How to master your Emotional Intelligence | Mikaeel Ahmed Smith (Full Podcast)

what does it mean to be intelligent immediately we may think of figures like albert einstein and those who possess a genius level iq people who have committed much to memory and have brains like computers yet today this traditional understanding of intelligence has taken a major shift by those who have excelled in their iq are being overshadowed by those who have mastered the eq emotional intelligence today we are joined with sheikh mikhail ahmed smith a teacher at the column seminary in texas and author of the book with the heart in mind the moral and emotional intelligence of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam join us as we unravel the profound concept of emotional intelligence to not only bet our lives and relationships but to better our identity as muslims and embodiments of the prophetic sunnah [Music] whoever studies the sallallahu alaihi and how he managed the arabs at that time who were like wild beasts and over a short period time managed them to become leaders of the world whoever studies that interaction realizes that this man was the most intelligent of all of allah's creation how are you today how are you feeling a great day here in dallas texas kind of cloudy rainy day but alhamdulillah allah's blessing so many blessings how are you guys doing alhamdulillah it's an absolute job an absolute honor to be to be with you here today this is a topic that's very close to my heart as well if you're part of the pun emotional intelligence subhanallah let's just like jump straight into it for those that are unaware for those that are just tuning in right now they don't know what emotional intelligence is if you can just capture emotional intelligence what is it yeah so let's go deep into it we got time you know i mean so let's let's go deep into it you know i mean you know what you could do actually come out you can look at the the acronym ruler take the acronym ruler right r-u-l-e-r right take each one of those letters and it breaks down into what emotional intelligence is so let's go into it so number one is emotional recognition right the the ability to recognize emotions now it happens on two two levels within yourself and with others as well right then you move over to the you which is understanding um that's what someone's ability to understand their own emotional estate and understand the emotional state of another person if we move over to l the l represents a label like they say they say a nice saying if you can't name it you can't tame it if you can't name it you can't tame it what that means is we have to actually build our emotional vocabulary in order to be able to name the feelings that we're actually going through and then we have uh e which is expression and and and and this is see this is deep this is deep so imam ghazali teaches us right that every single thing that god placed within you is there for a reason and and and our job is to learn through the sunnah the most beautiful articulation of that thing inside of you you know i'm saying and protect yourself from a negative expression of that emotion you know like you take something like uh i don't know something as simple as like fama greed right greed um so why would god make us have this this greed within us imam ghazali is like because if you didn't have that you wouldn't eat you'd just be sovereign you die you know what i'm saying so anger anger another thing like anger is beautiful when it when it stands up in the right place you know what i'm saying so so anger in its right place is beautiful it's attractive it's been changed yeah and it can bring change as well positive change oh hundred percent 100 percent i mean how how did the prophet say i saw them cause there was moments of anger like yo but i mean anger i mean it was in line it was the best directed it was it was in line with the uncle it was tied up yeah there you go oh see i read your book i read your book yo that's what's up that's what's up so so so now we move over expression by the way by the way the expression part is embodied in one narration where it's a famous narration everyone has heard this narration but we get the vodka of repeating it again the prophet saws uh his his son or grandson passed away forgive me for the lack of memory um i think it was his son had passed away and he was crying now crying is an expression it's something from the heart it's a it's the it's the outpouring of an emotion right but in his society it was it was un it it wasn't right it wasn't seen as something it was a weakness it was seen as a weakness it was it was seen as definitely weakness hundred percent now now and this is where we got to talk about the prophet sites i'm challenging the the emotional standards of society so mark that down we can come back to that but he's crying i want to finish this narration he's crying and one of the sahaba is like yo like what are you doing you know what i mean like because you're the role model for everyone and he said these amazing words he says the i will cry and the heart will feel hosun sadness grief he said but we will never speak anything except what pleases god and so what this shows is that while we are allowed to emote as a verb like we're allowed to emote and that's a part of the prophetic experience in life is to emote he had a amul he had a holy sentence and for us to act like it's oh oh men can't have times of sadness and he had a whole year of housing man subhanallah so so the emoting part is yes the heart is going to hurt the eye will cry alhamdulillah that's prophetic that's that's that's within the scope of prophetic uh teachings and guidance right but this is where the akl comes in the comes in by divine light right and teaching it by the so that see the intellect like like an eye the intellect basira the intellect doesn't see in darkness it needs light and that's where imam razi he says is the connection between the basira i'm