 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin wa sallallahu ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi. Alhamdulillahi. Thank you all for taking the time to join. We are just having some technical difficulties. Just going to get this all set up and finalized. Bismillah. All right. So we are starting this conversation today about deceptive desires. And really the goal of this conversation is to help us understand in detail what desires are, help us understand and find ways to curb these desires, and to help us figure out ways to channel the energy that we channel towards desires in a little bit of a different direction. We're in a world right now where all of us, every single person is obeying some desire or another. You and I, we are created to worship. We will either worship God, we will worship money, we will worship fame, we will worship followers, we will worship something or another. And the human being has a desire inside of them. It is a desire to want to worship something, but not all of us worship the right thing. That's just something for us to keep in mind. We live in a time where people say, oh, why do you worship God? Why do you have a religion? Well, even if somebody doesn't actually say outwardly that they're worshiping God, inwardly they are worshiping something and they're just making that thing on a pedestal. They're putting that goal that they have on a pedestal, right? So in the, in the old days, you would have the idea of very, very formal shirk. There's a, there's a statue that somebody, you know, makes and they're going to bow down to the statue. And now those statues are more figurative statues that people erect and they bow down to those statues. And those are the different types of things that you and I worship. So Allah actually asks in the Quran, have you seen the one who takes his hawa, his desire as his Lord? And that's an important consideration for us to keep in mind because you and I can actually be worshiping our desire. Somebody who has unleashed and not tamed sexual desires can just be worshiping their sexual desires. Somebody who is not able to stop yelling at people and who's always getting mad at people, they're just worshiping their anger. They're really, really not able to control their anger. So in these conversations, we're going to be going through one desire a week, inshallah, if Allah gives us assistance. And we're just going to be talking frankly, we're going to talk frankly about things like sexual desire, talk frankly about the desire for fame, talk frankly about the desire for followers in this world of Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and YouTube and every single other social media platform that exists. Many of us, we are trying to always gain more followers. We're trying to get more likes. We're trying to get more people to validate us. And so we're going to talk a little bit about why that happens and what we can do to tame it and curb that energy in the right direction. So let's start a little bit with just what the framework for our desires is. So let's try and establish the framework for desires by thinking about how you and I are created. Allah says in the Quran that you and I are created weak. He says We are actually created with a very, very significant weakness inside of us. And this weakness actually makes us susceptible to so much more than we would want to be susceptible to. So you know, you would have those moments where you're like, I got everything under control. I'm conquering this. I'm conquering that. And the next thing you know, we screw up again. We fall short again. We slip again. And that's because that weakness that we have. Now, desire is also not something easy for us to control. Desire is something that is created by God to be strong. It's not supposed to be weak because it's not supposed to be easy. That's one framework. I want all of us to keep in mind as we have these conversations that the framework for success in life is that life has challenges and life has tests. And if everything were to be super easy, well, where is the test, right? If God is trying to reward us with heaven, then there has to be certain tests along the way. And it kind of an exam to see, okay, does this person going to get an A? Is this person going to get a B? Is this person going to get a C? What type of grades are they going to get? And then based on that is the final outcome. So the natural propensities that we have are supposed to be difficult to conquer. Imam al-Razali, one of the chief scholars in the religion of Islam, he actually says that the most difficult propensity inside the human being to deal with is that of desire. And he says it is the oldest capacity in humans, in the man. And it is the first thing to be created in a child. Now, so this opens up the conversation, is a desire a bad thing? Like, should we just eliminate desires? The answer is no, right? You have to have the desire to eat. I'm hungry right now. I need to go eat food at some point. If I don't eat, if I have no desire to eat, what's going to happen to me? Well, I'm going to eventually lose energy. I'm not going to be able to do anything. I'm not going to be able to do the work that it is that I need to do. I'm not going to be able to contribute in whatever way that is possible to society. And eventually, God forbid, you might actually die of hunger, right? The desire for the sexual desire that's created in the human being for a reason. You're not supposed to eliminate it. You're supposed to channel it in the right direction. You're supposed to channel that desire in the direction of permissible marriage. And then that allows somebody to, you know, appropriate, have kids and spread goodness and spread children in the world and hopefully spread Muslims in the world. So there are all these different types of desires. Again, our goal is not to eliminate them. The goal is to channel them in the right direction and to curb them and to make sure that they don't control us. One thing for us to always keep in mind how we can evaluate where we're at as human beings. If something is controlling us, if something is controlling you and me, something's wrong. If you and I are in control of whatever it is that's inside of us, right? Ultimately, Allah is in control. But if we are able to control ourselves, then that means we're progressing along the path well. So never let something control you. Never let your impulse to, you know, just eat everything it is that you see control you. Never let the different things that you and I might be tempted to do, might be tempted to look at, might be tempted to engage with. Don't let anything control you because you and I are supposed to be the ones in control of our inner world. So let's talk a little bit about what desire is. And then let's talk a little bit about how we go about balancing it. So desire is a natural propensity inside of the human being, a natural propensity which makes us want to engage in whatever activity it is that we are talking about, right? So our goal is to bring this desire into a state of moderation. It is to bring the desire into a state of moderation. Just one second here, just want to check something. All right, sorry about that. So the goal is to bring the desire into a state of moderation. We want to bring it into equilibrium. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that somebody is like always overeating, like just all the time they're overeating, right? Well, the goal there would be to bring that desire of overeating into moderation of eating at normal times by doing what? What would we have to do? What the scholars recommend is you actually have to fast in order to bring the overeating into balance, right? How does that work? Well, if you fast, if you on one end of the spectrum is somebody who just eats everything it is that they see, and on the other end of the spectrum is somebody who is trying to regularly and constantly fast in order to bring the person who's overeating into the middle. You can't just reduce the food by a little bit. You actually have to start fasting and go on the other side of the spectrum, because if you go on the other side of the spectrum, you are now able to balance this desire and bring it into the equilibrium that you need to bring it into, right? So that's something for us to really keep in mind. The goal is not to eliminate it is to bring this desire into equilibrium. This is going to be the case with every single thing it is that we're talking about, right? You can use the desire for food to eat everything that's halal and that's haram. You can use the desire to enjoy, to drink, and to drink alcohol and to party. You can use those desires in the wrong direction. Your goal is going to be to channel them in the right way and ultimately to bring all these desires into a state of equilibrium. So another very, very common desire that we have. What is it? That desire would be the desire for the desire for anger, right? It's a very, very normal tendency in the human being to get angry. So how do we balance this tendency to get angry? Well, what we're supposed to do is we're not supposed to eliminate anger. You don't get rid of anger, but you channel anger in the right direction because Allah says in the Quran that those who restrain their anger, He says, that those who restrain their anger, so when you're really upset, when you're just about to unleash on somebody, the goal is to restrain anger. It's something I know personally I need to work on, right? That if I'm getting in a moment of anger, how do I go about restraining it? Now if the human being completely eliminated anger, let's say that desire for anger was just gone inside of you, well, how are you going to get upset about wrongs that are happening in the world? How are you going to get out of sight about social injustices? How are you going to get upset about things that people are doing that they shouldn't be doing, right, about corruption and all these other problems that happen in the world? How are we going to get upset about that? Well, that faculty of anger and the desire of anger is in there to help us get upset about the right things and to not focus on the petty stuff that is that we get angry about. So it's to again bring it into equilibrium. So in this kind of treatment of desires, you have a variety of different types of people. So we're just going to roughly categorize the types of people that you have when we're talking about desires. And again, class is focused on deceptive desires. We're going to be talking, inshallah, at a different desire every single week. And the focus for right now is just to help us give a little bit of a framework for what a desire is, how do we go about understanding it. So you have somebody, and these are from Imam al-Khazali, he says, you have somebody who's like never really ever had their desires aroused. And so they can really quickly respond to treatment. They can really quickly treat the desires and bring them all into equilibrium. That category of person I doubt exists in the modern world today, but maybe there's a couple people out there. If so, let us know how you're doing. But then there's a second category. This is the category of somebody who recognizes when they're following desires. They recognize their kind of foul acts. And at the same time, they sometimes behave in the proper ways, but they're not necessarily in the habit of behaving righteously or of taming their desires. This person has to uproot the corruption and uproot the desires and then go through a process of self-discipline in order to actually tame the desires. That's the goal for this person. Then you have somebody, this third category, is someone who actually thinks that following your desires, like just unleashed following our desires is a good thing. And this person is generally going to struggle to change, but it's still possible. And then finally, you have the person who boasts about being arrogant. They boast about how many girls they slept with, how many people they've hooked up with illicitly about all the different partying it is that they've done. They boast about these types of things. Now, again, there's nothing wrong with changing your life after you and I slip up in those areas. But there's definitely something problematic about boasting about all of the things that we've done that are actually bringing negativity and negative energy inside of ourselves and in society. So the person who loves corruption, who loves evil, they're very difficult to change. Somebody like the president of the United States who just left the presidency, thank God, just completely just obviously corrupt inside. And then his corruption was so bad inside that it just seeped throughout the whole country. You have hundreds of thousands of millions of people in fact who are corrupt now because of the fact that one person's corruption was so strong, it impacted others. Keep that in mind. You can have a light that's so strong inside that impacts others and you can have a darkness that's so strong inside that it impacts others. So those are the couple categories of people. Now let's think a little bit about how do we channel these desires. So we talked about what these desires are and we spoke about the different categories of people that exist and we also spoke about the fact that we need to bring these desires into some state of equilibrium. That is the goal, bring the desires into a state of equilibrium. You and I have to understand ourselves in order to really ever succeed in life. Keep that in mind. We cannot succeed in life if we don't understand ourselves in some way or another. What does that mean? Look, I can understand myself outwardly. Like, oh, okay, I look like this. I'm this tall. I weigh this much. I like these things. I'm interested in this. I'm not interested in this. This is a basic level of understanding. You can do that. But the goal of the human being, there's actually a statement that one of the righteous said that the one who knows themself, himself or herself knows their Lord. The first process of starting to discover the meaning, you know, people ask you, what's the meaning of life? The first way to start to discover the whole meaning of this whole place that we're in is to start to get to know yourself. And it's to get to know the good and the bad. It's not difficult to get to know the good. Everybody likes to get to know the good. We love when people tell us, oh, you're like this. Oh, you're so, you know, you're so nice and you're so kind and generous and, you know, you're good looking and you're helpful, but all the different things that is that people tell us and, you know, the ego, the nofs, it likes that. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, keep it coming. You know what I mean? Like, keep the praise coming, keep the likes coming. They love, it loves that. But what's hard to get to know, so that's easy to get to know the good about yourself. And it's important to know the good about yourself so you can amplify it. What's difficult is to get to know the bad about yourself. The things like, you know what, where am I weak? What are my blind spots? Where do I struggle? What are the things that I'm that I'm that are challenged for me? That's difficult, right? But that doesn't mean it's impossible. It does not mean that you cannot know the bad about yourself. It just takes a little bit more work. And so this is a very, very important aspect of this journey of spiritual purification and this journey of spiritual progress to actually uncover and deeply think about the parts inside of us that we need to work on. But in order to know that, you got to know what your inner world looks like. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. So you and I see every day we see the outer world, right? We see everything going on, everything that's that's happening in the outside that our eyes are able to see. There's also something called the inner eye. The inner eye is a part in us that's able to penetrate and see the inner realities of people. And first and foremost, understand our own inner reality. This is something that the more somebody progresses spiritually, if Allah wishes to gift them with this, they are given this gift. And this is based on Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He says, beware of the Firasah of the Motmin, beware of the piercing inner sight of the believer, because barely the believer sees by a very, very powerful piercing sight. So let's understand what this inner world looks like. You and I have a couple parts. You have what's called the nafs. So imagine the nafs is in the middle. Then you have the nafs is the ego. It's the lower self. Then you have the door to the spiritual world. And that's called the Ruh, the spirit. And then you have the nafs, which is the door to the dunya. It's the door to all of the things that can pull us down about this world, the fame and the followers and the money and the sexual desire. So that's the nafs. The nafs is the door to the dunya and the world. The spirit is the door to the spiritual world, the unseen. The idea of spirituality is the more you work on refining your spirit, the more access you have to these unseen lights and unseen breezes which bring about tranquility and calmness and all these other wonderful gifts that help somebody. In the middle, I misspoke earlier, in the middle you have the heart. So there's a little heart. You have the heart in the middle, you've got the spirit on this side, you have the nafs on this side. Now, the more you obey your desires, the stronger the nafs gets. So the nafs is like, so you're working it out, or you're working out this arm, the stronger the nafs gets, right? The more you obey and sorry, that you don't obey the desires and that you follow the practice of self-discipline and you work on yourself, the stronger the spirit gets, right? So now the spirit is getting a chance to work out. And then in the middle is the heart. Now the heart is going to be influenced by whichever side is stronger. The heart is just kind of like, you could almost say this like innocent bystander and all this that's getting influenced by these two sides, right? This isn't easy. The heart has, the spirit has angels that are helping it. The nafs has the devil and are the Shayat, the various Shayatin that are helping it, right? So these are the different types of desires that these are the different categories of the inner world of the human being. Now, what is our goal? The goal is when people say the idea of like purifying the heart, right? It is about taming the desires so that the nafs doesn't get strong, you want to weaken the nafs, right? So like my non-existent biceps here, you want to make them completely go away on the side of the nafs and you want to make the other the spirit strong. You want to make the spiritual biceps strong, you want to make the spirit in a very, very formidable place, right? That is really the goal. What happens then is the heart starts to get purified and now you can actually start to listen to your heart. People say, right, this idea of like, oh, you got to listen to your heart, but you can actually start to listen to your heart because you know that the heart is in a state of... Sorry about this. The heart is in a state of purity, right? So when the heart is in a state of purity, you can start listening to the heart, but don't follow your heart when it's not pure. That's going to mess you up because you actually could be following the nafs. Most of the time, we are following the nafs. Most of the time when people say that I'm going to listen to the heart, it's the nafs has been working on us for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And so really the heart is like this small little thing that's just gotten overtaken by our desires. So that's very, very important to keep in mind. And then, and I don't want to get too, you know, hopefully it's not too confusing. Next time, you know, see that white board, I'll try to draw on that white board. Hopefully you'll be, you know, able to read it. I've heard that my head writing is very legible, but Claire, that's why we have keyboards and you can type. All right, I'm the la. So the inside of the nafs, the last thing is there's this thing called hawa. That is the word for desire. The hawa is like speaking to the nafs, right? In addition to Sheytan, it's like, oh, do this. Oh, do that. Do this. Come on. Just look one more time. Do, you know, go. It's all good if you, you know, go and work that job that you shouldn't be working and, you know, go and go gamble. It's all good if you drink a little bit. A couple more hits of that pipe. It's not going to do anything. Go take a hit of your pay pen, right? It's the hawa is literally like whispering things partly inside of us. It's a desire inside of us. It can also get strong and makes enough strong. And we haven't even spoken really much about Sheytan. Like the devils are here to make things even worse for us, right? They actually continue to nudge at us, nudge at us, nudge at us in order to make the nafs stronger. So all this to say, goal is what? Eliminate, sorry, curb the desire, make the nafs weak, make the spirit strong, you become strong, life becomes easier to navigate, and inshallah it ends in a good outcome. That's the kind of very, very basic formula that you and I have. But our goal then, as these desires come, is we just want to keep trying to bring them into equilibrium. We want to bring these desires into equilibrium. So now I'm just going to talk at a very, very high level about the ways in which these desires are formed inside. So you have different parts in you. And these are all based on a framework established by the scholars of the spirituality, especially Imam al-Hazali. And they basically talk about, like I said, the nafs, the rouh, which is the spirit and the heart. You also have these faculties working inside of you. And they're basically teaching you or they're bringing you down. So you have what's called the rational faculty, which is the intellect. The rational faculty is supposed to be in control and in charge. The intellect is supposed to be telling you what to do. So do this, don't do that. That's why knowledge is so important. Gaining knowledge is so important because the intellect becomes more powerful. The more powerful the intellect is, the more in a good way. We're talking about spiritual knowledge here, not just like going and learning a bunch of facts and figures and then, you know, being intellectually arrogant. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the more and more the intellect knows and understands the religion, the more it's able to guide the rest of the body. Got it? Then you have another thing inside of you called the appetitive faculty. The appetitive faculty is the faculty inside of you, which primarily governs the desire for sex and the desire for food. These are what are called the chief mother desires inside the human being. Somebody who cannot control these will not be able to control any desires, which is usually what you'll see really corrupt people. Again, like the past president of the US who completely was just unleashed with his sexual desires and just was not able to control any other desire on top of that. It eventually led for a corrupt desire for power. He tried to even hold on to power, tried to stage a coup. You see where this leads. You see how evil just one or two untamed desires can make somebody and then how far that darkness spreads. So this appetite of faculty, it governs the desires inside of you, the appetite of faculty, talking about the desire for food and sex. We'll talk about those in the coming weeks, inshallah. The person who's able to control, right, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, he said, the one who's able to guarantee me what's in between their mouth and what's in between their private parts, I can guarantee for them heaven. That's talking about the food, right, according to many of the scholars and the tongue overall, like in terms of being able to control your tongue. And so you could also say anger and the private parts, meaning sexual relations. Some, excuse me, somebody's able to control these two. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, he can guarantee them heaven because they're very, very difficult to control. Excuse me. So all of this to say that you want your intellect to be in charge and you want the intellect to govern you. That's what you and I want. We want the rational faculty to be in charge. And then we have the appetite of faculty, which is the faculty which controls most of our desires. We want that faculty to be in submission to the intellect. Those are the two basic ones that we want to cover for today. So our goal then over time is any desire that we have, we just think about it. This works for all traits, but specifically for desires, you just want to bring it into equilibrium. So it's like somebody is completely doing, we mentioned food earlier, let's say sexual desire. Someone is just on Tinder all the time or they're addicted to pornography, all the things that are very, very prevalent today. And if you're a parent of somebody who is a teenager, especially teenage boys, just be very aware that it's highly likely that they're getting exposed to very, very dangerous and haram imagery out there that in a time when their desires are just developing and stimulating the desires in a very, very wrong way. So conversations are very important to have as families. So we have this desire that can get out of control. Someone in that state would need to regulate that desire, right? There's spiritual medicine someone can apply it. Proposal something indicated to us that if somebody, sexual desires are out of control, they should fast and that will help tame them. Why? Because these ones are linked, as we just mentioned, and they help clean the inner world and they clean the desires and they bring it into equilibrium or they can get married and permissively they can then engage in sexual relations. That will help channel and that desire in the right direction. So that's a perfect example of how to bring something in to balance. We just want to slowly and slowly bring these things into balance. And so our goal then over the course of these conversations is we're just going to be talking about the very, very obvious desires and then eventually we'll get into the more subtle desires that exist inside of the human being. The more subtle desires are those desires that the desire for religious people to notice you in religious gatherings, the desire for people to praise you, those types of things. And then of course we'll talk about the more obvious ones like sexual desire, desire for food, desire for excessive desire for money, the desire for being in charge, the desire for power, the desire for people to listen to you, the desire for arguing, all those types of things we'll try to cover. And then the more we can bring this into equilibrium, if Allah wills, the more successful we're going to be in our life. And so we'll end here with a story of somebody who's a very, very important figure in the history of Islam in America, Malcolm X. So for those who know the story of Malcolm, Malcolm, every single desire it is that was out there, Malcolm before his Islam was engaged in it, right? Hustling, dealing, gambling, drinking, smoking. I mean, everything it is that you could think of, right? Sexual relationships. But then Malcolm X, he eventually found, right, the nation of Islam, and then eventually he found Islam. And you saw somebody who, and it's not like it's just like a magic switch that happens, and someone just completely stops all the stuff that they were doing before Islam. There's still work that has to be put in. And you saw somebody who they might have been the most deeply engaged wherever they were on the streets, let's say, or when they were hustling. There might have been most deeply engaged in certain desires, and then they were able to curb those desires. And then what happened? Not only did he curb those desires, he got all of his desires into equilibrium, and then he channeled the most powerful desire. This is a secret. The most powerful desire are not the weak ones. It's called the highest desire that you and I have is the desire for knowledge. If somebody becomes really into learning, especially having the desire to know Allah, the knowledge of Allah, then the desires that are inside of them, the other desires will automatically start to get tamed, inshaAllah, because they will be focused on a higher purpose. And they will already put some work into taming those desires. So what happened with Malcolm? When Malcolm was in jail, he would read an insane amount. He would literally be reading, and they would close the jail, they would close the lights at a certain time, and Malcolm would have a light that he would be reading with. And then when the guard would come by to just check on every single cell, Malcolm would close the light and close the book. And then the guard would leave and he would keep reading. That's how much his desire for knowledge increased. And then his desire for learning about Allah, learning about Allah's religion increased, such that he became somebody who was into learning and then into spreading knowledge and spreading justice. And that desire became so strong. It's a good desire. It's a good desire because our goal is to channel the desires that pull us down. You and I have desires that are pulling us this way. There's to slowly channel them, bring them onto the horizontal playing field, and then slowly channel them vertically towards Allah. What does that mean? We can desire Allah. You can desire Jannah. You can desire getting to know Allah. You can desire the love of Allah, all positive things. If those desires become powerful enough in the human being, these lowly desires that you and I have, we stop wanting to follow them. Because you're like, dude, there's so much more I could be doing. Who cares about this? Who cares about getting high when I could be getting spiritually high in the right way? Who cares about these things? So these desires, he channeled the desires from literally being dragged down and then he started to be pulled up, a magnetic pull. He channeled these desires in the most positive direction, alhamdulillah. He was then able to go out and he was able to spread immense good, bring people who are struggling with significant parts of their life back into goodness. And he was able to become one of the most, if not the most significant Islamic figure in the history of the United States. I mean Subhanallah, Malcolm X. Look at this type of impact that he had all because he was able to control his desires and he was able to bring them into a state of equilibrium. So that is the type of potential that you and I have. We can't let the lowliness of desires, the lowliness of this dunya, the lowliness of all these appetites that we have bring us down. That's what animals do. The animals, they just, all they want to do is like they want to eat, they want to be with other animal, they want to copulate. That's all animals want to do. That's not what you and I were created for. We do that stuff at a limited level. We bring it into equilibrium and we focus on what's important in life. What's important in life is getting the desire to be focused vertically on getting to know Allah, the desire for loving Allah, the desire for loving the messenger of Allah, the desire for spreading clear, the desire for spreading good, the desire for serving, all these types of desires are positive ones that we can bring about once we tackle the basic ones. So inshallah we'll spend the next couple of weeks talking about the basic ones. We'll talk about how we work on them. And then of course the work comes in and we have to, it's a lifelong struggle. It's a lifelong journey that we put in, that we have to put work in, detaining each and every single desire. We work on ourselves, then we try to help our families and then our communities, societies and so on and so forth. Allah says in the Quran that He does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. So we got to work on what's in ourselves and Allah will start to change our condition, change the condition of our family, and then hopefully He will allow us to help change the condition of the society that we live in to help bring it out of the state of immense corruption and immense obsession with the wrong type of desires, bring it into equilibrium. So we pray that Allah blesses everybody. We pray that He blesses the efforts that we're trying to make and we pray that He assists everybody. We'll do a short prayer, a short dua and then we'll go ahead and end. We're going to try to keep these classes 30, the 35 minutes inshallah. So we'll do Wednesday every evening, 7 p.m. PST inshallah, 7 to 7. 30. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. We ask that you accept this. We ask that you pardon us. We ask that you allow us to curb our desires and to channel our desires in the right way and to bring them into a state of equilibrium. We ask that you put barakah and all of the efforts it is that people are doing Allah to spread your religion. We ask that you allow the Prophet to be pleased with all of us and we ask that you are pleased with all of us and we ask that you forgive all of those it is that have passed away from COVID and from any other disease amongst the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ in the recent days and in the recent weeks and that you grant them the highest stations of paradise and all those who are sick in our families and are the families of our loved ones that you cure them and that you remove all difficulty from our life and from their life and that you bring immense barakah and immense khair into our life and anybody who it is that is here that is struggling or that intended to be here or that is just making any good intention anywhere in the world that has any difficulty Ya Rabbil Alameen that you remove all their difficulty that you bring khair and ease and positivity and happiness and optimism into their life that you remove all of our anxieties and depressions that it should bless all of our affairs inwardly and outwardly in this world and the next. Thank you so much. So today we are going to be talking about the different types of desires that a human being has and we're going to just do a quick recap in terms of what we covered last time and then we're going to dive into a couple of the different categories of desires that you can think of that you and I might have. So last time we just talked more about the introduction and the framework for how desires work, what are the types of desires that we have and this time really the goal is to help us develop a deeper understanding of why desires can be so negative for us, why they can hurt us and why obeying our desires can be so harmful for us as human beings. So a couple of things for us to keep in mind first is that Allah mentioned in the Quran that the one who restrains their nuts from following its desires that for them heaven is the reward for that right. So Allah alludes to this in the Quran regularly that if you control yourself inshallah you're going to get a reward, you're going to get heaven or you're going to get some other type of reward for it and so that's important because what we're seeing is that the path to heaven, the path to the pleasure of God, the path to goodness is facilitated and really the path is set up in a way that we have to control our desires in order to get to the end goal right. So if we control these desires, if we control our sexual desire, our desire for food, our desire for fame and wealth and all these other things that we have inside of us we will be able to travel that path in a more effective way but if you obey your desires, whether they are the apparent ones or the subtle ones, whether you're following the desire to outwardly go and do something that you shouldn't be doing because of a carnal appetite or whether you're obeying some inner desire to get noticed and you pray only so people can praise you and you give charity only so people can tell you how awesome you are and how wealthy and generous you are, whatever desire you're following that that leads away from the path of heaven and so that's just one major point for us to keep in mind here. And as you know folks have questions, the live chat feature at least in YouTube is working so please feel free to chime in with questions I'll do my best to address them which I love. So we covered, we discussed this just briefly, the types of desires that you have I want to dive into it a little bit more in this class so our goal is to go from basic carnal appetites to what are called the stronger spiritual desires. So as I mentioned, the goal is not to eliminate your desires, you do not have to get rid and be a desire-free person. Islam is not the type of religion that says that you have to become completely abstinent in everything and you have to achieve kind of a monk type of status. No, alhamdulillah, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was our role model. He married, he ate food, he fasted and he broke his fast. He didn't fast every single day, not feel fast, of course in Ramadan he did, but he would pray at night and he would also sleep at night. He married, he engaged in relationships. So this idea of complete abstinence from the desires that we have to completely eliminate them, that's not what we're talking about here. The goal though is to curb our desires, it's to get them in control. You don't want anything controlling you. Think about this as a human being, only Allah should control you. Don't let something else your lust or some desire for food or some bank account or some money or all these types of things control you. No, when you get an inclination, they're like, oh, I have a decision I could make. I could go and buy a car and live within my means and buy a car that I can afford in either a 0% APR loan or buy a car that I can afford all cash. Or you could get the super fancy, the Mercedes, the BMW or whatever it is and it requires you taking on an interest loan. Well, desire leads you to Haram. So you following that desire to be the big boss and to be the big shot and drive the car, it is that you might want, but you can't afford it and requires an interest loan. We might not think of it as a big deal, 1% APR, 2% APR, but that's technically, I mean, not technically, it's very validly Haram. But which part of us, how do we go about controlling that? It's about limiting the desire for the person who doesn't have a desire in the first place to go beyond their means, who doesn't have a desire in the first place for significant wealth or all these luxuries or status or these types of things, they're not going to go and do these types of things. So that's something for us to keep in mind. So now let's get to the way for us to travel from following these carnal appetites to actually achieving these more spiritual desires it is that the human being has. So the basic appetites that you and I have, we had the basic appetites of sexual appetite, the appetite for food, those that's what everything's built on and then the appetite for money and the desire for wealth and the desire for status, those are those are other ones. Those are the things that pull us down. Okay, those things pull us down. What you want to go to is you want to traverse up spiritual journey is a journey upwards, it's a journey towards a closer relationship with Allah. So in order to traverse upward, you have to desire up things that are high up there. Does that make sense? So hopefully we want to desire what are called spiritual desires. So what does that mean? It means that we want to have a couple of things. There is a way to transform yourself. There is a way for Allah to transform you for an inner alchemy to happen that rather than desiring these base things, you start desiring high things like what? You start desiring love of Allah. You start desiring tranquility. You start desiring peaceful moments so you can worship Allah. You start desiring knowledge. You start desiring moments where you can learn. You start desiring sitting with wise people who can teach you. These are the types of things that human beings can actually start to channel their desires. So rather than somebody who's like parting all the time or clubbing or just caught up in all the different things that we can be caught up with especially in Western society, you start to channel those desires into the right direction and start to focus on what would be called these higher value spiritual desires. So that is very, very important. That is the goal of this path for us to take the carnal desires and for us to traverse instead of just following the carnal appetites, we try to shift those carnal appetites upwards and we instead eliminate the carnal aspect of them and we start to channel them towards spiritual desires. So now you and I know the goal. What's the goal? We got to get from A to B. We got to get from the situation we're in right now to a higher situation where we start desiring the right types of things. Now this is a journey though. It's not easy. This journey requires inner work and inner balancing. What you and I want is we want to figure out what are the different keys that will unlock different parts of us that will allow us to traverse this journey. So self mastery is what becomes important here. You and I might have heard of this concept self mastery. It is the idea of literally mastering your nafs, of mastering yourself. Your self, your nafs does not dictate you. You are not a slave to your nafs. You are not a slave to your desires. You are a slave to Allah. If you were a slave to Allah, you would desire Allah. You will love Allah. You will want Allah. You will yearn for Him. Allah says in the Quran, those people who have a yearning and they're aspiring to Allah. He mentions that. So that's what we want to be from. We want to be from the people who have this desire to get close to our Lord. That's not going to work if we're caught up in all these other types of things. So we have to reduce those things. We have to channel the energy in the right direction. But it requires hard work. It does require hard work. So just think about it like this. If somebody who wants to play a game, let's say they're playing a sports game, right? The Super Bowl just happened. And the team that won the Super Bowl, for them to win is Tom Brady and his team. For them to win the Super Bowl, you think it was just like there's chilling all the time, drinking and hanging out and eating food? I doubt that. No, they were working out. They were hustling. They were practicing. They were up early and working out. They are in different various games. They are of course winning all the different games in the season. And then they get to the Super Bowl and then they have to work really hard in that game to actually win. So that required work. But the work paid off, right? It paid off in a reward. You got a ring and you get a trophy and all these types of things. And you get bragging rights to say you won. But other than that, the reward is limited to this world. But they put in the hard work, the sweat, the blood, sweat and tears in the hard work in order to hustle to make it happen. Now think about this. You and I, we have a chance to put in the hard work to conquer ourselves. And we get way more reward than the simple reward of winning a Super Bowl or getting some money or some prize or status in this life. That's nothing. We get the reward of, inshallah, eternal jannah, eternal jannah, eternal paradise, no worries, no sicknesses, no problems, no challenges, all calmness and tranquility and hanging out with the prophets. May Allah bless all of them and bestow peace and blessings upon all of them, right? No family tensions and problems and illnesses and COVID and all these types of things. And let alone blessings upon blessings upon blessings, abundant blessings that Allah showers upon His servants in paradise. But it takes hard work to get there, right? It comes in the hadith of the Prophet Sallam. He said that paradise is surrounded by difficult things. And so it makes it easy to get to. And that hellfire is surrounded by beautiful things. And so it's you, you, you, you will yearn and incline that the desire in you will incline towards the path of the hellfire unless you and I tame our desires. When we start to tame our desires, our self becomes okay with the hard work and the self mastery needed in order to achieve the best outcome, which is the outcome of traversing the path to paradise. So let's talk a little bit about what types of desires exist. So you have the obvious ones and then you have the subtle ones. So I think I've already mentioned the obvious ones like a lot, but I'll just mention again, sexual appetite, appetite for food, the desire for money, the desire for fame, the desire for significant amounts of wealth, the desire to be in charge, the desire to be famous, the desire to have followers. These are all like in the last couple are very much linked, right? You'll see people in this society, they will do everything it is that they could and they'll be really promiscuous. And generally speaking, they have no control over their food and their diet many times. And then after they get to a certain point, it's not about that stuff. Like, well, now I got to make as much money as possible through whatever means as possible. And then while they're doing that, what are they spending their money on? They're spending, many people are spending their money on, you know, activities that they shouldn't be doing, going clubbing and this type of thing, open drinking, having tabs at the bar that are like thousands of dollars, right? Just overdoing and living this excessively lavish, unnecessarily exuberant, extravagant life. Then, oh, that's not enough. Well, now I got to be in charge. Maybe I'll run for office. Maybe I'll be, maybe I'll try to get to the CEO status of my company. That's still not enough because the NUS is never full. Now I want to be famous. I got to run for office and be famous. I got to be in charge of people. I got to be powerful. I want followers. Now everybody can get followers because of these different social media platforms. You'll see the desire goes on and on and on. And it never leaves you. It never leaves you. Different desires target different people depending on the age you're at, but you see this in politicians all the time. I mean, I see it even in the President of the United States, the past president, all these desires were extremely manifest in his life journey. And up to the point where the desire to be in charge was so manifest that he was trying to stage a coup in order to stay in charge. That's just desire and all NUS. Definition of NUS is that, right? The NUS cannot handle losing. The NUS cannot handle people when they don't praise you. And so that example was an example of pure NUS. You and I follow an example of spirit, of the Prophet ﷺ, who is a spiritual, who is our spiritual guide, right? He is the Prophet ﷺ. He is the one who teaches us how to attain stations of spirituality that draw us nearer to, nearer to Allah. Excuse me. So those are their parent desires. Those are obvious. The NUS, it likes those desires, you know? It likes those desires. And so it's