 I pray that your first week of Ramadan has gone well and that you found that the doors of mercy has opened in these days of mercy and that you're gearing up and getting ready for the second third of Ramadan, the days of forgiveness. Our discussion today is about the journey of the self in Ramadan and the goal for today's discussion is to understand the potential transformation a human can go in this blessed month. And we'll talk about it from the psychological, spiritual, and behavioral perspectives, the various transformations that can happen. But before we get there, first I wanted to share a story, one of my own favorite about the month of Ramadan. It's a story that's narrated about Sayyidna Musa, alaihi salam, Moses, peace be upon him, that Musa was given a gift or miracle of Allah speaking to him. And so he says to Allah, I was given the miracle of you speaking to me directly. Have you given a similar gift to anyone else? And Allah revealed to Musa that there will be a group of his servants that will come at the end of time who are given the month of Ramadan to fast. And they will fast until their lips turn white and their skin becomes a yellowish hue. And that the reward for their sacrifice of fasting will be that the veil between them and Allah is lifted when they break their fast. And that he will answer their prayers or du'as at this time. And Allah says, al-Musa, tuba, tuba is a part of jannah, a place in jannah and paradise, will be for those whose livers are thirsty and stomachs are hungry and Ramadan. A beautiful story reminding us how much, how incredible and amazing Ramadan is and the marvels of Ramadan and how much you can transform in this month. That the miracle that was given to Musa, Allah compares it to the miracle he gives, not just the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, but all of Ummat Muhammad, all of us. Ramadan in its essence is the month of the heart. I would often hear my teacher say about this month that it's the month of little food and little drink and little sleep. It's the month of ridding yourself of everything that's unnecessary, everything that's extra. I'd often hear them use the terms lahu and lahu, that it's the time and month to get rid of all the lahu and lahu. And lahu typically is translated as unnecessary speech. And lahu is typically this frivolous idol kind of wasteful time spent basically. And the idea here is to get rid of both lahu and lahu in Ramadan. And they usually have negative connotations. And so in Ramadan we're definitely talking about getting rid of anything and everything that's negative. But we're also talking about getting rid of the unnecessary extras. The things that aren't necessarily haram or problematic, but rather they take up time and they're wasteful in time. They're not needed. So here we need to take a step back and each of us kind of think to ourselves. What do I do that's extra, that's not needed in my day? Now since all of us are fasting, we're already giving up some extras. We've given up an extra meal by the mere fact of fasting. If you get up for sahur and you eat, if thought that's two meals, you've got even up at least one meal in the day. And certainly snacks as well. And if you're getting up for tawih, if you're praying tawih and getting up for sahur, then you also have given up extra sleep in your day. So you've already done this. Extra sleep and extra food you didn't necessarily need. And Allah is teaching us this. But what else can you give up that's extra you actually need? What do you find yourself gravitating to in your free time? Now for many of us, if it's not people that's distracting us, it's probably our phones, tablets, laptops, social media, the myriad of apps and games, Netflix, Spinging, right? All kinds of things that distract us and take our time. Abu Hurayrat reports that the Prophet ﷺ said that a person might fast and get nothing from his fast except for hunger. And he might get up at night to pray and get nothing from that, getting up at night except for sleeplessness. You see the point of Ramadan isn't just leaving food and drink, right? The ayah which we'll talk about a little later that talks about the Qibnan's fasting. It starts, it ends with so that you may attain God consciousness. Meaning that fasting is a platform of how you attain taqwa or God consciousness. An Imam al-Ghazali classified fasts into three different types, three different levels. The first of which is the level of the lay people, the general masses, who fast from leaving food and drink. And they have a routine, if you will. The routine of, you know, getting up for sahud, leaving food and drink all day long, eating if thar, and then going to pray at sarawih. Some people don't even get to the point of praying at sarawih, right? But this routine, this cycle, cycle in and cycle out, now it will definitely garner blessings. There is no doubt about that. But the question is, will you really be transformed just by the cycle of these routine activities, right? The fast, don't get me wrong, the fast will inherently benefit you, right? It will raise you in taqwa, just like prayer will inherently benefit you, even if you don't have a lot of thought and heart in it. It will still benefit you. Because Allah SWT says about prayer, right? That prayer will prevent you from evils. And there's the hadith of the Prophet, when somebody came to him and said, this person is sinning, but he prays. And the Prophet's response was, his prayer will prevent him, right? So keep on with that prayer. It'll eventually lead you to taqwa, God consciousness, same with fasting. And while this first level of fasting, this primary level is quite beneficial, it doesn't necessarily transform you completely. Why? Because what you're fasting from are things that otherwise are permitted, food and drink. But it doesn't mean that you're necessarily mean that you're actually fasting from things that are prohibited. That's the second level of the fast, right? But Imam Ghazali says that's the fast of the khawas, the elect, right? That they leave behind not just the permitted, the food and drink, but also the haram. They are the ones who fast from making sure their eyes don't see haram and their ears don't listen to haram and their tongues don't engage in haram and their limbs don't take them to haram. And they don't overeat or over-indulge. This is the second level of the fast. The third level, and the highest level to attain, is the khawas of the khawas, the elect of the elect. And this third level involves being physically and spiritually and intellectually occupied with your Lord, without breaking consciousness from that state even for a moment. This is the fast of the heart and the mind. And it's a very interesting idea, it's a very interesting idea, this idea of the fast of the elite, right? This is the fast of breaking, of leaving behind the