pointing to my eye but i'm referring to the the heart's ability to to see so nur al-anur is the nord of the heart combined with the nord of divine revelation so so like if you want to see correctly with your and see things as they are that's where the revelation kicks in so uh so the aka which is the i'm i'm referring to the the the role of the uncle is to regulate like oh stop there so you're like man why did my son die uh-uh the uncle's like no we we never say that we can cry we could be sad but we got we got to control this thing here we have to be in control and and i think kamal like this is what every man woman uh muslim should understand from the sunnah that uh expression of emotion is part of the sunnah and that moves us on and i'm going to let you guys speak but that moves us on to the last r the r is for regulation and that's exactly what this hadith was all about is yes you express but you regulate as well you know what i'm saying i think you've touched them a lot on their sheik like there was a lot i think in the beginning it's always really good to set the parameters and set the framework and given those definitions that you said but the heart and the intellect um reason you could argue reason is the projection of intellect as well so they will go hand in hand with one another but you also talked about how we're unable to articulate as well perhaps so like for many people the action is reactive like whatever whatever reaction it's almost like a reflex but what we find about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is this amazing ability to now this is going to sound trippy right this amazing ability to almost mentally slow down time and choose what he wants to do in some of the most ajib situations can i let me give example there's an example in the book okay so for many people with small eq the the space between stimulus and response is immediacy immediacy and that's where after the action they go dang man why did i do that hastiness is from the devil some people say as well exactly so if we could take that and what that would mean is like space out the stimulus in the response so that you can choose which response to make so the the best example is when the bedouin comes up to the prophet and he immediately he just yanks out his cloak and it it and it leaves a mark on the blessed skin of our our beloved prophet muhammad peace and blessings be upon him and the crazy part is as the prophet turns around he's already smiling as if he's controlled that emotion already and he's ready to move on like and so he turns around and what happens he's smiling he's like yo what do you want what is it and he starts asking him for money this and that so so for many people and by the way a lot of people think oh stimulus and response i can't control that that's false like when they talk about police training a lot of like high intensity training is about learning how to separate the uh how to create space in between the response in the stimulus and stressful moments i think that's that's pretty epic the way you've mentioned that these feelings are natural like it's very normal to feel anger very normal to feel sadness but it just comes back to that art of regulation the prophet sallallahu alaihi was a master of that you know many a time we would think that you know the the prime example of a muslim is someone who doesn't get angry but then there's the quote of like imam shafi the one who is made angry and doesn't get angry then he's a donkey like we have emotions these are innate within us but it just comes back to that of regulation that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam as you beautifully illustrated had mastered i wanted to to move along because this is not only about emotional intelligence you've spoken about moral intelligence how do the two i guess correlate or what is the relationship between the two moral and emotional intelligence okay so check this this is very interesting so kamal muhammad here's the deal i'm sitting in the lab you know what i mean sitting at the computer you know just in in the process of deep work trying to hash out this uh concept of emotional intelligence and how it connects to the prophetic uh to the prophetic paradigm right how does it connect to him because the more i read about it the more i realized this is him he mastered this this is our art that has been lost and muslims need it but what i realized is that emotional intelligence is a tool for change now what do i mean by that all right so let's back up just a little so we can make this beautiful entry into moral intelligence so as i said ruler recognize understand label express regulate all of those things happen on two levels intrapersonal and interpersonal beautiful one yeah yeah but once you practice all of those things within yourself right and and i'm gonna say it right away because a lot of people are like oh you know very theoretical you gotta sit down man you gotta sit down by yourself you gotta turn your phone off you gotta sit down do your thicker sit quiet for 15 minutes sit down for five ten minutes learn how to listen to the self uh i'm gonna get back to the point but a lot of people are too uncomfortable with themselves and that's because they don't know themselves right so you have to and our salah is all for that when you after the prayer sit down stay there listen to your heart be with yourself for a moment a lot of us we can't we can't be quiet we can't be in a quiet moment so i just wanted to put a pragmatic aspect to know yourself in an islamic context to know yourself happens in those moments of silence and reflection that's where you get to know who you are better reflect on the day reflect over what happened throughout the day and that will get you to know yourself better and if you know yourself you know your lord as well that's correct right exactly uh a beautiful beautiful statement of imam ghazali and others such an epic subhanallah it's beautiful so so so