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