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Asalam Alaykum Arahmatulla Barakatu for many people this world is an overwhelming place. There's so much that they have to deal with and so much that they have to struggle with that they become overwhelmed by the enormity of it. They become overwhelmed by their difficulties trying to make do within this world. But in truth, if one understood the nature of our existence, one would see that the world is actually a very, very small place. It's the size of an atom. But our mind blows it up and makes it very, very large. Makes it very, very complicated. It's like when I was practicing law, there were lawyers that would make whatever situation was brought to them incredibly convoluted. They would never look for an easy solution. They would just look for more ways to complicate things. And I was always amazed watching these people because they couldn't get out of their own way. They would create so many different issues, so many different difficulties, so many complications that the case was going to go on forever because there was no way resolving it, because in truth, they weren't looking for a resolution. They were just looking for more ways to make things difficult. Well, just like you're in a lot of trouble if you have a lawyer like that, you're also in a lot of trouble if you have a mind like that. There are minds that make everything very, very difficult. There are minds that see a situation and have way too many responses to the situation. One of the definitions for schizophrenia is that you get too much input from what's around you, too much effect from what's around you. So instead of seeing an overall picture, you see every little tiny thing that's within your purview, and then it becomes overwhelming. We need to learn how to decrease the amount of impact the world has on us, we have to learn how to decrease the amount of difficulty that the world gives us. And within Islam there is the shariat, the basic rules of conduct. And if you look at the rules of shariat, and if you examine them closely, you'll begin to understand that these rules are there to lessen our involvement with the world, to lessen our attachment to the world, to try and put the world in a place that it can be handled more easily. For instance, five times prayer. Five times prayer, if done correctly, removes you from the world for a period of time and refocuses you towards your creator. Then there are many, many other laws. The month of Ramadan, for instance, it lessens your attachment to food and to desire that accompanies your eating. It makes your attachment to these things less. The rules of sacrificing animals. It makes it more difficult to get to food. It creates steps in between your slaughtering the animal and eating it. And these steps take on a focus towards your creator. Marriage, in the way that it's set forth in the Quran, is an attempt to limit lust. Now, it is true that the Quran allows four wives, but if you follow the Shariat closely, you can't have four wives unless you can treat all of them exactly the same and equally, which is an impossible task. So, according to many sheikhs, including my Sheikh, Baal Muhayadin, the actual limitation is to one wife. The limitation is because lust needs to be controlled. And the more lust that you have within you, the bigger and bigger the world becomes. We are told to be moderate in everything. What's the point of moderation? Again, it's to control our desires towards the world, to control our rampage through existence trying to accumulate everything that there is. There are many stories of people trying to conquer the world, and they all end up in the same place. They all end up not being able to do it and end up somehow losing their lives, losing themselves. It is a futile endeavor. Somehow, each of us has to realize that the world is actually a very, very small place. And it's been magnified by our mind. Our mind has made it into this large, unruly creation that we have to wrestle with and try to control. Well, there is no controlling it, there is no conquering it. There is no coming on top of it and putting it in its place. What we have to do is decrease its influence on us, decrease its hold or grip on us. We have to overcome certain elemental influences to do it. Now, all of us are very much aware or should be aware that we are created with a body, and this body is made up of elements. These elements are the same elements that the rest of the world is made of. Interestingly, Allah has taken this group of elements and created various different forms that all look different, appear different, have different qualities, have different characteristics, yet he made them from the same elemental groups. He just altered the way he put them together. Yesterday I was out in the garden and I saw a pot that we had planted. And I noticed on the pot there were two different kinds of vines, and both of them had leaves, but they had different kinds of leaves. Then I looked up and saw the trees, and they had leaves, but different kinds of leaves. Then I saw bushes, and they had leaves, but also different kinds of leaves. And then I saw ground cover plants, and they had leaves, but also different kinds of leaves. And then I realized you could spend a lifetime studying leaves and the different variations of leaves, and you could become an expert on leaves and explain how each of these came and how each of them grows and what each of their characteristics are. And at the end, what would you have accomplished? Well, it's like that with so much of the world. There are so many variations. If you begin to study insects, how many different insects can you study? If you begin to study mammals, how many different kinds of mammals can you study? And at the end, what have you accomplished with all of your studying? There's so much to study in the world that if you are a thinking person, you would immediately be awed by the majesty of the one who created all of this. And as soon as you are awed by the majesty of the one who created all of this, if you are right thinking, and if you have some semblance of wisdom, you should immediately turn to, well, I need to understand who created this, I need to understand that creator. I have to