let's move forward so knowing yourself is the key to knowing other people what do i mean knowing other people emotionally understanding them being able to listen to them and so on and so forth right now this is what i this is what i understood there's a quote in the book by imam suhar suhaa diyu and he says this beautiful epic quote where he's like whoever studies the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and how he managed the arabs at that time who were like wild beasts and over a short period time managed them to become leaders of the world with the best of etiquettes and manners whoever studies that interaction realizes that this man was the most intelligent of all of allah's creation now what that statement tells me is our individual ability to access the heart of another person and to influence that heart is a sign of our emotional intelligence number one but there's a problem bro before i became muslim we knew what emotional intelligence was but we used it for a different reason you know what i'm saying man like we had a whole dif yo yo get inside their head you got him yo manipulation it's all about the manipulation how can you take advantage of someone how can you exploit someone by alluring them so so so basically kamal muhammad when i realized i was like look i understand that the intelligence of the prophet has this emotional component but it can't be just the emotional because we see that being used by so many manipulators and that's where i discovered the research on moral intelligence which i now connect to the revelation of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so look put it like this simple example if someone just wants one clip from this whole podcast you ever you ever got certified mail where you got a sign for it the prophets have a role they have a role which is a responsibility not a role they have a divine responsibility with ahadna i mean there's a whole verse about this there's a pledge that was taken from the prophets like you got a job to do and we know the epic moment is in front of hundreds of thousands of people right and right there in front of everyone by the by the miracle of god everyone's hearing his voice it's an epic moment he's an elderly older man now and he keeps saying take from me i might not be here next year and everyone's like yo what is he talking about he might not be here he's standing in front of hundreds of thousands of people and he says to everyone did you get the message i'm going back to that mailman analogy did you get the message they're like everyone's like yes but the prophet saw i said this epic moment of the seerah he lifts his hand up like this he looks up to the sky and he says o allah you hear what they said right bear witness as if i got the message across now here is the disconnect we have many duat that have the knowledge they know the revelation they know the quran they know the hadith they know the rational philosophical arguments against naturalism and and and atheism and feminism and all of the isms they know it but they're forgetting one thing that information has to be passed over to a heart not a computer so so so this is the connection between moral and emotional intelligence emotional intelligence is the tool by which the knowledge of revelation is passed on to the next heart you use emotional to pass on the moral intelligence to another human being that's right that's the interconnected between the two that's the interconnected right so and so our job our job as as just brothers fathers friends all of that is to increase our moral intelligence keep learning quran keep learning hadith keep learning thick keep learning tests kia tunas learn that but also master the art of understanding human beings i'll give you an example this is this is this is just mind-blowing emojis right here allahu akbar hadith can nobody say nothing about it all right hadith all right she says in bukhari the very first verses that were revealed were verses about the small surahs about fire about hellfire about kiyama this and that then she says until people got strong now this is heavy she says once people became strong then then came down check this but this is the best part she says not me she says if the first thing to be was revealed was don't drink alcohol the people would have said we will never stop drinking which people the people that later became the best people she says they would have said no never and she says if the first thing revealed was never stop uh don't commit zina then the people would have said we will never stop this hadith has been forgotten in the scene of dawah it has been forgotten and and to me this is the best example of understanding the nature of human being of the human being and the nature of human change the revelation did not come down at one time every muslim knows that you know revelation came down over alcohol prohibition slowly how come we don't slowly work with converts yo dude we've forgotten about the hearts like even personally speaking i don't mean to be condescending or or very i think over critical of certain uh madaras but i've seen first hand young kids you come up to them they i hate saying this but they have a resentment towards the quran they have a resentment within their hearts towards the quran like why do you hate the quran then when you see the way the teacher is teaching him he's bashing him here hitting him there doing this doing that and you wonder why he doesn't like the quran well are the most beautiful book on the face of this planet the most beautiful book the most beautiful book that is a means of peace this is a cure and a mercy and he resents it why not because the quran is is is a book that made him feel resentful but rather the teacher that was hitting him treating him ill and we wonder why well as well because it's become like a revolving door syndrome where we don't actually bring them in enough i mean there's always a bit of a gap in the distance and it's worlds