 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Salatu wa Salam ala Ashrafil Anbiya wal-Mursaleen. Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahabatihi ajma'in. Allahumma, Allimna ma yinfa'una wa nfa'na bima'a al-lamtana wa zidna al-mandnafi an-wabad. Last session we talked about how the akhal is used to tie a person down. So the akhal is called the akhal because it yaqil. It hables, it ties it down. So when a person's emotions and desires drive a person one way, the akhal, properly trained, can hold it down. So there's three ways to have an animal. One way is to take your rope, your habal. Habal means to tie down an animal. One way is to take your rope and organize it in a way to make a knot and tie that animal down. Another way is to not organize that rope at all and not tie the animal down. This was when the man came to the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam, and he says, aqiruha wa atawaka. Should I tie my camel and trust in Allah? Or should I leave it free and trust in Allah? And the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam, said, tie your camel and trust in Allah. So you can tie your camel. You can not tie your camel. And then there's a third way that I want to discuss today is tying it improperly. So using the rope, tying it but not tying it properly. So there's three ways to use the akhal to bind the human as well. You can take your thoughts and arrange them logically. You can not use your thoughts at all. And the third way is to use illogical thoughts, which would be synonymous with taking your rope, tying it but not tying it adequately in order to bind your animal down. Simply put, correct thinking controls your behavior. And mistakes in thinking leaves your behavior uncontrolled. So this connection between thinking and behavior as the premise behind the whole science of how to control your behavior. And that's what we're in the interest of. Our behavior sort of run away from us. And we're trying to figure out, well, what is the source to change that behavior? One of the things is to yield our thoughts in order to control that behavior. So our scholars were interested in this as well and how to control behavior. Because it will be rewarded based on our behavior. So in order to maximize that reward, we have to control our behavior. And in order to control that behavior, we have to control our thinking. So Imam al-Ghazali analyzed the behavior of let's say, for example, in one example of arrogance, and he described a defining feature of this behavior of arrogance. And he says the arrogant person is one who, So when he's given advice or feedback, he rejects it thinking he's better than it. And when he gives feedback to others, he does so roughly or he does so harshly. harshly and severely. So this is one behavior. And then he looks at, well, what is the source of this behavior? And it could be that the source of behavior is many things. But what he focuses on is the thoughts that drive this behavior and not just any thoughts, illogical thoughts. So then he starts taking this apart. This is in Bidaya til Hidaya. It's on the section where he looks at the sins of the heart, the mistakes of the heart, and talking about specifically Ojoab and Kibir. So he says, what is the source of this behavior? It's thoughts and illogical thoughts specifically. So what illogical thoughts does he attribute this to? So he says in the next sentence, they should know بَلْ يَمْ بَغِيْ أنْ تَعْلَمْ أنَّ الْخَيْرَ مَنْ هُوَ خَيْرٌ اِنْدَ اللَّهَ. That goodness is one who is good with Allah. So in other words, there's this illogical thought that this person who behaves arrogantly has. They're looking at everything as black and white. People are either all good or they are all bad. But the logical thought is they might have some things that you don't see that are good and that you might have some bad qualities that you're not aware of. So we don't really have the capacity to calculate all of that. It's much too intricate. There's too many factors and there's too many components. So the one who's good, who's good in the sight of Allah, who has the capacity to calculate all that and balance all that, it has the information to make those conclusions. And then he continues. The one who is good is the one who is good with Allah Fiddar al-Akhirah wa dalika ghayb. And he says, he's the one that's good with Allah in the Akhirah. So not now, and he goes on to more depth saying, you can be have iman now, you can be successful now, but you don't know how it's going to be all the way till the end. So in other words, it's this other illogical thought of jumping to conclusions. So you don't know if somebody that you think you're better than will make Toba and excel above you. And you don't know if you'll fall off and fall below them. So even if let's say hypothetically, you are right in your conclusion that you are better than somebody. Then step two is, well, we've jumped to conclusions because there's still time left in the game. That person can be better than you. And then there's other aspects of this. Feeling arrogant doesn't mean or feeling that you're better than somebody doesn't mean that you're better than them. So I feel better than them. So this must be true. And this goes on. But the point that I want to make is that there's this idea that thoughts are connected to your behavior. And if you want to change your behavior, you have to change your thoughts. So Al Ghazali was born 1000 years ago. And this connection between thoughts and behaviors became popularized in modern behavioral science or modern psychology. This thought behavior connection took on its own terminology. Instead of thoughts, they use cognitions. So instead of a thought behavior connection, they say a cognitive behavioral connection. And now this cognitive behavioral connection, the science is the most empirically validated form of therapy. It's been shown to be effective in changing people's behaviors, including specifically addictive behaviors, including