obvious. But remember this, the NUS, one time, one of my teachers told me, he said that the NUS will try to take its share of everything, including obedience. It will take its share in obedience. And Ibn Ata'illah in the Hikm, he mentions this, that the NUS wants its share in everything. So now let's get into obedience. Why does the NUS want its share in obedience? Well, what the NUS wants here is it wants to be noticed in some way or another. So with disobedience, it's very clear. What is the NUS getting? It's getting fulfillment of these different appetites. But when you start worshiping Allah and you start trying to get close to him, you start following the religion, you want to, now what the NUS says is like, how can I get a portion of this? So it says, oh, you should pray so people can tell you, look at how great you are. Oh, you should do this so people can say, look at how religious you are. Oh, you should say this so that people can praise you. Oh, Masha'Allah, Masha'Allah, oh, you should do this so people can like your status. Oh, you should post this religious statement or any statement, whatever, so people can praise you in this way or another. Oh, you should do this, give this much money so people can tell you how generous you are. Oh, you should learn knowledge so people can say, wow, look at this guy, look at this girl. She knows so much. This is the NUS trying to get its share in obedience. And this is very much a possibility. It comes in a very, very, very famous hadith with the Prophets of Islam indicated that one of the first people to be thrown in the Hellfire will be the scholar who taught people so that people could say he was knowledgeable and the scholar who recited Quran so that people could praise him, not for the sake of Allah. And this is what's happening here is that the desire, the NUS is taking its portion of the worship and the desire, this is called, these are called apparent subtle desires. So you have obvious desires, you have the subtle ones that are hidden. Once you break past the obvious desires, you've got to work on the subtle desires. Because if you don't, you can still be ruined. You can still be ruined in this life and in the next, Allah protect us, but it's not just about defeating the apparent ones. But Allah starts to help you. Allah helps always. Allah says that he, that he takes the believers out of darkness and into light. And Allah is the protecting friend of the believers and he takes them out of darkness into light. And so know that Allah can take you out of the darkness, desire into the light of trying to obey him and the darkness of obeying him for the wrong reason into the light of obeying him for the right reason. And the darkness of insincerity to the light of sincerity. As allah to Allah, he will inshallah do it. But we have to put in the effort Allah says in the Quran that whoever strives in our way surely we shall guide them. So you and I put in the effort and we know that hadith where you go to Allah walking and Allah comes running, right? You go into him a hand span, he comes an arm span. So we put in that effort. But the apparent desires are there. So don't discount them. Don't think, oh, you know, I'm not drinking. I'm not smoking. I'm not clubbing. I'm not, you know, on tinder all the time. I'm not doing, if you are doing all those things, there's a lot of hope. Allah will forgive you inshallah and Allah will facilitate a path to goodness. Don't let anybody ever tell you like you're too kind of, you know, sinful or, or, or messed up for salvation. No, nobody has that right to say anything. Allah is a Rahim. But some people might think that, oh, you're caught up in these types of things. And once I leave them, oh, I'm good. I figured it out. I'm bound for heaven. I got my spot reserved in heaven. You know, it's not how it works, right? Because there's still work to be done. And I have to work on a daily basis on a weekly basis on ourselves. The nafs will always try to trick us with something or another. It's tricks that are up its sleeve, trying to get to you. And the desires have to be conquered in order for the nafs to be defeated. So as we just mentioned, now there are a couple other things to keep in mind. The more you obey anyone desire, the stronger it gets. As I mentioned last time, it's like feeding. It's like you feed that desire. So the more you follow, let's say with sexual appetite, this one's obvious. The more one follows their sexual appetites, the more they're going to want to continue to engage in illicit sexual relations, right? And so you have somebody who's just not able to control themselves here. The more you eat and overeat, the more you're going to want to overeat. So this culture in the U.S. of buffets and this type of thing, it encourages regular overeating and unhealthy foods don't help with that. And then of course, you know that the country has no obesity problem. So this is because desires are followed. And then you have like ads come up like seven up or a sprite, whichever one says obey your thirst, right? These are targeted ads to make you obey the nuffs. It's really just saying obey the nuffs, right? Obey your thirst, obey your desire. So it tries to get you to obey that desire for food or for beverages and whatnot. So that being said, simple solution here, you lessen that amount that you do of that thing and it will start to get better, right? People who have pornography addictions, let's say, which is a very big problem in the Muslim community, unfortunately, but it is a problem. And unfortunately, it's not talked about that much either. The more one works on themselves and reduces the amount that they are engaging in or watching, the more they will be able to conquer that desire. It doesn't go away completely. That desire has to be eventually curved then into a halal situation or one gets married is able to release that in the right way. So that's the kind of high level path. But here's the tricky thing. When you get into this subtle desires, we have a parent ones and subtle ones. When you get into the subtle ones, the more you follow the subtle ones, the more your nuffs will trick you into thinking that you're all that and you don't really need work on yourself. So the other ones, it's obvious that you and I know, okay, for, you know, doing something very obviously haram like, okay, I got to stop. But the nuffs doesn't work like that. When you start to say, oh, I'm going to worship so people can notice me or I'm going to speak or I'm going to, I'm going to learn so people can say this about me, this type of thing. I'm going to, I'm going to try to get followers so that I can be, get more and more influence in the hearts of people. What's happening here is that their words affect you in a way you don't know. And the people's eyes and their gaze at you and all the different ways that they're following you affect you in ways you don't know. And that gets subtle because it makes the nuffs stronger, but the nuffs tricks you into thinking that it's becoming weaker. So hopefully this makes sense as you get more and more religiously oriented and worship oriented, the nuffs will get to a point where it's like, look at you, you're that you're all that you're the most religious person in your family. You're like, you're the person who like, you know, your family wears a job and has a beard at this, this and that. And nobody else does that. Look at you. And then what people end up doing is the nuffs tricks them so much. And I've seen this happen that they'll spend all this time talking back, talking smack about other people because they're going to look at this person and that person doesn't do this. And this person doesn't cover theirs. And this person doesn't dress like this. And they're just losing all their good deeds and backbiting. Meanwhile, they're puffed up thinking that there's something. That's the nuffs, that's desire being followed. And we ask that Allah protect us because they're very subtle things that can completely ruin our good actions. Right. So the path then is a path of self-control and the path is a path of working on ourselves and rejecting these impulses and rejecting these desires when they come. And we have to just be on guard for whatever subtle one comes up or apparent one comes up. So I'm going to just give a kind of very general review of how the scholars recommend curing this stuff. And then we'll get into specific ones in the future conversations. So at a general level, if you and I are into something, if we can reduce it, stop completely, it's good. But gradual reduction is better than not stopping at all. So let's say that somebody like smokes a lot of weed, right? Okay, smoking a lot of weed. It's very common nowadays. It's legal in many states in California. It's legal. People are smoking. Okay. Well, you're like, okay, I want to stop smoking weed. Hopefully you should want to stop. It's not good. It's an intoxicant. It's considered haram by contents of the scholars. I'm sure people already know that. There's not really any need to discuss that. But so you want to stop. Well, you might not be able to stop clean. If you can stop clean, Alhamdulillah. But what you do is you gradually reduce it. So you're doing this much. You reduce it to a little bit less. Okay, less frequently, less frequently, whatever device you're using, you use less of it and less of it, right? And you slowly reduce the amount such that the desire goes away and you replace it with something less evil. Okay, so you might go from weed to like hookah. And then you, because you just like the act of smoking and then you leave the hookah and you go to, you know, chewing some gum or something like that. And then you eventually leave it completely, right? The entire idea of the smoking. So those are those are ways gradual reduction works for obvious desires. But leaving at the completely is better. That's better. But it's not easy always to do that. So gradual reduction is a method that we have and that we're able to follow. Now there are a couple of remedies for us to keep in mind. They're what are called over the counter remedies. And then they're called specific remedies. Okay, so over the counter, these are like, you know, basic remedies of scholars have given us that, okay, this will work in general to curb all of your desires. And then there's specific prescriptions you and I need to be given for individual things that we're going through and a very qualified spiritual guide can help us with those things. So over the counter, five things are needed. You can nail these five things. If we can nail these five things, we'll be inshallah in a very good place and may Allah assist us. First is you and I have to have the determination and the intention to work on ourselves. We have to say, I want to work on myself. I'm not just going to be a person who's complacent. I'm going to improve. I'm going to work on myself. That's the first. The second is we add in regular doses of being hungry and fasting. So fasting curbed desires. It diminishes desires. We all know this and Ramadan is coming up. May Allah allow us to reach Ramadan and give us the full barakah. But Ramadan helps to eliminate these desires. So what you do is in your daily regimen has some portion, even if you don't fast for the whole day, where you just don't eat all the time. You want to have hunger because when hunger is there for portions of time, hunger facilitates this oppression of desire because a full, when you give yourself everything it is that your nuffs wants, I want food now. I want this now. I want french fries now. I want ice cream now. Just get it as soon as you get an instant gratification, the nuffs gets built stronger and stronger and stronger. So you and I have to curb that. So the first is determination and intention. Second is some regular amounts of hunger and fasting. Third is consistent amounts of worship and thicker. So we have, if you and I are trying to work on ourselves, we've got to get in a worship regimen, a worship routine, not just like, this is in addition to the basics. The basics are important. This is five prayers and beyond. So you add in extra prayers, right? You add in noato prayers. You add in the Hajr prayer. You add in extra adhkar that somebody would do. The three things I would recommend adding when somebody is doing their farth in order to help curb this. First is the regular one called sunna muakada. They emphasize sunna after each prayer or before each prayer of which in the Hanafi school at least is two before fajr, two after al-Bohr and two after maghrib and two after isha. So those would be good prayers for us to make sure we do. Second thing then is to do the sunna adhkar, sunna dhikr of the morning and the evening. You can find this dhikr in compilations. There's one called where the latif that I would recommend. W-I-R-D, a latif that is a compilation of the sunna dhikr of the morning and every evening. Try to do that at least once a day in the morning time. In addition to that surah yasin would be good to read every day based on various hadith or the problems. I'm encouraged us to do that, especially in the morning time. And then the third thing is to add in the hadjad prayer when possible. So the hadjad prayer is a prayer that is a special connection and brings a special prayer between you and your Lord. This is a prayer at any time from after isha and before fajr. So ideally somebody gets up 20 minutes before fajr and just prays two rakat, the hadjad, and asks Allah to help them in whatever situations they're facing. This is known as the hour of, Allah's asking. There's a hadith could see that indicates Allah comes down in no anthropomorphic way. He comes down at that time and asks, is anybody asking that I may grant them? Is anybody asking forgiveness that I may forgive them? Is anybody have a need that I may fulfill? This is the time to be close with your Lord. So determination and intention, hunger and fasting, worship and dhikr, and regular, then the fourth is turning to Allah in complete sincerity and begging him for help. Begging him for help. If you and I want to work on ourselves, we can't just like take this stuff, you know, in a relaxed way. We got to ask, we got to ask with sincerity and beg Allah, Allah help me. The scholars recommend doing it in a way that as though you were drowning, like you were so in need of help, not like, Allah help me, Allah help, like really from the bottom of your heart, begging him and inshallah Allah will answer. And the fifth is spending time alone. This is an important ingredient. We can't always have our devices with us. This means virtually as well. We can't always be with people who right now most of us are alone anyways in quarantine or in, you know, COVID situation. We have to have some moments. It's just us in solitude, just solitude, thinking about what's going on in life, giving ourselves time to process our thoughts, spending time alone with our Lord. Here's the five intention and determination, hunger and fasting, worship with and dhikr, turning to Allah and begging him for help and spending time alone. You'll see that somebody who's gotten the basics already down and then starts doing this stuff, you will start to go through spiritual transformation. This is tried and tested. This is a science. This is not just some made up thing. Tried and tested science by, of course, the Prophet ﷺ and Sahaba to begin with and then all of the greats who came after them that have continued it. So this works, but we have to put in the effort. This is the medicine. You and I need medicine. We have sicknesses. We now have the medicine. What do we do in order to curb our desires? Let's know what they are. Let's figure out the subtle ones and the apparent ones. And then let's know that when we embark on a path to work on ourselves, a level facilitated for us. Allah rewards the intention. The intention of the believer as it comes in a hadith is better than the action. So make the intention now. Whenever you are able to, when you're watching this or afterwards or some other period of time, make the intention you want to work on yourself. You want to work on your desires. You want to work on curbing these desires and you want to work on getting closer to Allah and inshallah Allah will facilitate that and may he make this immensely easy for you and immensely easy for all of us and facilitate all hair and all goodness. We see some questions in this live chat. So if anybody has questions, please post them and we will answer them inshallah. So somebody posted here, I'm conflicted. My ADHD is something that is making me shift my focus and struggle with khushu. Please talk about people who suffer from these mental struggles every day. So this is regarding focus in prayer and concentration from my understanding and your struggles are limiting you with that. So first of all, thank you for sharing and thank you for asking me the question. The first thing to note here is that Allah only tasks you with as much as you can bear. So Allah says in the Quran that he only burdens the soul with as much as he can bear. So Allah will not burden you with the difficulty or with the limitation or with the struggle more than you can bear. If you can bear it, Allah knows what you can bear. You and I don't know. Allah believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. So Allah says, okay, you can do this. I'm going to put you to the test but I believe you can do it. You and I can't do this. But Allah knows we can do this. So that's the first thing to keep in mind. And if you're struggling with something, it's a test from Allah and inshallah Allah will leave you from it and Allah give you complete shifa and cure from these difficulties. Just know though that Allah is testing you and that he believes that you can improve and get better and work on yourself through that test and that difficulty. Second thing to keep in mind then is don't beat yourself all over when you don't have khushu when you're not able to focus because of the situation that you are in. It's okay because Allah is testing you in that situation. He knows you're going to have weaknesses but the desire for you to want to improve is already that's the third thing is take basic steps. For khushu in the prayer it's recommended in the beginning to recite before you start the prayer. Then before you engage in your farth prayer, engage in at least some sunnah raka, right? Some sunnah raka is where you try to get focused. The third thing is to make sure that the area you are praying in or that you are trying to do dhikr in or whatever it is is clear. It's not full a bunch of stuff and because you need focus and concentration and then try to make sure that the noise is fairly limited and then just try to have focus. Okay I'm going to make it a goal to be focused in one raka or half of one raka or a quarter of a raka or in two raka whatever you're at. It's okay if you don't achieve full khushu in four raka. I mean that would be such a miracle if we had that. Allah give that to us but just start with something basic. It's okay if at fajr time you're tired and you're not able to focus necessarily. You and I know we have those things to work on but begin with these solutions and inshallah it will help. So try that out and let's inshallah see how it goes. If anybody else has any questions please feel free to type them into this chat. Any questions related to this conversation about desires or something else that's relevant please feel free to type it in. We'll wait just another 30 seconds or so and if not then we will go ahead and end with the dua. Okay well I'll see if anything comes up and if not then I'll just go ahead and end and anything comes up please type it in. Ya fatah ya Allah please open up the doors of your mercy for us ya Allah please please pour your mercy upon us ya Allah please facilitate goodness for us and our loved ones and all the people it is that are watching and that intended to watch and that intend to work on themselves in our Muslim community and anywhere in this world ya Allah inwardly and outwardly assist them ya Allah with your special assistance please help us with all of our problems and challenges please remove the anxieties and difficulties and stresses and problems and challenges and illnesses whether those are mental or physical or spiritual or psychological that we have ya Allah. Ya Allah you are a companion and our sister and our source of assistance and you are the one who helps us please help us ya Allah please help us ya Allah you are the one who assists please help us with all of our problems please cure us of all of our difficulties and our challenges and please give us the ability to get close to you and please allow us to control our desires and to live a life that is pleasing to you. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi Assalamu alaikum inshallah we'll see you next week. So we are talking about deceptive desires so we're just going to continue this discussion inshallah and today we're really just reviewing this framework that we've set up for deceptive desires and talk a little bit more about what the desires are that human being has and then from there inshallah we are going to go over a specific desire in each class so what we've been doing is on Wednesday nights inshallah we're doing a class once a once a week 7 p.m. just for about 20 or 30 minutes or so we're going to be covering different desires that you and I have so today's topic we'll be focusing on this kind of framework of desire and then we'll be talking specifically about the desire for food and what impact that has on our on ourselves and on our spirituality cool all right inshallah so let's go ahead and dive in as we've been chatting about you know we live in a world where everybody is really obeying their desires and God says in the Quran that you and I can be slaves to him or we can be slaves to our desires we can take our desires as our Lord we don't want to be that type of person that's not the type of life that we want to live where something material is controlling us or some carnal lust is controlling us no we want God to control us we want to submit to God that's really the type of approach that we want to have to our life so Allah says in the Quran that whoever restrains their desire is going to be able to have enter paradise so that is one of the ways enter paradise is if somebody is able to restrain their their desire and they're able to restrain and control themselves so it's like right when you're about to do something haram something that you shouldn't do right when you're about to look at someone you shouldn't look at right when you're about to eat something you shouldn't eat right when you're about to drink something you shouldn't drink you control yourself and that is at the essence of this religion is it's all about self control it's all about self discipline it's all about trying to find ways in order to calm your nuts down which is the ego that you and I have and then find ways to grow our spirit that there's a constant war inside of us between what's called our nuts which is our lower self and our spirit which is the spiritual self it is trying to help us ascend the spirit is trying to help you ascend to higher places the nuts is trying to pull you down to lower places it's your job it's your task rather it's your goal to control the lower part and to tame the nuts and then to focus your energies on cultivating the spirit that's what spirituality is about spirituality is the idea of achieving a station achieving a nearness to god by cultivating your spirit let's talk a little bit about how to do that and let's talk a little bit about how desires play into this so first of all we all have desires desires are not a bad thing that we've been chatting about um it's it's normal to have like a sexual desire you are now going to be attracted to people that's normal we are going to have desire to eat if we didn't we would starve again i want to eat we're going to want to eat good things it's all normal things we're going to want to have a desire to like earn some money so we can have a home we're going to want to have desire to have clean clothes all those things are there it's when those desires get out of control that problems start happening so it's when you and I start to obey our sexual desire let's say to the point that we start you know doing things we shouldn't be doing we started you know scrolling on tinder and swiping all the time and trying to just like release that desire or we start to engage in watching pornography right or somebody is channeling that desire in by having illicit relationships or someone starts to have an affair or somebody starts to have um any other type of relationship that we know we know we shouldn't be in that's when that desire becomes problematic but the human being who controls that desire is going to be rewarded significantly right and that's in this life and the next nobody likes somebody who can't control themselves and you see how ruined human beings are who can't control themselves even the last president of the united states that we've mentioned before i mean literally all throughout his life no ability to control himself like none right and then to the point where um uh you know when he was younger he was engaged in a variety of different affairs sexual assault rape cases against him and then it became about the desire for money and he got that and then the desire for fame and he got that and then for followers and then from there it keeps going now you want power okay i want to be the president now i'm not going to let go of the power i'm gonna stage a coup these are all because the inner self is not tamed when the inner self becomes tamed and inshallah you and i are able to achieve the levels of success because you walk around and you're like dude i'm not going to submit to that thing you're submitting to it's it gives you almost a type of freedom it's a really beautiful thing that when you are not a slave to a desire you have freedom when you are slaves to a desire you do not have freedom so those are the obvious desires then we've mentioned um subtle desires and what are subtle desires these are desires that are as you get closer and closer to god as you get closer and closer in spirituality your these subtle things start to pop up and you have to be on guard for these as well these are desires like wanting people to notice you oh i'm worshiping someone watching me oh i am reading extra prayers is someone gonna notice oh i'm gonna post this this this comment i'm gonna post this video is somebody going to take notice um of what i'm doing right it's it's this idea of validation from other human beings for your religious actions it's called ostentation or in the hadith with the prophet son said it's called the riyadh in arabic the word is a riyadh it's called this kind of bragging ostentation or it's just like being full of yourself oh you think you're all that right and all of us have met people we've all met people um unfortunately and we might have been there ourselves where uh it's like this type of judgment because somebody says they're more religious than you and so they make you feel like i know what i'm doing and you don't know anything and that's as a result of that i'm better than you well in the Quran the one who says i'm better than you is satan shaytan says uh i'm not like i am better than adam i'm better than adam alay salam because and he has a faulty reasoning of course he thinks because he's great for fire and adam's greater from play alay salam that that's why he's better but that's what religious people can also become arrogant and that is a very very big problem because that's called a subtle desire it's you using your religion to become arrogant and when that arrogance starts to enter into yourself that desire becomes difficult to control because now you're impressed with yourself and then you'll see people start to fall this happens all the time you know really really famous people who gain fame through religion and we see this a lot i was reading about like different creatures and these mega churches and what not that um you know for whatever reason these people gain a lot of fame uh and then they think that they're all that and then they get caught up in affairs they get caught up in scandals caught up in all these other things it's because their desires were never controlled they just shifted the desire from a basic desire that you and i might have to a more um unique subtle desire that somebody who's on a specific path might start to have so that is something to be on guard for now the goal is not to eliminate desire and we need that we need our desire to live in order to function the goal is to channel our desire in the right direction that's our goal so what does that mean it means that what is the right direction there is a way for you and me to take our desires and to rather than fall for material things it's to have spiritual desires high aspiration so we want to channel these desires to three areas to loving god first and foremost we want to have love of knowledge number two love of knowledge and wisdom and number three will one actually enjoy worship these are again high aspiration that you're probably thinking like how am i supposed to get here i'm the same way i'm like this is really hard this is what this is what the scholars mentioned is what's kind of mentioned is the higher stations and so we know the goal that's gold medal that's the first place okay now how am i going to get there it's slow and steady process to get there but if you make the intention the door opens that one of the great saints of our religion said and with the one intention if you make it sincerely 70 doors 70 doors of toffee meaning divine assistance and blessings and guidance open for you if you make that sincere intention so right now one thing all of us should do make an intention especially because we were in a blessed month of rajab and because ramadan is right around the corner we got two months before uh yeah right about two months or so make an intention that i want to change this is the year i want to change we all know in life when we've had major changes and the intention is the first thing that comes when you want you and you and i want to change so have that high aspiration that high him but it's called the high goal right and then start working towards the goal so there's a general method for controlling desires and then there's specific methods for each desire the general method is that you and i have to bring every part of us into um you and i have to bring rather than every part of us we have to bring certain faculties that are inside of us into an equilibrium what does that mean that means that like let's say this works for all character traits by the way let's say somebody's like super cheap makes someone's like super cheap they just they're known as being you know stingy for them in order for them to become moderate in their spending they need to go to the extreme of generosity this is what the scholars prescribe go to the extreme of generosity always be the one to pay always be the one to donate always be the one to give upfront right and then they will go from this this place and they they they force themselves to go here they'll end up in the middle that's called equilibrium so in ramadan we have a whole month of fasting not because god wants us to be hungry all of the time like we don't have to fast 12 months out of the year but it's because 11 months out of the year most of us are in this category we're always eating we're always engaging desires we're always caught up in something or another he says yo for one month stop all that stuff at least turning the daytime to stop all that stuff and then you will be calibrated because you would think logically god would say six months you do this six months you do this but god says in ramadan that like the blessings are multiplied by 10 50 100 times thousand times depending on god's generosity right and his generosity is limitless one of his names is a kareem the generous that in ramadan that generosity is so amplified that whatever we do it's one month but god's helps us become bring that brings us into an equal degree right in that one month and then we leave ramadan emerging emerging from the month of ramadan hopefully like okay i'm feeling better i'm feeling more balanced and then we got to start that kind of struggle again so desires have to be conquered but it's a slow process right and by the way as you as anybody has questions whether you're just post them in the in the comments and inshallah we will or in the chat or whatever it is and we'll try to get to them at the end inshallah would love for this to be a discussion as well so that is the the goal from the equilibrium perspective now the general kind of over the counter you know remedy for this is first you have to learn knowledge is a medicine and knowledge the lights first we have to learn second you have to put in the struggle okay i got to put in the work i'm just like when you want to go to you know want to work out you got to like lift you got to put in the hard work you've got to run you've got to train same thing with spirituality in order to grow in order to gain in control desires you've got to put in the work so you put in the work right you gain learn the knowledge you put in the work but the most important thing is you beg a lot of help you because you and i are not about to do this alone i mean this world is full of craziness there's too much going on it's not easy we can't do this by ourselves so we ask a lot yeah a lot i'm really struggling with this thing like i cannot for the life of me control myself in this in this situation or that situation if somebody's struggling with you know smoking or drinking or partying or in illicit relationships or with you know on another side like someone is trying to do good good deeds but it's struggling with people noticing them and wanting to be noticed and wanting to be praised you just turn it to Allah you turn the affair over to him and you say ya Allah i'm trying my best that i need you to help me because Allah says in the Quran those who strive in our ways surely we shall guide them you and i just have to try remember that this religion is not about getting an a plus it's not sometimes we think that we got to be perfect you weren't we weren't created to be perfect Allah says in the Quran that we created mankind weak we he's created us weak we're weak we're we got to sleep we got to eat we got to use the restroom we're weak people we get tired we we we we we can't lift like an insane amount of things at the same right at one time there's we're weak in so many ways we're weak with our knowledge we're weak with our abilities but in our weakness is our strength because when you show weakness before Allah Allah assists you with his strength and then he gives you the ability to succeed in ways you never knew but when you rely on yourself well we're weak so how can you rely on something weak when you have Allah who is the Al Qawiyul Mateen who is the strong and the mighty one right he can assist you so when you and I are focused on our desires or if not focused on just focused on trying to control our desires remember it's about not this is the general kind of over-the-counter remedy that's given by the scholars by the promises are learn the knowledge it's the light put it into practice spiritual struggle and then rely on Allah beg Allah Allah help me whatever it is you can do and never let anybody I don't care who they are don't let anybody ever close the door if some religious person or a family member or even a parent has closed the door and says you're never going to change you're never going to be fixed you're never going to do this you've just done too much bad just ignore them and remember your relation with Allah is unique Allah forgives whoever he wants he forgives whoever he wants there's so many stories in the idea that one time there was a prostitute a prostitute and she was um she she went to super thirsty and so there was a well and you know back in the days they had wells come to the now we have like access to running water and we have like give water all those people in the world who don't have access to clean water so she went down to the well to super thirsty and she she used um some way to to to get water there was no bucket so she just kind of used her hand right and then she came back up and she saw there was a dog who was super thirsty just like her so she's like yo this dog is thirsty I would I needed water I should figure out a way to get this dog some water so she takes her shoe and she goes back into the well and she brings water uh in the shoe and gives it to the dog and the dog punches his thirst and Allah forgave the promises and said to him that Allah forgave her for that action he forgave all the sins that she again is a prostitute right who's committed you know uh promiscuous sexual action we shouldn't be doing um and but she had a certain softness in her heart which led her to do this good deed and Allah forgave her for that so you and I like Allah's mercy is limitless it's not an excuse for us to do whatever we want and be like yeah I'm not gonna forgive you that's another extreme but what it is is it's a way for us to remember that our Lord is forgiving and don't let someone constrict Islam into this like narrow view of you gotta do one two and three and then you get into heaven if you do a dnc you're going to hell and other one that's it and their interpretation of religion is the only interpretation now religion is vast there's room for everybody there's room for us in our mistakes and there's room for us always to turn back to Allah so begin that process now inshallah so that's the overall method so let's talk specifically about this desire now for food um and why am I talking about the desire for food but we live in a time when um the country that especially you know in the west uh food is like everywhere right so we have buffets you have immediate you know apps that you can just order food on there's always snacks in our pantries we're just always eating now what does food have to do with desire it's interesting so food is actually known as the mother desire it's literally the chief desire and i didn't know this at all until i started reading about it how important controlling the stomach is to controlling the rest of your body so think about it like this you and i have a muscle an internal spiritual muscle called discipline that spiritual muscle is primarily governed by what we eat and how much we eat so if we eat a lot then it's going to be covered in a certain way if we don't eat a lot then uh or if we eat a lot and if we eat to excess then that muscle won't grow if we reduce our food intake and we fast and we control ourselves then that muscle begins to um build itself the muscle of discipline so food is this kind of mother desires we don't have to we have to control it which is why Ramadan is so important and why the Prophet ﷺ fasted in Ramadan and many times outside of the month of Ramadan i mean it was so important because he taught us that patience is half of faith in hadith and he said fasting is half of patience so if you have faith patience is one half fasting is one half of that you can say fasting is like a fourth of faith you know in this hadith and then we know the five pillars of Islam fasting is one of the five pillars right so we know how important it is so food control is important but this is not just food control with regards to fasting from uh from from pre dawn until sunset like in Ramadan that's not what we're talking about only talking about food control in all the situations right so when you and i have a full stomach this is what the scholars mentioned when you and i have a full stomach we start to get more energy and we start to have the desire to do more things now it sounds kind of weird because most of us are always right but think about the times when you've been hungry and the weakness that you feel and the like overall lack of desire to sin that you feel right ain't nobody about to be hungry sitting there like hungry and thirsty and then i'm gonna be like oh let me you know swipe right here and let me do this like that's not gonna happen right or like oh let me go and you know smoke some weed because i'm really hungry like you know that's just gonna make you more hungry and give you the munchies so that's not gonna work right so usually when you're hungry there's a lot of humility that forms remember this is a spiritual alchemy so alchemy is the process of transforming lead into gold that used to be done back in the day by like proper alchemists now spiritual alchemy is an internal process of transforming yourself transforming yourself in a in an amazing way from from the weak state that we're in right now to a more developed state food controlling what we eat is one of the best ways to do that right because this internal humility starts to to form and the desires are then tamed in other ways so the food is the chief desire and then the next desire that follows that which we're talking about later inshallah probably next week is sexual desire so immediately right the desire that governs our not ability to lower gaze or all watching things we should be watching or watching pornography whether it's clear pornography or soft pornography or watching or just you know engaging in illicit sexual relations we're living in a culture where like marriage is not really a priority anymore everybody's just hooking up with each other it's people are having sex younger and younger ages and like we got to talk about this stuff i mean these are things that are happening so we shouldn't shy away from having the discussions of what's important of what's actually happening in what's relevant in our society because we know we struggle and we know we've got to control these things um so food is this mother desire though that's contenting to be controlled what does overeating do it brings a level so this is like from a scientific and a spiritual perspective it's mentioned that it's you make somebody lazy it clogs the mind it impairs thinking and then it makes your desire stronger and from from a from a spiritual perspective so you get more desire to want to do more things so discipline is this muscle that's built and hunger is the medicine that allows you to build this muscle of discipline secret if somebody has discipline you're going to be very successful in your life inshallah you just never mind doesn't matter what you're doing human beings who are disciplined who have routines who are able to control themselves who are able to control their impulses there's a different level of success that they're able to achieve i'm talking about in this life not even getting to the next life and Allah says in the next life that uh those who are able to control their desires inshallah will achieve a state of jannah right so that's where discipline becomes so critical and so important and the desire to control our food intake um is so linked to that right so what is this medicine of hunger and control of the food so when you and i lose our discipline when we lose our when we start overeating we start to lose our discipline and then we start to fall into all these other sorts of things let's talk a little bit about what the benefits are there's a hadith where the prophet said that the devil courses through the blood in the children of Adam and you and i should limit the devil coursing through our blood like kind of running through our blood with hunger and thirst and a paraphrase in the hadith prophet indicated that type of meaning and he also said in the hadith hadith is a statement of the prophet's son that we use is kind of an authentic religious teaching to help guide us where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that the son of adam fills no container worse than their belly and a few small mouthfuls of food should suffice them but if he or she can't stick to that and they should have one third for food one third of their stomach for food one third for water and one third for for breath so room to just breathe it do thicker and just kind of you know be able to exhale and inhale in our society it's like three thirds for food one third for water one third for juice one third for something else like until you have two or three stomachs right so remember the devil is coursing through your blood promises them said this is some spiritual knowledge he's teaching us you limit the devil with hunger and thirst you say no i'm not going to let you run me you you're not going to control me i'm going to just cut you off i'm not going to let you be inside of me all the time i'm going to limit you with just restraining my food intake it doesn't mean you go to extremes and you're anorexic or that you you know that's a different type of topic it doesn't mean you go to extreme and you stop eating no but you limit you stop a couple bites short you limit that so what are some of the benefits of hunger that the scholars mentioned these are mentioned by some of the greatest scholars in the history of our religion spiritual masters is what they call it says the benefits of hunger among them are first that hunger purifies the heart and it illuminates the soul second is hunger sharpens your insight right and so this desire the ability to control desires comes when your intellect is working you and i all know the opposite of this so we said hunger purifies the heart and sharpens your mind the opposite of this is when you are not uh when you're overeat we all know the word food coma we've all gotten it food coma form was likely and we just overeat just like oh i'm so full and then you just want to like do all these other things right because the the fullness now leads to a route for as we indicated as the heavy vindicated for shaythan to have more control over us the second thing is it does is it brings a softness and impurity to the heart and it allows the heart to be more impacted more impacted right so you want your heart to be soft right have you ever met people who like they cry easily like something just small that they see or that they watch and they start crying and they start weeping that's an amazing thing we should not take light of that that crying and so easily coming to tears means the heart is soft the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam our messenger our master our leader sallallahu alaihi wasallam may Allah bless him preserve him increase him send salutations upon him that he had a very soft heart he would regularly be weeping regularly be crying there is no idea of like men not crying no men should cry women should cry crying is very very important very important but the softness that an individual has and and sometimes we feel bad about it oh my god every little thing makes me cry that's not a that's not a bad thing no so it means your heart is soft and when the heart is soft it's impacted more seriously so you want your heart to be able to get impacted that's what you want right so when somebody gives you a reminder or when you hear something or when you are just reflecting or when you're praying or when you're just about to do something bad the softness kicks in it's like no you're not going to do that because softness and purity are linked you want your heart to be pure it's one of the goals of this life Allah says in the Qur'an it's