apart from the prophet look at the prophet and i don't want to take away from you on the stage but when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was teaching [Music] i love you i love you i love you don't forget after every salah what a teacher and then we compare this teacher with the teachers of today i'm not down we have beautiful teachers i'm looking at one right here but no like i'm enjoying my shoe where do we draw the no no yo listen listen it's okay man we gotta we gotta be real man like i i respect the reservation in your tone because what's happening right now is this negative uh what's the word uh reinforcement so like the mo i forgot the exact term man forgive me but you just what you're saying this child picks up the quran and the last thing he remembers from childhood was that very mean face that very like like those harsh moments and i was in a madrasa man i witnessed this first hand you know i was an older student i converted when i was 19. so when i went to tafe the memorization of quran they treated me a little different a lot different because i was older but i i saw it i i saw it and and and i know people till today who still have that negative connection immediately that ptsd man from because they're away from they're away from the and he said something deep he said there's a revolving door and this is important because the next generation of teachers who listen to this podcast they need to ask themselves just because your teacher did that to you you got to stand before allah by yourself [Music] you know what i'm saying you got to ask yourself wait is this the way i should be doing this i know this is how they did it before cool all right i am not hating on them they lived at a different time listen to this he said train and educate your children for their time not your time because they were created for a time other than your time so what i'm trying to say here is like we have not understood the emotional aspect of islamic education and what i was trying to do in this book is to show muslim men that understanding emotion and connecting to someone on an emotional level is not some fluffy psychological da da da da western whatever this is prophetic this is a part you know when the prophet said the best of you is the best of your wives and i'm the best first of all the prophet is challenging men we love challenges second of all the articulation or the not the articulation but the uh uh how does that come into being uh the fruit to see that into fruition is through emotional nourishment to understand the needs of aisha here's an example he says to aisha just chilling with her one day oh aisha everyone knows this hadith i know when you're angry with me and i know when you're happy with me well what she calls him emotional recognition emotional understanding and labeling right there wow he spent that time to watch her he spent that much time to understand her and then he spent the time to express to her that i understand you and i know you do you know how how you know how how good she must have felt because she's noticed she's watched by the busiest man on the planet yeah i'm saying like man my my role in this book was to get people to understand if you want to be more like the prophet you need to understand people and and the smallest things you can do on the yomakiyama will be the biggest rewards you make a muslim smile you make muslims feel good something tiny tiny tiny you come on yo man you're like man where'd this come from oh you brought happiness to one person's heart what how did i do that you know what i mean like emotion is a powerful thing i think um i recall a story of my teacher's teacher and he was telling him and one day he was in the madrassa and the teacher said he is he called him by his name say come here and he goes do you want to tell you this the secret of religion don't i will give you this is it this is it and he's like okay okay what praising tell me which what's he going to tell me and he goes come closer he went closer come closer come closer bit more because okay and then he just hugged him allah he just hugged him and he goes that's that's the secret of the religion love that's what it is it's just love at the core you love one another subhanallah but going back if i could share briefly um you talked about anger as well and we talk about anger how that can be somehow misconstrued but can also be if it's rooted definitely you can bring about some change but you also mentioned about imam ghazalia and i remember i think imam magazin was teaching about the some call it the three brains or the three parts of the brains right so you have you asked them i've got a written down here says you ask them so which is always fearful but at the root of it's always desire so it's food security it's very primitive as well where many of us remain and if we are left to our own devices it will come it will become very destructive and the mama gaza called this the pig brain but then we have a midbrain right which is a sense of emotions right and it's this irratible soul but if we remove rationalism you become belligerent but it's a very guarded so you have the pig brain which is your stem they have your midbrain which is your dog brain but then if those two you know fighting with one another it becomes problematic but you have your frontal the faculty of intelligence and emotion which kind of discerns falsehood from truth and i've written here that's what we really need in order to lead us as well but like i said one the two when they're our stem and the midbrain collide with one another the pigs and the dogs well like what are we left with we're just we're just pigs and dogs yo that's heavy you know why nasi attun caddy button the front of the head like allah knows best you know the quran is constantly showing us beauty but i i just as you're explaining that the importance of the the the front part of the brain the neocortex to regulate everything you know and i think