laghu and the lahu, all the extra unnecessary. So on one level you left behind the permissible, the food and the drink. And on the next level you left behind the impermissible, all the haram. But on the third level you left behind what is otherwise fine, the mubah, otherwise okay to do. But you're purposefully minimizing, you're eliminating it so that you can spend more time focusing on your spiritual transformation and focusing on your connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Mashallah. Think about it like this, that extra, that extra time when somebody asked you, how are you doing? And you spent 20 minutes chit chatting with them. Now outside of Ramadan, that's fine, right? You're kind of getting to know people and you're keeping up the connection with people and your family and so on. But inside of Ramadan what you needed was only five minutes. The extra 15 that you spent is considered lahu. It's extra, it's too much, right? It was unnecessary, right? Chit chat and talk and so on. And also because chit chat could then bring with it haram too, right? So you want to really curve that and be careful. So in those 15 minutes what could you have done with them? You could have done more, ayyabata, more the kid. Or think about when you first wake up in the morning and people like the first thing they do is look at their phone, right? And they look at their, you know, their Facebook wall or their Twitter feed or their WhatsApp messages, right? And they take 20 minutes to do that. When all they really needed was five minutes to just see if everything was okay, right, with friends and family, right? But all the extra stuff that they didn't need, that could have been spent in clicking your Quran app instead and spending those 15 minutes reading a couple more pages of Quran that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten in your day. You see in Ramadan you take yourself to account for every minute and every moment and every second, right? That is, that is what defines the elect of the elect. The khawas of khawas, right? Those who are very careful in how they spend every moment of Ramadan. These are the people who understand the true essence of Ramadan. They understand it to be a spiritual and intensive spiritual retreat that's only 30 days long. It's a cocoon that we as lowly caterpillars crawl into, right? And we go into this cocoon for 30 days hoping that when we come out we'll have wings strong enough to soar with the rest of the year. Mashallah. And you see it's easy to get into this cocoon, right? It's easy to enter into this prestigious prep school called the Ramadan cocoon. Mashallah, right? That's easy because all it requires for entrance or admission is you being Muslim. But just because you enter doesn't mean you're going to be successful and doesn't mean you're going to graduate successfully from this prestigious school of Ramadan, right? The tricky part is actually trying to figure out how to make your wings strong enough that when you come out of that cocoon that you're able to maintain the rest of the 11 months of the year until the next Ramadan, right? Mashallah. And this is where here my teachers speak about Ramadan being different for different people. They would say that for some Ramadan comes as a mercy to wash them through and through. And for others, Ramadan came to scrub out the filth and the grime and the soot that had developed and kind of kicked on in our hearts all year long, right? And yet others there at Ramadan comes like a sieve asking you essentially to figure out whether you're going to choose Allah or choose the dunya, right? Choose your ahira, you're hereafter or choose the dunya. And it could be that the Ramadan for each of us is a combination of these things or whichever one it is. And I pray that we decipher which one it is. But if you're starting to feel like, hmm, which Ramadan is it for me this year? And you're starting to feel a little panicky and worried like a whole week has gone by and I still haven't figured it out. Now what? Right? Now the panic starts to build up a little bit. Well, let's take a step back because anytime the human being needs to figure out something, the manual that they go to is the Qur'an, right? So let's look at the Qur'an and let's look at what it says about fasting. We'll go to Surah Baqarah, ayah 183, which begins the discussion on the commandment to fast, right? Yeah, it's telling us, oh you who believe fasting is prescribed on to you like it was prescribed to the people before you so that you may attain God consciousness, right? That's the first ayah. Next ayah begins with ayyam and ma'dudat, right? They are a limited fixed number of days, hence the concept of the spiritual intensive, right? The spiritual retreat that we're about to enter into. It's very limited time. So make most use of it. And then the next ayah comes down and says shahru ramadan al ladhi'un zilafihi al Qur'an. And it begins right that way where it references that the Qur'an, that Ramadan is the month of the Qur'an in which it was revealed as a guide to mankind. Now between that ayah and between the ayah that comes to ayahs down, which give you all the rules of fasting, there's an ayah in the middle, right? The ayah in the middle. And most people don't think about this ayah or even connect it to Ramadan. But when you look at the order of the ayah, you realize Allah put it there, there is nothing have hazard in the Qur'an. It is there and in that place very specifically. So you have all these verses referring to the Qur'an, to fasting and slayam, right? And then you get this ayah that talks about where Allah says and if they ask you, here he's talking to Sayyidina Muhammad, if they ask you, oh Muhammad concerning me, indeed I am near and I respond to the invocation of the supplicant when he calls upon me. Beautiful. One of my favorite, that Allah says to us that he is near. Call upon him, he will answer. And the earlier story that we shared where Allah said, tell us of us, Ummat Muhammad coming at the end of time, that we will have our prayers answered and especially at the time of breaking fast and especially in this month of Ramadan. And then it carries on with further verses referring to the rules of how you fast. But look at that ayah that's sandwiched in between right there and remember that that is part and parcel of fasting, is calling on to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and asking him and asking him because this journey of the self in Ramadan, this journey we're going to take, it can't possibly be just because of putting away food and drink. It can't possibly be just from leaving the haram which we should have left anyway, right? The transformation that happens is that connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the focus on him. Jalla jalalahu. And reminding us that the Qur'an was sent as that