successful is the one who purifies oneself and destroyed is the one who isn't purifying yourself is about controlling your desires and beginning this journey of meaning the inner self that is what we are trying to accomplish inshaAllah and food is a very very important aspect of that so let's let's you know which other world we're going to try to just kind of wrap this up and summarize a little bit and again if anybody has any questions please post them in the comments we don't think see anything now let me see yeah i don't think i see any questions so cool um so let's let's talk a little about the the uh yes i'll mention that in a second inshaAllah so let's talk a little bit about what some of this how do we practically implement some of this so we first just have to decrease when it comes to the desire for food right when we know number one that it's linked to everything else that we're doing and number two we know that it is linked to um increasing our other desires what we have to do is decrease number one just the amount that we that we eat just a little by little just even one bite can go a long way just a little bit and number two we decrease how often we're eating so let's say that like we eat five times a day a bunch of snacks we just slowly reduce it to four times a day and then you get to a healthy medium of three times a day right and let's say you're eating like this big of a portion size you just reduce it slightly just by a couple bites and then a little bit more don't just throw out a whole meal or something like that no no no just slightly right and then and then um from there you have to decrease the quality like taste of the food so you don't always give your nuffs the nuffs is the lower self and it thrives off of um the nuffs thrives off of um fulfilling its desire it loves delicious things i want a cake i want cookies i want brownies i want this i want chips i want fries you know my nuffs loves fries for example right so you and i have to give it okay if it does if it listens you give it good things but you have to treat the nuffs like an animal that okay if it doesn't give behave you have to have and you're not going to get this thing that you wanted today that's going to start to result in spiritual cultivation that is going to result in a successful cultivation of purity inside of you and a successful taming of the desires so then there's then that's the tips for reducing the desire and then there's channeling the desire in the right direction how do we do that all these desires are meant to be god created them in us right so it's not a bad thing that we obviously we're going to eat we want to do all these things the first thing is okay we try to eat cleanly number one and number and number two by clean here i mean eat halal as well so if we aren't eating halal food okay we slowly work our way towards that we try to aspire i'm gonna try to eat halal meat i'm gonna try to eat some fish even if i'm not able to do all the time try to eat halal meat because there's a spiritual secret and spiritual benefit in halal meat that that only the person who eats it um will be able to feel that benefit and comes in a narration that person who eats halal for 40 days is able to achieve a state of light inside so it's okay for not doing it but we just slowly work on that right and a more kind of haram that we limit um not in like a way that we are so negative on ourselves that we feel like we want to get despair or quick but the more that we limit and the more that we start to add good things the more we're going to be able to progress spiritually the more we're going to be able to tame these things the second aspect is for us to eat cleanly eat clean pure food these days a lot of the food is manufactured a lot of it has msgs a lot of it has uh it's been you know food has been raised in very very problematic ways and so we just have to also try to eat in a clean way and the more you are not going to eat in a clean way the more pure we are going to be able to become because what you are what you eat you've heard that saying right so if you're eating some like animal that has had all this anxiety and all these other types of things that have manifested because of the way some corporate farm is treating that animal it will manifest inside of you no doubt it will and we asked a lot of tech desk but that type of stuff is real so eating allow ideally then eating cleanly and then the third thing is just kind of stopping before we're full just stop a couple bites short this will start to impact our other desires in the right way now some of us might be thinking like dude talking about food over here i am you know i am like struggling with all these big things and you're talking about food you know i'm struggling with drinking i'm struggling with smoking i'm struggling with partying and so all this is a framework keep that in mind so anything this will work for any desire whatever you and i are following or struggling with we just simply reduce that so we three methods you decrease the amount you decrease how often you do it the cadence the frequency and you decrease the overall like you could say deliciousness of it when for the food instance or you could say the uh what's the right word the overall pleasure it gives you does that make sense so that somebody is watching something that shouldn't be watching they should reduce the amount they should reduce the quality of that and they should reduce how often they're doing it these types of things are going to give us the inner cultivation that we need and it's going to help us tame our desires in the right way and so if we do that inshallah we will start to feel we'll start to feel closer to god we'll start to feel this type of spirituality manifesting inside and we live in a world where there's too much focus on the outward and not enough focus on the inward remember this islam is an inward path the outer rules are like if i take this water bottle the outer rules are just the like shell and the casing of the water bottle you've got to follow the outer rules we know that we struggle with them but we've got to follow them but the goal is to get to what's inside which in this case you're not down thirsty this case is water right you want to get what's inside the inside of it is the spirituality so there's so many people that are focused on you this and that this that just make this black and white difficult thing that constricts you because they have never tasted the sweetness of what's inside you and i have to have the outer framework and then be able to arrive at what's inside if we do that Allah inshallah will not let us down he will give us success because he says that if you strive in his way he will guide you and you there's hadith which indicates if you come to him handspan he comes to an armspan if you come to him walking he comes to you running you and i just have to take the first step so let's make that intention right now inshallah today that we're going to take that step we're going to work on taming our desires on channeling our desires in the right direction on trying to control ourselves on not being like every single other person in this world who broadly speaking is just caught up and is a slave for our desires let's be slaves of god and not slaves of anybody else and certainly not slaves of our own nafus of our own lower selves and of our egos let's try to submit to him and he will help us inshallah not only in this life and inshallah he will help us in this life but also in the next life we pray that Allah give everybody tofiq and success and tasir and easiness in this path and now we'll go ahead and you know feel any questions or comments that are posted so i'm seeing here this moment somebody asks salamu alaykum how often should one cry should one make oneself cry to soften the heart i cried out okay how does one okay got it so there's not like a prescribed amount that one should force themselves i think it's one one when you are feeling overpowered by emotions or by crying that you should release that you should not control it it can actually result in internal emotional blockages when somebody doesn't release the emotions that they're feeling i'm sure some of us have seen this movie inside out a Pixar movie which kind of shows this in a very very nicely crafted way right that what happens when you and i don't allow ourselves to express our emotions but the second thing is if we are able to we should try to just it's like the watering of the heart crying waters the spiritual heart with the heart doesn't get water it's not going to flourish spiritually so you have to engage in moments where you just feel like humbled before god and just saying i'm sorry for this or i'm scared of this or i love you for this and so these types of things will inculcate a type of softness and the crying should come from that so hopefully that's helpful and then somebody says how does one reduce the anxiety about the afterlife um e.g. death so good question um i would say that it's not a bad thing to be worried about death like that's not a bad thing at all the believer should regularly remember death like we're gonna die i'm gonna go in a grave i'm gonna be like it's a very very real thing in today's society they try to hide death from us they try to just completely not talk about it it's like a weird subject in in in in muslim society it's not supposed to be like that right like you know there's certain time you shouldn't speak about that like when somebody eating and whatnot but otherwise it's something that like should be discussed and it should be thought of because it can immediately i mean i don't remember when i when i really tried to like change in my life was when a couple people really close to me back in college just they started dying and i was like dang death can come at any moment i better wake up but i have to stop some of this stuff right so um that anxiety actually in that case helped but it shouldn't be an overwhelming anxiety what should we should be balanced so uh the way to do that is to actually be okay like i'm looking because when you die that's when you can meet a lot and a lot says that a lot loves the one who loves to meet him right a lot loves to meet the one who loves to meet him and i'm paraphrasing here like that will be the moment that you can kind of be released from the pains of this world so it shouldn't be a negative thing we should feel like death is going to be positive and positively beneficial for us so hopefully that makes sense um but this question about how does one reduce the anxiety about it uh and the the anxiety should not become overwhelming should be balanced and we should remember that it will be positive hopefully that the one who lives their life in a good way we should pray for good ending and we should hope and pray that it will be a positive experience for us uh inshallah so hopefully that helps let's see if there any other questions if anybody has questions just please post them in the q and a or um in the chat okay somebody asked a question here how does one help someone who is having a crisis in faith okay so this is a very good question how do you help somebody who's having a crisis in faith um inshallah first and foremost do not overwhelm them and try to convince them of all the intellectual reasons to like come back to the religion that's not the way to do it you don't want to overwhelm any human being what you do when somebody's having a crisis with their faith is first you got to try to pray for them like sincerely if you really care about them sincere levels of prayer ideally in the in the middle of the night at the Hajj of time if possible at the time right before fajir if possible that that's the first thing especially if it's a loved one or somebody you really care about that's very important second is um try to understand why they're having a crisis just talk to them ask questions don't give them a lecture ask questions what's going on what is it that's leading to this crisis what is it that's leading to this issue right so try to understand a little bit more of the details and then the third thing is you give them okay you know this is what helped me in this situation this is what helped me in that situation don't don't make it a um what's the right word don't make it about you but also don't make it like such a bad thing that oh my god they're having this crisis and like what are they gonna do they're gonna leave us long ultimately guidance is in Allah's hands you have to keep that in mind it's where the law helps but if somebody is having a crisis in their faith which is the question first pray for them second um try and ask them a lot of questions and third give them examples of times that you or somebody else you know struggled with something and how they overcame it that will be the first step and then remember you put in a little bit of effort and Allah will take care of the rest don't don't worry if uh you know they're they're really really really struggling um and if they are having a trauma as somebody just asks if it's a trauma a lot of us are traumatized with the spiritual upbringing that was problematic and if that's the case then try to point them to like beautiful examples of people who don't have that background so many people came from a very very strict black and white halal haram this is it this is the only way everything else is innovation everything else is this you can't do anything in your religion you can't even live your life because you're going to go to hell type of approach i see a lot of muslims and they eventually leave like the major practices of religion because it's just too constricting and that's not a swamp try to work help them work through what the trauma is you mentioned that you said i told the loved one that life is a test that works only when somebody has the spiritual framework for understanding what a test did you can't tell somebody it's a test if they don't even understand why tests come right the first step is belief that tests are going to help them get closer to god that's a hard belief to cultivate it's not easy so i wouldn't start with that i would kind of go at that um when you feel like they're ready but try to work through the trauma and have them seek like a proper spiritual counselor or spiritual guide in order to work through that crisis so that was the question um inshallah that helps uh and inshallah they'll that situation will get better inshallah don't worry just pray and allah will help inshallah does anybody have any other questions see anything popped up here somebody mentioned sorry it's just hard to find balance between beings and seren soft hearted in some world today society um that is a really really good point that somebody mentioned um so it is it is certainly difficult to find a balance between beings and seren soft hearted thank you for mentioning that point uh it's it's important though to not lose the beautiful aspects of our religion and the beautiful aspects of our tradition because this society just limits us don't let this society limit you don't let the society that's been created by the white man to do the things that serve the white man and serve their corporate interests limit the way you and i operate no you and i should be sincere you and i should be soft hearted you and i should follow the example of the promises on to the best of our ability in balanced ways that we can do it in this society but not let the frameworks and the colonizing frameworks and the problematic frameworks and the subjugating frameworks and the subverting paradigm and all these types of things prevent us from the inner inner beautiful traits that are really has to offer this is what islam has to offer the world we have character to offer we have spiritual development to offer we have personal development to offer when a human being has all these things that's really when they start to succeed but that we have to kind of put in that effort first and foremost and then people see that beauty and they will start to be guided inshallah so try to keep that in mind it's a very very good point somebody brought up if anybody has any more questions please post them we'll just wait for another minute and we'll end inshallah i'll just go ahead and close with a quick draw and if any other question pops up inshallah we ask that you guide us you guide all those people we are who are struggling with their deen who are in difficulty who are facing a crisis who are facing a trauma who are facing any problems we ask you allow us to curb our desires we ask that you bless this month please put blessings in this month of rajab inshallah and allow us to reach Ramadan yahrab and anameen yallah allow us to get closer to you please don't allow us to be discouraged please don't allow us to have despair please don't allow us to have any worry yahab or anameen yallah anybody who's struggling with any aspect of their life any sin that we're struggling with yallah please yallah forgive us yallah and pardon us yallah and cure us yallah and remove this difficulty from us remove our challenges remove our tribulations give us our sincerity and give us as much as much closeness to you as possible with ease if you have a look for la afia and give us guidance on our ability to get close to you coming directly from you and allow us to strive in your way as much as possible inshallah inshallah we'll continue this every wednesday 7 p.m sorry we're in a little bit late today started a little late today i was having technical difficulties inshallah i'll help we'll get that together next time so we'll start again next wednesday 7 p.m uh juzakum ala khair please keep us in your prayers everybody have a great week asalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wabarakatuh thanks so much bye all right so we are continuing in this conversation that we've been having about desires deceptive desires and today's topic is we're going to focus on the desire for lust so we we've been touching upon this a little bit so we're going to dive a lot deeper today inshallah so uh let's let's let's dive straight into it um what we just what we discussed last time was the kind of mother desire and so there's one mother desire that human being has and a couple things to keep in mind that the human being that's able to successfully control their desires in this life is the one who will be rewarded inshallah the most in the next life there's a direct correlation between how many of our appetites we follow how much of our nests we follow and whether or not we are going to be successful in the next life and so we really want to try to be people who are controlling our desires regularly so we spoke last time about food and how food is this kind of mother desire and now we're going to talk about how other desires stem from food so we'll dive into lust today and sexual desire so sexual desire is not necessarily a bad thing even though many times it's made out to be um in moderation and channeled in the right direction it's a good thing and so what we've been trying to do is talk about all of these desires at a high level and talk about when they are negative and when they are positive and how do we channel the desires in the overall right direction so the way to think about this um you and I have a certain type of desire because Allah has created it within us sexual desire has a couple of reasons according to mama al-azali that god created this desire in us first is the obvious one of allowing the human race to continue right if the human being did not have this desire then the desire for relations uh and obviously that would not result in the human race continuing because we would not have offspring and whatnot um and the second reason is actually what imam al-azali says and where many of the other scholars say is to allow you and i to know the delight of the afterlife that one that there are indications that the desire that one feels in that experience is a very very very very very small portion of the experience one is going to have in the afterlife and the type of euphoria one is going to experience in the afterlife now this is of course when you're talking about channeling it in a permissible way when you're talking about channeling this desire in a halal way now let's talk a little bit about the condition of the society that we live in right so we live in a society right now that is filled with uh overall promiscuity following desires not really like being in touch with ourselves in a deep way such that we try to control these desires or channel them in the right direction so the job of the muslim is to say okay how am i going to ward off the different aspects of the society that are negative and how am i going to channel the desires that i have in the right direction uh such that i can achieve success in this life and the next life we also see in the society of small examples you have apps like tinder and other dating apps where people are literally just like scrolling through these apps in order to uh find you know ways to release their sexual desire and find less to have uh find ways to release their less you have uh phones and devices that every single you know anywhere from a teenager all the way to an adult has access to that literally you have the entire internet at your fingertips and so anybody who wants to engage in some type of impermissible lustful desire they want to watch something that they shouldn't be watching if they want to listen to something that they shouldn't be listening if they want to um chat with somebody or start talking with somebody that's going to lead to an eventually uh uh uh desire a sexual relationship they are able to do that very easily even in a pandemic you're able to engage your lusts and yours and the the the traits of zina uh you're able to engage them in forbidden ways even though you and i might be just literally sitting in our homes right and so we live in a society that is full of promiscuity it's full of pornography it's full of hyper sexualization and it's full of trying to make us follow this desire from a young age so now regularly we see for example in in western society um you see promiscuity at a young age and you also regularly see people getting having sex before marriage right that's very very common uh in fact it's who i believe the statistics show now that more people now engage in relations before marriage than people engage outside or that sorry more people engage in relationships outside of marriage and they do in marriage right and so this is a very very uh big shift even in western society so this is these are the impulses that we're facing these are the lusts that we're facing these are the desires that we're facing but we have to know we have to know that god created us as human beings in order to test us that's that's one of the main why Allah created us and and he created us in order to test us and he created us in order for us to be able to for him to see okay who is going to respond to this desire and who is going to refrain themselves from this desire those are the main reasons why we are created just checking something here so that's up to us now the more tests that somebody has the more reward they're going to have when they resist that test right and so Allah knows our condition and it's not expected that our condition is going to be the same condition as people of past societies that's not an expectation um that that that that exists right now what does Allah say in the Quran with regards to desire and sexual desire and controlling it first is that he commands the believing men and the believing women he says to tells us to lower our gaze and he tells us to lower our gaze because he indicates that lowering your that lowering the gaze is is a way to prevent the desire from developing further that that's what happens when somebody lowers their gaze that the desire doesn't develop further the desire starts to be tamed right because the eye is the entry point and as soon as somebody sees something they see somebody attractive now the thoughts start to stir in the heart right and when the thoughts start to stir in the heart what starts to happen is they start to get ideas and when somebody starts to get ideas then they start to say okay maybe I could reach out to this person maybe I'll start texting this person right and the kind of overall sexual desires are uh uh incited within somebody and all begins with the eye which is why God commands us right to lower our gaze that that is one of the first cures you have to this desire and by the way as as folks have questions please just put them in the comment section and we'll go ahead and get to them and if you're having any issues with the audio just please also put that in the comment section let me know uh I can't 100 tell if the audio is working properly or not so um that that is the uh where was I sorry about this that is the situation of how God tells us to okay this is how you start to reduce this desire by preventing it at the onset to lower your gaze right but then he also gives us many indications that human being is created weak right he says that we created mankind weak we created the human being weak so when you're created weak what does that mean well when you're created weak it means that you and I are going to slip up we're going to fall into things and they're not always going to be able to lower our gaze we're not always going to be able to control ourselves but God gives us routes right to say okay look I know this desire is inside of you and you can release this desire in a permissible way right thus uh he tells us okay you can get married right you are allowed to get married and we are not a tradition that is you're forced to be celibate right you have other traditions that in order to reach certain stations of spirituality you can't get married um our tradition um though that doesn't doesn't have that the prophecy psalm did marry um and he encouraged us to marry it's a sunna of the prophecy psalm but to release that desire in the halal way is what we're taught to do to not let our lust get to the best of us like has happened in most of the societies that we live in so those are some of the ayes of the Quran and then you know Allah describes zina fornication and adultery in very very intense terms in the Quran just saying how uh uh reprehensible these things are to him right so these are things that obviously we do our best to stay away from now we'll talk a little bit about um we will talk a little bit about uh the hadith now so the prophecy psalm he indicates he says that whoever can guarantee me what is between his two lips and what is between his legs right so his uh the food that he eats and the sexual uh uh the sexual relationships that he engages in guaranteed them do them in a permissible way he can guarantee for that person jannah and this is a paraphrase in the hadith here but this is generally what the hadith indicates another hadith of the prophecy psalm says that a lustful gaze is a poisoned arrow from shaitan whoever abstains from that gaze in fear of Allah shall receive an increase in faith and the sweetness of which they feel in their heart so when you and i like are about to look at somebody we're about to check somebody out we're about to go on a haram website we're about to do something we shouldn't be doing and this is especially happening for sure amongst um at certain age groups especially like you know if you're if you are a teenager or if you have teenagers this starts to become more and more of a thing right pornography is a very very big problem in our community unfortunately not discussed enough um and the types of images that people are looking at both hard pornography and soft pornography whereas these the prophecy psalm says poisoned arrows from shaitan now imagine if shaitan shoots a poisoned arrow at you you're screwed you're in trouble right your whole body and your whole system is going to be impacted so whoever abstains from that at the gaze at the onset right whoever abstains from it they will receive an increase in faith and they will feel the sweetness of the faith in their heart because you're like okay i'm doing it for the sake of god remember that it's harder when it comes to worship it's harder to stay away from disobedient things than it is to do obedient things it's actually very once you you can get to a point where it's like okay you got the prayers and a rhythm you're doing your dick or you're doing all the stuff but when when sins get presented in front of you mean you're less get challenged when haram things come up in front of us that becomes difficult to tame right and we see that some of the biggest uh prophets in the history of islam are challenged with this so the story in the quran of say the yusuf aley salam that he was challenged with being seduced right and it's mentioned that he even indicates the ayat in the quran that that he would have given in had there not been assigned from his lord right that this is a desire that's naturally there that that any human being can fall into but of course Allah protected his prophet may Allah grant him mercy and peace from falling into that so this is no small thing this is very very much a uh an easy thing for people to fall into the prophet says cut it off at the beginning and you'll feel the sweetness of faith why a sweetness of faith important because when somebody tastes the sweetness when you taste the dessert when you taste the sweetness um when when you taste sweetness when you taste the dessert you taste something right you want more that you have a really delicious cake and you're like dude i want i want a cake again right you have really good cookies or brownies you're like i want more of those or where did i get those from it's the same thing with the sweetness of faith and when somebody tastes the sweetness of faith you have people like it's like faith is just this kind of burden this like boring intense thing that we feel sluggish doing and then you might have people who they actually enjoy it and you might you and i might see like maybe our parents or others that they're literally enjoying their prayer and they want to pray more and you're like man i can't even do the basics and you want to pray more and for them it's not a burden because they've tasted the sweetness of faith the sweetness of faith is tasted when you and i stay away from haram and when we stay away from things we shouldn't be doing right and when we do engage in them it's we just ask forgiveness and we try to change it's not about um expecting everybody to be perfect remember we said Allah created mankind weak he knows we're going to mess up he created us to mess up but it's about messing up and turning back to him and then the Prophet ﷺ said that every limb fornicates in some way right and he said that eyes fornicate and they do so by looking and the hands do so by touching and this is a very very like this is you know very much uh um comprehensive hadith he said the feet do so by walking to the haram place right um the mouth does so by kissing and the heart does so by forming the thoughts right and wishes and then so on and so forth until the other actions somebody engages in what's uh important about this that if you apply this to our times right you could even be texting and your hands are in a state of fornicating because you're like trying to flirt with somebody you're trying to like you know uh spark up a conversation with somebody and you are doing so with a lustful intention behind it um and so there are a lot more ways now remember every single limb gives account i mean subhanAllah every limb will give account and Allah will ask that limb and the limb will speak out either for us or against us so say she or he was uh the eyes will say that they read Quran and that they watched that they looked at the Quran or that they watched pornography right like which end of the spectrum does somebody want to be on and then of course there's mediums in between the hand will say that they used me to do good and to give charity or no they used me to like you know send flirtatious text message and to swipe right and swipe left on tinder i mean these will be statements and we'll have to stand before a god and answer about these statements and some of them i'm sure many of these things will feel embarrassed right now imagine all of humanity watching us as Allah asks these questions and we ask Allah veil us and protect us on the day of judgment ask these questions about why did you do this why did you do that right and our hands are will speak our limbs will speak that day the mouth is where you and i won't get to give explanation rhetoric will not help it's going to be the other limbs that are speaking in in in their stead in uh uh on that day so we have to keep that in mind and that is the indication that we we try not to engage in any form zina any form of fornication by preventing it from even by even looking at something haram let alone you know reaching out to somebody who we know we have a lustful desire attached to them let alone walking to a place that we know we're going to do something we're going to mess up and so on and so forth this is very very important now what are the challenges though in our times that people struggle with right and again by the way the goal for these talks um and i appreciate some of the comments here that um you know it's often taboo uh good so so the goal for these these conversations to be really real like that it's we're just trying to be real and these are real issues and my understanding is and i could be wrong but that our elders our teachers and of course the prophets and they didn't shy away from addressing the real things that were happening in their society and there were some really serious things right so let's talk about the real stuff let's start with the major thing that i believe that people in our society struggle with when it comes to lustful desires um we'll talk about we'll we'll start with this which is pornography why is pornography so dangerous right pornography is dangerous because first and foremost it is the most intense form of zina of haram that the eye can commit the most intense form of fornication and it is a spiritual pu it is a spiritual spirit to the heart it will destroy your heart literally it will completely destroy the spiritual heart when somebody engages in that and look that doesn't mean that if we're caught up in it we forget we we give up no no no we turn we turn back to a lot a lot can wipe our hearts clean in a minute ramadan is coming we're already in a special month of rajab we're about to enter ramadan in about a month and a half so there's a lot of time until for us to change the goal is not for us to despair but it is for us to realize that hey we might be struggling with it and if you're if you're if you have like siblings or you're a parent you have kids just know and i know this through like having worked with a fair amount of youth that people are struggling with pornography like a lot and they're doing so on their phones they're doing so in the middle of the night on their laptops they're not like you would likely have no clue that somebody in your house is is engaged in that but they are and that leads and it has significant damages in their worldly life just in terms of how it's going to impact future marriage future relations there's a lot of damages going to have let alone the spiritual damages and the uh the spiritual damages sins and uh that people have ruined the impact it's going to have in the next life so what do we do about this right so if somebody is struggling with this or you know somebody who's struggling with this it's important to to realize a couple things first is just realize the damage that does number two is to actually and i've i've i've uh seen people who like work in this field mention this to those who are like addicted to this imagine that if somebody else was watching some like a mother or or sister of yours engaged in this activity imagine if somebody they were watching that person what would you do you couldn't stand it for sure you couldn't stand it right you would um you would uh just lose your you would completely erupt if you if you thought that someone was watching your mother or sister doing that type of act now you got to keep in mind if you're struggling with this that is someone's mother or someone's sister or someone's daughter so how could you allow for that type objectification to happen to somebody no the human being is dignified somebody might be in a state where they're caught up in engaging in that act or doing so for the sake of money and whatnot that doesn't mean that we get caught up by promoting that industry by encouraging that industry no we have to be people that are calling to good and that are staying away from that so that's the first thing to remember the second thing is if someone is struggling with it is okay you reduce it slowly you might not be able to get rid of the addiction immediately you slowly work on it okay i'm going to go from this many times a day to this many times a week to this many times a month and then i'm going to work towards quitting this this type of behavior and this type of action the third thing that someone does is to pray to Allah to sincerely this should really be the first thing but i'm just kind of going you know no specific order here pray to Allah to really help you with this situation right and if you and if you're sibling or parent pray for Allah's protection for your children or for your you know siblings or whoever it is with this because this is very much present across society right now very much present so pray for special protection for this type of stuff it's not the same as it was back in the day it's really not it's too accessible right and this is we're talking about there are two types here you have like people actually going and logging in on like what are actually pornographic websites and then you have what's called basically soft pornography which is people seeing like people posting pictures of basically themselves make it on even basic on platforms like instagram even on tiktok and other platforms stuff is happening and so how do you respond to it well you and i have to control ourselves and we have to help ourselves and we have to help other people who we know that are struggling with this the fifth the next thing that we do is we increase the amount of protective thicker that we're doing so remember this the more thicker somebody does the more light someone will have the more light someone has the farther away shaytan will the less effect rather than shaytan will be able to have them and we see this in the hadith of the prophecy somewhere he says he tells satan the omar that if you were to take if you were to travel one path shaytan fears you so he would travel another path because the light and the the the augustness of satan the omar it was so amazing that shaytan couldn't stand it right satan couldn't stand it so that's possible the more protective thicker somebody does the more they will assist in this i know people who told me that they couldn't control lowering their gaze they couldn't control this desire and then they started adding more thicker to their schedule they started doing a couple of basic protection duas they started adding in the sunnah morning duas and the sunnah evening duas they started adding in a couple of these basic things right a recommendation that i've made before it i would say again is to read regularly try to at least listen to on youtube if not read what's called the weird al-latif of imama haddad which is a compilation of the process i'm going to do in the morning of the evening and try to at least read that in the morning time right where w i r d al-latif la it uh la it i f uh sorry la t i f so that is the way to protect ourselves you gotta do more thicker we know we're gonna struggle so like if we're going into battle and remember when you are on the internet in some way to perform you are entering into a territory where people are going to be coming at you in a negative way whether that's hate haters which happens a lot or whether that's um uh haram coming at you so you have to be protected when you're out in the world you have to be protected it's like entering a spiritual battle spiritual battle should not be entered without spiritual preparation spiritual preparation is uh done so by asking a lot for protection and it's best done through the sunnah duas that the provisional allocated and told us to do with regression protection and if one isn't able to do that just make general duad that a lot protects you from uh the type of lust that you and i might be it might have or we might channel that so that is a very high level overview right so first is realize it'll destroy your heart we're talking here about someone who might have an addiction or regularly engage in pornography second is imagine if someone is doing this to like someone who's watching you know you someone in your family a mom sister daughter and realize that that person who someone is watching is a mom sister or daughter to somebody so like that's how could you do that right third thing is to reduce it slowly fourth is to realize that um pray to Allah regularly to help you and pray for your family and your kids and others to be protected and lastly is to increase the amount of protective thicker that you're doing if you do these four or five things Allah will help inshallah Allah helps the person who starts to uh starts to work on themselves inshallah so that's the first major bucket the second major bucket of things that i believe that i've seen that people struggle within our society is just an overall like you know not an ability to lower their gaze and then that gets into like illicit relationships right so this comes from a desire of like maybe someone always wants to flirt if someone always wants to get attention maybe somebody always wants to present themselves in a very specific way so the opposite gender could be attracted to them happens all the time and you know the filters that we have on social media make that a lot like more inauthentic by just we can make ourselves look like ways we don't even truly look right and that comes then if someone sees that image and they might not lower their gaze right and so what do we have to do first and foremost we have to be people who follow that try to follow that commandment okay i'm going to follow Allah's commandment and the Quran it says to lower my gaze i'm going to try i might not succeed but if one out of every five times i can succeed if today i'm lowering my gaze zero times now every time i see something i shouldn't be looking at if one out of every five times i can succeed in lowering it i'm improving remember shaytan will try to get you to go from zero to 100 real quick you'll be like if you're either like a super super saint in the religion or you're like a terrible terrible you know sinner who has no hope like he's going to try to point paint those extremes remember this umma is a middle nation as the Prophet sallam said so you and i don't have to be on either extreme we just have to try our best Allah rewards it when you try remember that always allow or reward you when you try it's not about being perfect not about getting it right so with regards to this we try to lower the gaze we remember number one the sweetness and the worship that will come and this overall calmness will feel number two we realize that when we see haram and when we text somebody haram things when we text haram images and when we start to do this type of stuff what happens anxiety builds up in the heart anxiety and depression come from a spiritual perspective from the limited understanding that i have is um from the sins that we are committing and it's very very real the more sins one commits the darker the heart gets as the Prophet sallam told us and the more dark the heart gets the more trepidation and worry and anxiety and problems the heart has so we might have anxiety that we're feeling now because of certain things that we were doing a six months ago or a couple months ago or even last week you might not feel the effect of the sin immediately there is an effect that that happens right so keep that in mind it will help you when you lower your gaze it will help you with your anxiety and third way to help reduce lowering the gaze or sorry to increase lowering the gaze is to again increase the number of thicker that someone is doing the amount of thicker someone is doing the same prescription for that the the one struggling with less and pornography is very similar here right now the other thing to keep in mind is um let's talk about specific places that you and I get into when someone might start to the desires aroused many times it'll be a specific app like tinder or instagram or something else where they're or you know tick tock something else that someone is on and they see something you know that they shouldn't be seeing and uh then the desires get aroused and they start to follow down a bad path so or it's a specific person that they're texting their dma their messaging and there's a certain type of lustful slash love interest that's forming that we might think is going to lead to marriage but it might not we don't know right so we might be doing something we shouldn't be doing it's damaging us spiritually in the process so if it's a specific app and we're or a specific website that we're not able to control ourselves we should take a break from it doesn't mean permanently delete just take a break from it though until you're able to control yourself i know people who deleted these apps and it's had tremendous spiritual benefit for them because they were able to take a break reset clean themselves or a lot of course cleanse them and then you know keep keep still had stuff to work on but just okay now they were able to go back into it because the intense power of the lust that was being ignited wasn't as present so if it's a specific app delete it if it's a specific website block it there's blockers you can get like on macbook they have a blocker called self control which is an app sometimes when i'm working i'll like put you know a couple of websites news sites and others on that app and then even for the whole day i can't access those sites even if i want to go read the news or whatever other site somebody wants booked so if it's a pornographic site someone's struggling to stop looking at block it just control those things put those control mechanisms in place parents you don't have to do this forcefully for your kids if you are a parent you should talk to them about it and because the helicoptering type of issue the helicoptering type of issue might might become more challenging for somebody so you want to make sure you do it in a very very gentle way with with somebody so what do we say specific specific app delete it specific website block it if it's a specific person that is inciting those desires distance yourself from them if it's a specific place that one goes to stop going or bring someone with you so if you know that like when i have my device alone in the room at this time that is time i'm going to mess up put your device away if you know if i go to this person's house i'm going to start to flirt with them or whatever it is don't go to their house it's it's difficult these are like simple things but they're difficult to do so we just have to take you know what we