who are the charlatans, who are the ones who trick and manipulate or use, they profit off of Islam, they market themselves as teachers when they have, they're grifters, they have zero credentials. So credentials matter in our tradition, credentials absolutely matter, and that's why the traditional path is a path of a sned, it's of a chain, right? That you, if you're a person of knowledge or you're purporting to be a person of knowledge, then you should have credentials that connect you to a chain that's, you know, throughout history that goes back to our primary sources, right? The Prophet's life said, I'm being obviously the first teacher, our prophet of God, right? And so our scholars, they all have chains of transmission from their teachers to their teachers, their teachers, and they're going all the way back to the great scholars of our past, the Sahaba, the Prophet's life said, I'm being the first, and that's how you know that you're learning from someone who's proven themselves to be people of authority, because you can't be in the chain unless you have Ijazah, which our license is to teach. So it's kind of, you know, it resolves that issue, but in today's day and age, people don't even ask for those credentials anymore. It's just like, oh, they have followers. Well, my teacher pointed out, Shecham Zameel, bless him. He said very clearly, people forget that Iblis has the most followers. So, yeah, so that's not a criteria for authority. If you're looking for followers, you know? So, that shouldn't be your standard. It's not about followers. It's about who did they learn from and are those people qualified to teach? And honestly, I was speaking to someone earlier about how scary it's getting because the lines are being blurred all the time. And like you said, people will make claims, they say certain things, but this is why this document is so important because he's gonna put the responsibility on you and me to know how to identify the true scholar from the false one. And if we don't have discernment, then we're just like every, we're part of the problem, right? We're sheeple, as we say. Sheeple are people who are just, I'm gonna go this way, I'm gonna go that way. We don't wanna be like sheep. We're not cattle. Allah gave us the intellect for a reason. So, asking the right questions. And for me, a big criteria, this is just my tip that I would advise is first of all, make sure that you're following people who cite their sources often. If they're speaking without citation of sources, that to me, that's a red flag. We need to see where did you get that from? It can't just be my own ideas. I don't wanna hear the ideas of anybody. I wanna know that it's grounded in, and it's passed all the tests, right? It's passed all the tests that this is solid knowledge, sound knowledge. And that's where really emphasizing the tradition, you know, that it has to be rooted in our tradition. It can't just be fanciful ideas or opinions. And that's one of the signs of the time that people will be very impressed by their own opinions. And so they start to oversell their own opinions. So someone could be a very eloquent speaker and they're just going on and on and on, but it's like, okay, who are you speaking from? Where are you speaking from? So teachers who use texts, who refer to the Quran, to the Hadith, they're usually, masha'Allah, I think, rooted in the tradition and they're pretty safe. I mean, there's obviously other things to look for, but that would be certainly one of them. So seeking sacred knowledge, he mentions that as, if you wanna really have the best conduct and behavior and character, and that has to be a primary focus of your life, that you are a person of seeking knowledge, keeping with spiritual guides and the fraternity of aspirants to gain insight into one's faults. This is actually also an important reminder too, that we need sohba, so we need to come together like this, because if I take knowledge and make it my own personal endeavor, but then I don't come together with other people to just kind of share ideas to make sure that, am I thinking about this right? Sometimes we need that perspective that only another person can offer. Then I'm left to my own devices and this is very dangerous, we don't wanna be on our own trying to figure everything out. So having a jama, having a group, and that's why it's important to, study groups are really encouraged, finding people that you have similar interests with and keep their company. And that's how you can also start to behave better because we conform to the groups that we're in and company matters. And then foregoing dispensations and interpretations concerning injunctions for one's own protection. So this is about looking for loopholes. Like don't be the person who's constantly trying to find the easy route to everything, because sometimes you need to be challenged. If you're always trying to shortcut your way into the Dean, and of course, the professor said that the Dean has made easy for us and it is. But some people, they have ulterior motives. It's like they're really, they're not satisfied with order and structure. They're trying to find ways out of that type of discipline and that's not good. You wanna have some commitment to discipline. For example, I mean just an easy analogy would be dieting. If you're going to try to lose weight or you wanna get in better shape but you're always looking for the shortcuts. What's the quickest, like a seven minute workout. You're likely not gonna make that much progress. You might get a little bit of exercise in but you can't be always looking for that kind of stuff. And there's, I'm sure, better examples but that's the third point. And then he says, organizing one's time with the remembrance of Allah to maintain the presence of heart. So now this is again the onus on us is if you really wanna be serious, you wanna be a better Muslim because people make these statements all the time. I wanna be better, I wanna get closer to Allah. I feel like there's a disconnect and they say all these things, say all these things and then you ask, okay, what's your schedule like? What are you doing? But there's nothing