specifically addictive behaviors. And that's something that we're going to discuss now as well. So if we go to page 94, and the section on mistakes and thinking. So once we're able to notice some common types of mistakes and thinking and irrational thoughts, then automatically, we start to become aware of their connection with our behavior. And automatically, we start challenging them just by becoming aware of them. So on page 95, it talks about the first mistake in thinking, this is what they call black or white thinking. So it talks about somebody who was caught up in a lot of black or white thinking, just before they entertained the idea of going back to their addictive behavior. So it gives an example of somebody who received critical feedback from their boss. And now they view themselves with that feedback as completely worthless. They're worthless on the job, they're a failure, they start having thoughts of nothing I do is ever good enough. And I never succeeded anything. So whenever your thoughts contain words like nothing and never and are absolute, then you're most likely in the middle of some black or white thinking, especially if you're a perfectionist type, you're more vulnerable to this. So the mistake here is this view that everything you've done is useless. The black or white thinking is something like you get some feedback, some critical feedback, and you interpret it as I messed up everything at work, or you lapse in your addictive behavior and you say all of the work that I've done to come to this point in order to progress is useless. I messed up everything. I might as well just continue to engage in my addictive behavior. If you contrast that with I made a lapse, I made a mistake, let me continue to engage in all the work that I've been doing and continue to work hard, that will have a better chance of leading towards pushing forward and staying absent from your addictive behavior. Okay, let's go to the next one. This is on page 96, discounting the positive. So the same individual, if the same individual, their boss gives them a compliment on something that they did well at work, they would discount the positive, they might have had a thought like, No, my boss didn't really mean that. They just feel sorry for me because I keep screwing up. They said that out of pity. So by discounting the positive, you cast aside all the ways that this compliment might be reassuring. And you're not able to make a balanced assessment of yourself. The irrational thought is my boss only said something nice to me out of pity. And that leads to the behavior, I have nothing to lose by engaging my addictive behavior, and then lowering the threshold to engage in your addictive behavior. The third illogical thought is jumping to conclusions. So this is like going back to discounting the positive. This is like the arrogant person, looking at people and discounting any positive or any good in them, and only focusing on the bad. And this is like the arrogant person, considering things in black and white, I'm all good, they're all bad. And then now the next section jumping to conclusions, this is like the arrogant person jumping to conclusions in this manner. So jumping to conclusions. If you tend to jump to conclusions, you're doing one of two things, either your mind reading or fortune telling. So for example, the arrogant person, they see themselves as better than others, their mind reading and fortune telling seeing into the future that I'm better, and I'm going to stay better all the way till my death. If you're a mind reader, then you assume that other people's behavior towards you reflects something negative about how they feel about you. You make these interpretations with very little or no factual information. For example, if you're with a friend who's not being especially talkative, they're a little quiet, rather than assuming that they might have had a bad day, you jump to conclusions and say, they're not talking to me because they don't like me. Or they're not talking to me for some other reasons. Or if you fall into a habit of fortune telling, then you predict that things will turn out badly for you. The way you see things, there's doom and gloom waiting for you around the corner. This is your ultimate fate. So for example, when you jump to conclusions, you say something like, with my luck, treatment won't work for me. I'll never be able to stop my addictive behavior. There's no point in even trying. So in a lot of ways, we can see how our thinking sets us up to continue in our addictive behavior. And you can almost look at it as we have this drive within us to engage in this behavior. And we reverse engineer our thinking in order to bless that behavior, to let it happen. And if you've been engaging in an addictive behavior for a long time, your thoughts are secondary. Your thoughts are secondary and engaging in that addictive behavior is primary. So engaging in your addictive behavior, you have to just tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself to make it right. And so if that's jumping to conclusions, thinking of the world in black and white, constantly putting yourself in a place that's right to continue to engage in your addictive behavior, great. That's perfectly attuned to propagating addiction. The next page talks about taking your feelings too seriously. So I feel better than this person. Maybe I got a suit on. I go to the supermarket and there's somebody there dressed less fancy than me. And then I feel better and I maybe perhaps ask them a question and treat them in a in a bad way or some other situation where you feel better. Like she thought it bliss and sort of sad. When he Allah asked him, what's prevents you from prostrating to Adam? He says, I'm better than him. You made me from fire. I'm hot. You made him from dirt. So taking your feelings too seriously, feelings aren't fact. So taking your feelings too seriously can lead you back to engaging in behavior because feelings aren't fact. So they lead to illogical