can do and and do our best with it and if it's a specific time that we engage in this this activity we fill that time with something else right so we do our best and again Allah will guide us um the other two things to help with this first is uh too fast regularly and you don't have to do that as a full day fast if it's not Ramadan if it's you're just trying to control the desire you just reduce the food intake so maybe you skip one meal right the less full someone is the less they will act on their desires that's a proven methodology according to our religion so you lessen the food intake and the animal instincts inside of you become weakened and then you don't act in that type of way so food and less will desire directly linked the second thing to do to make sure to do this in more broad way so the first is to control the food intake the second thing is to increase the bigger intake as we mentioned the third is to say out with the bilim and shaitan energy regularly as soon as we are about to do something to say out of the bilim shaitan energy it'll stop it to a degree it will inshallah because shaitan is coming at you and it'll immediately heal the the next thing is to never be alone with the opposite gender in either some type of you know private communication in the same room to the best of ability best of our ability because that's when the desire starts to start right so when you and I are like texting somebody and we're not married to them and we're you know slowly starting that conversation DMing them and doing all this stuff we know where it's going to lead to we want it to lead somewhere and that place we want it to lead to is a desire of ours that's impermissible so we have to just cut it off at the root right and keep this in mind the best thing to do the best thing to do mama khazali mentions is to break this at the outset that to cut it off at the outset he said to cut the desire off at the outset meaning to like immediately lower the gaze or immediately close the app or to immediately delete it or something like that he's like it's like pulling a bowl before it gets to the gate imagine you have a bowl like an animal a bowl and it's about to get to the gate it's like you know there's a gate and it's going to run in the field after that it's if you cut it off at the outset it's like controlling the bowl before it gets to the gate but if you try to treat it after it has after the outside after the desire has been stirred it's like the bowl is running loose in the field and you're literally chasing it and trying to catch it from its tail that's not going to be easy to do it's possible it's not going to be easy right so this is why cutting the desire at the outset is important these are addictions and addictions they take they take us completely they completely consume us right so that's a kind of general prescription that scholars outline so what is what we'll review one more time it's to control the desire at the outset it's to never be alone with the opposite gender to reduce our food intake and fast regularly it's to increase our thicker intake and it's to say out of the membership on energy and it's to cut that thing off so it's an app we cut it off if it's a website we stop going on it if it's a or we block it if it's a person we limit our communications with them and so on and so forth this is the the way that we can hopefully start to do this and most importantly inshallah Allah will help us and lastly what is the way to channel this in the right direction so I did say that that we'll talk about the way to channel this in the right direction having sexual desire is not haram in and of itself but channeling it in the wrong direction in the lustful direction is what's not allowed so we can channel in the right direction what do we do the first thing is to actively channel the desire in the right direction is to get married now what does that mean obviously someone has to be in a position where they're capable and they're able to get married at the same time though we do need to have real conversations in our community about like having extremely high expectations that parents might impose on kids say you have to be this age the girl or the guy has to be like this look like this walk like this be of this position be of this race in order for you to get married to them we set expectations so high and I can guarantee you for the parents who if you're doing that your kids are in some way or another starting to get into some form of illicit relationships it's almost impossible to control desire in this country and if you and I as people if we have kids if we are the ones who limit them from getting married when they feel like they're ready to get married the haram and the sexual desires that they get into the lustful desires that they get into that's on us that's on the person who limited them keep that in mind so be much more open minded this is not the same as things used to be way back in the day like they're this stuff is way too easy to get into you don't want someone's spiritual heart to be ruined someone's mental health to be ruined someone's addictive addictions to go up all because we were not able to have a very frank conversation about getting married in an appropriate age if someone is out of college and they're able to like earn some money they're like in their early 20s I believe personally they should get married even younger than that I think if they're able to manage it they should do it because otherwise the desires just keep increasing people are hooking up with people people are on tinder like and again more 95% of people of parents and one don't even have a sense of the stuff that's going on on the internet because we're because they might not be engaged in it themselves or the different apps someone's in so that's the first thing is to get married and to have a hollow way right that someone is able to release these desires the second is if you're not able to do that the the the energy that one is trying to activate or release with these desires one does so in other means so one takes up the sport one's exercise one does some other intense activity to release that energy that is not a long-term cure like the way marriage is but it is a way for us practically speaking to say okay every time I'm about to do this I'm gonna go run instead I'm gonna go do this instead it's going to release a certain type of dopamine inside of you that is going to still trigger similar things that would have been triggered with that other addiction that one has so those are really the two like ways that I believe and Allah knows best there's probably more if you have others please comment and suggest that one can channel this desire and this lustful desire in the right direction so those that's really the main thing you want to keep this brief so if anybody has any questions I'll wrap up and if anyone has questions please post them in the chat or the q&a section wherever it is and I'll go ahead and try to answer a couple of these questions or comments or things you've seen or you know concerns and whatnot please do so and we'll go ahead and try to answer it I see someone said yes this topic needs to be addressed I'm gonna learn I totally agree so just as a kind of recap while we wait for any questions to come in and again the goal here is like be open create an open forum ask whatever questions it is that on someone's mind and we'll do our best to address them and inshallah if not we'll do our best to check with a qualified person and hopefully get back to you you know in a future week or in a future discussion but just as kind of a quick review we spoke about sexual desire and we know that it is something that Allah created in us it's something that is a good thing if channeled in the right direction it's to allow us to marry it's allow us to have kids it's allow us to understand that it's a small portion of the delight of the afterlife as according to mama was Ali at the same time though the societies that we're living in are full of lust full of desire full of promiscuity full of sex at younger and younger ages and so we have to do our best to control this desire and the way to do that is to lower our gaze to cut it off at its root to try to fast often to try to increase our bigger intake and to turn to Allah sincerely and ask him for help and if we are caught up in a major major difficulty like we're addicted to pornography or something else we do what I just mentioned before and we slowly reduce our intake if we can't cut it off directly cutting off directly is obviously preferred and we reduce our intake of that and then we cut off the apps or the websites or the different channels it is that we are consuming this stuff from or the people it is that we're engaging in this stuff with and inshallah slowly and slowly Allah will facilitate Allah will help we ask Allah bless all of you and make this easy for you anybody who's sick may Allah cure you and inshallah I'll see if there's any questions I don't see any pop up anybody has anything please post it in the chat inshallah otherwise we'll go ahead and Salam alaikum wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah Muhammadin wa ala Ali wa sahbihi sallam ya Allah ya Rahman ya Rahim ya Allah please allow us to channel our desires in the right direction please allow us to channel our desire ya Allah and have knowledge of you and love of you and to desire your heaven ya Allah desire your agenda and to desire you ya Allah desire closeness and nearness to you and nearness to your prophet sallam ya Allah please forgive us and pardon us for any impermissible things that we've done for any wrong thing we've looked at or anything else it is that was just pleasing to you and please cover us in your mercy and your love and please forgive all of those that are struggling with their life all those who are here and present and watching or any have any intention to work on themselves please forgive them and pardon them and please assist us in all of our different situations and all of our different affairs please allow us to control our desires please allow us to lower our gaze please allow us to be people who are people of chastity and people who are who are pure inside and outside and please allow us to have love of you and your prophet sallam sallam wa sallam wa sallam wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka me thank you so much as i go here i don't see any question um uh and yeah someone said i deleted my social media and it has lowered yeah it lowered my lust desires totally feel the amount of fight or yeah totally feel that i know a lot of people that's happened with just because the amount of things that are out there that we're seeing when we're just scrolling we can't you don't even have time to lower your gaze because the next scroll is something else right so totally totally feel you thank you for sharing that um i don't see any of the questions i'll give it another like 20 seconds or so otherwise we'll go ahead and thank you all so much for it thank you. I hope everybody is doing well it's having some culties here. All right so today we are going to talk about we're going to continue this conversation on deceptive desires and really the focus for today is going to be um on the framework reviewing the framework for desires and then we're going to talk a little bit more about the desire for money and kind of what this does and how it relates to greed and uh uh treating others poorly and and uh just the overall sickness that having a deep attachment for money can bring to the heart. So as we've been discussing a human being we have desires we have many desires we have uh sexual desire we have our carnal appetites we have the desire for food we have the desire for money we have the desire for fame we have the desire for power we have the desire to be in control and so on and so forth now not every desire is considered a bad desire right there are some desires that are actually considered um good desires and there are some desires that are considered desires that can be channeled in a in an appropriate direction in a beneficial direction so that's something important for us to remember the second point is uh the second kind of main takeaway uh from the conversations as far as that you and I can channel our desires either downwards or upwards and the goal is to channel them vertically upwards what that means is to channel them in a way that you and I are desiring Allah we are desiring love of Allah we are desiring knowledge of Allah we we love dhikr we love these types of things and this might seem like a very very lofty type of state to be in but it is possible right and and that's something that we want to try to aspire to uh inshallah so now we'll get into the conversation for today um so we're really focusing now on the desire for money and what that is so we live in a society that's really filled with um it's filled with everybody trying to get rich right trying to get a get rich quick schemes are here uh there are people who are trying to not only get rich quick but who will steal people's money in inadvertent ways who will commit fraud who will do anything it takes in order to get their share and to take somebody else's share and so it's important to talk about this concept of greed and this concept of money we also live in a society where everybody wants to be rich and famous now it's important to know that there's nothing inherently wrong with having mashallah a lot of wealth and a lot of money but there is something inherently wrong with just like always desiring and doing whatever it takes and forgetting our religious obligations in order to just try to be uh ahead of everybody else and to try to be rich and so on and so forth that that is something for us to uh keep in mind so Allah mentions in the Quran he says that your wealth is a test for you he says that and he gives us regular indications in the Quran that he's going to test us with different means and your wealth wealth being one of them he also says in surah al-amran that the enjoyment of worldly desires um that he he tested mankind with various worldly desires including uh he says in the verse that we gave we we have adorned various shahawat various desires for the human being and in those he includes treasures of gold and silver and and he includes horses and he includes cattle and fertile land all of these he says these have been made appealing to people and then he says but these are the pleasures of the worldly life but with Allah is the finest destination right with Allah is the finest destination so what does this mean what does it mean when Allah is giving us this indication of desires and giving us these indication of uh you know gold and silver and horses and cattle and whatnot well we don't live in a time where you know most of us have horses and cattle and we don't really have gold and silver very much either um and we don't have you know as many not many people have land whatnot so what does this mean right in our context you and I could translate this as saying okay gold and silver includes all of our money our salary our stocks our investments like these are the types of things we get absorbed in many times and uh horses in this context right and could be translated as cars the different types of vehicles that somebody has um and just obsession with oh I gotta have a car I gotta have this car I gotta go for the utmost luxury and the next the next model comes out I gotta get it right and it's like this attachment that you do you by any means necessary will go to get that thing that it is that you want right and then you know land and cattle other aspects of our wealth is this constant idea that I have to grow my portfolio I have to grow my investments and whatnot again nothing inherently wrong with doing that but if that's our obsession if that's the desire that fuels us that's where the problem comes in right and that's very very important for us to discuss it's very also important for us to discuss as generally speaking if you come from a masha Allah a wealthy background a successful background no no nothing wrong with that that's a good thing alhamdulillah you should praise Allah you should feel grateful for but if somebody allows that to get in the way of their religious obligation if somebody allows that to get in the way of doing the right thing if somebody wants to keep going and going and growing in their wealth and society and they go and they do haram things in order to grow and that starts to become a problem and so we have to look at that very very seriously there's also hadith or the problems some indicates that true hungry wolves do not cause a direct destruction in a group of sheep in a flock of sheep as much as the love of rank and wealth does in a muslim the problem is indicated right now imagine you had a 50 sheep right and again this is we're not most of us we're not farmers so these types of situations are harder for us to imagine but imagine if somebody had that and then you had two hungry wolves what type of damage they would do to the sheep they would just go after them right there would be carnage obviously someone is saying that that they don't cause as much destruction to the sheep as does the love of wealth and rank and we're going to talk about rank next time inshallah as does the love of wealth and rank to the human being right so we have to take a look at this that these are things that are happening at the heart level the inner level rather than nufs level you and I not every single thing that's good is seen we're not every single thing that's bad that's is seen for our intentions you could have really pure sincere intentions and it could be a very very good thing alhamdulillah and nobody would really see it though only Allah sees that intention you could have very very bad intentions you could have very very bad thoughts only Allah is seeing that in the same way in the same way you and I could have very very negative things going on deep down inside of us and only Allah is going to be able to see that right and so the obsession do by any means necessary obsession with wealth could be one of them right you have a another narration this is a story of Issa al-aslam and says the disciples of Issa al-aslam asked him he said what what is the reason that you can walk upon water and we cannot he said how do you and so Issa al-aslam replies to them right this is a jesus he replies to them he says well how do you value gold and silver in your hearts what's the value of these in your hearts and they said they're good they're good he said they're the same as earth to me they're the same as dust to me they're the same as dirt to me right like that the the one of the traits right is that you had he had this trait of ascetic detachment where these types of things were not valuable these are not inherently seen as valuable and as a result he was able to achieve very very lofty stations and Allah blessed him and through Allah's power he was able to have many miracles on his hands right so those are some of the examples of you know where wealth can become a risk for us and what we need to try to aspire to right with regards to this kind of love obsessive love that many of us have this depth deep attachment that we might have to money and that manifests in a couple of ways it can manifest when we have a hard time letting it go it can manifest that when somebody needs our help we don't want to help them it can manifest in a way that we have a hard time um spending on other people it can manifest in a way that we are constantly stressed about money not like am i going to make ends meet but how am i going to get more and more and more we're never really satisfied it can manifest like that this is sickness that that many of us have inside i mean i know i definitely struggle with this right this is something we all have to work on right so there's another story in the Quran where Allah mentions the story of someone named Qadrun and this was a man at the time of Musa al-Islam and he had so much money in so much wealth insane amounts of wealth like next level amounts of wealth that it took a group of like it took a whole group imagine a whole group of like really strong dudes filled this this whole room this back room and that's how many people would not not be needed to carry his wealth but to carry the keys of his wealth to carry the keys that's how many people would be needed right a whole room of people would be needed in order to care a group of strong people would be needed to carry the keys of this guy's wealth right so he had a lot and what will people do people would look up to him people would be like oh look at him it's Qarun he's the boss he's the rich man he's like they would um give deference to him they would have an next level level of respect for him kind of you know as though as though he has uh some rightful for them just because of his money right so they had this immense respect for them and people with other people more more righteous people would say like why do you guys respect him so much like what are you doing is because oh he's he's look at this position that he has look at the station that he has look at all these types of things that he has right so what happened he became arrogant he's like you know when you have this much and you have a group of dudes who need to carry your keys just literally the keys to all your money you think you're a big shot right so he became super arrogant and he thought you know he he calls all the shots everything is about him and so he became so arrogant that a lot opens up the earth and swallows him because of his arrogance because of his attachment to money and because of the arrogance that results now was money the problem no it was the arrogance that was the problem but if somebody has a lot of that how many of us could manage it that's we have to know we have to know the trade and that's what we're trying to you know trying to discuss right it's just like we talked about last time is let's say um sexual desire in and of itself is that the problem no it is the way that that manifests in the way we're not able to control it same thing with the desire for food is that in and of itself a problem no but we need it to eat but if we start doing haram and so on and so forth then it starts to become a problem right so these are things for us to keep in mind now remember we have to just remember a couple things here what is the benefit of this wealth why do what is the benefit of of money right what is the benefit of this well the main benefit that we have to keep in mind is it is a means to an end that's what it is it's a means to an end it's a way you are going somewhere just like you need a car you need a car to get you from a to b right money is a car it's a vehicle to get you from where you are here to the next life to traverse and you need a map you need it in order to not be always stressed in order to not always be worried in order to not um uh uh uh be be worried about different conditions that are going to go on in your life right we need that but when you spend on our families food house alhamdulillah that Allah has given us all this type of stuff however the way in which you spend is the issue right and it's can somebody handle the potential negative implications of having it and if do they become greedy as a result we we all have probably heard hadith of the Prophet's son said that the son of Adam or he indicates the son of Adam that if he or she had one mountain of one valley of gold they would just want another like they're never they never get the only thing to fill them will be the dirt in their grave right and Allah says in the Qur'an he says al haqum et tukatur tattasursumul maqabit that vying for worldly increase has distracted you it's occupied you you've become so into it until it is that that that you will actually be um you know visiting the graves where you whether you are yourself in the grave or it is this kind of realization i'm going to end up in there and then Allah says that you will then know that's when you and i are going to realize so like our goal in this life is to realize that this is not the end game it is not the end game and i'm saying that to myself first and foremost it is not the end game to become rich it's not the end game to become wealthy it's that that's not the end game the end game for us is to get to the next life and to successfully uh successfully get to the next life and if wealth helps us do that alhamdulillah but we have to be on guard for any negative aspects of it so let's talk now about how this desire manifests right how does it manifest well remember this the desires are the root and the sins are the branches so you have to be able to to cure the root before it becomes a disease right and spread throughout everything else and becomes a sin can also become a good deed though if you cure it properly so what happens here a couple things happen if some the desire for wealth gets to somebody in a bad way first is that you begin to want everything around you you it manifests in greed i want this i want that i want more i want more it's always about more more more more more and that goes back to this hadith that if the son of adam had one value of gold that they would want another the next thing that happens you and i become envious if we start looking at other people be like oh he has this he has that latest iphone i should get that oh he has a benz why don't i get a benz oh i should get this car oh he has a bmw oh he has a tesla oh she has this purse oh look at that they have a five bedroom house i have a four bedroom house i should get the five bedroom house but if i get a six bedroom house what about a swimming pool what about this again nothing inherently wrong except the fact that overly getting into these luxuries and forgetting the main point of our existence can become a problem because the one who keeps going and going and growing it's like okay now the next thing is once the love of wealth is not sufficient for people then the love of fame comes in which we'll talk about next time love of status the love of power it keeps going and growing and growing which is why you'll never see people in a society be content with just being rich they will actually want to then be more than rich they're going to want to quote unquote climb now i need power now i need influence i gotta run for this position i gotta run for that position once you have that you gotta keep getting it right and because it doesn't stop the desire doesn't stop right and it can end up manifesting in negative consequences if it's not tamed properly so then what ends up happening if somebody does not change the desire correctly they end up taking haram means many times they end up taking the wrong means to get wealth right and so the goal here is for us to always keep in mind if we do want to have a strong intention in mind and we do want to achieve worldly success i'm there not nothing wrong with that but if we now start to three things usually manifest with regards to someone taking the wrong means to acquire wealth first is they just go after haram jobs and haram income that's important for us to not do there are the obvious ones like selling you know liquor having a liquor store selling drugs these types of things but there are the unop they're the ones that are not so obvious like maybe working for a super unethical like weapons manufacturer i mean that's kind of obvious but like working for an unethical organization or somebody that's an organization that's getting most of its money from completely haram sources these are questions we have to ask at the very least we have to look into it and we have to try we might not fail we might not succeed we might fail but we have to at least try because but if you and i become so obsessed so obsessed with this with how much money we have how much rank we have how much influence we have and so on and so forth we'll go to any means necessary and i know many people that you know really really really high paying jobs like will they will will reach out to them but they're in an industry that they're just not comfortable going in that industry and they'll just kind of turn they'll just turn down the job because that's not worth it to them it's not worth the Muslims it's not worth sacrificing that income for them right even if it's paying them two three times more than they might be making so that's one way the second way is if this love of wealth manifests is we start to take out impermissible amounts of money in the form of loans what does that look like what we live in a society where lending is a huge part of this society and so let's say again that we've given that car example oh i have a you know a solid car but everybody else around me has a Mercedes or a BMW or a fan some other fancy car now what i've got to get that too well i don't have enough money to buy it and so what am i going to do i'm going to go i'm going to take out a car loan i'm going to take out a two three percent apr car loan not thinking that there's any problem with it well there is a problem with it because having a car loan that has interest associated with it under no circumstance like under most circumstances right why we couldn't be we shouldn't be doing that we know that interest a love very severely warrants against interest in the Quran he says that tells us to stop taking interest he says stop giving interest he says he wages blood his messenger wage war on the one who takes out interest right so there's very very these are verses in the Quran very serious but we don't consider them because the love of money is so deep rooted and then it becomes it i gotta have this thing i gotta have that thing and then that's one example okay well maybe there's somebody who um wants to go and remodel their house okay cool well now i'm taking out a loan at five to ten percent apr over going on my credit card bill just so i can have really really nice cabinets let's say okay nothing wrong with having the nice cabinets if we say alhamdulillah but what means are we going these are just examples apply them to whatever situation we have in life but the excessive credit card debt the excessive debt that accrues as a result just because we weren't satisfied just because the love of and that greed deep down inside of material objects and money was just deep down inside right and then the third way this manifests is we just overindulge right overindulge all we do is just shop and buy things and i gotta get this i gotta get that that's an issue right we can't we can't be getting into a life as muslims we're like all we care about is consumption no we have to care about giving back to others we have to care about if if somebody uses their wealth to give to others to build massage it to assist others of course to take care of their family you know alhamdulillah if you have nice things we say alhamdulillah for them but in the appropriate ways in the time that we live in that's so different than somebody who just is like i gotta have the best of five designer bags and then ten this and you know i have to i have to buy a five thousand dollar shirt and you know five thousand dollar dress and just all these types of things that like just keep on accumulating because when you have the money it's all relative people say that right wealth is relative hundred thousand dollars to somebody might be chump change versus to somebody else it might be their entire year of salary it just depends but it doesn't mean that it's worth squandering that's when luxuria which is a disease that was it's part of the kind of catholic framework in the christian framework it's also manifest in our in our sense right like this love of luxurious things all we want to do is spend our money on luxurious things it's a problem we have to think about that nothing again wrong with doing things within limit but overdoing it beyond beyond even a bit more than what we need it can become an issue so we have to think about so what then is wealth for as we talk about this desire for wealth and desire for money what is it for it's for three things according to mama was out he says first it is a vehicle as i mentioned to get you to the destination use it wisely it'll help you in the next life the promises on me indicated he said in various hadith and stories how much have you sent forth for the next life right and it's how much have you saved for the next life and he said that everything it is that you give in the way of charity is what you've saved for the next life everything you've saved in your savings account if you don't give it away at some point right or use it for something beneficial it's not saving for the next life right it's used in this life so there is that aspect use it to get to the next life this is in two ways it should be to to give or to help us get the things we need to have a car to have a home and to take care of our family and put food on the table all these things some of the great things it's done with the right intention and we try to do them with a lot of income but that's the main goal right it's not too that we cannot let the means become the goal it's not the goal it really isn't the goal the second thing wealth is for is to help build either ourselves our families our institutions to let's say you you want to hire someone to help you so you can focus on your taking care of your family or focus on learning the dean or something like those are praiseworthy things mama was all he mentions that right because you will free up your time to do things only you can do right let's say you want to read Quran and someone some and so on and so forth rather than spending you'd say Allah bless you with wealth rather than spending four hours cleaning your home you spend that time in beneficial activities and you maybe get some help to clean your home you're using it in an appropriate way you're you are focusing on building your own knowledge your own skill set and in the same way building out institutions taking care of family and whatnot it's all positive things right and then so these are really the vehicles that we can keep in mind that this is what the the goal one of the goals for wealth is and so the Prophet has warned us against this kind of intense greedy competition and told us and indicated to us many times how detrimental it can be for our community and we don't have to go much farther than the Muslim world even to see like the level of the how much the negativity that the desire for wealth and the desire for money and fame has crept into some of these societies i mean you it's amazing you can have literally people who are struggling significantly and the people who are competing to build super tall buildings and who are paying like for example in parts of the Emirates you have people who pay insane amounts of money to get their license plate to be the absolute best license plate so like it's something like i think i think it's in Dubai there's fewer numbers you have license plate the more high class you are seen in society they'll pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars equivalent to getting the numbers reduced on their license plate they have like very few numbers it's a form of status it's part of love of status but it also just shows that like what is that wealth being used for right how is it that we can get into that level i mean what is the point of that is literally zero zero point absolutely zero point zero benefit to that it's just but somehow Muslims weird we're doing that type of stuff because we've lost we've lost the way of what we're supposed to be going right so what is the cure for this what is the cure for this excessive love of money the cure according to the scholars is first is to get rid of the haram sources of the money so if we are in love with it so much that we spend a lot of money on haram thing or sorry we're getting a lot of money from haram sources we have to reduce that either slowly or get rid of it completely we can't keep getting access to our wealth from sources that we know our questionable we have to work on that the second is to reduce haram spending so spending that we know is not good things we shouldn't be buying but we are buying right that we that are impermissible same thing then goes with loans if we all do or are caught up in loans we got to get rid of them as soon as possible right we have to work on paying them off we have a car loan got to work on paying it off because it shows that there are many other ways to get the car most likely there was probably a way to lease it and to negotiate the rate what's called the money factor rate and at least that you're basically paying you know close to nothing and what would be and what would be the interest or the money factor there are ways to do that but are we going out and finding these ways or are we just going out and doing it everybody else is doing and trying to compete with everybody these are the questions we have to ask and then the next thing to do is to just overall reduce our consumption and to not be so focused on the luxury right okay i'm going to get what i have alhamdulillah and these are unpopular topics i know because the nests we like the stuff i mean this is this is hard for all of us right to really really really think about this um but the the reality is is that it should not it should not make us obsessed whatever occupies you all the time means we are obsessed with it we gotta get rid of that obsession and you have it alhamdulillah you just say alhamdulillah having things is not a bad thing we have to say alhamdulillah we gotta keep that in mind but excessive attachment to them such that it distracts you from your theme that's where the issue comes and we ask Allah for guidance because for some people wealth is a blessing and for others the same thing is a test a test in in the sense that we do Allah is going to see how you handle that right the third way to do this and by the way i see this question come in until i'm going to get to this just a second um and please if anybody has questions please just post them in the chat that the third thing is uh to contemplate death that is one of the ways to remember okay this is not everything this world is not everything it's not always about this world i gotta remember i gotta remember what i'm here for i'm here to make it across this journey of this world so i can enter into the next world inshallah in peace and then hopefully make it through that journey so i can enter heaven inshallah that's my goal to be with the messenger of Allah so to be with Allah so i remembering death contemplating death just sitting just tried a couple things that the scholars recommend sit alone with all the lights off and just imagine what it will be like to be in your grave there will be no phone there will be no people there will be no facebook there will be no instagram there will be nothing with you it's just you and your grave and Allah hopefully is with you in there right like from a from a spiritual perspective or or not it could be negative right we don't know so we have to contemplate this let death settle in let the reality again unpopular topics but let the reality of the fact that i am going to die i'm going to meet my lord let that sink in let it let it really sink in so that we start to realize that oh this stuff dude it's petty why am i worried about it i just gotta keep moving in life get through it make sure i'm praying my five prayers make sure i'm doing a little extra and just kind of make moves right right and then the fourth thing is in order to cure this is to contemplate right the the the fact that all this is going to disappear and death contemplation will help with that right all this is going to disappear your the money that you save for the next life is the money you and i will give it's not the money that we just literally save and hold on to right and the fifth way to cure ourselves is to be generous and to give money away if we have it to be to give our okay i'm going to give a donation even five dollars ten dollars anything we can do if we have more hundred dollars five hundred dollars a thousand dollars give it to an institution give it to somebody in need give it to you know charity or something but to to get rid of this idea that like i have to hold on to everything right and this is the way then to channel the money and we said with every desire we'll talk about how to channel in the right direction the way to channel this in the right direction is to use it for the right reasons to be generous and to build for with it to build institutions with it to make it a sadhika jarya for us to to to help people with it right and again that means then there's nothing wrong with having it it just cannot be an obsessive desire that we are really really attached to so just a quick review of these q we get rid of the haram sources that includes our loans that it like that includes the haram income that we have we stop spending on impermissible and haram things we reduce our consumption overall and we stop just becoming consumers we're always buying i gotta buy this you know 50 outfits and this many bads and this so on and so forth we begin to contemplate death right and then we are generous and we give our money away often we try to be generous with it we try to give out we try to give back we try to take care of people inshallah if we do these things this desire will go away and once the desire goes away mama rizali this is a very interesting analogy he says wealth is not it's like a snake he says you have to be a snake charmer you got to know how to work with it not everybody can do that though not everybody can do this we can't just think like oh everybody can handle sometimes like oh i want to be a billionaire well not everybody could handle being a billionaire most people can't handle being a billionaire because i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of things that come with that right like a lot of accountability will come with that and on the day of judgment potentially a lot knows best and we asked he doesn't take us to account for anything but not everybody can handle all the different things that come with having significant amounts of money we have to know how to handle our wealth we have to know how to handle it as mama rizali says so may Allah and salla assist us we'll just get to this question if you're coming from a poorer family and you're looking working to change your family wealth status and um is that an unhealthy or an unislamic mindset no no not at all that's an amazing mindset mashallah if somebody is trying to do more for their family if someone is trying to assist their family and trying to kind of quote unquote move up and establish themselves i from my understanding um there is nothing wrong with that the main thing though to remember is to just do it in a permissible way to not find impermissible sources if something is impermissible to to project it right to not like take out a loan to then start a business so that you can grow right because that would be then impermissible route and as a result something impermissible to go to continue with that type of thing it would be something to watch out for but overall like if someone is doing in a halal way and they're able to give themselves a solid life and that's their intention to take care of the family take care of the parents those that that goes into the praiseworthy direction inshallah so hopefully um brother that answers the other question so if anybody has any other questions inshallah please just post them we'll just wait in the chat for just a 30 seconds or a minute or so and otherwise we will go ahead and do a short dua and end i don't see anything i'll just do a dua and if anybody has anything please go ahead and post it in ismail aqman ar-Rahman ar-Rahim alhamdulillah oahumma salli wa sallim wa barak ala sayedina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi sallim ya Allah ya rahman ya raheem ya Allah please assist us please uh help us with our lives ya Allah please help us with any difficulty that we are going through please ya Allah remove any desires that we have that are negative ya Allah please allow us to channel those in the right direction ya Allah please allow our uh our nafs to not have control over us and please bestow sakina upon us and please bestow tranquility upon us and please cure all of the Muslims of any diseases and please cure all of our loved ones and family members of anybody else who struggling with COVID in any other situation ma'sha'Allah wa sallim wa barak ala sayedina Muhammadin wa alihi wa sahbihi sallim alhamdulillah we have another question come in unrelated what do i do if i have not fasted for many years since Ramadan is coming soon um alhamdulillah so if you have not fasted for many years so i if you could just clarify in the question is this what do you do if you need to make up your fasts or what do you do if you're just kind of out of practice um that would be that would be helpful uh if you if Ramadan is coming up the best thing for us to do is first to know it's it's going to be here in about a month and a half inshaAllah for us to start to get in the rhythm of fasting okay maybe we try to fast once every other week or even once this month and then two three two two times in the next month just kind of get in a rhythm or fast once a week whatever it is that we can do or just start to maybe you skip a meal here and there right you start to get your body used to skipping a meal so that you can be ready for Ramadan the second thing though if you're saying for not faster than again if you can clarify in the chat we can try to respond in a more specific way but if you're saying what do you do in terms of makeup fasts right if you have to make up those fast then of course you fast this Ramadan um okay got it got it got it's not just makeup fasts you're saying overall well look don't don't stress get do what you can right so if somebody is just getting into Islam and you're just starting to you know get into a rhythm mashallah ala make things easy for you take it slow do what you can right okay you can do if you can go into it the you gotta know the obligation is okay i gotta do 30 days i gotta do the full 30 days right um with except the time for a woman when they're on their cycle if someone is getting into the religion newly entering the religion newly starting to practice you do manage it with whatever you can do so you make the intention i'm gonna fast the whole month you ask Allah for assistance and you start with that and hopefully you Allah will help you inshallah will help you get through it so just kind of begin right so from a um a basic perspective it's fasting from the time right before fudger comes in what's known as pre dawn up until sunset you don't eat or drink water and then of course you try to pray all of your prayers during that time and try to limit any other haram things that we would be doing or try not to do any of those at all that's like the basic kind of rule of the fast but you know we can get more into that tell us we'll try to do some basic Ramadan prep so hopefully that answers the question that was being asked with regards to Ramadan but if one does have an out of practice or have a lot of makeup fast and what not to do it's okay just take it slowly do what you can okay of course the obligation is the obligation get into it but if somebody it's like impossible for someone