in the book i talk about how imam ghazali says that the the if we could call that front part the uncle is supposed to be the king right it's supposed to be regulating over thing all right you over there you over there you over there and many times in society the uncle is put to the back and we let the the pig brain and the dog brain like yo it's saturday night do what you need to do it's your night what's the saying check it is without ocular or knuckleheads i think that i heard one time oh yeah yeah you open in another can of worms bro you better be careful in arabic the word it comes from the word to thai yeah your mind your soul to tie everything it rains allah yeah yo imam ghazali says the reigns hold the reigns yo don't let the rains go you know going back to what you're saying in order to move the conversation along so how can we use this emotional intelligence to foster relationships with those around us for example we have situations in the workplace um in marriage as well when it become really hard sometimes you may have to read between the lines with what your boss is saying or your spouse is saying um how do we maximize this and we just came out of a lockdown as well yeah came out of like a three-month lockdown and they said during that time people would just always you know smashing her you were saying as well um now that we're left with ourselves you said this in the beginning people don't know what to do and for those who don't really um affiliate themselves with any source of divinity well they've got no vices they're just stuck so they don't they're really freaking out because they have no no source to go back to perhaps it was just all vices and nufs but i think i know you're a fan of poetry i think hafiz said um he said you know i wanted to take a long journey i wanted to go to travel so i sat down and i sat still for three days oh lord and that's when you that's when you knew the essence of themselves sounded small yeah you were talking about how do we take this emotional intelligence into our families and stuff like that right into our relationships with bosses and a relationship with colleagues and so i man i always give the example and i think one of uh kamal's poems man spoken word we talked about this in the podcast where it was it was two people talking to each other you know the person which one was it d depression yeah yeah so that one to me spoke volumes about what our the function of emotional intelligence is on a friendly basis on a brother to brother sister to sister level which is to recognize pain understand pain and be able to help and alleviate that pain from people that that's that's huge that's huge that's huge um and and and and and so i think we need to pause there for a moment and realize like like i have a responsibility of the brothers and the sisters around me that i'm i'm aware like i call a friend i text him or call him and i hear something in his voice and i'm not just like ah he'll be all right i'm like no yo you sound a little different everything's cool he's like yeah i'm all right like no no no yo what's up bro what's going on like we need to actually care about people on that level and that goes within the family that goes at work that goes brother the brother but i think that poem that you know sidi kamal had put together it beautifully it shows the relationship how we need to connect to people on a deeper level the other thing i want to highlight is you said something very deep um that the teacher your teacher's teacher had mentioned about the hug in my book i have a whole section on physical touch right i don't know y'all if you remember that section come on um physical touch is amazing because first of all it's it's the it's it's the biggest sensory organ of the body right it's the it's the biggest sensory organ of the body and there's so much information that we get through the skin and one of the things i tried to present in our in my book was the prophesized usage of hugs of handshakes of patting someone on the chest like he was close to people you know and and subhanallah i've had the privilege i'll say of working with some children on the spectrum of autism and sometimes what you learn is physical touch communicates too much emotion for them to handle sometimes do you understand what i mean by that like there's so much information being communicated through a physical touch that they're it like triggers it's not easy for them to take so you have to help them and do different things i guess what i'm trying to highlight though is the importance a hug man the importance of a handshake you know what i mean a smile like and literally literally literally the prophesy said them spoke about the values of two hands touching each other like literally like you shake hands and go like this and sins are falling off like what because like skin to skin touch has an effect on another human being man you know in yo i saw like in china they literally hire like touch therapists oh my gosh you know what they have um there's this crazy thing subhanallah where people hire people to hug them when they sleep i don't know if you yeah it's a bit creepy but it is but i guess it works would you mean a bit creepy bruh without being no yeah that's that that's probably gonna be right there it's actually it's actually crazy subhanallah no no but it speaks to the deprivation the deprivation of deep touch deep connection well yeah it speaks to that it speaks to that and that's why i think a lot of our families in certain cultures certain cultures are more close than other cultures and we're talking about positive touching we're not talking about negative touching and abusive touching we're talking about positive touching you know what i mean and and the prophesizing was all about positive touch man all about positive touch you know so many people you see he walks up to his friend he bear hugs him from behind he sees another dude he smacks him on the chest like you know another person