catalog, as that manual for human beings. Allah knows what he created, right? And that you have to know that when you call upon Allah, he answers you. And if it's good for you, if it's good for you and if it's not good for you, then he replaces it with what's better for you because as humans we don't necessarily know what's best for us. Although sometimes we think we do, right? But Allah will fix and put in what's better than what we asked for if what we asked for wasn't so good. So we should go into the month of fasting with confidence, knowing that Allah knows what He created, knowing that He knows that this was best for us. People might say really, fasting without food and drink for an entire month? Yes, an entire month of the year. That's one twelfth of your year. That's one twelfth of the year is roughly about eight percent. That's eight percent of your days alive, you're fasting. Now Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala there was a detriment in that He would never have commanded it. But He knows that there is a benefit in it and that benefit isn't just physically. There's a physical benefit and a spiritual benefit and a behavioral benefit and a psychological benefit to this commandment subhanahu wa ta'ala. And He would never ask us to do something that was detrimental to us. And so here we should really focus on this fasting with confidence and know that it is the best for us. But we should also do one of the most beautiful lessons we learn in Islam is that the human being should always be between two very important emotions, hope and fear. Hope and fear, raja and khuf. We should always, and in terms of fasting, we should look at our fast with hope that it's been accepted and we've done the best we can do. And a little bit of fear and trepidation that maybe I didn't do as well as I should have with this day of fasting and that tomorrow I will do better. I will do better. I will do better. It's beautiful. It's like the wings of a bird, hope and fear that if you lose one, the bird cannot sustain its flight. It crashes and falls, right? Always to be between the two emotions. And here we ask ourselves and say to ourselves, this all sounds great. Dr. Rania, this all sounds great. But how, how do we do this? How do we take this journey of the self in Ramadan? How is it that we reach a point that we're really reaping the full blessings of this month as it's intended to be? Let's look at Imam al-Ghazali and his psychology of the self, right? We're trying to understand our journey of the self. Let's look at Imam al-Ghazali and the psychology of the self. And Imam al-Ghazali's understanding of the human psyche supersedes the best of what modern psychology has come up with and explaining of the human condition. And I say that as a psychiatrist that I truly am just amazed by what Imam al-Ghazali has come with as the framework of the human psyche. And incidentally, Imam al-Ghazali's framework of the human psyche is the same framework we use at the Khalil Center, which is a Muslim counseling center. And for those who are not familiar with it, it's a professional counseling center where we integrate Islamic psychotherapeutic care with professional counseling. And this framework of how you offer counseling and care to Muslims, right, is one of the most important thing I think we've been working on at the Muslim mental health and well-being program that I direct at Stanford University and work very closely with Khalil Center to come up with. Because I think it's incredibly important and Imam al-Ghazali and our noble predecessors and scholars like him have come up with this wonderful framework of how to understand the human psyche and how transformation can happen, which is really the essence of what counseling is for, right? And so when you look at the true genius of Imam al-Ghazali, you see here that when he talks about the psyche, he splits it into four domains. The intellect, akil, the heart, qalb, the nafs, the self, and the ruh, the spirit, or soul. And the spiritual heart, not the physical heart, the one that pumps blood, but rather the spiritual heart, the qalb, is what derives and nourishes our drives and nourishes our soul. It's what seeks connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and it is what has the potential to have the most beautiful experiences and purists of emotions. But you see when you don't feed your heart, right? Just like if the physical heart was devoid of blood, it would go into cardiac arrest and die. The spiritual heart, when it's not being fed properly, right? There's a huge void. And whenever there's a void, you see these four aspects, right? Something else will come up and try to fill the void instead. So the first contender that comes up to the plate, kind of waddles on up, very naively, is the physical state. And it comes to the frontline thinking it can fill the void that you haven't been feeding your spiritual heart with. It's going to fill the void with what? The physical, right? Stuff. Clothes and cars and gadgets and entertainment and relationships and people, both actual and virtual, right? And fill it with stuff, right? But unfortunately, the more you put in it, it's like a bottomless cup. The more you try to fill it, the more that seeps out. The more you put in, the more that comes out. And you can't actually fill the void truthfully to feel the void still. The next contender comes up. And this is the nefs, the ego, right? So it says, okay, the physical can't fill it. I'm going to try. And it wells up, right? The ego wells up the nefs, all your desires, right? And when the physical wells up and the ego wells up, it pushes the spiritual heart out of the way. It weakens that connection to the heart. The connection that you could potentially feel with Allah, it weakens it. And so Ramadan comes and actually it is the only time of the year that it forces you to put the physical aside and break the nefs and put that aside. The ego goes down and the physical goes down. And like we said, whenever there's a void, something else has to well up and take its place. But when you put down and minimize the physical and you minimize the ego, the nefs, the heart, right? It takes its place. It takes its rightful place, right? And its connection with Allah, it's like the phenomenon that we hear about when we learn that when somebody loses a sense, the other senses get stronger. Like we know this about people who are blind, that their hearing is much stronger than the typical person. And when the person is deaf, their vision is stronger than the others, right? This idea of one will take over the other. So Subhanallah, look at how Ramadan comes. Pushing the physical out of the way, physical needs, right? The stuff that we try to fill the void with and pushes aside the ego, right? And the nefs and the whims and desires and pushes the two. And you can't turn to