to handle all the makeups or whatever it is that they have to do they just slowly work through and ask Allah for assistance inshallah may Allah assist all of you and help you and make this time easy for everybody inshallah if there's any more questions we'll please post them otherwise so I don't see any others. Okay, thank you. Well just like I said, Assalamu alaykum inshallah. We'll see you next week at the same time Wednesday 7 p.m. inshallah. So we're going to continue this series now inshallah on deceptive desires. We've been talking about a different desire every week and today inshallah we are going to be talking we're going to do a quick review and then we'll be diving into a specific desire which is focused on the desire that the human being has to always be right and to argue and also how that stands in relation to the desire for anger. So a couple of things but we've been talking about so far it's basically this idea that the human being can either go in a good direction or a bad direction. The human being who follows their lower desires, their lower appetites, their shahawat, they will end up generally going in a bad direction. So these include the desires that we've been talking about that following the desire for food in the wrong direction, the desire for sex in the wrong direction, the desire for money in the wrong direction, the desire for fame and power and argumentation and to be right and all these other things that you and I can follow those desires and we can go in the wrong direction if we follow those desires and we don't channel them correctly. At the same time we there's a reason why we even have desires and if we follow and channel the desires in the correct way inshallah we are going to use what Allah created for us in a positive way and to hopefully ascend closer and closer to Him. So the one who restrains their themselves from doing what's haram we all have this understanding and know this they are going to benefit and the one who gives in to these desires they are going to be harmed and Allah says in the Qur'an after out of the bilan shaitan that destroyed or sorry successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who doesn't. So our job is to try to purify ourselves and what better purification than to try and purify our nafs right. So what is the nafs? We've been talking about the nafs a little bit. The nafs is known as the lower self. This is the lower part of us that inclines towards following and doing haram things until it's refined. So the nafs goes through training. The more spiritually trained somebody is the more the nafs is going to improve and eventually the nafs can get to high stages known as for example as mentioned in surah al-fajr, nafs says in what's marahina, the tranquil soul where the soul will actually be in a state of accepting Allah's decree and assisting you and I in accepting Allah's decree and being in a state of contentment. However in the early stages what is known as nafs al-ammarah mentioned in surah al-yusah and the other early stages these this is the evil commanding soul and the nafs will follow its base desires and take you in the wrong direction. So you and I have to work on ourselves. Now here is a very very important thing just because somebody is starting to practice religion or has become religious or has signs of religiosity does not mean that they are refining their nafs. The two are not always linked. If they are following the right path, if they are following the right types of knowledge, if they are doing the right types of spiritual practices in line with the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ attempting to be aligned with the akhla and the character of the Prophet ﷺ, okay that's a very very good thing. However if they are following a very very outward focused harsh way of religion that everything has to be their way or the highway and yes they might be worshiping a lot but is the worship really benefiting them then you have open questions about if their acts are actually benefiting them because as you become more purified your character should improve and what is the evidence of this the evidence the evidence is a hadith that the Prophet ﷺ where the sahaba came to him and they were impressed with a woman a woman who used to fast a lot extra fasts no also fasts and she would pray a lot of extra prayers specifically that the hadjid prayer the prayer known as the prayer the last part of the night very very virtuous things for somebody to do and so they were impressed by her however sahaba mentioned that it was mentioned that she was also rude to her neighbor right and had this kind of rudeness and the Prophet ﷺ said that she is in fire he said that she's in the fire because even though she might have done these this worship the ahlaq the character wasn't there and we it comes in the hadith that the wadiest deed on the day of judgment is one's good character one's character will be the wadiest deed on the day of judgment and then the Quran magnifies good character as well so let's let's let's examine that right that it's not just about how much worship you do no you can do the base amount of basic amounts of worship and a little bit more but work on yourself work on having good character try to work on getting rid or mitigating your desires and you can be in a very good place and you can do a lot of worship and all these things but if you're not doing it in the right way and you're getting puffed up thinking you're all that thinking you're better than everybody is it really even helping you is it really benefiting you so this is something to keep in mind so we're trying to talk about just briefly today is this desire to be right this is a desire that in the world of social media in the world of the way things happen now on twitter and on facebook and on instagram and on tiktok and even in the comments and these different threats everybody wants to be right and this was the case this has been the case throughout history but now everybody has to prove themselves i want to be right it's my way or the highway it's about me anytime you hear somebody really magnifying themselves me me me know that they are really at a subtle level worshiping themselves they're worshiping their nuts they're worshiping their opinion the person though who's humble enough to accept that okay a lot of course is the only one in control and there could be a different way to do things they at the end of the day are following the kind of correct approach that we should be taking in our religion so what is this desire to be right all the time this is a sickness this is a sickness deep inside the human being and remember from different desires stem different sins so the sins are kind of like stems and the desires are like roots so the sexual desire when uncontrolled can result in the sin of adultery right can result the results in the sin of zena can result in the sin of looking at pornography and so on and so forth the desire when it is uncontrolled the desire for uh uh the desire of anger and the desire to be right it results in the sin of arguing it results in the sin of yelling at people it results in the sin of trying to always prove yourself and maybe you're even backbiting people because you're saying oh did you hear what they said they're you know she he or she totally you know uh totally wrong and you're just talking bad about them all the time this is what the desire to be right leads to and it's very very present in the world that we live in so there are different categories of this desire you have those who have this desire who argue about it who argue about worldly matters right so i have to be right about okay i'm talking about politics my opinion is right my party is right we saw this manifest in the last election and we see this manifest throughout the united states right now that there's very very little cooperation between different parties simply because they believe that their way has to be the way there is no such thing as compromise for them because it's about their way and that links to other desires not only the desire to be right but the desire to win the desire to be in charge and so on and so forth so we can see how much these desires really end up ruining us at the same time at the same time there are different ways that you and i can manifest this desire in in in in the world in a worldly sense so i might manifest in politics could manifest at work could be in our own homes we might hope i have to be right with regards to like you might be just you know young and arguing with your parents or vice versa and even though you might have a sense that the other side is is kind of on the verge of the truth you because you are sticking to your point it's like no it's about me i see this happen from time to time right people who like have this arrogance to them that it is difficult for them to admit that they're wrong about something and it's very much a cultural practice and generally speaking many of us of us men we have this a lot i would say that right there is a kind of general sense that you know no i'm i'm the boss i'm in charge i'm right and the the the promises on taught us humility you taught us that being wrong is okay and imam malik said that saying i don't know is half of knowledge so you know there is no concept in our religion of having to prove yourself always in to be right so that can happen in so many different areas it can happen at work it can happen in of course you know at work a new job it can happen in the political arena it can happen with family it can happen broadly with extended family so many ways it can happen then there are people who it's it's it's about arguing for religious matters this is far more dangerous far more dangerous i have to be right when it comes to my view on the religion when it comes to my specific approach or even if you follow mudhub it's only my mudhub that's correct right it's all this argumentation argumentation is not in any place in this religion and we have to work on ourselves to get this desire to be right if we want to really purify ourselves remember Allah says that successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who isn't who doesn't so we have to try to purify ourselves we have to try to work on ourselves in order for us to actually grow and succeed in this religion so when it comes to arguing about religious matters what does this mean right you do have um many many examples of things that have become controversial unfortunately because so many people have tried to fit their framework in here's something to keep in mind or sorry the religion into their framework you have two types of people you have somebody who they want to know the truth and they will fit their religious practice into whatever the truth ends up being okay and then you have somebody who has a very specific framework in mind and who will fit the religion into their framework and who will exclude this and include this in order to fit it into their framework now the danger of this latter methodology and why it's so problematic is because there are groups of people unfortunately today who have major prominence in the Muslim community and the Muslim world who literally had a very specific view of religion in mind and they took out everything it is that they didn't like and they just made stuff up oh this is weak this is fabricated because i don't like it not because of anything else made the great imams of the past had accepted certain hadid that accepted certain statement no i don't like it because in the line with my view has to be my view right and their arrogance and their following their desires got them down a path where they became very very harsh with everything and it's still manifest today where if your practice doesn't fit their very narrow view and their desire to be right has become so magnified that you are excluded there are even movements in the leader leaders of these movements that would say everybody who does not follow my way is a catheter even though there are so many different differences of opinion that you could follow about how should you do a certain religious act and and whatnot but again the desire to be right took them over and there were they killed people they straight up muslims killed muslims in the then in the um uh they kind of disguise if i'm right and i'm on the religious truth this is a very dangerous desire and it ruins people it ruins people and it's very related to the hadid that the praksha samari said that i fear more more than the dajal the antichrist i fear for you evil scholars olemah asu that these scholars who literally they will fit the religion into their framework it's about themselves it's about their nuts it's about their ego it's about their fame it's about hypocrites like the hypocritical that's very dangerous and it's become a disease in the olemah today such that you and i will see very just someone's just trying to worship i'll give an example tonight tonight is known as later to the israeli mirage masha'Allah the mcc will have a inshallah beautiful program with dr ali atayah and acclaimed scholar teaches at zaytuna college and he lectures in many other places as well including mcc on the just reflections on israeli mirage right what took place on this night this is the night of the 27th of rajab we are in the blessed month of rajab we have just alhamdulillah entered this blessed night and it's good to talk about the events that took place on this night it's good to remind the muslims Allah says uh fadakya inna dikratan fa al mu'minid remind and reminding benefits the believers right but you have a group you have groups of muslims who it's about their way so because they don't they don't know oh this is how you should do certain things it's okay they're going to that you start to have people who say no you shouldn't practice anything on this night there's no need to single out any specific nights of worship uh there's no proof for this so on and so forth and just continue the same thing same groups of people do it for nes shaban they do it for the motive of the provisional and they'll continue to go on now the danger of this it's one thing if you're really sincere and you're really just like okay i really really firmly believe at the bottom of my heart that every single thing that i do has to be like in line with the very very very narrow methodology of how i do things okay you're welcome to do that but then at the same time that group of people like you should you should definitely stop watching television you should get off of all social media you should probably stop driving cars you should probably stop using watches to tell the time and tell the prayer time because all of these things will not fit the narrow methodology or the kind of innovation methodology that somebody is trying to fit their view in but that's not going to happen because it's only when it comes to my desire to be right right i have to prove myself and then religious argumentation begins this happens all of the time in the community it's the big problem and the way we respond to this is we should not engage in argumentation we should not i see it all the time in youtube threads and and all these different threads people just arguing back and forth back and forth as though you forgot that we're brothers and sisters that we are muslims that we are supposed to be united that we have enough people outside of our umma who are going to hate on us that we don't need to hate from within that if you disagree you are entitled to disagree and you can have your opinion but disagree respectfully and just leave it right just let people do their own thing that we're living in a time when people are just barely trying to hold on to faith so stop trying to fit everybody into the narrow technical view that you want to follow like right like let's let's be a little bit it's called magnanimity let's be a little bit magnanimous with regards to our approach to other people and try to be generous and try to be open to harm rather than trying to shove everybody how it doesn't fit our narrow approach this is what happens with the desire to be right and these people they push people away from the religion they push people away and it comes in narration that a people never went astray after they were upon guidance except when they took to arguing right and one of the scholar of the great scholars he said if Allah willed evil for people he would give them argumentation and prevent them from action so you have many people a very very special time comes in the religion all they spend this all that time they spend arguing about it instead of just worship just go make dua go pray go do something useful or just at least not arguing it'll be better just remain silent right as it comes in and narration speak good or remain silent right there's no need to always be talking and arguing about trying to get your opinion across but this is it just happens so we have to control this desire we have to work on this desire we have to work on ourselves so the way that we need to approach this right it's first and foremost to realize that and when it comes to matters of dunya when it comes to you know politics and work and sports and all these things we should engage in discussions if we want but these are like i mean come on these are petty things let's not let disagreements really get in great risks between us let's try and be reasonable with our conversations and let's just be okay with being wrong or be open to hearing different perspectives that's the kind of back road but when it comes to and so that's there with it however when it comes to religion we have to know there is no room for argumentation if we are not scholars and we are not scholars and so we really should be arguing we should know that we need to have the sunnah methodology and everything so if you want to be right let's say you have this desire to be right and you want to prove your point the way in which you go about proving if you and you believe your point is the correct religious way which means it's the way the prophet says on practice the way in which you go about proving your point must be aligned with the the sunnah as well so the methodology has to be correct and the fact that you're presenting has to be correct you cannot go improve your point and then the arrogant yellow people get angry get mad use slurs call people names and say my point though is my point i mean i'm on i'm on the truth i'm following the sunnah how are you following the sunnah if your methodology is not in line with the sunnah show me one time when the prophet says i'm argued show me one time where his uh uh just just i have to be right got in the way no he didn't even have that right this was one of the famous nights on this ramiraj where we know his blessed heart so the love sunnah was actually washed all of these things were washed away from him so as a perfect human being so what does that mean it means that we need to work on ourselves we need to work on our hearts we need to work on our foods we need to work on our egos we need to stop thinking that it's my way or the highway we need to humble ourselves we cannot be so puffed up all the time walking around just looking for people to make mistakes so we can call them out this has to go away i know so many people who've been pushed away from islam by by those of us who might act in this way and we ask Allah for forgiveness if we've ever pushed somebody away because of this methodology but we have to work on this right so a couple of things to keep in mind ways to attain this desire to be right number one really recognize the danger for you to always be praised or for you to always be at the forefront or for you to always be right that's not a good thing it's not a good thing in western society it's a good thing because everybody the people don't operate with the afterlife in mind but it's not a good thing for us in our in our context in the islamic context to always have to be right because we know it's a desire knowledge is the first step so once you know that this is a desire don't follow it down the wrong direction where does the desire to be right come in when it comes to to be on the hawk when it you want to be on the truth that's a good thing alhamdulillah if you want to follow the truth you want to really learn how does this religion really work i want to learn the religion in the best way possible alhamdulillah that's a good place the desire to be on the right path is good but the desire to say now now i'm following the dean now everything i do is the right way everything somebody else does is the wrong way we can't do that we cannot do that your kids might do things differently than you as long as within the permissible the permissible boundaries that the scholars have created and including the differences depending on the scholars have created say alhamdulillah that they still believing and that they are doing that they're not going to follow every little thing you might get disappointed at certain things that's okay just but know that it is a test for you and i because Allah says that he will test us with all these aspects he will test us with our wealth and our children and within ourselves and with other people we will be tested so we have to ask Allah for patience and we cannot let this desire to be right and to be to win all the time given the way the second thing to do is to work on our anger usually the negative aspects of this they result in angry argumentation angry arguing and it's a problem so we have to work on our anger how do we do that the Prophet saw someone he told us that if when you get angry he told said say alhamdulillah the shaytan energy and he said if you are standing sit down if you are sitting lie down that anger is a fire like the from the fire of shaytan and it makes you rise get up right you see people ever and get angry and they're just like they'll do their math they like they're they want to fight they like say what'd you say to me and they start to get up and then you can see they're getting puffed right so calm it down promises and said just calm down and then he said if that if you do that and also if it doesn't work make wudu with cold water because cold water will extinguish the fire flame know when you are about to get into an argument and when you were your desire to be right is manifesting to leave the situation that forgetting the exact verse that when the approaches you say peace when the ignorant person who just wants to argue like yo come like tell me about this tell me about your proofs for this tell me about this there's every single thing is about arguing you know they're not coming with with a very humble approach there's one thing when someone comes into you and you know hey you said this thing or you know I'm learning something and I just was wondering like how do I think about this like I heard one thing from one person what are the different proofs for for this type of approach mashallah that person is really trying to learn and somebody coming and just being like you this way is wrong everything you're saying is wrong your approach is wrong this is an innovation this is a bidah now my approach is the correct way and show me why you get this wrong it's a disease just ignore people like that just ignore them just say Allah say Allah and leave them to their idol talk just leave them to that because that won't benefit you I'll tell you that much will not benefit you enough if the scholars want to discuss it the differences of opinion mashallah they do that already so let's let them do that for us it's not worth it let don't let the desires to be right and religious matters get away so taming the anger is very important here third is analyze the issue and think about is it worth reading you really like having to be right right and is it really worth my time and is it worth me getting into sin because when you start arguing and anger comes in the way you are getting into sin you are creating animosity you are disrupting things between yourself and you are disrupting a societal harmony you've ever been in like where does this happen a lot of me we've got we've all been quarantined for a while so we haven't gone but you know maybe at the airport or like sometimes I've seen this on on the subway back when we used to be able to ride the subway that something small will happen everybody's quiet and doing their own thing two people like disagree on something and boom argument start and everybody's impacted the entire harmony of the situation has been messed up I mean this happens sometimes at airports but anytime when people are kind of an intense mood this happens sometimes it happens unfortunately even in our own communities our own messages so what does that mean don't don't disrupt other people's harmony if you have inner harmony I will tell you this you will not be the person who's disrupting the outward harmony because your inner harmony will be a light that brings harmony to everybody else but if you don't have inner harmony you're just going to go out and look to pick fights you're going to try to pick everybody apart argue here argue here argue here my way the highway every single situation that is a disease I highly recommend to your set to you to myself first and foremost and to all of us we have to work on ourselves to get rid of that disease it will destroy us it will destroy us it will mess us up as an umma it will create problems it will create animosity it will create tension and it is a desire that just like these other desires once they get out of control like the sexual desire and the food desire all these other ones we will start doing many haram things and we do not want to be in that boat we don't and people will this one is to a degree very problematic also because people will just hate us too so like you know we're going to be in major trouble with other people as well and we will we will create a dissension amongst people so if anybody has any questions feel free to post them to this chat we're about to end inshallah when we have any questions or or anything please feel free to post them we will go ahead and get to those inshallah so those are really the ways that we should approach this and lastly all of these desires can be controlled with us doing the following things with us doing an abundant amount of thicker with us fasting often with the right intention and with us appealing to Allah and really turning to him and ideally in the later parts of the night and begging for him to help us that yeah Allah get rid of get rid of this for me help me with this those are the general over-the-counter tours that the scholars prescribed right that try to and in this case though the fourth one actually that's also prescribed is to limit the amount that you that you talk so that doesn't mean we don't talk ever but when you're about to get into an argument just zip it okay i'm gonna i'm i know my desire to be right is going to manifest right so let's work on ourselves let's try to do these things and when that comes up when a topic comes up just say you know what i'm just going to leave this i'm not going to like i'm not going to engage i'm going to leave it because Allah will appreciate if i leave it we know that famous story and we'll inshallah end with this and we'll mention briefly on isram miraj we know the same story of said number buckler siddiq that one time he was in the mudship and somebody was insulting him and he was the provisional someone was with him and someone insulted him the provisional stood by and he was the provisional was actually standing by and i believe the narrations that he was smiling and this person kept insulting said there were buckler workers at radiolaho and didn't say anything kept doing it he didn't say anything he kept doing it and finally the provisional still listening and smiling and finally the person insulted him again i say the number buckler siddiq radiolaho that he responds to defend himself and at that moment the provisional went he left and the buckler catches up with the provisional and said he asked Allah this person was saying this to me you were there and then why did you leave he said because when you were silent right there are angels there responding on your behalf but when you decided to right say something and engage shaitan came and shaitan and the prophet cannot be in the same room right so uh and i'm paraphrasing this is the hadith here but that that's more of an indication right that look at look at what the prophet is on his teaching us here just don't engage i'm not talking about in categories where you have to respond or somebody's like getting getting you or your family into a difficult situation or into trouble or any situation that abuse or talk or anything i'm talking about just when people just want to argue improve themselves right just don't respond it's a desire don't you shouldn't follow it i shouldn't follow it and don't let someone else follow it inshallah we ask that Allah help us we ask that Allah assist us we ask that Allah facilitate goodness and care for us and allow us to control our nuts and allow us to work on ourselves and that he allow all of our intentions that are good to be fulfilled inshallah and prevent us from following or any evil intentions or evil thoughts that we have salallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakah alayhi wa sallam Muhammadin wa alayhi wa sallam alhamdulillah just briefly if anybody has questions inshallah please post them on the chat we'll take them now and one thing to mention so tonight is a blessed night israela miraj mcc will have a program just in about 30 minutes on also streamed on on youtube live and i think facebook live check it out inshallah um just briefly about this night it's a very very special night it's a night that the prophet ascended to the heavens he went from mecca to jerusalem to the heavens and this is the night in which he was gifted the prayer and he was gifted the prayer directly it didn't come in the same form of revelation through the same methods that the quran came no the prophet was gifted the prayer and i'm sure the doctor aliyah will get into this but there was this whole conversation the prophet came with 50 prayers he went and said the musa alayhi salam uh said the musa alayhi salam uh told him your umma cannot do 50 and he went back and increments of five or ten there was like this kind of back and forth until Allah eventually legislated five and said the musa alayhi salam said your umma cannot do five and the prophet said i'm too shy to go back and he uh accepted five prayers Allah said it is five with the reward of 50 so use this night to connect to Allah there's not any specific ibadah that i'm aware of that we're supposed to do on this night but it is a good night just like all the nights are all the nights of rajab especially good nights to just pray good night to make ablani duha good night to learn about the events that took place and it's a good night to make duha for yourself and for the umma of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and just to overall remember how much he sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did for us that one of the most amazing aspects of this night was that when he was in this conversation with Allah the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam according to most of the opinions of this ulama he met Allah on this night and Allah says when we say in our prayer atayatu lillahi that that whole up till the end it is Allah Allah says that we repeat that we follow that Allah said to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam peace be upon you oh Nabi wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said peace be upon us peace be upon us peace be upon us and all of the righteous servants so when he was in this amazing intimate meeting with Allah he sallallahu alaihi wa sallam didn't just think about himself he thought about the whole umma he said peace be upon us right that's us hopefully we can fall into that category even if we're not righteous and you know I'm definitely not there but hopefully I can just fall into that peace be upon us and may Allah eventually make us from the righteous right but look at that he remembered all of us so the least we can do is remember his umma and our du'a regularly and not argue don't waste time arguing about anything tonight or in any of the nights Rajab is here Shaaban is coming up there will be a group of people who try to argue about Shaaban and its merits and this Shaaban just don't engage Ramadan is then coming up alhamdulillah our umma is united about Ramadan at least and don't argue about moon sighting don't argue about any of that stuff just worship Allah follow whatever it is you're down to it ask Allah for guidance worship him remember all of us in your du'a's may Allah make this time easy for you full of light full of khair full of abundant abundant abundant openings for you and your family and cure any of of you and any of us we're going through any difficulty or move any anxieties and depressions and problems and sicknesses and issues that we might have and allow us to have abundant secrets and blessings poured upon us on this night and all the other nights Allah thank you for for the comment on the last of if there's no question we'll swim another 30 seconds uh and inshallah we'll end we are passionate of the truth we know which is only a fear of Allah but we have to control our emotions and doing that one not to argumentation exactly to the to the to the person who mentioned that part of that one is not arguing that's actually otherwise it's not that one because Allah says that call to the way of your lord with hikmah with wisdom right and he tells musa aleyselam when he's going to do that one to fer'on he says to fer'on one of the worst like tyrant ever he says to fer'on to be to be gentle with him so it's not that one if it's with argument that's something else it's from it's not from the dawah of the promises on it's something else entirely so let's just keep that in mind but totally agree that we have to control our emotions we can't be passionate or we can be passionate but we cannot be intense and argumentative we have to be merciful then we have to not be harsh we cannot push people away from islam and to bring people in and we will bring people in from our akhla not from our from our intellectual rhetoric it will come from our akhla inshallah our character i'm gonna say the as-salamu alaykum wa alaykum as-salam alhamdulillah okay i don't think there's any more questions inshallah i will stay on for another little bit if anything pops up what do we do when people say on tiktok lgbtq muslims are going to bad place do we argue no so so good question look this the topic of homosexuality and that entire topic is a very very broad topic but just briefly only Allah knows where someone is going number one number two there are many lists of harams it is not about having a desire it's about acting on the desire so somebody who has a desire before they get married for any sex opposite sex or the same sex and they act on that desire right let's say that somebody's not married and they are like a man and they sleep with a woman well and that's not their wife they that's haram same thing if they sleep with a man that's haram right and so that's one thing to keep in mind second thing is there are many lists of haram sins or sorry major sins among which are homosexuality arzina it is uh adultery is another sin disobeying your parents is considered one of the biggest sins in our religion there's so many sins taking interest loans are it's a huge sin so when people get into very specific topics many times that are stemming from a disease of the heart that they just want to single out groups and they don't want to look at everything in its macro context there are many big major sins it's not worth narrowing in on very very specific groups getting very very homophobic getting angry with you know the specific groups because of that right the the other thing is if somebody has that inclination it's about again controlling the desire the inclination of it in and of itself is not the problem we're talking about the desire and acting on it is the problem so when people start to take the place of Allah and say this person is going to hell this person is going to heaven this whole group is in hell this whole group is in heaven it's like oh really it didn't know that you that that you that you are you are God next to God are you are that what you are don't engage with people who try to legislate where people are going leave that to Allah Allah knows what's in someone's heart and Allah knows where someone is going to end up they might people might make toga people will change inshallah and there might be righteous Muslims who in their hadith that indicate this who at the end of their life they will change and may Allah protect us from this but they will have a bad ending and there could be Muslims who are really doing lots of haram and at the end Allah will change their life and they will have a good ending and it is about the way that Allah seals our life inshallah but definitely don't argue don't argue about any controversial topic just don't waste your time it's a desire don't waste your time by arguing about LGBT don't it's not your it's not not not my business not your business let the scholars discuss it and be merciful to people who are in that struggle be merciful to them be nice right don't argue about controversial things Muslims argue about just just tell people like you know go worship go make dua for people and you'll see the feelings you get in your heart you will see the light that enters the heart when you spend time learning and worshiping Allah that is way better than the tension and trepidation that enters the heart that is associated with arguing and all the other worries i i face this issue all the time and people just want to argue about stuff and i'm just like i i have that inclination as well and i have to hold myself back like how do i stop this because this is not healthy for me even mentally let alone spiritually good question thank you for asking sister okay all right and if there are any other questions inshallah please post them otherwise please keep everybody you can go ask tonight inshallah please check out this program that dr aliyah tai will be doing at 8 p.m easterns in about 22 minutes check it out until i think it's on youtube or israh mirage hopefully it'll be recorded as well so we can watch it later inshallah what if you bring logical arguments just for someone to reason and come to the truth so argument the the the construct of an argument the Quran is full of arguments meaning Allah is presenting to us in a very very logical way this is why you should believe right so that's not a problem when i say arguing i don't mean the classical definition of argument what i mean is that like this kind of intense angry debate that people engage in to prove themselves right so if you bring logical arguments let's say that what's an example here let's say somebody wants to know let's say that somebody wants to know interest let's talk about interest okay someone's like oh i i don't really understand interest like is it haram is it not like what is it about is it just me is it just like when the interest rate is really high so you say well according to the scholars the first thing you started what are the consensus of the scholars the consensus of the scholars is that interest-based instruments are problematic then if they really need to look at the proofs again it's really not actually for you and me to look into all the proofs because there's hundreds of thousands of proofs so we're not going to know them most of them right just like a doctor when they're treating you they're not going to tell you the different chemical formulas that came up in that treatment that result when you take the require virus vaccine you're not diagnosing all of the different ingredients in the vaccine no you are just taking the vaccine and you're hoping it's going to help and hoping it's going to work same thing with you go to the scholar and you say what is the situation here and they will tell you so let's say with interest don't you really want to look go in the Quran Allah has many verses with the butler and other ayah that talk about interest he says he wages war on the one who take him and a lot of messenger wage war on the one who takes interest then you can look up different hadith there are various hadith that indicate the the the problematic place that somebody who is giving interest or bearing witness to interest or taking interest will be so you can present those to somebody and say you know what you should check these out i think it's very dangerous i think we should get out of interest i think we should stop taking car loans and stop taking student loans and ideally convert any other loans into any Islamic loans that are possible right you can do that but if it's like an intense argument and usually the argument comes with like on contrary on very controversial topics logical proofs are fine but just be careful not to let it get into a bad place right just be very careful because what happens is just like the let's say somebody who's going to engage in in a zina and in haram and like like a sexual acts with somebody that they're not married to it's not necessarily haram to like just you know say hello or something like that but it starts with the hello then it goes into a text conversation then it goes into a little bit more and a little bit more next thing you know the haram act has happened so you have to know yourself is the logical argument you are bringing going to lead to the haram argumentation that's going to happen if so don't do it but if it's just to and the person is receptive mashaAllah bismillah and you are able to control yourself then we should we can engage in that so with our intention that people come to the truth yeah good question if there's anything else inshallah we will go ahead and answer it or we will try inshallah forgive us hope everybody's doing well hope everybody's preparation inshallah for Ramadan it's going to be again soon inshallah okay i don't see anything else so we are going to continue on in this series where we've been talking about different desires that the human being has and today we are going to move on to a desire that is very very prevalent in the world that we live in and this is the desire for fame and the desire for followers so what we're really going to be focusing on is to understand why do we as human beings why do we have this desire to be famous why do we have this desire to have so many followers why do we have the desire to have the most amount of views and to have the most amount of people constantly watching us and praising us and what is the spiritual cause for that and what are the spiritual cures for this desire for fame and this desire for followers so we're going to try to keep it brief inshallah and as you have questions come up please feel free to post them in the chat whether you're following along on youtube or anywhere else so we live in a society where followers and fame are really really really big part of the culture that we live in it has become universalized and almost democratized in the last 10 or so years where as before it could be that you know you had to be among a very very specific class of people you had to have a very very certain type of privilege in order to kind of rise through the ranks and become famous that's no longer the case and now with the advent of more and more social media platforms and with all of us having our smartphones it's very very easy to just put something out there and to try to become famous and to try to get followers and to try to get views and to try to get likes and while there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to do some type of good or spreading some type of benefit using different types of platforms it definitely becomes risky when you and I start to desire this stuff when we actually start to want more I want more people following me on more I want to be more famous I want to be more in charge I want to get more and more people under my purview I want to get more and more people listening to me I want more and more power I want more and more control that actually becomes very dangerous for the human being that's why it's called a desire and that's why it's actually warned severely against in our religion because what it can do is it can eventually go on to ruin you and me that you and me desiring people to follow us and people to be like us and to people to like everything it is that we say and everything it is that we do it can actually end up ruining us spiritually and this is important because you and I won't notice this when we're young that as we get older and older and older the more and more we let this get to us the more and more the impacts of this start to happen and they start to creep in the more and more we start to become stressed out and the more and more the spiritual ramifications start to take hold and we've seen this happen in all realms of life we see this happen where somebody begins their life in a very very specific way they began their political career or their social media career or whatever it is and initially right they're just trying to do something and then from there what happens is people start to like what they do and people start to inflate them a little bit and they start to get a little bit of a bigger head right and then from there it starts to become about how much money am I going to make through this so we touched upon this in two two classes ago where we talked about the desire for money and we talked about what the desire for money is linked to and why the desire for wealth can very very much ruin us because the Prophet ﷺ he said in the hadith I mean he indicated this that the love for money and love for wealth are worse for a Muslim than wolves are in a flock of sheep among a flock of sheep right as I see somebody says salaamu alaikum wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullah and so the the love for wealth the love for for fame the two are linked and we'll talk a little bit about that but that can ruin you it can really really really ruin you because your whole life becomes about pursuing empty things that's at the first level remember you and I are here for a very specific reason we are here to try to get through this life and to try to get to the hereafter we are not here to collect fortune we're not here to collect a bunch of things we're not here to collect a bunch of fame and a bunch of followers because guess what when you die your bank account doesn't go with you your social media following doesn't go with you all the likes that we collected don't go with us all the views that we collected don't go with us none of that's going to go with us to our grave all of our stocks all of our investments all of the money that we've gathered none of that stuff is actually going to go with us when we pass away so what is going to go with us our good deeds will go with us the amount that we gave away will go with us these types of things are what go with us when we pass away so the perspective of the muslim is always a perspective of what am i going to have not in in the life that i'm living right now no it's what am i going to benefit from after what am i going to benefit