he's shaking hands like he's connecting to people on that emotional level he's not distant from them he's close with them and i i presented a number of studies that talk about that the the dopamine releases that a person gets just through skin to skin contact you know you ever notice i don't know in australia y'all got that free health care stuff don't y'all yeah medicare yeah yeah yeah so over here we pay for everything right so do you know when the baby is born it to you it's going to sound crazy to your listeners when the baby is born they hand the baby to the mother so the baby could could be on the mother's chest right so that that's called skin the skin time they call that they label that skin the skin do you know they char charged into skin i've heard the prices are like exuberant amounts like like 500 600 bucks so so i know it's crazy the there's two things we're talking about here first of all how messed up america is that's one collapse the second thing is the fact that they've put a sticker on a price tag on this skin to skin contact because they know how valuable it is for this child the moment it comes out of the womb to connect to another skin and be there so you know and and so many now why is this important if you are a father 30 years old or however years old listening to this right now you need to hug your children you need to wrestle with them you need to play with them the prophet saws used to wrestle with hussein hussein and he used to they used to write on his back and stuff so don't be this kind of distant kind of like you know no be close and a lot of us we we can't do it because it wasn't done to us but when you're going to break the cycle you know what i mean the problem he broke the cycle himself when the man said i have 10 kids i've never kissed one of them he goes man i kiss my children and and he got it a bit so but as an orphan subhanallah where did he get that from yeah i mean did he did he really subhanallah you actually spoke about the importance of touching defusing a i guess a tense situation or an aggressive situation as one of the mechanisms in emotional intelligence and we see the prophet he's going around the kaaba and one of the before he was a sahabi he comes around and goes i want i want to kill him the most hated person to me is the prophet sallallahu alaihi and then the prophet by virtue of a touch the most beloved people to me how did that happen may be exclusive to him yeah no but but listen listen listen i i will admit with you that touch the prophet is different no one we don't have that right but nonetheless nonetheless we still see the the benefit of it like we still can see in our personal lives when you walk in the home man all right yo there's a hadith the prophet saws would never walk in the house he would touch us he like how many husbands walk in the home and it's just like someone said where's the food yeah what's wrong yo what's going on everybody's good here i am in my office yeah i mean yo you know because because here's the deal i was i lift i listed i i i uh put this research in the book where you there's can there's there's messages communicated through the tension in the skin man like you hug someone you can feel anger you hug someone you can feel joy so so like like and in the i put the research when they said we truly have not unraveled the mysteries behind touch like these are scientists speaking that we haven't understood what touch means and when i read the hadith where the prophet says shake hands because it removes hatred and animosity listen to this come out yo i want you yo you gotta you gotta put this in one of your spoken words listen this is what i always say hear me out on this there's software and then there's code okay by windows i use windows as a software do i know this code behind windows no but i benefit from it i write on it i i i put pieces together i write a books on it right so check this this is what i say the prophet saws gave us the software the science and the discoveries is the code they're gonna catch up one day they're going to discover but benefit from the software that the prophesied son gave you you feel me look look the prophet already said shake hands you'll see the effect of it now the research is back there trying to figure out the code how how does this happen i'm like yo yo go ahead i have to stop you there muhammad yes who does this remind you of right now oh you put me on shake hands bro shake hands bro who was that oh yeah we had the viral shake hands shake hands because i'm i'm not leaving until you shake hands and subhanallah we just saw it manifest before our eyes put your hand back out bro you going shake it this time i promise you put your hand back on bro you're gonna shake it bro y'all be good bro yes yo even in sports listen i put this in the book even in sports whenever two teammates fought first there would be a punishment go run laps okay and then the final the final moment is the coach says all right you two shake hands now um sportsmanship and it and it wasn't you gotta see it man it wasn't like they just shake hands they're good and if they did that he would like no shake and once they properly shook then it was as if everything just sorry to win away sorry to interrupt you but uh touch gloves touch gloves yeah economy conor mcgregor khabib it wasn't happening it just wasn't happening we didn't have time whoever better than that made a lot of money how about money but yeah definitely so you actually talking you know when people can actually feel off you can feel you know the hatred or the love when you hug him when there's that contact i think what we always have to remember is that robin intellect right that divine the divine presence as well um the robin heart the lordly spirit because there's always a continuous battle you know between the good the evil the physical the intellectual but to tie in with our last question and i've written it down here presence is such a large part of