food. And you can't turn to things that are, you know, ego, laden desires for instant gratification. So instead, what happens? You actually are able to rekindle that spark that was in your heart, right? To rekindle that spark and actually ignite it back into that connection with Allah, this is why the Awliya, those who are close to Allah, have written about and spoken extensively about how their connection with Allah almost unanimously started in the month of Ramadan. The Awliya sometimes are also scholars, but sometimes they're not. The Awliya are folks like yourself and myself who have worked and worked and worked hard and then reached a high level in connection with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. And they have said that that happened for them in the month of Ramadan. And if not in the month of Ramadan, then when? Right? When the heart can really feel that connection with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So then you realize that Ramadan comes to realign our system, to realign, to take this journey of the self and realign everything the way it's supposed to and put the heart back in its rightful place as the leader, masha'Allah. This is the fast of the khawas and khawas, right? The elect of the elect, the fast of the heart, masha'Allah. So again you might say, Dr. Dhania, this sounds great. How do I do this practically? What are the practical tips of doing this? This is the theoretical. What's the practical? How do I actually get there? Well, and you might say to yourself, how do I know that I'm in the days of mercy, right? A week of that has passed, a few more days of it left. How do I capture that mercy of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la? I know that the next third is going to be those days of forgiveness. How do I attain that forgiveness and make sure I'm forgiven for everything small and big, known and forgotten that I've done? And the last third is coming up that has in it most likely, how do I attain that and how do I become those from those who are taken out of the Hellfire should they have been written to be in it, right? And here what I offer myself and you, inshallah, is the formula of my spiritual teachers. Beautiful formula where they said in Ramadan, you take everything possible and you categorize it into three categories. Everything. You have to figure out everything you do and say. Every action you take in Ramadan, you have to figure out if it fits. It has to fit into one of these three categories. The first being that it can be dealt with after Ramadan, postpone it till after Ramadan. The second, total nonsense. And the third, it needs immediate attention, right? So you postpone the first till after Ramadan. You throw away the second and you take care of the third now because we do not have more time to waste. A week of Ramadan has passed, right? So here in our kind of discussion, let's talk a little bit about how to practically make sure that we are the khawas of the khawas, right? That the journey of ourself is really going to go towards supposed to be the fasting of the heart. So let me share with you a little bit about, you know, the group of people I typically work with, women and girls. And often, often, you know, I hear a lot of guilt about not doing enough. And I hear a lot of anger about, you know, how come as a woman, we have it the most difficult to try to balance everything, being mothers and wives and daughters and daughters and laws and balancing careers if we have them and so on. That there's so much expectation that we are the ones who do all the care taking, right? Making sure that everybody else is fed and everybody else has gone up for sahrud and everybody else has gone to the masjid to pray. And everybody has done everything else. And nobody turns around and asks whether we as women, right, have any but we've taken care of our own ibadah and has there been time for it. And by the way, this story, although I'm talking about women right now, really extends to anybody and everybody that has a lot on their plate, particularly caretakers, whether they be of elderly parents or in-laws, whether they be of young children, whether they be of taking care of things in your life or career, whether you be a student and you're trying to balance out your primary responsibility of studying, for example, right? So anybody that's got a lot on their plate, right? So I hear a lot of anger and frustration, a lot of guilt, right? And for women, especially I'll hear, you know, the weasleaved away at the kitchen all day long and the men were the ones to get off for the tarawih, they came to eat and they went to pray and they got there fast and they got there tarawih and we got nothing except slaving away in the kitchen subhanallah. And I guess, and I would imagine that this sounds familiar to many. And here I would say, you know, this feeling of helplessness, this fatigue, this kind of feeling of a failed Ramadan journey is very common. But again, I offer you my teacher's formula, you know, that we need to figure out what needs immediate attention. Because I really do think this formula works. And what needs to be postponed until after Ramadan, right? And what's nonsense? And let me explain to you what I mean by nonsense, right? Take, for example, the succumbing of familial and cultural you know, expectations that really make no sense. Like what? One of my pet peeves at Ramadan are these massive iftars, right? When you feel that you have to have all these people over to your house to feed them. Now granted, feeding people is a blessing and is important. But the hadith, if you look at it says that you break the person's fast, which is like a date, a cup of milk, these massive iftars, and especially here, I'll talk about women for a minute, is really problematic. Because think about what happens. It took you several days to buy the groceries and to figure out the meals you wanted to make and to prep it and to clean the house and to get it ready and so on. Then the day of fasting, and the day you're fasting, yes, but the day of the iftar, the guests are coming over, you cooked and cleaned and cooked and cleaned and cooked and cleaned to the extent that I've heard sisters say they have literally forgotten to pray their fardh prayers, trying to do these iftars, right? When they have like tons of people coming over. It's like Subhanallah, you have let go of what has been commanded, the fardh prayers, and you're busying yourself with what is sunnah, breaking people's fast, which makes no sense. It's total nonsense. Do you see what I'm saying? And even if you do, and then let's say the people come over and you cook and clean and cook and clean, and then afterwards, they leave, and what are you left with? A big mess to clean, right? Which takes another day. And if you do this, just this one iftar, the last that you took over four or