from when i leave this world because the afterlife that is at the end of the day what matters Allah says in the Quran that the Akhirah is better for you right it is better for you than where you are right now so that is the reason one of the reasons why this desire for fame and status and followers and rank and all these types of things are very very condemned and we'll talk now a little bit about what it does so what it does as you and i start to spiritually the impact that it has as you and i start to follow our desires is it starts to ruin you slowly and slowly and slowly so people become very much destroyed by searching for this type of stuff and we see in haditha the prophet says that love for rank and property causes hypocrisy to grow in the soil as water causes like plants and leaks and other types of things to grow so just like water will cause certain things to grow in the soil the love for rank the love for followers the love for people watching you and people being and basically kind of sort of in a very very many way many worshiping people that love in the spiritual heart in the soul it causes hypocrisy to grow now what is hypocrisy hypocrisy is to do one thing on the outside but to actually be somebody else on the inside and why is it that this grows well one of the reasons it could be Allah knows best is because when you and i are trying to do things for other people we are not necessarily doing things sincerely only for the sake of Allah that we require a certain amount of work on ourselves first and foremost we have to work on ourselves before we start doing things publicly because otherwise the hypocritical aspect can come in and even if we still do all that the hypocritical aspect can still come in but that's where we ask Allah for protection and we ask for assistance and Allah says in the Quran that we have made the hereafter for those who do not seek elevation on the earth they're not going about and seeking elevation like what does that mean that sounds you know very very like a big big word big phrase right what does it mean Allah is saying that if you and i are not going out and actively seeking that i want to run the show i want to be the boss i want to have be the most popular i want to be the most famous that that is who the hereafter is meant for and this applies to all aspects of our life so we really have to think about this that the culture that we live in then glorifies and magnifies people who are popular and glorifies and magnifies people who are famous it glorifies and magnifies people who have some type of inherent popularity or fame about them right you maybe they're in the like for example these days the royal family these types of things these types of things are all irrelevant what does it matter whether somebody's popular we know this in high school we really see it in high school that i remember in high school high school is a scarring place very weird place because it's all about like oh what a popular kid's doing you're a popular kid's going to this party and dude at the end of the day like nobody even remembers the popular kids anymore i mean and if we were among the popular kids okay cool but like what did we do that actually is going to benefit us later in life most of the people that i knew that when we were in any of those circles most of the stuff that those of us who got caught up in that stuff it hurt us right it ends up hurting you but that's all irrelevant why does it matter who cares these days everybody's talking about the royal family and this thing and that thing i mean why are we giving so much attention to the to these monarchs who colonized so much of the world they're irrelevant they should be completely irrelevant i mean the wrongs that they do we need to notice them and we need to call them out but like they've been doing wrong since for the last you know many many centuries the fact that they even get attention is a problem right but it's because oh they're famous and there is this fame and same thing with celebrities you see this all the time a celebrity does something and everybody's talking about it who cares what why do we why is it relevant to us when you and i die is that person going to be relevant to us no so why do we give so much of our worldly attention than to that it's because they're famous and when they're famous there's a there's an aspect of we elevate them and actually what ends up happening and spiritually this is something mentioned in our religion that what ends up happening is they become a mini god that we worship they do they become a mini idol that we worship that i'm worshiping this athlete i have to know everything about them i'm worshiping this celebrity i'm worshiping this president i'm worshiping this prayer and it's not that you're bowing down to them actually when you make sajdah right in prayer you're bowing down to Allah but when you spend all of your time and when you and i spend all of our time thinking about something and always just being obsessed with it in a mini way we have that mini worship and that's what the desire is because Allah says in the Quran have you seen the one who takes their hawa their desire as their lord so the one who takes their desire as their lord is the one who gives something preference overgiven preference to Allah right and so we have to think about the danger of this stuff and now what ends up happening is we grow up in a culture that magnifies this stuff and then we ourselves want to be magnified we ourselves want to be elevated we grew up in a culture that emphasizes so much on fame and popularity and rank and now it's so easy everybody wants followers everybody wants likes and then we grow up and that's what we think we have to do and we end up in this stressful pursuit all the time of these superfluous empty things and it ends up impacting us because we don't focus on the big stuff that matters in life so this is something just for us to keep in mind for us to reflect on this is not something that goes away immediately but we have to at least think about it and we have to know about it right and so let's talk about why spiritually why the human being wants this as the scholars mentioned and again as anybody has comments or questions or anything just please post them in the chat so why do we want it the human being what you and i want is we have that we we have a desire deep down inside of us to want everything that's really what it is and so we wonder why do people want fame more than they want wealth right so you get to a point in life where you're rich let's say we see this a lot people are rich but at some point the the wealth is not enough and the money's not enough now i gotta be i have to become famous i have to be have a certain type of profile and even higher than that is the people the desire for power after you become a certain level of fame or have a certain level of fame you want a certain amount of power and control we'll talk a little bit about why that happens slowly what ends up happening is you and i just like we have control over a bunch of things so like oh i have this thing and that thing now i acquired this i acquired that i got this i want new clothes i want new that we just always buying stuff right versus this desire for wealth and i want new cars all the time and just keep getting keep getting what ends up happening is that that the human being also desires now control and influence over people's hearts and over people's attention so it's like oh i got this much now how many people can i get to follow me how many people's attention can i get oh i have 20 people i have a thousand people i have 10 million people how many people's hearts have i captured you can't buy your way to someone's someone's attention it's not going to work you have to influence your way they recall these days everybody's an influencer you have to influence your way to them and the more and more i have the better it is and you start thinking of yourself as something you elevate yourself and it doesn't matter what you where we are at in life that elevation does happen because people they give their worth they base their worth on this many times you and i have been introduced to people like oh have you met this person they have one million followers okay great well if the people fall if they're if the people are following them towards something good and they haven't their egos not full of themselves and they're not full of themselves right okay mashallah but if they're following to like a to hell frankly like to to to to sin i mean none of that stuff is relevant and even if they're leading someone to good but they're full of themselves they think they're all that we see this happen all the time in the Muslim community somebody will achieve a certain level of of rank and followers and people and kind of being influenced by them and then they go off and they do something super corrupt they're like embezzled money or they you know have like a scandal by like having secret wives and this type of thing i mean what is that where do you find that in the in the sunnah of the prophet sallam you don't find it because these people they didn't prioritize correctly they went too quickly after fame and the wrong things without grounding themselves this is why grounding is so important so this is now let's walk through a little bit of this kind of deep deep spirituality that's linked to this desire for for followers and the desire for fame this uh and if this gets at all complex just please post a question and we'll do our best to address it so the human being you and i actually have a very very deep spiritual nature we have a very angelic nature and we have a have a nature that is directly from the divine presence because Allah says in the Quran that he says that the spirit of my lord he says the spirit is from the command of my lord that's what he says that he tells the prophet sallam say let's say that the spirit the Ruh is from the command of my lord now what does that mean that means that deep down inside of us we have something inside of us that has a a very very high nature right because it's from the command of our lord now all of us at the same time the soul the nuffs so that's the spirit that's the elevated part then you have what's called the nuffs the ego the nuffs has a desire in deep down inside of it as Allah says in the Quran right that Pharaoh he says that i am your lord most time the nuffs has that desire the nuffs deep down inside wants to be the lord most high so Pharaoh was the personification the embodiment of the nuffs so he had no hesitation in saying such an arrogant and very frankly problematic statement that i am your lord most high even though Allah is the lord most high Allah is the only lord right but pharaoh had no problem saying that then human nuffs has a tendency deep down inside to actually want that same thing that pharaoh wanted to be the boss to be in charge to have as many people but you and i know that we can't have that but we can't have control over everything we can't have control over the sun rise in the sunset we can't have control over the planets and the stars we can't do that so then what we end up doing is because we can't have control over all of those things we settle for what we can't have control over and that is we can have control over how many people we are able to influence and how many hearts we are able to capture that we can't have control over so then we start desiring that and remember there's a big difference between somebody who starts this with the wrong intention and someone who says okay look i know that there's risk is out there but i'm going to work on myself big difference Allah does not tell us to be perfect from the get go but he does tell us to have a good intention and to be sincere from the get go that is not much God tells us so when we go out and about and doing what we're doing we can't get so influenced by the western culture and by western uh pedagogy and by the way that these that the west frankly generally speaking a culture dominated by white men that they have that they're they're trying to teach us to do we can't let them influence us no we have to have our own ways our own paths so their technologies are created in such a way that everything is about followers and everything is about views and everything is about likes and everything is about influence okay we can use it but we got to know like when it's going to get to our head and we got to know what to use it for and to not use it in the same way that is where where it can become negative um or negatively impact us right so eventually what we end up doing is we want control and influence over people's hearts and their attention span the more we can get that the more we the more elevated we become oh i got that i got one more one more one more and eventually it becomes a thing i got 10,000 more 20,000 more and more and more followers more and more fame and that is that is the essence of the problem that's not where our hearts supposed to focus no no no that's you and i are not supposed to be focused on that we are not we are supposed to be focused on worshiping a lot getting through this life without trying to collect all these things but the one who collects themselves they will eventually get ruined that's what's going to end up happening and how does that happen just just let's talk about where it's happening today it happens all the time that the the people who get the most famous and they get the most amount of power and the most amount of followers they become full of themselves they become super full of themselves we're seeing this happening right now with you know certain political figures here in the united states that there were moments of extreme fame extreme popularity extreme amount of followers a lot of a lot of power and arrogance and control and then what ends up happening well you think that you're invincible but what goes up must come down and so now these people they get exposed they get in scandals they get caught in their sexual abuse and sexual assault scandals you will rarely find somebody who's risen to the top in these types of ways that has not done something wrong majorly wrong along the way hurt people abuse people assaulted people i mean it's so rare in the time that we live in you'll that they start to get exposed because the the the that that that fake kind of image that they've put out can only last for so long until some people realize not this is who this person really is now their time it's time for them to get exposed and Allah eventually does expose many of these people and if he doesn't expose them in this life the hypocrites are exposed in the next life we already know that they're exposed in the next life like that happens many many many times that you become you think you're invincible because of the number of followers because of the fame because of where you're at and then slowly life starts to and we have a lot of protection for all of us our brothers and sisters and all the Muslims that this never happens but that what ends up happening is slowly and slowly and slowly right the exactly someone says the facade can only last for so long totally agree thank you for mentioning that that fake miss can only last for so long because you're just like dude that's not really who you are you put on a facade and guess what even if it does last let's say that somehow you can get it to last for as long as possible right before you die it's not going to last past your grave and all those millions of followers are not going to visit your grave how many people visit the grave of celebrities and like actually do something beneficial for them no the Muslims sometimes we have people come to our graves they read Quran they make dua for us when they're praying all this type of stuff but like how many people does that happen right for when when when fame becomes the primary motive it's not it doesn't happen it does not happen right so that is something for us to keep in mind this will ruin us it's just a matter of when so we have to know what the cure is what is the harm so first and foremost the cure for this type of thing the cure for this desire for fame this desire for popularity this desire for followers just to just reorient your mind and reorient my mind we have to start thinking this is a bad thing i cannot be this is not my cannot this cannot be my motive i might have a deep intention let's say that you are you know teaching people or you or you are doing something in which you need to get you need to try to access as many people as possible so you make like a facebook page or something or you're like an instagram page or something and you're trying to sell something for your business or whatever it is they're trying to okay nothing wrong with that but if you start to become like you're so worse you're literally worshiping my god oh my god have this many followers oh my god have this many likes oh my god and you're just like that's all you get you literally get off on that there's a problem because you should not get that excited about anything related to this dunya to this lower world we might get we might that might happen because we're weak i know i get excited about stuff like that because i'm weak but i gotta know the whole goal of spirituality is to know what the top know what the kind of top goal is right and then work our way from where we're at so like if i know this is the aspirational goal this is the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ but i'm like all the way on the ground one day i just gotta get as close as possible i mean i'm never gonna reach the full nearness but i just gotta get as close as possible and Allah says those who strive in our way surely we shall guide them so for anybody who has an intention to get closer to Allah to become more sincere to stop desiring followers and fame let's just make that intention right now to make that intention right now somebody asked a question where are you from uh i'm from i'm from the originally i'm from Pakistan but i live in in the bay area in terms of scope area so that is the cure that is the first cure just realize how problematic it is the second cure is to just realize how harmful this is the harm of rank and this this pet this kind of empty hollow followers and rank and all this time the harm what is the harm you're all first of all you will always be tripping about when something goes wrong what's going to happen here what are people going to think here what are they going to say right oh what are they saying in the comments about me what how much are they hating on me how much are they praising me that's just going to occupy your mind and i guarantee you will eventually get to the point where it occupies your sleep and prevents you from sleeping it will get to that point because it's not natural for the human being to have that type of things always out be occupying their mind and unfortunately we see this happen in the celebrity culture that we live that many of these celebrities they end up getting to a point where like drugs and significant we're talking significant drugs become their recourse because they the the the stress of the press and the paparazzi and the followers and the fame is not something that's manageable it's not manageable you can manage it for a little bit of time but you cannot manage it sustained for a long period of time without at some point impacting you spiritually and that and then at some point it will impact somebody psychologically and and and deeper at a mental level and that's just a reality that all of us especially those of us we're young we're growing up with this technology we just have to keep that in mind this stuff is not sustainable over a long period of time if we don't use it in a in a healthy way we have to know principled ways and healthy ways of engagement i'm not saying we leave all this stuff we use it in a healthy ways right so that's the second thing to keep in mind that we have to know the stress that it's going to bring right the third thing is we have to know what danger lies ahead if we embark on this journey but okay you it's it sounds um it sounds cool like oh i'm gonna you know i got i'm famous i got the followers i drive the bends i'm gonna buy this car i'm gonna become like you know all and then eventually i'm gonna get power i'm gonna be the top dog i'm gonna come control like all that sounds great until you realize that like the more and more if you don't manage it the enough the spiritual soul deep down inside it just becomes black and dirty because you become arrogant and full of yourself look at the past president of the united states but just look look at him i mean just half i don't even see need to say anymore but just look at what look at what his journey of life led him to right and where he's at right now that like yeah you might have the fame you might be in power you might have all this stuff but like dude i mean where you at really i mean spiritually where you at right i'm always surprised at like the christian the people who are you know christians who who can vote for somebody like that because you know it goes against every single ethical teaching there that person's character goes against every single ethical teaching that does exist in in the sayings of jesus peace be upon him and in the bible and whatnot but you know that's a whole different topic the fact is is that uh we have to keep this in mind right so the third thing that will help us is we have to know that we will die that will help us a lot and i know this is like a heavy topic but at the end of the day if we can remember that we're gonna die all this stuff becomes a little bit easier because even if people were to literally worship you like you could have five million let's say three billion people following you and they worship you and they prostrate to you and all the stuff that some of these people desire when you die that's all gonna go away and nobody's gonna do it anymore and it's not going to benefit you even if they do do it it'll actually just hurt you because a lot doesn't like that type of stuff right so we have to just have that perspective in mind right and the last thing is if we're serious about working on this and we know it's damaging our heart we will slowly leave the places right that people are overdoing it with regards to praise for us and with regards to following us and what they're overdoing it and we will slowly leave or take breaks from time to time because we know hey this isn't good for me spiritually i got to work on myself everybody knows and the last thing i'm going to say and shella will end and if anybody has questions or comments please post them because i'll get to them right now shella the last thing i'll mention is you and i know where we're at spiritually we know what hurts us spiritually the way to gauge if something is hurting you spiritually is if when you do it or after you do it you feel a certain trepidation and a certain anxiety right and that that comes with it you know then that there's something likely spiritually off with regards to it and the way to know if something is beneficial and again this is a general rule Allah knows best is if a calmness and tranquility descends when you were doing something or after you have done something generally speaking that will be spiritually beneficial for you so you and i just have to know where we're at spiritually Ramadan is coming we have about a month or Ramadan let's take this time to invest to work on ourselves to get rid of some of these deep desires and to to to know that at the end of the day in our 60 70 80 year lifespan whatever our lifespan is we've got to know it's important we have to prioritize what's important we can't let the culture in the society that we live in brainwash us into thinking that superfluous superficial things like followers like fame like having a lot of power like having a lot of control over people that we can't brainwash ourselves into thinking that that's important now we have to know it's important what's important is that we are in this life to try to do our best to worship Allah and to eventually meet Allah in a good state and when we compare million 10 million 100 million years in the next life again remember the next life is eternal there's no number but let's just say you assign the number 10 million because it's hard to quantify eternal eternality you compare 10 million years to 70 years it cancels out the 70 literally means absolutely nothing because so if you spent your 70 years just most of them in a good state and even if you didn't spend most of them in good state you tried your best towards the later part of your years and you repented you just did your best inshallah all of that eternality that 10 million years and longer will be good and will go well for you but if you spent that 70 years in a bad state dude was it really worth it was all that stuff really worth it was ruining your not your your soul really worth it then for the negative consequences that could come after that's just something we have to keep in mind and we have to know our focus we have to know what we're trying to do we have to know what we're trying to accomplish and inshallah let's keep that in mind may Allah bless all of you if anybody has any questions or comments please post them otherwise you will end I know it's mugger of time here at least where I'm at so we'll go ahead and proceed to end if there's no quick questions and somebody had asked if we can do more lives inshallah we will do more inshallah all right cool so I'll do a quick du'a I'll wait for any questions you yeah Allah yeah Rahman yeah Karim yeah Harim yeah Allah we ask y'allah that you accept us y'allah that you pardon us y'allah that you cleanse our hearts y'allah and remove any difficulties and any any spiritual impurities and any dirtiness from our hearts y'allah and allows to get near to you and allows to be good people yeah Allah who are clean towards towards other Muslims who are who are people of good character who are people of good akhlaq who are people of gentleness who are people of of kindness y'allah allows to people who are sincere y'allah with you who do not desire the life of this dunya y'allah who did not desire the the the the followers and fame and all the other things it is y'allah that could ruin us y'allah you know best what ruins us y'allah so allow us y'allah to be in a state of of purity and allow us y'allah to be in a state of your protection and give us everything good that the Prophet sism asked for and we ask for protection for everything evil that he asked for and we ask you allow us to prepare in this month of shaban for this month of Ramadan and allow us to reach Ramadan as it approaches was Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakala sayyidina Muhammadin wa alayhi wa sallam alhamdulillahi rabbil ahmeen alhamdulillahi jazakum Allah khair thank you so much and i don't see any questions i will wait just for a second here in case anything pops up alhamdulillahi so nobody has any questions just or comments please post them in the chat and we'll get to them inshallah okay alhamdulillahi well then if i don't i don't see anything so we'll see you all next time inshallah we're doing this every Wednesday 7 p.m pacific time we do this this short class 20 30 minutes on a different desire and we'll wrap it up before Ramadan and we'll do one right before Ramadan and Ramadan prep as well inshallah all right so we're going to continue on this topic we've been chatting about around the different desires that the human being has and we have been covering the apparent desires they're like very very obvious desires that you and i have what are those desires those are the desires for food desire to always be eating the desire for drugs the desire for drinking the desire for partying our sexual appetites our sexual desires the uncontrolled lust that we have those are some examples of the apparent desires we've also chatted about the desire for money and the desire for wealth and just kind of always chasing after dunya and not really ever stopping so those are some of the very very obvious apparent ones we've been chatting about some of the remedies and the ways that the human being can go about resisting those desires and channeling them in the right direction so just as a quick review before we get into the topic for today when it comes to desires the goal is to channel them in the right direction and so there are cures you could say for each of these desires god did not create the human being to have zero desires not that you have to eliminate them it's not when you for example you have the desire to eat all the time okay god wants us to control our appetite doesn't want us to stop eating though but he wants us to control the appetite and to try to eat permissible food the desire for sex the sexual desire god doesn't want us to uh not have that at all he wouldn't have created in us but he wants us to channel it in the halal direction in the right direction right to eventually go and get married and to not you know end up uh hooking up with people and in affairs and these types of things so those are examples of ways that the human being channels their desires in the right direction however if the desire gets out of control then rather than worshiping god we begin to worship our desires and that's very uh it's a very very subtle difference but it ends up happening because we just worship ourselves we worship the specific desires that we might have and so as you and I are on this path of spirituality we might you know we're all in different paths but we might be in a place where we are trying to now work on a bit more of the inner parts of ourselves right once you kind of get a couple things going in in our religion it starts to become about the inner work the inner work is the most important work the one who can clean themselves internally the one who can purify themselves internally the one who of course Allah purifies they're going to be the successful ones as Allah mentions in the Quran so that's all about the the work of controlling our thoughts controlling our desires trying to not let our desires control us the strong person just like the prophet sallallahu alaykum said he said the strong one is not the one who can defeat who's like super uh big and can defeat someone in wrestling the strong one is the one and he was giving example of anger so the strong one is the one who can control their anger anger is a desire that many of us have left uncontrolled and it results in many many many problems you see this problem in the Muslim community all the time for example unfortunately and really frankly in other communities as well that angry people create destructive families very very tense households stressful situations at home and god forbid some of them even get to the point of hitting their their partner hitting their spouse because they're not able to control their anger and so that's why controlling ourselves and controlling our desires become so important so again we've been talking about that parent desire so now we're going to get a little bit into the subtle desire we're really going to just spend one you know class on this um and then we'll do you know we're going to try to aim to go for about 20 or so minutes and then we'll do some question and answer at the end so for and feel free to post questions in the chat as as we go along so for uh the subtle desires so these are actually very very tricky because these are desires that you and i have with regards to religious acts and religious worship uh so example of this this is a desire that human being might have to want someone to notice when you worship god so you're praying and uh you know you're praying in like a a mosque or something and somebody walks in and you might have been just like kind of whatever praying and then you suddenly fix yourself and you get up and and you know try to present yourself in a very very specific way now why did we do that god was watching the whole time right our angels on our shoulders were also watching why did we do it when a human being came into the picture it's because we have a desire for someone to notice us we have a desire for someone to notice our religious act it's very very tricky and this in the social media type of culture that we live in where everything is shared and everybody wants everyone to know everything it is that we're doing this is very dangerous because someone who doesn't do an act sincerely that act can become more and more and more nullified until it's eventually gone it doesn't even count because that act wasn't for the sake of Allah right so this is why the inner work becomes so critical here and becomes uh so important so the other example of this is if somebody uh wants to give charity right it's a great thing to give charity but if someone gives charity just so other people can say oh look at you you give so much you're so generous and you say yeah I know look at me great right again it's a desire for people to notice you you didn't do it for the sake of Allah it's very very very important for us to keep this in mind so this eventually results in what's called subtle aspects of hypocrisy subtle aspects of hypocrisy right and hypocrisy is very very dangerous because you and I don't want to be hypocrites God warns very very clearly in the Quran uh talking about why hypocrites are are amongst the worst types of people right so what what type of hypocrisy happens here you might when people are around and when people know what you're doing you might do more worship you might do more acts of uh more thicker you might read more Quran you might you know really make it an act to like show people oh look I'm reading the Quran and uh I have Quran here if I'm like oh look at me I'm reading Quran and I'm so you know and it's Ramadan and I did this many khatam of Quran and like you really want to just show off all that worship is just boom boom gone because you showed off and Allah says that you in many hadith indicate this you get the reward from the people praising you that was the reward you wanted you didn't get the reward um from you got the reward from people praising you you did not get the reward uh when you actually should have gotten it right or when you wanted it uh which is on the day of judgment because you saw it in this life so that can happen right then there's also for example you just kind of present yourself in a very very specific way religiously that you want people to know look at how religious I am right so might be in the way that you dress and again you're doing it for the wrong intention there's one thing to dress doing things for the sake of God but there are other ways to do things such that you just want everybody to notice you and if you do that and you just say like you know you might have people like oh I'm just tired today I've just been I've been like awake since since the hadjud time just I've been awake since like 5 a.m and they said that because they wanted you to be like oh mashaAllah you prayed the hadjud today you prayed the hadjud is enough so pray that's prayed before uh the last third of the night before so Fajr comes in and you're like oh yeah yeah I've been praying and like and you feel you get happy that they notice and you start to you know people comment like oh you're so tired today what's wrong oh yeah I've just been up since so long I've just been doing all these religious acts and just you know or like it's a not Ramadan and you're just like oh I'm just my fast I'm just fasting all the time I'm always doing extra fasts because you know I gotta do them because I want to get you know you you might have good intention initially I want to get close to Allah but you ruin it because the the desire wasn't in control this is very very important for us to control our desires so um there was for an example uh there was a somebody asked can you pray the hadjud 20 minutes before fajr yeah you can break the hadjud even one minute before fajr like you can break the hadjud at any moment before fajr enters so I would try to make it you know even if you can't catch proper prayer if you're awake before fajr just make dua at that time and then get your fajr in inshallah and fajr time as well is a great time for making dua very very meritorious times the more just the most important thing is the more struggle that's required spiritually like to wake up or to do something the more benefit you're going to get in that act of worship which is why you have prayers that have such significant rewards attached to them right and which is why you have months like Ramadan coming up with there's so much struggle 30 days of fasting but there's so much reward attached to it so keep that in mind for really all actions so there was a story of a man you know he was praying in the must-jit and he was praying whatever and then he heard you know somebody walk into the must-jit and he like fixed his prayer and he's like oh someone's here gotta make sure they notice me and um they they they fixed and he fixed his prayer he kind of tried to pretend like he was really concentrating got into this really deep state and you know he finished the prayer and he was waiting so he could see the person so he could wait for them to praise him and he noticed that it was it was a dog that that walked um uh uh walked in the must-jit and the dog you know obviously the dog had no benefit but look at this man I mean what kind of state are you in that God is in front of you God is everywhere and you are praying to God and yet you thought someone walked in and you beautified what you were doing and it ended up being a dog right um so that's that's something for us to to keep in mind right we should do things for the sake of God and somebody mentioned I grew up Catholic and I'm learning about Islam mashallah that's really really great uh anything it is maybe Allah and maybe God make this easy for you to learn and hopefully facilitate your journey towards whatever path is best for you and inshallah that is the path of Islam inshallah so um and if you have any questions feel free to post them so why is this dangerous right because why you're pretending you're pretending and you can't you know and who are you pretending in front of you are mocking actually you are not just putting your mocking who you're mocking the Lord of the world you don't think he knows what's inside me you don't think he knows it's inside you but we pretend we pretend in front of him and he knows what's going on inside we're really just doing it for everybody else but we're pretending not only are we doing there's one thing like the obvious hypocrite like the person who like like just admits yeah I don't really do anything for God's sake I just do it because of other people but there's like a whole depth deeper level of somebody who's pretending and then actually mocking God how do you mock God how could we do that right like look what kind of person uh what kind of state do we have to be in to mock God but we end up doing it regularly and all of us have this inside of us in some way or another so we have to really think about this that if you really knew who was watching you which is Allah why does it matter who other but other people know what you've done right why does it matter that you have to share all these different things on Instagram and on Facebook and you know I did this and I did this and people don't realize that sharing when it's something beneficial is fine but it's very you have to be very careful the more you share your deeds the more more happy you get when people are happy about you doing deeds good deeds the more your deeds start to become they start to become at risk because you should be doing them for the sake of Allah you should not need other people's praise but in this praise focus culture that we are in sometimes we end up being you know very much in trouble because of this so the prophet sallallahu sallam he indicated this trait it's just for the formal name of this trait this desire the subtle desires known in english is ostentation and in arabic as a riyat the riyat is this is this trait that we are talking about we want to purify ourselves up so the prophet sallallam he he indicated that this trait is more hidden inside of you than the footsteps of an ant on a black crawling on a black rock in the darkness of the night so think about this an ant an ant is already small little right creature it's already black and it's crawling on a black rock and not in the daytime when the sun is visible but on a black rock in the darkness of the night so like the prophet sallallam is indicating to us here that this is very hidden inside of the human soul this is a very very hidden trait so if it's a hidden trait we have to do something to try to purify ourselves of this trait right so let's talk a little bit about how we do that there are degrees of this the strongest degree that somebody might have the worst level of this is that you only do religious things when other people are noticing that's it you don't do them otherwise like you literally only will do them if someone's watching me cool i'll do it someone's gonna a lot of people will be at the mosque i'm gonna pray uh but otherwise you don't pray you don't do anything like people come over your house i'm gonna pray now but you never pray on your own because you don't really you know you're not really into that into it that's that's obvious hypocrisy the second level is you do it still at other points but you get happy when people find out about you doing something so people find out about you doing something that's like different than what a lot of other people in society do extra prayers or even your basic prayers these days and um you get happy like oh yeah i know i mean i'm so and you you feel suddenly you'll you'll you'll neglect you'll you'll you'll uh outwardly reject it most people but inwardly you'll feel like oh my god look at me i'm so this i'm so that right that's the another level of this the third level of this is that you this of this trait of this subtle desire of wanting people to notice you is you expect people to treat you differently because of your quote unquote religious deeds and your religious status so you say i am i'm i mean this could be as something as as limited as you expect them to give salam to you first i am so and so i i deserve them to for them to say salam to me don't they know i'm learning don't they know i'm i'm the hafiz of the quran don't they know i lead the prayer like do you know if you expect that subtly you might not say it you subtly expect expect that i know this that the prophet salam would always hasten to give salam first even though he's the greatest creation the greatest human being ever created and uh uh the most amazing person the most perfect of allah's creation salallah and yet he would rush to give salam to everybody first even though people should you know uh rush to give him salam so that is a subtle hypocrisy inside of somebody and then another level of this is that you desire a very very specific title right so if you are learned you really want people to know you're learning so you're like i'm you're gonna you're gonna call yourself she you're gonna give yourself a title right you might introduce yourself as a oh i am imam so and so i am so and so right it's very very agi when people do this i see sometimes i literally met people who like introduce themselves with a title like i am imam this this and that it's like or i am musty this this and that it's like well maybe in other people's eyes they might view you as that but in your eyes you should not view yourself as anything you should not view yourself as anything but this is a very very subtle desire the very subtle desire because you start to want title you want recognition this all stems from wanting praise you know this happens in other traditions as well right i am um this minister i minister so-and-so i am priest so-and-so i am rabbi so-and-so i am right and you you think that you were doing things for the sake of god but in reality you're just doing things for the sake of people alhamdulillah that our religion and our and the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam Muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam has given us the cure for these things that many times really mess up religious communities in the time that we are living so this is something for us to keep in mind so let's reflect on this a little bit i'm just going to just pardon me for just a second it's going to turn the light on this room it's getting dark sun is setting one second alhamdulillah sorry about that all right so the this is very dangerous especially if you start to label yourself right so like i've also seen this before but people will actually label themselves on their website or on their you are on their facebook and they'll give themselves the title of like who they are i am stop this and that's one thing if you have like a like like like somebody who's doing that for you but it's totally another review yourself or elevating yourself to a very very certain position this is not from the way of the of the traditional of the traditional scholars from everything that i've understood so now this can happen at different points in the religious journey in the deed itself so imama razzali he mentions that this desire for people to notice you can happen at the beginning of the deed and this means you do the deed entirely for someone else right so like at the beginning you're like i'm just going to do this so that people can be like you know praise me you just you're seeking that praise and that praise that starts to have a certain sweetness to it starts to have a certain like addictiveness to it you really want praise you want likes you want people to notice you right that type of thing so at the beginning you might do it entirely for something else according to our olemah that cancels out the deed entirely that if you did not even have any ounce of you that did it for the sake of Allah that deed is cancelled out entirely and then the rest is kind of on a spectrum right so like you might do it some for the sake of Allah some for the sake of other people and then it can be rewarded or you know punished accordingly the other thing then is that might be at the beginning but then there's the struggle the human being has in the middle of the deed or at the end of so if you just are getting like so happy that people are finding out about your good deeds that that's a risk that all of us have to be worried about right you you and i need to be careful here because we should not we should know that the one who needs to know knows what we do he knows what worship he knows what religious deeds we're doing this whole thing comes comes when you and i start to think of ourselves as something and the whole goal is to see of our religion is to focus on Allah there is nothing nothing except Allah nothing worthy of worship except Allah nothing worthy of your attention except Allah no true attributes except Allah no true essence except Allah so that is to to to keep that in mind somebody asked are you i'm a someone asked what are you a sunni or she a muslim i am i'm a sunni muslim i try to be at least um so the the person who is happy about other people finding out about their worship and posting about it and whatnot is at risk right so these are things now let's get a little bit into the cure here