emotional intelligence how does one achieve presence in an overstimulated world because there's so much because noise has become the hallmark of the modern world so if you could give us some practical steps for our listeners and viewers at home what would be those practical steps to give back to trace back to the honey to go back to the sweetness to the to the divine essence so bismillah you know when it comes to presence um i think what we really need to help everyone understand is that all of us are human beings not human doings and what is truly human is being in time and space right right listen man what do i mean all of us are in the rat race but at the end of this rat race you're gonna look back and and only remember the moments you were present in so what is life except moments that you lived in not lived through our our audience needs to realize that if all of your days are living through existence what are you going to have at the end man so first thing to answer your question people need to hear over and over again the importance of lit of experiencing life experiencing life the greatest yo muhammad hear me out on this what is the greatest single act that a person can do on this planet in the sight of allah's divine sharia i bear witness bearing witness is just being present and seeing something the foundation of it all is to be present and say i see that you're god i'm here and i i recognize that why am i why am i saying that you can't be a witness if you're not there if you're not there mentally you're not there hold on hold up hold up you're not hearing me man subhanallah a witness the judge if you tell a judge i was a witness and the judge is like were you there you'd be like nah i wasn't there you're like yo you ain't a witness then okay okay everyone in the list every listener agrees with us now we ask them the next question is there such thing as mental being somewhere and mentally being checked out every one of our listeners is going to say yup i've had a conversation with someone who wasn't mentally there was that person a witness of that moment no their body was there their physical body was there but their soul wasn't there their mind wasn't there their heart wasn't there now here's the issue imagine 24 hours and in that 24 hours in every moment you're in you're looking to the next moment here's the question when did you live every yo you gotta put it down look there's a moment in time so in this particular space and time this moment in space and time my mind is in a different moment in space and time so at what point in time do my physical presence and my mind come into the same space and time unless you force them to do it and and so i guess the first thing muhammad that i really want our audience to get is how much life is wasted by not being present in the moments that we experience and guess what guess what children and elderly people they will teach you presents 100 they will teach you your children man if you yo my kids they're all under eight if i'm there but not there they peep it right away one hundred percent i'm sure you were there my boys stay with me play with me don't sit down yes play with me yes yes it's a lesson that kids can always teach their parents as well i think malcolm x and and the elderly look let me tell you there's a story i always tell a good friend of mine uh muhammad abdullah muhammad his grandfather allah passed away now about a few months before he passed away his grandfather had come to visit him and so he was living his grandfather was living with him or he was at his place one or the other and muhammad tells me he was like whenever we had to go out or do something i would try to do it for him and he would say stop let me do it i just need you to be here with me you know and our mind is we gotta get somewhere his mind isn't i gotta get somewhere he's on the clock we he's not on the clock no more he's like yo i'm living life right now but for me and you it's like i gotta get somewhere i gotta do something so the first thing i'm doing and i haven't even given practical tips because right now i think giving practical tips before people really re understanding what's at stake here is pointless and i really want our listeners to think for a moment how much of my life will i actively say that i witnessed and was present there uh and how much of it did i live through now i'm not talking about living in the moments of when you get home from work living in the moments of when you reach places i'm talking about even the drive back from work every moment has infinite potential but it's as if we use some moments just to get to the next every moment has infinite potential do you know what i mean by that say subhanallah right now infinitely preserved infinite right there infinite potential that moment in time has gone it's gone it's three seconds it's four or five is that many seconds ago it's gone but it has infinite potential what i'm trying to highlight is as you practice mindfulness you will learn how to be mindful in very important situations you and your wife sitting down for dinner chilling you know you you and your children playing you'll be mindful but then this is where it becomes mind-blowing you'll learn how to become mindful in what seems to be mundane mundane you're making your coffee in the morning man you're making your coffee in the morning and now you're actually present it's not just like okay what am i doing over there i gotta do this okay whatever where's the cream no i'm in it now it doesn't mean i'm slow everyone always mean thinks it means that i just start moving slow and everything like yo muhammad what are you doing uh why are you moving so slow i'm being mindful nah you don't gotta be slow i'm being present you know you're not being present we can still get stuff done but i think there is a very important aspect of slowing down in life periodically like and listen we have five daily prayers it's as if god has trained us and given us a