five days of your ibadah. And if you do this just a couple of times in Ramadan, that's literally half of your month gone. And if you do this more than that, that's your whole month gone, right? Subhanallah. So what do you do? And people say, but I have to invite people over. They invited me, I have to invite them, or I have to go, or I have expectations, or my in-laws, or my, mashaAllah. So I offer you again what my teachers have offered me. Do the bare minimum necessary. You have to go see your in-laws, then you must do that. You have to invite them over and do that, right? But your friends and the other people who are not going to have this intense animosity or difficulty with, you say to them, after Ramadan, or it's too late now, but you would have maybe thrown a big party before Ramadan and said, I'm inviting all my friends and buddies so that nobody blames me for not having, you know, been invited or inviting them. True? And if you couldn't do that, then maybe you say, look, I'm postponing everything because I really want to focus on my Ramadan and I'm postponing everything and I'm going to have a big shabang in A'id, which is exactly what the point of A'id is for. You see, A'id comes after this arduous month of fasting as a celebration for you to eat and drink and hop and skip and run and play to all kinds of things, right? That's the point of A'id. It is the same thing as the big A'id, A'id al-Adha, right? At the time of Hajj. After that arduous journey of Hajj and you're disheveled and tired and fatigued, then comes A'id, right? It's the same concept of Ramadan. But we forget. And in fact, sometimes we even let A'id pass by without really putting the emphasis that we should on it. And yet we try to do all of this in Ramadan. I mean literally recipes that don't come out except for Ramadan. I find this to be the most nonsensical thing ever, right? People pulling out grandma's old recipes from, I don't know, Mashallah, and frying and stuffing and doing and mashallah. This truly is a problem. Truly this is a problem, right? And here I would say, you know, really try to figure out and minimize and figure out the bare minimum of what you need to do and the bare minimum expectations you need to fulfill and everything else postpone. Or if it's truly nonsensical, throw it out completely, right? And if you do have to go to places that are distracting, right, or will take away from your time, don't go spiteful. Instead, go and understand that this is your duty. So you have to go, but do your duty and leave, right? Say I have to pray and say, I'll leave, right? Or I have to get up early for Sahudah. And so you leave, right? And last year, people get really stressed out. And so last year we did a talk on stress reduction and al-Balkhi's techniques of how you deal with stress. Because what happens if you find yourself in a place where you are not happy and not comfortable and you really want to do this Ramadan thing that you just heard about, Mashallah, but you have to go because it's keeping family ties. It's keeping people happy, you know. I would recommend that you review that lecture, inshallah, because that too is your jihad. It is. It's a difficult thing. And so you see sometimes we make this journey of the self in Ramadan more difficult on ourselves than it needs to be, right? Figure out what you can postpone, really. Think about it. Was there an article someone sent to you, a YouTube clip that you wanted to watch, a show, your favorite show? All of it can wait. None of it's necessary. All of it can be postponed after Ramadan. This is assuming these are things that are halal and okay, right? But they can all be postponed. If they're haram, they have to be gone, Mashallah, right? And then figure out what needs immediate attention and make that your priority. And figure out how to be creative instead of being spiteful, right? There are duties we have to take care of. You have to eat and drink. You have to do laundry. You have to clean the house around you, right? Chorus. Well unplug. Unplug from the music and the other stuff and plug in the Qur'an instead. People are like, I didn't have enough time to read. I want to read or I'm slow at reading or so on. And I have to cook and clean and laundry and so on. Well, plug in the Qur'an. And do you know that if you put the Qadi on and you listen to him and you just recite after him, that counts as recitation. That counts towards the Qur'an you're supposed to read or you want to read in Ramadan. But we forget because we're on autopilot. So we start doing our folding our laundry or cooking without realizing that we should also be doing the Qid during it or that we should be reciting after the Qadi and that counts towards your Qur'an that you're hoping to do that month. Subhanallah. Or if you're feeling like I'm all I do is show for the kids around and they have camps and classes and so on. And again, turn on the Qur'an, recite after him, make use of your time, double what you need to do plus what is extra to do. Be creative in how you do that, Mashallah. Or you feel like you're spending so much time cooking day in and day out because your family has to eat, you and your family have to eat, Mashallah. Do it on Ramadan's meal swap. I think it's a beautiful idea where you get a group of people and each one help cook. And so you might cook in the entire month of Ramadan like four or five times because your sisters or your family members or so on, they helped you, they cook the other days. Things like this or get a group of people, preferably you would have done this before in Ramadan, but you can get a group of people together and cook some things that are freezable and put them so they're easy sahud and easy if thought items. Be creative. The point is here, the point is be creative in how you do this so that you can spend more time in Qur'an and more time in Ibadah and more time in the service of others. And then remember that Ramadan is also month of charity. And charity isn't just monetary. Some people have the money and they need to give that. But others don't have that. And that's not the charity that's expected of them. Their charity is the charity of time or the charity of energy. The charity of volunteering, of giving your knowledge or giving your time or giving your energy. At Stanford, I'm always working with students and they'll say, I'm a poor broke student. I don't have anything to give. Give your time. Give your knowledge. You have some time off and there's some Muslim kids that need to have a camp. Go work with them. Right? Share your knowledge. Right? Share that energy. Your message, your local message needs something. It needs people to help direct the lines of traffic and the so on. Give your time and energy. That's charity too. Subhanallah. And every day needs to have charity. And no day of Ramadan should be devoid of that. Mashallah. And