a couple things for us to keep in mind um one is there's actually an interesting interesting story of wish to kind of another way to look at this or another way of example of this right you have a story of a man who's praying and again he's praying in the musket and somebody walks in and has like his friend with him and is like oh are you uh are you praying uh says look look at this man who's praying look at him he's he's always praying his extra prayers he's so righteous he's so worshipful look at the way he bows look at the way that he prostrates like he's such a righteous man and the man during his prayer like turns around and says don't forget to tell him that i'm also fasting today i'm also doing an extra fast um and uh i mean you know it's a it's a it's a just a just a didactic tale but think about that right like what kind of person would be in that state where they are so obsessed with themselves you can have narcissistic religious people very much so in fact we have tons of tons of narcissistic religious people so that exists where you're obsessed with yourself but instead of being obsessed with your looks or being obsessed with your money or being obsessed with something else you are obsessed with your religion and your your knowledge and this type of thing and you think you are something and this is again very very subtle desire and it plays the whole world i mean it's there and the whole world this is why you have so many people who get caught up in scandals and whatnot who get to a certain level of position in society especially religious position and then they mess up and they do something majorly wrong because they weren't worshiping god from the beginning sincerely they were doing it for other intentions i do this i can get this if i do this i can get money if i do this i can get power if i do this i can get control and most suddenly if i do this i can get people to praise me and to notice me so that's something for us to keep in mind so the cure for this at the basic level is for us to just remember that the righteous would hide good deeds like they hide bad deeds so so the people of Allah they don't tell other people about their good deeds let's make that a practice like don't unless you really need to encourage somebody like you want to tell your you know siblings or your friend like dude really like you know you got to get on the prayer grind like prayers so helpful for me like that's different but like don't go and tell other people about especially about extra good deeds that you do like yeah like i gave a thousand dollars the other day or like when i was you know 10 years about so much money and i gave ten thousand dollars to the to this muster there's something like that it's like no no no no no if you did it for the sake of Allah he already knows that you gave it you don't need to tell everybody else otherwise the deed starts to get canceled out so that's the first thing um the the the second thing is that um you tell yourself so hide those deeds right the second thing is you tell yourself if Allah already knows why do other people need to know keep that in mind right you don't need other people to know if Allah already knows what you're doing you don't need other people to know about your worship right why do so ask yourself what is in me that i got to tell everybody why do i got to post about this on social media why do i got to get other people's attention why do i got to get other people's attention drawn to me right then the next thing you mentioned to yourself to cure this is you say what benefit will it bring uh if people know about this deed but if god doesn't even accept it like what benefit is it going to bring if people know about my religious acts but god didn't even accept them because when you do it for the sake of people like we mentioned the worship and the reward can get cancelled out right and so overall the last thing is you just detest this you don't you resist it look none of us are going to get to the point where this is a very subtle deed remember the promises on me indicated this this this subtle desire of wanting people to notice you and basically of rya and hypocrisy is such that it is more subtle than a dark ant crawling in the depths of the night on a black rock it's very hard to see that's why you got to do the work but the person who is spiritually illuminated will be able to see at night better than they can see in the day because their light is so powerful and night time is the time of spiritual awakenings and spiritual lights that are descending so the goal here is to become spiritually illuminated people become spiritually illuminated and these desires these traits these bad traits they get cured inside of you inshallah because the light of Allah is so powerful and when the light of Allah is literally the light of Allah is is is so powerful that when when it is shining inside of you right and no relation to the actual essence of it amazing things can happen and and we see that with people the most foremost of the of the prophets the prophets allah usallam that his light was so strong so strong that you actually have hadith where they would say that it was like a dark night and the moon wasn't out and yet the messenger of allah usallam's face would be so illumined that they could like pick things up on the ground because how much light was coming from it these are the great people of Allah these are all the great prophets of all the prophets are great the prophets may Allah be pleased with them this is the type of light that they have so our goal is illumination we have to fight this though the more you resist every time you resist a bad deed every time you resist it you get illumined in some way every time you do it you get dark every time you do something good you get illuminated every time you resist something good right and you do something bad instead you get dark so the whole goal is this process of illumination of illumination until you are able to see so clearly your spiritual heart becomes so powerful that it's able to navigate things and it's able to see and you'll pick up on things do i do this for the sake of Allah am i being sincere no that wasn't sincere i got happy that that person noticed this is a subtle thing it takes spiritual effort and work and struggle but you'll start to then eventually when you're worshiping it'll just be you and Allah that's the goal we want to be at that it's just us and Allah it's not about someone else noticing or someone watching and whatnot so the big most important takeaway here is to keep on struggling no matter what we're what we're at where we're at religiously for talking about this specific disease or this specific desire keep on struggling against it just keep on fighting it don't don't want people to know don't let people know about your worship don't let people know about the good deeds that it is that you're doing and don't get happy when they find out about them because it is the sickness inside of the heart but if you do just say no man i messed up this time i got to keep going i'm going to keep trying i'm going to keep resisting this and we just keep working at it and keep working at it inshallah so we're going to we're going to change the topic just briefly for two three minutes going to talk about um uh later it's in this chat ban which is a very special night coming up in about five days if anybody has any questions please post them in the chat and we'll get to the questions inshallah so on this at least where i'm at in california this sunday night is a very very special night in our religion it's called later to miss shaaban the 15th of shaaban and it is the day of that of the 15th of shaaban is monday and islam the night proceeds the day so this is a very important night to stay up it's a very important night to worship the following that monday is a very important monday to worship uh or too fast if possible and it'll also help us get ready for Ramadan so this falls on sunday march 28 sunday march 28 and we we hear in the in an amazing hadith that one night say the aisha radi allahu anha noticed that the messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam had left uh the house and she went out to see where he was and she found him in the graveyard in the bucky graveyard raising his arms to the heavens in dua and he then said to her that on this night the night of miss of miss shaaban and the 15th of shaaban that Allah forgives more people than there are hairs on the truck on the sheep of a specific tribe that was known for the amount of sheep that they had right so not just the amount of sheep let's say they had a thousand sheep the amount of hairs that were on the sheep so you're talking hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are forgiven on this night right and then he also said sallallahu alaihi wasallam that Allah gazes at his creation on the night in mid shaaban and forgives all of his slaves except god forgives everybody except two people those who attribute partners to Allah who say that there is more than one god who attribute partners to Allah and those who have ranker for others in their heart who have hatred towards other people in their heart their other brothers and their sisters and their fellow people in religion and their fellow muslims so this is again i'm paraphrasing the hadith here the prophecy i mentioned and he said that when you and i when this night comes we should spend part of the night at least he said the night in prayer and fast the following day because Allah calls out to his slaves from sunset until dawn right so from the sunset of maghrib up until the fudger is there anyone seeking forgiveness from me that i may forgive them is there anyone seeking provision from me that i may provide for them is there anyone suffering so i may relieve their suffering amazing things happen on this night and Imam Ali regularly he mentions Sayyidina Ali radiallahu anha radiallahu anh he also mentions many of the virtues of this night mentions that du'a is accepted and and and others and and just in case those who want to know there is by the way a difference of opinion on this night so for those who don't want to worship and who want to do something else you are always welcome to do whatever it is you would like the hadith here are narrated in the collections of the Muslim Ahmad in the collection mama tirmidhi the collection of imaja you have scholars who differed though on this so again keep that in mind it is very very virtuous the majority of the umma took this night as an important night to worship however there are some scholars including very very very prominent scholars who said you know it's it's it's better to not single it out um even though there are again very strong hadith that indicated so just something to keep in mind not a night to argue not not a night to waste your time about like oh should i do this should i not the most important thing is use shaaban to worship Allah as much as possible to get your heart ready for ramadan right and this this day of this this night of nish shaaban according to many of the tabi'in first and foremost according to nishmi wa la sallallahu sallam then according to many of the sahaba then according to many of the tabi'in is very very important for us to try and do extra worship to get in the zone remember we are not in the zone like these people used to be so we have to do things that go above and beyond many times to get in the zone so use this time to get in the zone don't use it to argue don't use it to waste time don't use it to watch netflix make it a time where you put phones away put tiktok away put instagram away put netflix away and just focus on worshiping Allah and whether you do that with any any specific time or any specific night mashaAllah but at the very minimum try to do it on latinist shaaban which is again sunday march 28th at least in the area that i'm in in california so may Allah reward all of you may he make this time easy and and you know for for this lesson that we just discussed these subtle desires about about may he cure these desires that we might have about wanting other people to to notice our religious deeds to notice our worship may he remove them from us may he purify us may he make us people of a nearness to him may he make us people of nearness to the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam may he bless what's remaining in this month of shaaban allow us to reach ramadan may he give an excitement to us in our hearts for the month of ramadan alayhi wa sahbihi sallam alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin alhamdulillahi if there are any questions otherwise we will end it is maghrib time here don't think i see anything i don't know if anybody has any questions about the topic please feel free to post them or any other random questions okay not seeing anything again any questions just post them in the chat or any anything else that's irrelevant please post it alhamdulillahi do you know more about do you know more about surah paha and its benefits so that's a good question i do not know i'm sorry do not know specifically about surah paha and its benefits it's amazing surah describes the story of saying the musa alayhi sallam going to her own but the specific kind of benefits of that specific surah i'm not aware of that's a good question though okay any other questions alhamdulillahi alhamdulillahi all right well thank you all so much i hope everyone is doing well so we're going to continue on this topic and today we're really going to be focusing on the overall cure for our desires so every human being has desires alas manas ala mentions this in the Quran so we're going to be specifically thinking about how do we go about curing these desires we've been talking in the last like six or seven classes in discussions about specific desires so the desire for food the sexual desire the desire to be right the desire to to win arguments the desire to be in control the desire for fame and followers these types of things and those are all individual unique desires each of which have their own unique cures their own kind of prescription that that you can get right at the same time what the scholars of ardeen have done um and most importantly what the prophet sallam has done is given us a kind of general over-the-counter type of uh cure right so said okay if you do these three to five things and you do them regularly you do them consistently inshallah you will be on your way towards spiritual success you'll be on your way towards curing your desires and those three to five things are very doable everybody can do them and alhamdulillah we're coming upon a month uh this blessed month of Ramadan in which we have like 12 or so days left before this month comes inshallah that everybody's going to have a chance to work on themselves we're all going to have a chance to work on our desires um so alhamdulillah that's a very very good thing and somebody says salam alaikum alaikum salam so um and as as folks have questions come up just post them in the chat or in the comments or q and a section and we'll get to them inshallah so uh as we mentioned some desires are really strong and others are weak and so our goal is to figure out how do we go about curing all these desires inshallah remember that the goal for the human being is not to eliminate your desire it's not that you should never desire food or you should never have a sexual desire or you should never desire um uh in a speaking or this type of thing no it's that you and I have to tame the desire and channel in the right direction so Allah gave us the desire to eat to eat permissible things to eat in in in balanced ways to eat uh Allah says in the Quran that to to eat halal and tayyip food to eat clean and pure food that type of thing and to give us energy for worship what he didn't do is he didn't create us to eat like you need to eat to live right but you don't live to eat same thing with all of the desires so you you and I have to have for example sexual desire in order to just continue to for the world to uh function and for populations to grow that desire is there but it has to be channeled in the halal way it can't be channeled in an impermissible way because if it is channeled in an impermissible way then that obviously hurts us spiritually so the goal is to channel the desires and remember that you can channel your desires upwards your desires can pull you closer if you use them correctly you have the right intention you can actually get closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala versus what usually happens is that the nafs and shaitan team up to bring us down they actually bring us down and drag us down so our goal then is to live this life with this pursuit one of our main goals and this life has to be okay how am I going to control myself now why is this important think about it you and I work really really really hard for other parts of life like many of us will go to school for 12 years to get a diploma from high school and then another four years for some six to eight years if you're doing a professional degree to get a degree and then you enter the workforce and we spend 16 to 20 years learning waking up every day eight o'clock or before eight have to be at work or be at school by seven thirty or eight many people and then they continue that grind for so many years 16 years 20 years and then of course the work that work grind continues for you know god knows how long now that's for for what for dunya for like oh i want to be learn i want to learn which is a really good thing or i want to get money or you know i want to have a job all these things no problem with them but that's what we do it for allah has given us another challenge which is that okay you can also work hard but work hard for me that there are people who strive for the sake of the dunya and then there's people who strive for the sake of allah and you can work hard you and i can become people who work hard for the sake of allah that is totally doable and that's what we should be aiming to do so why do i mention that because this path to taming the desire for the human being is not a path that like we can just we can just completely you know win in one day no we have to work hard at it over and over and over again we have to be consistent with this so i'm now going to get into and these are all things the goal here is to really focus on ramadan um prep in alhamdulillah we're you know short of just shy of two weeks away from adhan so let's think about this from the perspective of how do we use the skills hopefully that we're going to learn today to then apply them in the blessed month of ramadan inshaAllah so the first thing that we want to be doing is in order to cure our desires in order to cure the heart in order to bring about spiritual success is the regular amounts of worship and thicker we can't have a spiritual path we can't spiritually flourish if we don't worship that's it's just impossible now there i'm going to talk about the basic level and then i'm going to talk about what we should aspire to at the basic level in order for us to like get in control of our desires for us to not be angry all the time for us to not lose our cool for us to not lose our um for us to not let lust overcome us or overpower us for us to not you know always uh and feel the need to listen to something or feel the need to look at something or or look at things that we shouldn't be looking at we need to do the basics and then we start adding more on top in order to help control more and more parts of us and channel them in the right direction basics are the five prayers now all of us we struggle with that right and many of us we struggle either with doing the prayers or with focusing and paying attention to prayers so our goal needs to be how do we come up with a program for ourselves especially this ramadan that okay i'm going to get on the five prayers i'm going to make an intention to pray five times a day this ramadan and i'm not going to miss the prayers and if after ramadan or you if if outside of ramadan i struggle with fudger i struggle with something else gonna make an intention to uh really really prioritize my fudger there's many ways to do this anything human being must prioritize you can prioritize don't let anybody ever tell you oh like you can't do something you can do anything you put your mind to and i'm not just saying that i really really that that's a hundred percent fact because if somebody had a flight early early in the morning at five a.m. or four a.m. even if the flight was at six a.m. they would get up at four o'clock they would get up at five o'clock and they'd be at the airport on time to catch the flight but when you and i have this kind of flight that we're going to be meet that we're going to have a spiritual flight with uh to the heavens at fudger time we don't join that right because we just you know our nafs is lazy and what what which desire overpowers us at the time the desire for sleep the desire for sleep overpowers the human being when it comes to waking up for fudger or when it comes to praying another prayer the desire to say i'll do it later i want to do this instead i want to read this instead i want to watch this video instead those are the desires that overpower us during certain times so the first thing we have to do is establish consistent worship there it's doable and we need to believe in ourselves and we need to know that Allah would not have given us the worship to do if he didn't believe if he didn't know that we could do it we just have to put in the energy and inshallah Allah will take us the rest of the way now once we've established and this is a big deal in and of itself once we've established the five daily prayers and we want to get more spiritually advanced and we want to start controlling the desires at a deeper level then we need to do the following we need to start adding in the sunnah dhikr the sunnah at the car that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would do regularly or he would encourage us to do of which there are three things that i would recommend that if somebody wants to flourish spiritually i'm not just talking about get by anymore you have somebody who gets by let's say like you're planting a garden getting by is like you got the dirt in the garden you got a couple like weeds growing but somebody who's flourishing they are going to have the planting flowers and flowers are going to be growing they're going to want fruits they're going to want trees that eventually lead to fruits that's the type of stuff they're going to want so spiritually flourishing the goal of your deen and my the goal of this deen is to flourish it's not to just get by we have too many of us who just want to get by and as a result we end up right giving in to the the whims of this of other people's values and whatnot but if we realized how much we had how much Allah has given us in this deen subhanallah we wouldn't want anything else but but how do we go about doing that so the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam regularly would encourage us to first do du'as that they are known as the du'as of the morning and the evening the person who does the du'as of the morning in the evening the sunnah du'as of the morning in the evening will have tremendous success inshallah in their life and any of their efforts that they try to do that day it will also help us control our desires it will help you with anger it will help you with sexual desire it will help you with desire to eat all the time it will help you with desiring to drink or smoke or be in a relate an impermissible relationship all these things these these dickers they they are they control help us control that why because they are light and light what what lights do is light actually penetrate it can pierce darkness you can have a room that's fully dark let's say this room is dark one candle could light up this whole room you and i you all have candles of light inside of you or more powerful than candles frankly you have beans inside of you that are just waiting to be open but the access has to be open the access is open when one does a regular amounts of dicker somebody asks what do you mean du'as what are the du'as yeah that's um that was a great question so specific couple specific du'as you can literally just i would do two things you can google morning and evening du'as the sunnah morning and evening du'as and there's little books that are prepared like not books as you say a couple pages that that would give you all the du'as the prophet's home would do in the morning in the evening so for example he would recite there are certain verses of the quran that he would recite there are certain du'as like the du'a rabbi'a would become an emiss at the shayateen until the end that he would recite so those are some examples um there's also a compilation so some of the scholars have gone and taken all the du'as from different hadith they compiled them into um what's called a uh litany basically in english it's called it's called a weird in arabic which is a compilation of different du'as so one that i've uh had our our teachers have told us to do regularly is called the where the latif right so a where the latif uh the where the latif is the morning and evening du'as that that that um we should be trying to do every day that's an example for the person who asks the question so and someone asks how can i become a better muslim um yeah so we're we're definitely it's a great question we're we're going to be covering that throughout this this discussion inshallah so the goal of becoming a better muslim is achieved through controlling your desires that's one of the main ways because Allah says in the quran um he emphasizes he actually tells us this is the criteria for success he says successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who is who doesn't so the one who purifies themselves meaning the one who cleans their desires they will be successful the one who doesn't they are going to be in trouble and you and i know even in this world when we follow our whims and whatnot we get in trouble so the sunnah du'as first thing then there's sunnah quran that the prophets would read regularly we should read the following surahs regularly we should read surah yasin in the morning time ideally after fudger if we really again we're talking about trying to attain higher ranks of spirituality we are no longer just talking about the basics five prayers or basics alhamdulillah we got to get those in now we want to tame the desire we don't want to be people who burst out in anger we don't want to be people who let our sexual desire control us we don't want to be people who just let something else control us we want to control our own desire so now these will help us do that surah yasin in the morning and um find an surah that you prefer to read in the evening time so surah al-mulk is sunnah to read surah al-mulk uh before um sleeping or anytime from isha until sleep ideally so that those would be what i would recommend is yasin in the morning and mulk in the evening once one has that down also add in surah al-wakya the 56th chapter of the quran surah al-wakya the event um recite that or listen to it if you can't recite but ideally you recite and or listen um and add that after maghrib so those are the three if you somebody can do the sunnah duas surah yasin and surah mulk and it sounds like a lot but when someone starts doing it consistently it's like you could just go on a walk and you know you can get it in you can just it's five minutes that we that we give up on instagram or on tiktok or on you know reading the news and we can get these duas in five minutes here 10 minutes here five minutes here and we will boom we will you will feel it you will feel so good you'll feel so good you'll feel spiritually light you'll feel happy you'll feel a certain type of darkness removed because these duas are very very very powerful and this is why they are the first step they quiet your mind and they quiet the senses it's surah yasin surah mulk um which is the uh first surah in the 29th chapter surah al-wakya and surah wakya wakya w a uh q i a h in english as the transliteration surah al-wakya those are the three that i would recommend reciting or listening to regularly based on different hadith about them and then the the duas uh of the sunnah duas so that's the first step okay we got that down now we go into the second step so we get the worship and um uh we get the worship and now we go to the second step and hamdol ever coming upon the blessed month of ramadan the second step can be facilitated for us so what's the second step the second step is um controlling our food intake it's actually hunger and fasting the it's amazing that Allah gives us a command right um that the fasting has been prescribed for you what is a prescription you get prescriptions when you need a cure for something Allah prescribed fasting for us to cure the heart look if he didn't make us do it i mean how many of us would do 30 days of fasting in a row like never we wouldn't do that right like that's a lot but hamdol Allah is giving he's like you've got to do this now and hamdol Allah almost all over the world no matter how much we're caught up in other stuff when it comes to ramadan we will do our best to fast so fasting helps a lot what does fasting do fasting remember these are all unseen things going on so what we're talking about now is like these spiritual cures these are not happening you can't see them it's not like when you apply an ointment to your face you've got a pimple and it goes away that's not how spirituality works it's uh Allah says in the Quran that one of the first few ayes of the Quran is that um this is a book for those who have no doubt those who believe in the unseen belief in the unseen is essential part of our religion so believing in the unseen in this case is you knowing that there's unseen effects to your there's unseen effects from your prayer so Allah says for example in the Quran that prayer prevents you from lewdness it actually restrains you from uh mis inappropriate behavior you're about to do something inappropriate you pray the spiritual effect of that will at least reduce the amount you are going to do inshallah ideally if the heart is in a decent enough state um either way it will always help inshallah so hunger and fasting does the same thing it builds a spiritual discipline it's for us we might be like all the headaches and I'm tired and you don't feel good that's that's there but in reality there's something else going on there's something else going on spiritually so there's two ways to do this first there the outright days of fasting of which we have Ramadan coming up and of which we should try after Ramadan to have a regular amount of fasting in our lives at least one day a month we should try so now the Prophet's Islam is three days a month the three white days or um different hadiths say Mondays and Thursdays but at the very least the three white the white days meaning um the white the days of the full moon um 13th 14th and 15th of the month but at least once a month we should try so we can keep it up a little bit we keep it just one day I'm gonna not eat right a little I'm just not gonna eat right I'm gonna I'm gonna skip um you're basically skipping one meal but it's still it's an amazing thing to fast what does it do for all the things you and I have been doing that whole month it will purify them inshallah internally that should be our intention because again all we collect so much darkness on the internet and talking to people and just just our own souls the stuff we think about the stuff we look at like there's so much darkness fasting cures it purifies it so you do you're doing your worship and dhikr now you add in this next ingredient okay so now you're starting to make this beautiful spiritual um you know all these beautiful spiritual ingredients are going to make eventually a recipe to help you with your spirituality one you're not fasting though the sunnah is still to restrain your food intake so it's not about always fasting most of us we can't fast all the time and we actually shouldn't fast all the time right but we can after Ramadan we can't control our food we can stop a couple bites short and this has amazing spiritual effects that we should try to have a day where we do the following three things in order to ascend to higher stations of spirituality again talking here about somebody who wants to control their desire and achieve states of good character righteousness talk about these types of things not just like i'm getting a basic sin right person who's like content with the c in the class that's fine but this is the one who wants the a in the class who wants to really crush it so hunger means um just okay i'm gonna reduce if i eat like this much of a plate of food every now and then i'm going to eat this much of a plate of food i'm going to eat half the size just because it will help me control my nuts the more you are hungry the more the nuts gets into control and again i'm not talking about like starving ourselves or anything i just balance levels of you limit the food intake and at the very least if we can't limit the quantity we limit the the deliciousness of the food what does that mean it means don't let your nuts eat everything it wants unless it obeys you your nuts is like an animal if it obeys you i don't know how many folks have pets but like i recently got a little kitten very very fine little kitten and i've been having a lot of fun with him and he when he does a good job with something learn something new plays you know we give him a little treat right but not every day and there's certain treats he really really likes so i like when he's been extra good on that day he gets like the treat that he really likes and he sometimes just takes it from us and runs away with it because how much he likes it doesn't let us feed it now if i if you give your your nuts is like an animal if you give your nuts everything it wants anytime it wants it it's just gonna it's gonna rule rule rule you you are not going to obey the nuts yes sorry somebody asked question what is the nuts my apologies i should have clarified so the nuts is the lower self the ego of the human being the lower self the nuts is the part in us that brings us down so there are levels of the nuts but the the basic translation is lower self or ego and when it's impure it teams up with the devil it teams up with shaytan to basically mess us up to get us to fall into sand to get us to do you know silly things that that's the nuts so the nuts has to be tamed in ramadan shaytan is gone we know that the shell theme are locked up but the nuts is still very much there and so fasting actually helps to tame the nuts that's the goal of fasting to tame the ego tame the lower self it calls you to your lower part you have another part inside of you known as the spirit the rule the the spirit is the higher part in you okay and uh someone mentioned that that this is a little bit on uh hard to understand because your ego is your identity so it's a really really good point it's not exactly like that so that's why the ego translation is probably not the best translation lower self is probably the best transition it is you but it's your lower tendencies you can through spiritual nurturing you can train it you can train this part of you to become better to become right just like you and i have moments where like we really you know you ever do something you regret and you're like you know that someone tells you like you know that wasn't you like i felt like that was just like a different part of you and you're like yeah that was like really my you know my my um the part of me that i wish didn't come out that much if we ever have an angry outburst and we do something else that's because the nuts can pull you down but sometimes you have the higher aspects of you right like your your higher angels some people call it in this culture you you know you're so generous you see someone on the street you help them out like all these amazing things there are parts in you that are bad and there are parts in you that are good the nuts you can essentially say in the early stage of spirituality it's the part in you that's bad but slowly through training the nuts can become good well it can become trained to be good if that makes sense so it's not exactly ones like only ones identity there are many parts to one's identity think about it if you have different parts of you this is one part and then there are higher parts of you and then there are kind of the like medium parts right everybody has different aspects to them internally so the goal with hunger is to cure cure oneself through um uh through limiting the food intake yeah and that gives clarity and that allows for an internal purification to happen so hunger and fasting then the third one the third one is moments of solitude moments of solitude why is this important the desires many times get stirred up inside of the human being because we are always around people always we're always stimulated and if you know in covid we haven't been able to be around people um many of us you know alhamdulillah that's a test and many of us have not been able to like hang out physically but we're still always around people digitally we're always around something or another some show there's always something in front of us in order to spiritually progress the human being needs moments of quietude solitude what is the proof for this that the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he had a long period of meditation in aghada hera before the revelation came and many of us we know the story that he would go up there to meditate for long periods of time and say the khadija al kubra radi allahu anha our mother and the wife of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam she would bring him food or they would meet halfway for him to get provisioned and food and whatnot then you'd go back up to meditate and it was in one of these nights that he was meditating the beautiful night of laylatul qadr where allah then says that um in the anza nahufi laylatul qadr that then he sent down right the quran and jibril alayh sallam came to him and this famous verse was recited ipra that recite the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said i don't know how to read slash recite i don't know how to and the jibril alayh sallam did it again and then he hugged him and shook him and this whole intense event happened this spiritually powerful yet really intense event after these periods of meditating right because that was the the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is is showing us and a lot of showing us ultimately that this is the way to attain spiritual openings you want to get higher levels of spirituality obviously there's no prophecy and what now it's not what i'm saying but you you follow this example you have moments of silence and solitude it doesn't mean you go off in a cave for like two years and you don't do anything else i'm saying but you got to have moments like at least five minutes a day where it's just you no device no nothing just you and Allah it's it you just sit there and you think or you go on a walk and you just put everything away and you just think and or talk to Allah why is this because the senses have to be quieted in order for your thoughts to actually come out you don't have so many thoughts we have so much stuff going on all these different things we're thinking about and why not in order for us to succeed in life we need to have times where we just hear the thoughts this one's worthless this one's important this this that and then you just have moments of calmness and you just let everything process okay everything's processing and then you have that moment of time where you just talk to Allah about whatever is going on in your life this can be after the prayer but i'm mentioning like ideally in addition to that right so we're talking about solitude in addition to the time just after the prayer so have moments where it's just and this Ramadan make it a goal at least five ten minutes ideally you know the best time that we could do this is the time right before it starts if we're not busy with food prep if we try to prep our food like an hour in advance 30 minutes in advance go and sit for five ten minutes in a place quiet just you and God and just make the law and talk to him you will see amazing wonders and those will be the best five ten minutes of your life for that period and you will want to do it even after Ramadan because intimacy with Allah and this love you remember you and i have a deep desire to love and this religion is about love and Allah has a deep love for human being one of his name is a wudu and the most loving is one way to translate it according to the scholar so that's that's that love that you and i have that Allah has for us that we cultivate for him in these moments alone in these moments of solitude so a couple of ways you can be physically alone but not actually if virtually you're still active and everything so i recommend visual stimulation have moments we need to go and cleanse this ideally but at least every day have moments of the day a couple hours or something like that or a couple minutes whatever we can manage put away all the devices put away the music put away all the things that can stir up desire it takes one look at something impermissible to stir up a desire you get excited about it or so or one song of something you know that's that's that's that's gonna bring out the bad part of us and boom now the desire is stirred just it was dormant and it's stirred you need moments of solitude in order to to be able to quiet the senses and to be able to actually think and to be able to progress spiritually so we have worship and dhikr is number one number two we have some hunger and hunger hunger slash fasting number three we have moments of solitude all of these are from the sunnah of the prophet sallam many of these though unfortunately are forgotten sunnahs many of us focus on certain sunnahs which are amazing but we forget some of these like crucial sunnahs related to worship um and that we have to bring these back inshallah into our lives this can also be though taking some time to go on a walk taking some time to think like it just it means not being either with people or with devices that's probably the best way to put it put one way to put it in the time limit have moments where we're not with people not with devices and you just have time with you and god and time to think the third the third the fourth one that that leads to is we need to also have moments of silence what does that mean for somebody like me who talks a lot it means just zipping it up every now and then right why is it because this the the the part of us it likes to talk then again back to this nuffs this lower self the nuffs likes talking it likes talking about itself like talking about its accomplishments like the oh look at me I did this that I did that and then it likes to everything from talking about itself to posting about itself to trying to get everybody to like itself to like its image all those things the narcissistic attitude they all stem from the nuffs right moments of silence will help with that we need moments where we just okay yeah I'm just going to try to like think I'm not going to talk meditation is a big big you know um it's important it's a big part of our religion as well meditating a lot it's it's uh you could basically say meditating and reflecting um a lot describes many parts in the quran where he encourages us to do to double which is like a meditative reflection a deep reflection um so have moments though in order to do that to unlock whatever you want to get you want to have moments of silence okay again not all the time you don't need to be quiet but we need to have moments of silence inshallah somebody asks a question uh that's a good question let me get to that just in a sec so a little bit more elaboration on the nuffs I'm gonna get to that just a second inshallah so then the fifth part of it is um night worship or you could say like not sleeping all the time not oversleeping what does that mean once you have the basic worship down the hardest for example prayer for most people is fudger because fudger requires limiting sleep and the nuffs again the lower self the part in us that pulls us down the nuffs the best way to think about it is the nuffs pulls us down to our worldly tendencies to our haram tendencies that's the nuffs and I'm not going to get too into it but you have stages of the nuffs so it can eventually get to a point where it's perfected or close to perfected and it can actually pull you up but in the most of us it's pulling us down towards bad thoughts anger overeating sexual lusts and desires are always wanting to be right trying to have so many followers trying to be in charge trying to be in control trying to be the big the big man or big woman in town trying to just like run the show every desire you can think of negative traits that we have come from the nuffs and the nuffs being out of control and Allah says that controlling the nuffs though will help us it will actually allow us to achieve a state of success um so hopefully that kind of clarifies that um a little bit it's it's and I'll get to the second part in a second so reducing sleep and night worship the goal is you you want to slowly reduce the amount of the amount of like indulgences that one gives oneself so like if we always sleep through fudger we have to have days of course ideally every day but we have to have days we wake up for fudger because the otherwise the nuffs thinks it's you two and I start to think that oh it's totally fine like what's the point I'll just make it up and I don't need to pray because I want to wake up at eight o'clock and fudger comes in at six o'clock so like that's two hours of sleep well if you and I were to wake up for for that prayer we would actually feel a spiritual benefit from it and we would actually have more energy than we would have we slept through it but it's hard to understand until we start to implement it same thing goes for reducing sleep slowly in order to increase our night worship one of the most important prayers one can do in order to become closer to Allah in order to get spiritually close is that the Hajj prayer Allah says in the Quran he says that was the problem to do the Hajj then that the more you do the Hajj of some will attain a very specific station because of the prayer of the Hajj the Hajj is to pray before fudger anytime ideally really anytime after Isha until fudger but generally speaking the last one third of the night call it two hours before fudger that can be one minute before fudger or it can be literally two or three hours before fudger so that that is the that is the most important aspect of this so in order to try and control our nafs night worship starts to become a more and more important aspect of our of our life so there's a spiritual effect reduced to sleep slightly don't don't like never sleep but don't oversleep all the time we have to have moments where okay i'm going to do a little bit less sleep so i can get up and worship a lot because that's what the son of the prophet someone he wouldn't sleep from emotion the night he would sleep worship for for one third of the night one half of