membership to a club of mindfulness we we already got the membership every salah is a moment for mindfulness listen we practice presence five times a day you know why because the moment the moment you get out of salat now you can be mindful with your children now you could be mindful with wifey now you could be mindful with your mother night five times a day practice of mindfulness practice man it's a it's a it's an ocean of knowledge on this mindfulness topic i'll say this man i think what we need to do is first have some deep conversations with ourselves about how i'm living life number one and how i'm living through life and not living in life number one uh number two a lot of people are waiting for like spiritual experiences and he's like every moment of your breath breathe breathing is a spiritual experience the fact that you breathe in oxygen and then it you know how it goes through your body that's a spiritual experience man if you've just stopped and thought about it like what's happening you're so every moment in life is spiritual if you're able to see uh god's hand behind it um and so but i would say just to give some pragmatic steps allahu akbar i would say the first step would be distractions removing distractions from life as much as possible so what that means is uh i'm gonna physically remove things away from me that will that will uh take me away from what i'm doing i i read something i got an email the other day uh which was talking about living in a state of continuous partial focus partial attention so we do everything with a partial attention like literally uh you if you think about the word while you go throughout the day you'll realize every moment i'm doing something my half of my mind is somewhere else and so the idea is like learn to recognize that the prayers are going to be the first place where we learn to say i don't want to mentally go forward or mentally go back i want to mentally be in this moment right now i want to practice feeling the air around me i want to practice feeling the carpet under my feet right now do something to bring your mind to what you're experiencing in your body right now and and uh yeah that's some of the ideas of mindfulness this ocean of a topic and i hope our listeners really start to do research and and realize the importance of living in the moment and then realize that islam has already given you the answers to this if you practice it in the right way how many of us like live to the ages of 70 or 80 but not actually living you know not cognizant you're not actually there because we follow these gray areas these habits which have like destructive tendencies and we're just not present we're present but we're not present so like we said with prayer you need to you need to disconnect to connect yeah but you said you said something muhammad in s right that's all about presence think about it what is an intention it's being knowing what you're doing and why you're doing it how much of our life is on autopilot and this is one more thing i must say i truly believe every ramadan is a neurological reboot for mindfulness and presence and intention why the moment you wake up in the morning the most mundane thing drinking water you're like comes the big biggest blessing as well oh let me put that down like no no i don't think you get what i'm maybe i'm not articulating myself well check it when i pick up something to drink it's it's mundane i do it so much i don't think about it ramadan comes what happens stop talk no you think about you're okay i got it better so you ever yo you ever noticed how hard it is to drink water the day after ramadan yeah because you always think yeah it doesn't come not true it doesn't come that show okay so there you go so what happened in ramadan was this major system reboot that reboot some people have to wait till they're like 45 and go bungee jumping for a reboot bro bro midlife crisis they haven't thought about what they're doing their whole life every year allah says i'm going to stop all you things you do you're going to stop eating you're going to stop drinking you're going to get a reboot by the time this month is over you'll be able to start new trends and new habits and new mindfulness every single year ramadan [Music] no it's deep it's and you know it's funny we look at ramadan and we're like dang man ramadan's about to break my coffee joint ah here it comes it's about two months away oh man his city side is hard let it break you it's supposed to break habits so that you can bring back the habits you want in your life if you're if you're annoyed by every smudge in the mirror how will you see kaleele right yo to all the listeners to all of our listeners please check out a few things i got to do a shameless plug here i give halakkas every wednesday evening it's on my instagram page and on my facebook page and youtube page for kalam institute.org check us out uh all of my podcasts are on columns podcast you can check it out qalam column it's just a big queue right there hamdulillah check that out and check the books out the book and shop with the heart in mind if you google with the heart and mind it should go to the link at callum's page inshaallah thank you so much everyone may allah make us people who connect to other human beings the way the prophet connected to other human beings i'm gonna leave everyone with one hadith a man came up to the prophet saw i said him and said who do you love the most thinking that he was the one the prophet sallam made everyone feel loved may allah make his people that make everyone thinks that we love them the most insha allah a beautiful way to end the podcast thank you so much [Music] you

Channel: OnePath Network

Views: 199,421

Keywords: Muslim, Islam, muhammad, quran, mohammad, sunnah, religion, mohamed, Allah, onepath, onepath network, ummah, islamic reminder, islamic lecture, Dawah

Id: AKEEP_gb-mc

Length: 55min 23sec (3323 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021