here we'll kind of wrap up with the example that we started off with. This example of Ramadan being the spiritual cocoon, the spiritual cocoon that you crawl into as a caterpillar. Right? This little tiny caterpillar. And that most people would say that the caterpillar is something they don't really like too much. Right? Compared to a butterfly. The butterfly is beautiful and has these amazing patterns on its wings. And people kind of, you know, they like the butterfly. But they're not too excited about the caterpillar. The creepy crawly and it kind of gets in the way and it eats things and Subhanallah. That is not as beautiful and maybe even unsightly or unpleasant to some people. And they don't even want to see it or touch it. But we forget where butterflies come from. They come from these caterpillars that it could argue with his journey to transform from the caterpillar into the butterfly. And then we forget that it took them to go into their cocoon to transform and come out as a butterfly. Right? And like us too, that the last 11 months, the grime and dirt and soot that had built over our hearts, right, has come in the way of our heart really being able to connect with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And for us to emerge on the other end of Ramadan as a new person completely transformed, it will require us going into this cocoon. And like the caterpillar, that's really concerned mostly with very earthly needs, right, eating, essentially finding food and drink. And it can't go very far, very different from the butterfly that can fly and soar and figure out where it wants to go and figure out where it's going to have its net put its next generation, right? And like this butterfly that's going to have these strong wings that can carry it far of places. And it's able to have loftier aspirations than the caterpillar, than we too need to be like that butterfly, right? That will come out coming in this caterpillar that when it went to the fruit, it left holes in it and made the fruit rot. And when it went to a leaf, it put all kinds of holes in it and left it with holes, right? And when it went to wood, it caused it to weaken and rotten, very much unlock the butterfly that goes to a plant and brings out fruit from pollination, right? And it goes to a leaf and makes it look more beautiful. Us too, likewise, we need to do the same, we need to do the same as butterflies. And to really want to transform fully, we ask that Allah SWT to out of transform us from lowly caterpillars into butterflies, right? That allows us to really use these 30 days that were meant to be the spiritual intensive to emerge on the other end, very strong with wings that can help us navigate the next 11 months safely and soundly. That this journey of the self be truly transformative and that our fast be the fast of the elect, of the elect, the khwas al khwas. We ask Allah SWT to accept our fasting and our prayer and our charity and our standing at night and that we make that he makes this month the way it was meant to be a month of little food and little sleep, a month that we read ourselves of unnecessary lehu and lehu. Sisters and brothers, remember that it's not just quantity. It is also quality. You're not just meant to reduce the quantity of what you eat and drink and consume, but you're also meant to look at the quality of that too. So no more festive extras, right? Take away the extras. Put yourself in the shoes of those who truly don't have what you have. This is the definition of empathy and the only way to literally put as opposed to sympathy, right? To have empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of somebody who doesn't have what you have. And for you to do that you must actually work. It's not just a feeling, it's an actual working towards, which is what we do in Ramadan. So you minimize the food, you minimize the drink, you minimize the lehu and you minimize the lehu, right? You minimize all of these things and we hope that after 30 days of doing this that we actually have built healthy habits that become imprinted on who we are and it's last for a long time, inshallah. That Allah ﷻ make us people in Ramadan who learn to not be petty and trivial, who learn to be humble yet confident, who learn to become magnanimous souls, right? Who learn to have their insides match their outsides and have the inside and the outside both be beautiful. I mean, I ask you sisters and brothers to keep me and my family in your du'as, to keep each other in your du'as, to keep Zaytuna College, its students, its faculty, and its staff in your du'as. I ask you to remember Zaytuna College and support its efforts and to check out the new website and I ask you inshallah to please keep us in your most precious du'as this month and we all have a transformative month. Wa-alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wa-sallallahu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa-ala alihi wa sahbihi wa-sallamajma'een. And now inshallah we'll take a few questions. Alaykum wa-salaam. What advice do you give to those who suffer from anxiety and depression during Ramadan? The question was what advice do we give for those who suffer from anxiety and depression in Ramadan? And the answer to that I actually would recommend to you to look at the last year's video that we had of Imam al-Balkhi that talked about stress reduction and how you deal with things like anxiety from an Islamic framework and point of view but in a nutshell I would offer a couple of things. The first of which is to kind of recognize what's happening here. Really come to an understanding of why these emotions have overcome you and if you're able to figure out for yourself what the triggers are then you know inshallah what to avoid and what to work with. Imam al-Balkhi goes extensively in the discussion and we talked about this in the last session as well extensively in this discussion of how it is that you change the frame of thinking. And a lot of therapy or counseling is exactly that helping you overcome and change that frame of thinking the negative patterns that essentially have overtaken you. But I also want to tell you that sometimes this is not possible to do completely alone and there is nothing shameful in getting help when you need to get help. In fact this is the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam right that you get help when you need to get help. And so with that I would recommend that you also seek out people who can help you with the counseling. If it turns out that you're not able to figure these the triggers and difficulties out alone sometimes it is mild and it's possible for you too but sometimes it is not and I highly recommend you to seek out professional help and care. Those who have an understanding of Islam and really can integrate the two things together would be very useful inshallah. But that