stop looking at the creation and start understanding the creator. Now, in creation, all of creation has certain things in common: mountains, hills, rivers, vegetation, animals, insects. All of the things that we see have something in common. They're all made up of elements and they all have form. They all have a form that was created out of the elements. But if we're going to search for our creator, if we're going to search for the one who manifested all of these things, we can't search in form. To find him, we have to search that which is formless. And to make the leap from being attached to form and being attached to that which is formless is quite a leap in this world. One of the reasons it's so difficult is we perceive everything with our senses. And to go to a more subtle form of perception takes a certain amount of effort, faith, and belief until you become cognizant of the fact that there is power in what cannot be seen, there are attributes in what cannot be seen, and there is an entire world of things that cannot be seen. And they carry a power that invigorates our life, sustains us, maintains us, and there's a part of us that is also formless that is connected to that. But our sense perception doesn't see that which is formless. We have to develop a more sensitive manner of perception. Love must be perceived by us. Love must be something that we can interact with. Love must be something that we can feel. Now we don't necessarily feel it through our senses. There's a difference between lust and love. There's the physical act of love, and then there is the transcendent act of love. Love can span the universes. Love is greater than anything that we can see. We were created out of Allah's love. And if love is a quality of our creator, then it is obviously self-evidently greater than all of His creation. So to know the truth of our Creator, to know the truth of ourself, we have to understand the truth of what love is, and the truth of how love functions. Now, if we are going to take on the path of trying to understand our Creator, trying to move forward towards finding our Creator, studying our Creator, we have to find someone who's already spent time doing that who can teach us. And this is the Sheikh. This is the one who has given his life towards allowing others to understand what it is that he knows. He has given his existence towards the work of helping people understand their creator and bringing them closer to their creator. And one of the ways that the Sheikh does this is by creating a connection between himself and all the people that he works with. And this connection becomes a love connection. This connection becomes a connection of trust. This connection becomes a connection of reliance and of consistency and of a place that we as individuals feel safe in this world. So the Sheikh creates a cocoon that we can step into and feel safe in. He creates a space for us where we can run from the world and all of its traumas and come to the place that's trauma-free and that is protected. Now, when we are under the umbrella of our Sheikh, we feel that protection. And this is one of the reasons that we return constantly to visit with the Sheikh. I used to drive 75 miles one way to see him three or four times a week until I finally moved to Philadelphia so I could be in his presence more easily and more readily. The connection between the Sheikh and the disciple is the prelude to the connection between man and his creator. It's a stepping stone towards reality, it's a stepping stone towards the truth. It's a path to take you towards your ultimate destination. The Sheikh, in essence, is a boat that you get into to cross the river of illusion. He is the port that brings you to the place that's real. It's the beginning step to take you towards reality. Being with him will change your state and ability to perceive things. Being in the presence and resonance of love brings the resonance of love into your being. And as this resonance vibrates within you, methodologies of perception are created in you that did not exist prior to that resonance coming into your being. One of the great gifts that a true Sheikh has is he is able to share with the ones around him that which he has. That's his point. That's why he. Does this. He is here as a representative of our Creator to bring the knowledge of our Creator to humanity and to take this knowledge and implant it within humanity so man can establish a connection with his creator. The methodology that's used by the Sheikh is to be an exemplar of that which is divine in manifest form. Now the truth is that that which is divine is beyond what is manifest, it's transcendent beyond that which is manifest. It's formless, it's not elemental. But until you have the cognitive ability to recognize that which is not elemental, you are put in a situation to react to that which is manifest so that you can develop the sensibility within you to recognize that which is not manifest. Now, Allah is constantly giving towards humanity. Allah is constantly giving towards his creation. Allah is constantly supporting, protecting, and nourishing His creation. The creation could not exist without Allah's constant giving of everything that is needed by that creation to exist to be. It is a constant flow that comes from our Creator in this world to each and every one of us. The Sheikh is an intermediary who shows you the process that it's going on. Imagine that a being exists, that every time you come to see him, he's kind. Every time you come to see him, he's loving. Every time you come to see him, he resonates at a vibration that lifts you out of whatever difficulties, problems, conundrums that you may have and puts you in a place that's peaceful and tranquil where you can be content. Imagine coming to a being whose interactions with you are always on your behalf, who has no self-interest other than to make you more. These beings exist, and they exist because Allah wants them to exist, and these beings have understood that the way to truth, the way to reality, is to be of an assist to humanity and to work in God's way, to work with God, for God, to do his work after surrendering to his will. So in fact, God's will is brought into the world, manifest through these people