the night many times um so that's that's part of us if we want to attain closer stations that's something that we will do uh no no problem at all to the person who mentioned that may Allah bless you um so uh hopefully that that that that clarifies a little bit the in ramadan and i think we'll in shallah we'll try to end with this in ramadan what happens we reduce our food intake because we have to and then many of us reduce our sleep intake i was just thinking about this other day i was like oh subhanallah like waking up for work and everything isn't going to be tough in ramadan but Allah is actually setting it up so she'll say okay you pray at you faster in the day and he wants us to get up and pray at night to to pray tarawee prayer ideally it's not farth but it's a very very good thing to do automatically in ramadan then the spiritual cure starts to happen because subhanallah Allah already knew it was good for us so you and i start to sleep less because well we have to wake up for sahur and that's early as it's very very early and then we wake many times we might go to tarawee or these days we might pray tarawee at home because of covid but either way you know we have a less period of consistent sleep but that actually might it might hurt physically like you wake up and you're like oh my god it's so early it's so cold i want to be up right now my head hurts you don't want to talk to anybody at sahur or seri time right but spiritually there's some effects happening effects happening and the people who miss out on this they miss out on the spiritual effects they say oh i'm just going to eat everything at night and just like so i can get a good night rest and they'll eat it like right after isha and go to sleep and not wake up for seri will they miss the spiritual effects right if somebody was passing out and they told you hey you come to this spot and you wake up at this time and you'll get a million dollars let's say coming to the masjid or you come to some place and everybody comes to get a million dollars i guarantee you 99 percent of people would not miss it because they want the million dollars and say you come every day and you'll keep getting a million and they keep coming right because for money most most of us there's never enough but first dean we're like oh i just got to do the bare minimum well now we need to call ourselves to to have higher aspiration higher motivation higher himma make this ramadan ramadan where you try to discipline yourself you try to tame your desires or you try to go above and beyond just the basics okay you're going to do the basic fasting alawakbar that's already amazing but do more we're talking about this next weekend child but we'll try to do the fast of the eye the fast of the mouth the fast of the ears meaning you stay away from haram inputs in all these areas try to lift yourself up and remember that all of these things we mentioned today the eight things regular amounts of worship regular amounts of dhikr especially the sunna dhikr at the car of the prophet sallam regular amounts of fasting and hunger regular amounts of solitude regular amounts of silence and regular amounts of extra night worship all of these things will have such a powerful cure and impact on your heart you won't you do this consistently for a year you won't even know who the who you'll you'll you'll be completely different person because it's such a consistent effect it's a light that purifies the heart that illuminates you that makes you into a very very much a human being who's focused on good character who's focused on the presence of Allah and who's focused on trying to be present with Allah is what I should say so let's try that this ramadan inshallah and inshallah we will we will pray and hope that everybody has a very very blessed ramadan if there's any questions now please feel free to post them somebody said are we allowed to watch netflix during ramadan um i mean i would i'm not going to answer like whether it's not necessarily allowed or not i would stay away ideally from netflix and from television in ramadan if you can if it's really difficult if somebody really feels a need to like they have to watch it then don't watch anything that has like naked images that has shooting that has violence that has blood that has curse words that has relationships um that almost rules out like most shows that are out there but you know if there's something that isn't uh that might work but i would try to fast from tv from netflix from some aspects of social media at least the like dangerous aspect of all we do is scroll and just kind of keep going the kind of you know um uh scroll of death or whatever it's called right we just i would try to stay away from that yeah but it's not like if as long as what you're watching is okay it's technically okay but if it's going to hurt you spiritually it's going to hurt you spiritually and for the person who wants to climb in nearness to Allah and again we're talking here now about higher stations but everybody can do this Allah gave all of us the capability to do this they will use all their time wisely that they would try not to use their time in things that are going to be quote unquote waste of time in ramadan because you're in ramadan you're in a state of fasting you're in a spiritually blessed month so doesn't you should we should try to be put on in our time to try to learn if we can't do that we should try at least not to do something that will drag us down um inshallah uh and and somebody mentioned her to go uh mashallah yes her to go i've heard a very very very powerful show um yeah so maybe that could be one uh that could be a you know spiritually uplifting you know documentaries type of things you know they could be fine if one needs to just do what they need to do everybody's in a different state you know what i mean like sometimes you're just so finished you just got to get through the day and that'll you have a different kind of schedule for yourself and different things you do versus when you're like are in a good zone you can do extra things you can do some Quran you can do some biker you can like help somebody out in those moments when you have that him that energy don't let Netflix or anything bring it down because it'll just make you stay sedentary and do that but in the moments you're just so finished you can't do anything okay there might be some more room for this stuff but in Ramadan we should try to limit it uh either way yeah okay cool so we'll do one more question just because we're here at mother of time at least we're on that um if anybody has a question please post it um inshallah question related to desires or to Ramadan or to you know anything else um inshallah all right not seeing oh someone asked me what i do for a living i work uh in tech uh a startup for a living yeah all right not seeing anything else okay i'm the law okay so inshallah definitely next week i think it's going to be our last week for this specific class um and we're going to focus it all on Ramadan prep so inshallah tune in with next week Wednesday 7 p.m. pst try to keep it to about 30 40 minutes focused on Ramadan prep inshallah um and uh is there a book or anything that explains what nafs means in islam it's a really good question um the uh the book i would get there is a book called the beginning of guidance the beginning of guidance and it's translated in english it's by mama rizali i would get that book is that that will generally explain many of these concepts we're talking about many of which are pulled from from that type of book um inshallah someone says i'm deaf is it okay to put Quran even if i don't hear it well uh Allah bless you and may Allah reward you for this for for enduring the what i can't imagine how much him i resolve that takes um it's totally okay yes to listen to it to look at it whatever you are able to hear um yes that's that's a great idea putting Quran on loud speakers somebody mentioned if they're not able to hear fully is a totally great idea totally allowed to do um as long as you're not doing it in like you know a bathroom or an unclean place otherwise it's totally good um yeah and if one can even if one can't not if you can't read if somebody can't recite it's good to listen if someone can't listen it's good to recite or to just look at the words just looking at the Arabic words has a powerful spiritual effect um and make the intention that one day i want to get to the point where i can do this inshallah yeah okay cool so i don't see any more questions so if there's nothing inshallah i'll end with a short prayer please bless this remainder this month of shaban allow us to reach Ramadan and please bless the Ramadan of all those people yalla that are here all the Muslims in this world yalla all the Muslims in in in in our area yalla all the Muslims yalla who are struggling with their deen and all the Muslim in general yalla make the Ramadan easy for us yalla make this Ramadan easy for us full of khair full of light allows to tame our desires in this month and allows to turn our fair over to you and allows to not be worried about anything yalla and remove our stresses and our depression and our anxieties and our difficulties and our problems yalla we ask you yalla that you gaze upon us and that you that you draw us near to you yalla alhamdulillahi alhamdulillahi alhamdulillahi thank you so much alhamdulillahi this is actually the final class of this series on deceptive desires and we're going to be focusing today specifically on the blessed month of Ramadan and we're going to be talking about what it is that we need to do in this blessed month of Ramadan in order to begin taming our desires we've been talking about the various types of desires that we have we've been talking about the various different ways desires come up inside of the human being and now we're going to be talking specifically about the month of Ramadan and the kind of details around that so alhamdulillahi in this month one of the main things that we can do is we need to really invest in understanding the inner world that we have so there's the outer world that we engage with and then there's an inner world that all of the Muslims have everybody has inside of them the inner world is the world that regulates our emotions it regulates how we're feeling it regulates all these different spiritual aspects as well and in order for us to really succeed when it comes to purification when it comes to controlling our desires that understanding of the inner world is very very essential alhamdulillahi Ramadan there are a lot of things happening in this inner world that are important for us to understand first and foremost is that in Ramadan we know it is a month in which the heavens are open and which hell is closed right so the gates of heaven are open in the month of Ramadan as per hadith and the gates of the hellfire are closed so what does that mean we've been talking in this in this conversation about desires we've been chatting about this idea of being pulled upwards or being pulled downwards right and so you can be pulled spiritually up you can actually be be pulled up in a very very positive way or the downward forces of life and and of in this case of satan can pull one down so we have to be able to be pulled spiritually we have to be able to be pulled up instead of dragged down Ramadan is the month for us to be able to do this so it's very very important for us to keep that in mind i'm just checking one thing sorry about this so Ramadan is this month for us to try and achieve this kind of state of spirituality where we are again being pulled upwards how do we go about doing that it is a chance for us to work on our nafs so in Ramadan shaitan the shaitan are gone we know that the shaitan are gone so it's really just us and our nafs right and so you are left with your nafs which is your ego your lower self your lower soul and you've got to resist the nafs you have to resist the desires of the nafs you have to fight these desires in order to succeed in the month of Ramadan because the nafs wants to eat the nafs wants to do other things the nafs wants to waste time and Ramadan is this supposed to be this month of productivity is supposed to be this month of worship it's supposed to be a month where you and i are trying not to engage with our nafs so if we try not to engage with our nafs in Ramadan and in this blessed month of Ramadan the more and more we resist the desires that the nafs calls to the more and more we will be able to succeed in this in this blessed month so Allah is upon us Allah is already assisting us by commanding us that we have to stay away from food he says we have to stay away from food and from drink and from even lawful sexual relations during the the fasting period that already begins a spiritual taming process for the nafs so that's really really important and then the other thing to keep in mind is you actually get to kind of microscopically look at yourself in a way you don't get to look at yourself another time because in other times when we do something wrong we do something bad we attribute it to shaitan many times right so we say oh this is because of shaitan or he whispered this in my ear or um you know we feel like oh maybe all the bad is not necessarily coming from something i'm doing but in Ramadan the shaitan are locked up so we actually now know okay this is something that i have to work on this is an inner problem that i have right versus outside of Ramadan we might not always know it this is a problem i have but it was incited by the shaitan by the great deluder of shaitan as Allah mentions um in Quran so it's a chance then for us to do what to focus on this topic we've been talking about which is to hone out to control our desires for madan is this month where you can achieve a state of of higher of a higher spiritual state by controlling your desires we have a hadith for the process i'm indicated that none of you truly believes until his desires are in accordance with what i've brought so your desires in order for us to achieve the per pinnacle of belief in order for us to start achieving perfected belief our desires what we want what we don't want what we desire to do what we don't desire to do should be in accordance with the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and that's not easy that's so they could take a lifetime of work but it is possible and that's what we have to be encouraged by that everything the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is telling us he wouldn't tell us if it wasn't possible he's telling us because it's possible and he's encouraging us so never let anybody tell you that hey i can't do this or that i can't succeed in ramadan no you can do it you can't succeed in ramadan you can achieve your goals you can achieve your spiritual goals all these things are totally possible but it takes work and so we have to put that effort in we have to put that work in if we put that work in we put that energy in a lot can assist us in ways you would never think imaginable things have happened people have changed their lives in ramadan in ways that they never even thought possible and in ways that you could not recognize them after the month is over or maybe a month or two or two go by you could not recognize them because maybe somebody who is in a state of they're going to the bars and they're going clubbing and they're drinking and they're smoking and in one ramadan they have one night of sincere repentance where the tears flow from their eyes and they turn to their lord and they're sincere to him and they conquer certain desires Allah helps them conquer certain desires and and then you'll never see them in those places again after the month of ramadan i know people personally who this has happened to uh so use this as a month of change and again whatever desires we're talking about the big the big stuff or the subtle desires this is the month to conquer those desires somebody's asking uh what is the best time uh for the ad during ramadan so there are many good times for the ad during ramadan but the specific time we should be thinking about every day is while we are fasting and right before we break the fast so there are traditions which indicate both of those is being very very good times to make dua while we're fasting and right before we break the fast um other good times uh to to make dua in this blessed month of ramadan are of course during sahur time because that's already a very very virtuous time outside of ramadan that's that's the hajj of time during ramadan it's still the hajj of time uh meaning the time the last one third of the night where hadith indicate that um Allah in no physical anthropomorphic way but figuratively just to help our human minds understand it um uh descends and uh he asks is there anybody who needs anything that i may fulfill their need anybody who wants forgiveness or seeking forgiveness that i may forgive them so that time right the time one or two hours before fajr salah is an amazing time for dua throughout the year especially in ramadan then it's good to make dua right for sure before we break iftar um don't try not to be caught up in food prep or to be caught up in watching something and whatnot definitely don't have the tv on um in that like the last 10 or 15 minutes uh before before iftar it's a very very good time for dua um inshallah so those are some times and then there will be specific nights um that we know again every night is amazing in ramadan but there are specific nights of course the last 10 nights the odd nights of the last 10 um where we can try to catch the night of power of which um many many many duas and openings um are answered and are given so there are levels then that we should try to focus on in this month of ramadan and what do i mean by this look you you and i are all we're all in different stages of our of our journey right so we might be caught up okay like somebody might say hey i'm trying to leave very very specific haram thing in ramadan someone else might be like oh i already left most of the haram stuff i got i had to do i'm trying to advance in a different way and someone else might say you know i'm already done that so now i'm trying to continue growing alhamdulillah the month of ramadan allows us there are levels of fasting in the month of ramadan there are levels of fasting so it allows us to um it allows us to progress in these levels so we're going to talk about these for each of the limbs that the human being has we're going to talk about the different levels that you and i can try to achieve in terms of controlling our desires associated with the eyes with the ears and with the tongue um and then we will wrap it up inshallah so and again as you have questions is just please please please post them and we'll we'll get to them inshallah so first is the eyes now that at the basic level the eyes gravitate towards doing haram things they gravitate towards looking at haram they gravitate towards looking at pictures and bad images um at not lowering their gaze at looking at the opposite gender the eyes gravitate towards that ramadan is a month where we're supposed to control we we should always control it ramadan is a month though in which we are taught to fast from what Allah usually allows us in normal times Allah usually allows us in a normal period to um uh to eat and drink food right to eat food and to drink but in ramadan he says stay away from this even though it's halal in normal situations so for sure then you can stay away from the stuff that's haram in a normal situation right um so the eyes are going to gravitate in most times to looking at things that are impermissible in ramadan you control yourself say no i can't look at that person no if somebody has like their sexual desires acting up no i can't check that person out no i can't look at that bad image somebody wants to watch pornography no i can't do it because i'm fasting if i do it my the reward of my fast will completely diminish right the more sins you and i do throughout the day in ramadan the the lesser and lesser the reward of the actual fast gets so you might have like this much reward at the beginning but because we look at this thing we curse at somebody we we we lose our cool with someone etc etc and by the end of the day we our reward has diminished all we got was hunger and thirst because we didn't have to get the spiritual training remember it is a month of spiritual training that's the that's the purpose of ramadan and say refresh refresher for us um and so it is a refresher for each of the limbs for you to remind yourself this is why this limb was created a lot tells us a lot tells us to worship him as one of the main reasons why he created us and each limb was created for a specific type of worship so ramadan has every limb is engaged in some form of worship if we are following the sunnah of the providence of this element and most of us we're going to fall short but we should try to do our best of all the sunnah so what's an example of this right um the eyes if we follow the sunnah of reciting quran from time to time in ramadan you try to you try to recite one section of the quran a day one joe's a day safara a day or even a little bit um less if we can't do that much or more our eyes are engaged in worship that's what the eyes are created for to look at allah's words right to uh look at allah's uh what allah has revealed to the prophets of the sunnah but we might or we might do something else we might just scroll on our phone instead it just depends on what somebody wants to do in ramadan with the limbs that allah has blessed them the person who's trying to achieve the state of nearness to allah will say no i'm going to use this in obedience person who's like and just got to get through the fast okay let's just do whatever that is that they want to do right the same thing goes with the tongue the same thing goes with the hand the same thing goes with every other part of the body so it's just about us trying our best and we're going to fall short it's all good we just get back up and we keep trying but that's a goal is to aspire it's to aspire to higher levels it's to aspire to get closer and closer so again the eye at this first level is trying to it doesn't lower its gaze and looks at haram so we should with reminding ourselves that i am fasting i'm not supposed to look at bad things we remind ourselves of that and inshallah we will start to progress right the eye we will emerge at the end of ramadan not wanting to look at the haram things or at least being in more control because of all the fasting and all the vicar that happened that's one desire specifically that we're talking about linked to the eye that in ramadan we try to get a control of another desire linked to the eye or another negative trait you could say is looking down on other people the eye has a tendency it's not created to look down on other muslims that's not the purpose unfortunately in our umma today we are filled with we look down on each other we somebody might practice more than someone else and they look down they say look at this person he or she's not religious he or she's not this and they they they they judge them inside and they look down on them and that's not what the eye is created for the eye is created to have a good opinion of others right so you're supposed to say okay you see someone doing something wrong and you come up with okay what the prophets don't say 70 excuses you say maybe he or she did this maybe they're met and they're they're they're going through a tough time maybe this is what they are um uh struggling with right and so you try not to look down now that's looking down on somebody is someone who's already started to work on the major haram things with the eye will now start to focus on this one they'll be like you know what i'm really trying to improve myself i'm trying to improve my spiritual state so i'm going to try to work on on this aspect right so that would be another example here and somebody asked uh do you have to lower your gaze uh from bad vids and just all uh just overall lowering gaze uh yes so so so anything that is um uh not not allowed or haram to look at in real life it's not allowed to look at in a video in a photo in a drawing in any other image representation so yes we would have to which is unfortunately why this age of internet and social media it has its positives right like we can't do this video in these these classes during covid and whatnot if we didn't have the the blessing of being connected to so many people we wouldn't be connected to at the same time it has its determinants and so there's a lot of haram out there right a lot of uh bad images a lot of people just you know dressing inappropriately a lot of um basically you know near pornography types of images that are flooding instagram flooding tiktok flooding facebook and just letting the internet in general so in ramadan if we can't control ourselves we gotta deactivate for a little bit because we're literally going to lose the reward of the fast and remember you only have 29 or 30 days the point of the fast is not for to make you hungry not the point of the fast the hunger elevates you to a spiritual station you could not achieve without the hunger that is among the wisdoms of fasting that he has enjoyed fasting for us that in order you that you might attain a state of god consciousness and be mindful of god so he didn't say so you could be hungry or so you could be thirsty the thirst and hunger help you attain a state of mindfulness of god but if you are thirsty and hungry and again cursing at this person and getting angry at this person stealing from this person lying from this person checking out this person all the different things we might do how we are we are negating the aspect of attaining a state of mindfulness of god so again keep in mind the higher goal and then we keep in mind the different things we need to do so let's let's come up with a goal then for each limb that we have we're talking about three today eyes ears and tongue to attain a state of takwa a state of mindfulness of Allah and by controlling our desires so first level for the eye is not looking at haram the second level is not looking down on people the third level is just to not look at things that will waste the time that will not be of benefit again this is a higher station but we should try to have portions of Ramadan at least maybe in the last 10 days we're saying you know what for a portion of these last 10 days i'm going to try not to look at things that are just going to waste my time maybe i'm not going to read this maybe i'm not going to go on this site maybe i'm not going to watch these videos because i know it's just going to waste my time and i'm in the most blessed time i'm in the last stretch of the month of Ramadan so i don't want to waste my time right so that would be an example right in the situation same thing goes with like watching movies watching shows as long as there's nothing haram in it you can't necessarily say that the whole thing in and of itself is haram and and and whatnot but you but you should think about you know it's a good use of my time in this blessed month right and can i control my watching habits in this blessed month of Ramadan and remember the angels are descending regularly in this month hell is closed heaven is open what is heaven if heaven's open then who can come right the angels are already they come down all the time and they're descending far more often in the month of Ramadan we know that and it's root of other Allah says it's another Malayah to Ruhu that the angels and this and and and and jabriel islam according to the dominant opinion i said descend down and there's a certain tranquility that comes with them now imagine the angels deciding they see us like you know watching a netflix show like they would be like come on dude what are you doing or they see us like you know flirting with someone via text or they see us looking at something impermissible or they see us like yelling at our our parents or they see us i mean how would they what would they say right like what would do what state do we want to be in when the angels are descending down just one example for us to keep in mind so we should imagine and we should we should remember that this is a month of a very very special blessings and again we start by and try not to look at haram things then we then we improve upon that by trying not to look down on other people with the eyes and then we improve on that even by trying not to look at things that will waste our time especially as the month progresses and we are getting closer and closer to the end then we move on to the tongue the tongue generally speaking can get caught up in many many many diseases most of the sins that the human being commits relate to the tongue backbiting lying um accusing people of things making unnecessary fun of people all these types of things happen because of the tongue cursing right these types of things so the tongue we should come up with okay you know what we all know the bad habits that we have well i'm going to talk about three right now backbiting so we know when we gossip we know when we talk bad about people we all know that there are certain types of situations or certain people that we might talk bad about so we have to control ourselves in this month of Ramadan with regards to speaking bad about people we really have to work on ourselves in this month how do we go about doing that well we should remember first that our reward for the fast will get significantly diminished and we should remember that backbiting is worse than multiple acts of adultery also some said in hadith that the backbiting um and i'm paraphrasing here but that that it that it's worse than many acts of adultery right and which one of us would be cool with like you know if if we committed or if our family member or somebody committed adultery nobody's going to be cool with that yet regularly we gossip about people we talk smack about them behind their back we you know uh uh we try to try to say things even if we couch them in various words but that the other person would not like and backbiting is defined as if the person were to hear it they wouldn't like it doesn't matter if it's true backbiting is if it's true it's false it's called slander um but backbiting is when something is true so in Ramadan we have to be careful we should not backbite we should try to limit we should limit them out we talk about other people the way to do that is first stay away from people who gossip we know that we have certain friends who gossip or we might be the friend who gossips stay away from texting them stay away from interacting with them number two know the types of people who know the types of people you backbite about usually there's a handful this coworker this classmate this family member like we all know hey there's like a handful of people that we all talk smack about and we like whenever they come up and topic and someone asked them oh how's this person doing we started going off about them right and like oh they did this and that and we just start to backbite so we stay away from talk talking about those types of people and even letting that topic come up so if we know that hey i might say something that's not good just don't even say it right don't mention that person don't mention then the name of that person don't ask about them either because you know as soon as you ask somebody oh how is so-and-so doing boom the door is open to backbiting and we're in trouble then those are the two ways that we should start with and the other thing is just to remember the the punishment that comes in the amount of reward that you lose in Ramadan for doing this your whole fast can go right the whole fast can go because somebody spent an hour or two gossiping about somebody because it's such a such a bad thing spiritually and you won't feel the benefit of the fast you'll feel you'll start to feel trepidation with sin is associated with feeling off and feeling trepidation so the more that you sin the more trepidation that you tend to feel so that's one of the the diseases of the tongue we should work on in this month second one is a lying and this is fairly straightforward in the sense that we all know if we lie what we lie about and who we lie to so we should try to stay away from those types of topics and we should try to stay away from people who we either lying because we want to impress them or we're lying because we feel obligated about something usually most people aren't like just straight up telling like huge lies about themselves most of the time that's at least what i found usually little lies here and there people will say about you know situations at work or school whatever it is and so we have to make sure in this blessed month that we stay away from any type of lying because it is a very very dark effect on your soul from then the goal is make your soul full of light any sin makes your soul adds darkness to the soul so you don't want to counterbalance all the light that you're getting from fasting with all this darkness and then it just kind of cancel each other out you don't want to do that and and the third thing and this is actually something a lot of us struggle with is is cursing cussing like saying you know explicit word insert word here right that type of stuff so we want to stay away from that and we all know we should come up with a list hey i say the f word a lot i say this where i say this the d word a lot whatever words it is that we're saying and we make a commitment stay away from it i am going to go a whole one day in ramadan without saying anything bad i'm gonna try because i know the reward of my fasting being diminished right and then watch you'll feel good you'll do it the next day but then the next day maybe you go a week you set my little little little goals right and then you say okay now i'm gonna make this habit and i'm gonna stay away after doing this for a week regular i'm gonna stay away from saying things so as soon as like something crazy happens instead of saying oh and then insert word here you you replace that with something else either a lighter version of it even if it's not the best word it's the lighter version or you know you replace it with with with something else i i know people who like as soon as you know something intense is about to happen god forbid like someone's driving and you know they have to break suddenly most of us would say like oh and then some some word they they say yeah a lot or their their heart is already um their heart is already attuned inside there like they say Bismillah first they say Allah first right because they're always in a state of thicker so they're not the last thing that's going to come to their mind is you know uh whatever word that comes to most of our minds and i'm totally you know i've been in this spot so i i i uh it's something we all just have to work on so it's fairly straightforward list out the words list out the situations the people who we talk to that we end up saying these words in front of and and and then we just commit to reducing them and then eliminating them great so we're just going to move on now to the ears and the main thing here to keep in mind is that in Ramadan you want to avoid two things you want to avoid listening to Haram right so you want to avoid that ideally and you want to avoid um so listening to you know explicit explicit music and and and that type of thing um and you want to after you kind of established that level okay i stopped listening to like generally bad things first words misogynistic lyrics lyrics talking about sex anything that they're talking about killing and all these other violent things that they could be talking about those would be considered impermissible to listen to and they will mess up your spiritual state when you're fasting again there's a difference between having an outward accepted fast and an inwardly realized fast your fast can be accepted outwardly by you staying away from food drink and sexual relations from the time right before fudger enters until the time right after mugra mentors your fast can be accepted but you could get zero reward for the fast might get a lot you might not you could get zero though depending on how many sins we do and then even more than that your spiritual state right can be um uh your spiritual state can be affected as well right so that is something to keep in mind that your spiritual state the state that you have of calmness is also affected by good deeds and by sin um that somebody does so for for for um the ears we just have to keep this in mind that you know we try to avoid listening to things that we would not want to listen to um or that would have you know impermissible lyrics and then we also avoid listening to as we try to get to a higher level we try to avoid listening to anything that won't be a benefit to us so again we try in the last 10 days anything that's not beneficial i'm going to not try not to listen to i'm going to try not to listen to um i'm going to try not to listen to something that is not going to be beneficial as we get closer so these are a couple of the things um and someone says thank you for uh thinking of fasting for ramadan but i'm not muslim ma'sha'Allah may Allah bless you you know you should just try it out alhamdulillah if you're even if you're if if if allah's inspiring you with it i would try it out try out fasting try out some of these other you know spiritual tips try out doing some some prayers in the month of ramadan even if you're not muslim and inshallah you'll feel the benefit fasting is actually a god says in the Quran that fasting has been prescribed for you speaking now to the umma for the muslim community as it was prescribed for those who came before you so um those who came before us and many many other religions had to fast many of them have stopped fasting but many of them had to fast we know that mosa islam fasted we know that daouda islam prophet david fasted a lot we know that isa islam prophet jesus fasted a lot and of course all the other prophets did as well so uh fasting has immense benefits um we very highly encourage you ma'sha'Allah that's really good and someone says what is your favorite part about ramadan um my favorite part about ramadan is probably uh getting a chance to kind of like quiet at my thoughts and everything that's going on and have moments right at least have to force myself to just kind of calm down a little bit just be quiet and just listen to what's you know going on in here and just try to connect um uh myself you know do my best to to form a connection with allah that's one of my favorite parts about ramadan uh alhamdulillah cool so we'll just finish off and the last thing we just wanted to mention um and and keep the questions coming we'll we'll save about five minutes um for questions is if you have the desire to aim to argue or get angry in ramadan again while you're fasting you actually are supposed to say like i am fasting i am fasting and you have lead the situation and if it's with another muslim they should know and they should not try to force you to do it right because this is all about us usually shaytan he is going to um he's going to push us to argue shaytan is going to push us to argue most of the time but in ramadan shaytan's the shayatin they're locked up right there's still humans shayatin going around like human human devils we know that many you know there are definitely many human devils in society um but the the the actual shayatin they're locked up so the argument of the argument of energy or the anger what does that have that comes from us so we have to work on ourselves in ramadan to try to control it so a couple things remind yourself that you're fasting if that happens and again all these are desires we talked about in the past series and so um you know the the desire for getting angry and desire for arguing was covered a couple of weeks ago so i'm just kind of distilling it now into what we should focus on for the month of ramadan we increase then our thicker we increase our remembrance of god in order to calm down the anger we of course practice the sunnah of if you're sitting you if you're standing you sit and if you're sitting you lie down and you try to go make ko wudu to calm yourself down right um and we try to leave the situation so these are things we can do in this lesson month of ramadan to avoid just doing the basics i would encourage myself and everybody else challenge yourself this in this month really sincerely challenge yourself to aspire to higher levels and higher station don't just be content with the basics don't just be content with staying away from food and drink and and and and in relations try to stop looking at bad things try to stop looking at down on people try to stop listening to bad things try to stop talking and speaking bad things and bad words try to stop lying and cheating and all the things we might do here and there try to make this a month of purity in order that you and i may attain a state of god consciousness and mindfulness of god that will then benefit us it is a month where you fill your spiritual reserve to help you out throughout the year and if you fill that spiritual reserve you and i will have so much benefit after the month of ramadan we just have to take one step and Allah multiplies and multiplies and multiplies and remember Allah says that fasting everything that you and i do has a specific reward to it except fasting god says fasting is for me it's for him meaning he rewards it however he wants to reward it it has unlimited potential for reward fasting is very very special the secret of fasting is that nobody knows your truly if you're truly fasting except god because at any moment during the fast i could literally just go and i can drink a little bit of water right i could just do that i mean today i'm not that i'm just not a dafra mugger but i'm not fasting anyways but i could just do that right and nobody would know if i'm just in my room only god knows though if you're really fasting it's special it's for him that means there's a special significance of building a special relationship with him this month so lastly we'll just end with and try to increase your relationship with him in this month talk to him more in this month connect with the the book that he sent you the love letter that god sent you to all of his creation the Quran in this month try to connect to it recite it if possible if you can't recite it at the very least read it in in in your language english or whatever language it is that that we might speak and engage in deepening the relationship aspire make an intention right now we have short of a week before the month Ramadan comes in that i'm trying to get closer to Allah in this month make vast intentions i'm trying to follow the sunnah of the prophecy some in this month that we intend to try to follow the sunnah of the prophecy song and follow the example of all the righteous who came after him in this month and to try to attain stations of nearness to Allah that he only gives his most highest servants and that we try to attain forgiveness of Allah for all of our sins and that we intend to let the fasting elevate us and to remove our sins and to allow us to attain a state of purity even after the month of Ramadan is over and there's so many other intentions you can make so let's try to do that inshallah we're going to be doing lastly a class at on sunday this coming sunday so sunday april or that be i think april 11th right at 6 p.m pst um we're going to be doing that and it will be live inshallah it will be focused specifically on Ramadan prep tips for Ramadan prep a little bit of like the the thick review of Ramadan and a little bit of time for question and answer and like also how to manage our time in Ramadan how to use our time most effectively inshallah join that and then in the month of Ramadan we're going to be doing class every sunday um and going live every sunday at 6 p.m we're about 30 minutes specifically focused on uh 6 p.m pacific center time specifically focused on repentance repenting in Ramadan how do we turn back to Allah in this month how do we seek his forgiveness so um you know inshallah if it's if it's uh beneficial um please you know please feel free to attend um there is so if there are any questions now please post them um we'll get to them and then we will end um inshallah inshallah yeah just listening to the Quran English translation that's really really good that's really really good keep that up i'm gonna know the mess understanding the message of the Quran and then implementing it is so important it's so important i'm gonna know if anybody has any comments or questions again just feel please feel free to post them otherwise we will end uh with the du'a inshallah and somebody asks do we go live every week so kind of um we will be though as i just mentioned the schedule um we will be following that in in Ramadan and we might do some more lives as well okay cool we'll end with the prayer Bismillah Alhamdulillah that you grant us forgiveness for our sins ya Allah pardon us for our wrong doings ya Allah grant your gentleness and your mercy upon us and upon all of our family members upon all of our loved ones please spread your mercy in this month of Ramadan please ya Allah by your mercy remove this COVID in this disease from us ya Allah make us be able to meet each other again and to restore a state of normalcy to this world ya Allah give us spiritual tranquility in this month make this month easy for us make the fasting easy for us make the fasting especially easy for all of our brothers and sisters who are struggling in refugee areas who are struggling in war-torn areas ya Allah bring bring bring refuge and bring ease and bring faraj to the Muslims in Yemen and in Syria and Myanmar and in Palestine and in all the other parts of the Muslim world in Kashmir all the other parts in in in the the Uyghur Muslims in China all the other parts of the Muslim world ya Allah that people are struggling please assist them and please please give them assistance from your special assistance ya Rabbi al-Amin ya Allah please give us the tawfiq and the divine assistance to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in this month and to worship you abundantly in this month in a state of gentleness fi kheir wa lutfu al afya in a state of health please give us and those of us who might be sick ya Allah please give us health please give us health please give us good health Allahumma sallallahu ala afya ya Allah we ask you for afya we ask you for complete and total well-being ya Rabbi al-Amin ya Allah ya Allah and we ask you ya Allah that you allow us to enter this month with the best of intentions and allows to gain the best of knowledge before this month comes and allows to use this month productively and allows to leave the haram that we are doing and leave the bad thoughts that we have and to be excited for this month rather than seeing this month as a burden ya Rabbi al-Amin we ask you for everything good that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked for and we ask you for protection for everything evil that he asked for wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barak ala sayyidina Muhammad al-Malim sallam alhamdulillahi wa barak al-Amin alhamdulillahi wa barak al-Amin alright great sallallahu alayhi wa sallamu alaykum wa rahmatullah