would be something I'd really focus on and as you're going through your month of fasting right really focusing on like we talked about the rajat and khuf right the wings of hope and fear really having the sense that Allah is going to see you through that if he brought you to this tribulation he's going to bring you through it inshallah. And that is something he has taken an oath upon himself to do so have confidence in that because Allah has said that this is something he will do but seek out the care and the help that you need and that would be my strongest recommendation. Can you say a few things about how to instill a love for Ramadan in children and young teens and how to help them understand Ramadan at a level beyond just abstinence from food and drink? I think that's a great question the idea of instilling the love of Ramadan or instilling the concept really of Ramadan in the hearts of our young people right children and adolescents that it's not just leaving food and drink behind and that's exactly I think what we're talking about with the three levels that Imam al-Ghazali talked about right where the first level is just food and drink and you're right that most children you know the concept of what they can attain is kind of like okay this is a month where we don't eat and drink from these hours to these hours right but mashallah children are amazing creatures they really have the ability to understand a lot more than you think they can so even when we talk about very theoretical ideas like we just shared right with Imam al-Ghazali he talks about the fast of the khawas and the khawas al-khawas right the elect and the elect of the elect right this too they can grasp so when you say to them the month of Ramadan is also the fasting of the heart this is a concept interestingly enough that children can actually grasp but let me give you a couple of examples how we said for example that Ramadan is a month of charity well that's not just a matter of putting some you know money into their Sadaqah box for the poor but rather going out of their way to do something that truly is filled with charity so maybe perhaps you kind of get them you have to purposefully put them in situations they can do that and really feel that they're giving and contributing to somebody maybe they're going to make something maybe they're going to sell something maybe they're going to do something that they take the profits of which and they feel the struggle in doing that to then be able to give to the poor right for some kids it's easy for them to put their hand in their their little bank and give Sadaqah away charity away but for others it's very difficult so you know your children which which has more which one there's more of a struggle and for the one who it's easy to just give money away maybe you do something completely different to really teach them and instill in them the real concept of Ramadan so you put them in a situation where that's something that they're not really too excited about right giving more time and more energy as opposed to just monetary right charity you take children for example and you you work with them on getting rid of with the law and the law so what does that mean for children well they have to feel that they're cutting a cutting back on something that is very otherwise totally fine and normal like maybe extra playtime right extra time on the the trampoline or maybe extra time playing at washing something right you kind of curb or even reading right novels and things that they're interested in doing and it's not that you have to substitute it with put and per se although that would be best right but you're substituting it with extra remembrance of a lot in some way or the other right even if it means that instead you're going to sit with them and actually do something with them or teach them or do some nashid with them right kind of remembrance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but in that they're understanding that I have to cut away some of my extra playtime or I have to cut away some of my extra whatever that's considered extra they go into their closet and they pick a new shirt they hadn't worn yet and they give that away in charity this is the instilling the concept of Ramadan that's really we're trying to instill even in children but never belittle their ability to understand never belittle their their ability to really grasp concepts that we think sometimes are too big for them but subhanallah they have much purer hearts than we do and they're much more generous subhanallah sometimes than we are as adults so don't superimpose your adult mind and soul and heart onto them let them grow in a way that they can subhanallah but give them the tools to do that. What advice do you give for those that create goals to achieve during Ramadan but are unable to keep them? People who have goals they want to achieve at Ramadan but can't quite reach them I would say keep your intentions high right with a group of students recently I had them do this exercise where they had to figure out the minimum amount that they promised themselves that they would not go under whether that was in Quran or whether that was in prayer like extra prayers or whether that was in charity every day of Ramadan they had to kind of come up with this idea that in this month of Ramadan I will not go under this many rakaz of tarawih I will not go under this many dollars given and maybe it was just one dollar right that was their minimum threshold I will not go under you know making sure that I call my mother every day right students right so things like this where they had to reach a certain amount minimum and then I had them think about the maximum think about in the most ideal situation what would they reach how much put on what they complete how many prayers and how much time in prayer would they spend if they had all the money in the world what would they give in charity right money time energy and so on knowledge and I had them do this exercise of the minimum and the maximum the reason being is because sometimes people get into this thing of like I need to pray 20 rakaz of tarawih every night Ramadan I'm going to and going to and going to and then they flop and when it doesn't happen they feel like they failed they had a failed journey of Ramadan but instead if you say to yourself look I'm going to get to the minimum minimum ideal minimal ideal threshold I'm going to pray at least eight rakaz and did you know that even two count as Ramadan as a tarawih excuse me that even two rakaz count as tarawih now that's not the ideal but I say that because sometimes the going gets rough sometimes a mother's you know a mother has a young baby who just doesn't want to go to sleep right and so she keeps on having to get up and she's not able to pray that night very much or maybe you have a monstrous exam final the next