who've understood the truth, who've imbibed wisdom, and who have transcended the physical magnetisms, the physical pulls, the elemental influences, the elemental magnetisms that exist within the world. Someone once asked Bao Mohayedin about the horoscope and the influence of the horoscope. And his response was that the horoscope is about elemental forces and the interplay of elemental forces and how they will react. But if you have transcended your elemental nature, there's no need for you to look at your horoscope because your horoscope no longer affects you. You are now at a different state, at a different level, at a different understanding, and under different aspects of control. You're not elementally controlled any longer. You are now controlled by God's qualities and God's direction. And if you can make that jump, if you can make that jump to going from being attracted to and trying to interact with and trying to do the bidding of the elemental forces in the world, you have transcended the elemental world. You've died to the elemental world. And this is what dying before death is. It's one of the aspects of it. You have died to the influence of the elemental world upon you, and you no longer take your direction from the world, but you begin to take your direction from God, God's intentions, and God's influences. And you've developed a sensitivity within you that you can sense this direction, that you can sense this flow of energy, and you can move with it and then become one who is a transducer. A transducer is a in electricity, it takes a signal and amplifies it. Well, if you can get the signal from Allah, then you can amplify it to humanity. And that's what the Sheikh was. He was an amplifier of God's signal to humanity, and became a power source for Allah's power to humanity, and sat and gave off this signal, gave off this frequency, gave off this resonance, and helped each of us develop an ability to pick up this resonance. Now, depending on how sensitive we are and how sensitive we have become, we need assistance or we need less and less assistance. The sheikh would tell us you need at least twelve years with the sheikh until you develop the sensitivity so that you can receive God's resonance, God's signals yourself. And you can go out into the world and give out these signals to the rest of humanity. But to do this, we have to give up our attachment to that which is physical, to that which is elemental, and to that which we are magnetized to when we are under the control of all of our physical senses. And that's why the Sheikh says you have to be able to see with the eyes within the eyes, you have to be able to hear with the ears within the ears, you have to be able to smell with the nose within the nose. In other words, there is a whole set of senses within each of us that are attuned to the unseen, attuned to the formless, and we have to come in touch with them and learn to use them in the same way that we use our sight and our touch and our sense of smell and our sense of taste. And we have to understand that these other senses that are attuned to that which is formless are more important to us than the senses that are attuned to the elemental, because they are attuned to that which is eternal as opposed to that which is temporary. The entire set of senses that we have that interacts with the elemental world are temporary. We know that because we've seen people die. All of them disappear, and the things that they are attuned to disappear. So we have to change our focus, and we have to make it more important that we become attuned to that which doesn't disappear. We become attuned to that which is eternal, and the way that we become eternal is to give up, die to that which is temporary, and take up a new existence in faith within that which has to do with the qualities and attributes of our Creator. And slowly we go through a change. We need to become more and more sensitive to things. Our teacher taught us to be vegetarians, to stay away from eating meat. The reason being that meat carries with it certain vibratory natures that bring us lower as opposed to bringing us higher. Plants have less of that influence on our being than animals have. We should occupy ourselves only in occupations that are halal in this world. We should only do things in appropriate ways. Again, that's why the laws of conduct have been set up so that our interaction with the world is limited to permissible things and becomes more and more limited as our ability to perceive the reality of that which is formless becomes stronger within us, and we grow in that reality. So we have to focus as to what is most important in our life, and we have to realize that our purpose here was, as per Allah's intention, to come to know Him, to come to know our Creator. And we have to give a certain amount of time in our life to fulfill that purpose. And if we don't, then we have to realize that we are we go further and further away from developing the sensitivity within ourselves to be able to contact the vibratory resonance of Allah's majestic, graceful qualities. So we have to look at our life, we have to examine our existence, and we have to attempt to redirect our efforts and redirect our focus towards that goal. We have to set up a goal, we have to be able to see what it is that we are attempting to accomplish. If you are shooting at a target with a blindfold on, you're not going to hit the target. It's not possible. If it happens, it's by accident. So we have to have our eyes wide open, we have to have our ears wide open, we have to have our heart wide open to attune ourselves to the truth. And we have to find a guide who is already attuned, who isn't looking for anything from us, but is only looking to assist us. And we have to thank God that these people exist in the world and that they've been brought into our presence. And we thank God every day for sending Baal Muhayedin into our presence and allowing us to walk on this path of truth. May all of us find that path and develop the sensitivity within us to be able to understand the true resonance that comes from our Creator and allows us to become close to Him. May it happen for each of us. Amin, Amin. Ya Rabbilal Amin Asalam Alaykum or Rahmatullah Waparakata.