really there. So if you're serious, then you have to take it upon yourself to say, that's it. I'm gonna take out all of these bad habits and vices I've collected over the years. I don't need to do this anymore. I don't need to watch this much TV or listen to this much music. Actually, I had a sister not that long ago tell me that she was a very big decision for her, but she decided cold turkey, she was cutting out all music. She just said, I'm done. Music is a huge fitna for me, it's distracting for me. When I listen to it, I forget to pray. So she made that decision, I'm breaking from music. That is a beautiful sacrifice. But what that also opens up is your time. You're going to be managing your time better because music and other things like that, entertainment and whatever take up a lot of our time and their waste of time in most cases. So organizing your time to make sure that you're really remembering Allah that's on you. And then the last one he says is suspecting the selfish soul in everything in order to free oneself from its whimsical desires and to be safe from destructive circumstances. This is I think very, very important because we externalize problems all the time. We are very quick as human beings to finger point, to blame everybody else always. But the believer has to come to reality and say I am actually at the heart of a lot of my own problems. And if we're really being honest, we'll start to really do that internal work and say actually I keep saying that oh, it's so and so is fault because I missed prayer or I can't do this because you guys are always keeping me busy with this and that or the other. We just like I said make excuses and justifications and that's just the normal sort of ego protection that we do. But turn on yourself is basically what this is saying. Realize that the enemy within is your greatest obstacle to God. And until you see it, you see her, right? You see your own enemy, him or her, yourself, your ego, then you're going to, it's going to continue to trick you, right? It's going to continue to dupe you because you're gonna be deluded, you're gonna be distracted, you're not gonna be looking at right what's in front of you which is you stand in your own path. And I'll give you an example. And this honestly works like so there are times and this happens to me, it happened to me just the other day where I will get up to pray and I'm praying and I'm trying to be very concentrated. I try to select certain suras so that I can keep my mind focused and I know which cat I'm on because my brain is constantly thinking about things. So I have my own ways of trying to be very focused, right? So I don't remember which prayer it was but I prayed and then I wasn't sure. Did I just, I don't know what happened. Something got my attention. Brain went off into the other direction. So I have this conversation with myself. No, no, no, I think I prayed, I'm pretty sure I prayed all for it. No, I had to, I did, I had to. And so I start having this conversation with myself and then I realize aside, this nuffs wants you to believe something but maybe there's something else compelling you to question it, right, to question yourself. Let's just get up and pray it again. That's it, enough, battle over because if I'm gonna sit there and tug and go to battle with this nuffs and I allow it to overwhelm me, then I'm just gonna be like, it's okay, I'm tired, I already prayed. I'm gonna move on. But if I just come to reality and say, no, it actually got me this time. I was trying to be focused, but I'm human. I made an error. Now I'm gonna overcome it because I'm shutting down the debate, right? The debate is over. I don't care if I did it without, I mean, I did it with the right intention. If I did three or four, may Allah accept it as extra nafila but I'm gonna do a whole entire different prayer. Now I have certainty that I prayed all for because I'm actually laser focused, right? So I try to make it a habit that if I have that doubt within myself, I don't let my nuffs try to negotiate with me because I know my nuffs is lazy. I know my nuffs will want me to take the easy shortcut route and go, no, no, no, it's okay, you're fine. You always pray this prayer, right? So just do the prayer again and shut it down. And after that, when I do that, I feel so much better because I'm like, if I had allowed my nuffs to convince me that I prayed all for, yes, I might have just moved on and forgotten about it, but what about on the day of judgment, right? When all your prayers are brought before you and there's gonna be an accounting and I'm like, it's just not worth it. I don't wanna go through that, oops, I could have, no, there's no coulda woulda shoulda on the day of judgment. So pray again, halas, end of topic, move on. So that's kind of how you turn against yourself, right? Cause your nuffs will not direct you ever to good. It's never gonna tell you to take the harder path. It will always tell you to take the easier path and so you disobey and whatever it pushes you and goes you to do the opposite and inshallah you'll find success. So alhamdulillah, there's more, but inshallah we went over a little bit because we had that break for prayer. So I don't want to keep all of you for longer. I just, let me just look at this really quickly, yeah. So when we come back, inshallah, what we'll do is we'll pick up from this third section next month when we return and we'll read more, but you have the document now. Please feel free to read ahead, inshallah, and explore this with your spouses, explore it with your children. This is a wonderful document that I personally think every Muslim should look through. I really think it's really important. So alhamdulillah, any questions in the few minutes before we end here? We're tired? I know, it's evening, work tomorrow? Yeah, inshallah. Oh, okay, when it's over? Okay, JazakAllah khil, alhamdulillah. No, I want to thank all of you and I want to thank those of you who are on the live stream as well. I apologize for again any interruptions or issues here if there were any. So we'll go ahead and we'll inshallah end in Dua. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.