thoughts. So for example, in the book, they say, I feel hopeless. Therefore, life must be hopeless for me. And this leads to the behavior. Well, things will never get better. At least if I engage in my addictive behavior, I don't have to I can distract myself from this pain of this hopeless life. And then it goes on and it has many different examples. Maybe we'll go over one or two more. We'll skip a few and on page 100, labeling yourself, labeling yourself as a close relative to taking your feelings too seriously. It goes like this. I feel blank. Therefore, I must be blank. So I feel better than this person. Therefore, I must be better than this person. You label yourself for the ways that you feel or for the mistakes that you've made. So an example is if you made a mistake, you might label yourself as a loser rather than a person who happened to make a mistake. So you make this sweeping label based on one data point. So for example, I relapsed into my addictive behavior just like I knew I would and just like I always will be. So if you think like that, then it perfectly sets you up for the behavior because there's no point in me even trying to stay away from my addictive behavior. I might as well just go ahead and do it. Okay. So now it talks on page 101. The last paragraph will go over, which is the spiraling lapse. And this is really profound. To prevent a lapse from converting into a full blown relapse or from preventing a relapse to getting worse, you need to avoid the mistake called the spiraling relapse or the spiraling lapse, which is when you interpret a lapse as being the result of one of two things. Number one, they say, you see yourself as a personal failure. People who interpret a lapse as a personal failure tend to feel very guilty or ashamed. And the desire to avoid or numb those feelings can very easily lead to more drinking or using or engaging in your addictive behavior. Number two, you view the lapse as being the result of things that are completely beyond your control. So either number one, I'm a personal failure. I'm going to I'm going to lapse anyway. I might as well just go ahead and do it. It perfectly sets people up. Number two is you view the lapses being completely out of your control. So people who think of themselves as having no control over their behavior or their addictive behavior tend to give up on attempts to stop. And that's the most important thing. And the thing is, is you might listen to this and say, well, is this specifically directed at me? And in reality, this is just such a common tape that gets played in behaviors that are hard to change, that it feels like it's exactly about you. But this is word for word on these pages that I referenced 101 and 102. And if you can address those thinking patterns, you'll have a much, much better chance at succeeding and breaking your addictive behaviors. Here are some of the thoughts that you might have had if you've experienced this spiraling lapse into your addictive behavior. One lapse means I'm a total failure. Thought number one, one lapse means I've totally failed. Number two, I've ruined everything now. I've blown everything now. I might as well just keep on engaging in my addictive behavior. Number three, I'm hopeless. So what's the point of having help? And then there's more. I'm going to say one more. I've screwed up already today. I've messed up already. I might as well go all out. Or I have no willpower. I've lost all control. So it's different ways of locking ourselves into this idea that we've completely failed and all the shame and pain that comes with that, that sets us up to more addictive behavior. And number two, different ways of viewing all of this as out of our control. So what's the point of even trying? And if we can attack those thoughts, then we have a strong chance of attacking our addictive behaviors. And again, attacking the thoughts to control the behaviors, this is something that's within our tradition. And it's not only when we look at the scholars, Prophet As-Salam, when people would come to him with behaviors that were hard to change, he would take them through a process of reasoning and logic to help change them. The Quran is constantly calling us to use our aqa and using logic to get us to think in a certain way and change our behaviors. And so when we think about in modern psychology, this is the number one empirically validated intervention used in order to change behaviors. Basically, the idea is becoming adept at this sets us up to battling those addictive behaviors. Now you can do that in many different ways. So you can practice the skills on your own by let's say reading this book, going over it once a week here, but then also reading it in between sessions. You can practice it by using a coach or a counselor to help you somebody who's done it. Maybe they're not a professional, but they've done it more than you. They can help guide you on the path of how to fix your thinking. So it's like peer support. That's like 12 step meetings, specifically smart recovery meetings uses cognitive behavioral thoughts. So you can practice it in that platform. Cognitive behavioral therapy for all addicted behaviors, food, pornography, drugs, alcohol. You can get a professional therapist to sit with on a weekly basis to go over. Well, how do I address my addictive behaviors and thoughts that lead to them? If that's not an adequate level of care, if that's not an adequate not, you can keep tying it. You can keep learning to tie it. You can go escalate to therapy a couple times a week. Let's say an outpatient program three days a week. If that's not enough, then you go to one most days out of the week, like an intensive outpatient program. If that's not enough, then you just go into and just get away from everything in isolation 30 days. Go into a residential program. Well, that's all you focus on is intensive therapy and staying away from the addictive behavior. So in shall I will that will go ahead and wrap up and open it up for questions.