day and we're about to hit final season right and it's impossible you feel like to do both and then you feel really guilty that you put these goals and you couldn't reach them so now you understand why it is we do the minimum and the maximum right at least the minimum so you have this threshold that you reach that you know you definitely can reach there is and you can do it in your sleep right one dollar of charity two rakaz of tarawih maybe a couple verses of Qur'an you've done the bare minimum that way on when the day going gets rough and you have a difficult day you've met your minimum and you've promised yourself you're not going to fall under it but when you have a free day and a day that has time and energy and you're done with your finals and your and your kids able to sleep by all means it's not time to chit chat by all means it's not time to go watch a you know your show right it's time to stand on that prayer rug and pray and actually reach the 20 rakaz of tarawih right so I recommend that you do that for yourself and I think it would really help you modulate the two inshallah I think this will probably be the last question we can take um Maryam Ahmed from Virginia asks how do you keep the balance between making Ramadan exciting and motivating such as decoration and extra stuff while also getting rid of the extra law and allow so can you repeat the last part while also like lo like you know playing so if I understood the question how do you balance between the extra and how do you keep the balance between making Ramadan exciting and motivating while also getting rid of the extra kind of law law got it the level yes got it um yes definitely you know you said something about decorations in there Maryam and I think what's what's what's um I really highly by the way encourage decorations um you know because we're not in the Muslim lands right now where you just walk out your door and everything feels Ramadan right um here you have to take that extra step to really make sure that you even if you're alone I say this to my students who are in the dorms and I'll say to them look hang up something that has Ramadan that signifies Ramadan and at the very least clean your dorm room I'll say this not because I'm trying to be motherly but rather because you feel the spirit of Ramadan people have spring cleanings we need to have Ramadan cleanings do you know what I mean right so this idea and I've had the students come back actually the following weeks and say this really helped you know my little tiny dorm room but I actually cleaned it up and it really made a difference in being able to do I bath it in there and so I would say that this idea of really cleaning up right for Ramadan and putting up decorations for Ramadan and especially for A'id are incredibly important I don't consider those to be from the extras I think that that's actually a minimum threshold we should reach right as Muslims here in America because we need to have that as Western Muslims because it's you don't feel Ramadan when you get out there otherwise it doesn't really feel like Ramadan but in terms of what your question about the extras the balance between fun and between the low how do you balance between the two things this is where I'm meant by the creativity be creative as possible right whether it's for yourself or for your children right make sure that you are able to figure out the good balance between the two so for example here you have the this idea of for children like we said making sure that they really still have its summer vacation for many right so here they are in summer vacation and they want to have some fun they want to run and play and watch this and do that and go to camp and these other things that they do and you're saying to yourself it's Ramadan it's Ramadan I need to read I need to read Quran I need to pray and so now you're limiting them and you right and so that's that's not striking a balance at all instead what you do is you change your frame of thinking and you say to yourself Subhanallah in this time of my life and this these are my duties these children are children and they're not always going to remain children they're going to grow up before you know it will be gone or you say to yourself maybe you have elderly parents let's change the scenario you have elderly parents or in-laws that you're taking care of or grandparents and you say to yourself Subhanallah time flies too and that won't always be the stage that you're in but for now that is your duty and you should never be spiteful of your duties but rather you should be creative as they say to yourself look while I have to show for my kids to camp and make sure they still have a fun summer vacation and while I have to or I have to take care of my elderly parents right that in the meantime I'm going to make sure that I in the back of my mind do the dhikr or turn on the and instead of turning on something else TV or music or the like right that instead of spending that extra time on social media I'm going to switch it into spending time with the Quran and even if I get my 15 minutes in right alhamdulillah that was 15 minutes otherwise lost changing the frame of thinking and so thereby you balance your duties you balance fun or duties with reaching the spiritual heights of Ramadan that we hope inshallah that we all get to and we really transform ourselves in this month again I pray inshallah that Allah Almighty makes it a month of transformation and makes it inshallah a month where you really come out we all of us come out the other end beautiful butterflies with strong enough wings to really last the entire year well alhamdulillahi rabbal alameen I'm going to put in one last bonus question from somebody very special to myself who says sometimes after an iftar invitation at someone's home I feel too tired or lazy to go somewhere else to pray tarawih is it okay if I gather people to pray tarawih right there in the home absolutely by all means inshallah by all means of course the masjid has its special place and its special reward and it's you know doubling the reward because you're going to be praying in the house of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but by all means if you have people gathered even one other person gathered that's enough to make a jama'a a congregational prayer and to pray in fact if you have an iftar and if it's not possible to get to the masjid which is the priority but you couldn't reach that priority then by all means there has to be a tarawih in the home right and somebody should lead that mashallah and people should come together and pray together and I would highly highly recommend it inshallah and I would say that you should not have a gathering in which you didn't either go to the masjid for tarawih or have tarawih in your home if you can't do one or the other there shouldn't be a gathering altogether