Julie's Podcast

Debt, Devotion, And The Bigger Picture

• Julie • Season 1 • Episode 3

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I share why rituals are anchors that realign the heart, not cages that confine it, and how real prayer pushes us away from harm and toward integrity. We talk about human potential that even angels questioned, the role of free will in rising above appetite, and a practical definition of maturity rooted in discipline and resolve. From there, we widen the view from me to we, drawing on the collective language of our prayers and the Prophet’s focus on quality over numbers. The aim is a life coherent enough that faith and character match behind closed doors and in public.

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Welcome to Purpose and Peace with Sister Julie, a place to slow down and reflect. In a world full of noise and distraction, this podcast invites us to ask deeper questions about meaning, faith, and what truly brings peace. Through reflection and lived experience, we explore how reconnecting with purpose can guide us intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Wherever you are on your journey, you're welcome here. So welcome back to another episode of Purpose and Peace, where we have been discussing purpose in religion and trying to find a way to ground ourselves in purpose rather than simply following Deen in a transactional manner of do's and don'ts. Our last episode we touched on the importance of role models and recognizing that we all have role models in multiple aspects of our lives. But the reality is that for many of us, we don't actually end up achieving that which our role models achieved. Although we revere them, we hold them in high esteem, it's very, very rare that we end up really following the footsteps of our role models in whatever domain it may be. Obviously, for us, we're looking in the spiritual field, but you could take this example, apply it across, you know, different athletics. People hold certain athletes in high regard, but to put ourselves in that position and to make that struggle, it's actually quite rare. So we looked at self-motivation being a key factor in achieving any great outcome or goal or being determined in any field, there has to be an element of self-motivation. I can motivate others, others may motivate me, but at the end of the day, for me to pull through and achieve my goal, motivation has to come from within. And coming from within, we look at the why. Why is this important to me? Why is it important for me to grow in my spiritual field? Why is it important for me to feel a connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Why is it important that you're listening to this episode again? The why is from the purpose. So I can't get to my why if I don't understand the purpose that I'm doing it. And our purpose as Muslims, it's really rooted in our deen. It's rooted in our Islam. Now, in Islam, we see the word din come up quite often. And deen coming from deen. Deen in Arabic is a debt. So if I owe something, I owe a dein. I owe a debt. Now it's very interesting that when you think about din being like a debt, the question is, what is it that I owe and who do I owe it to? Everything. Everything I have. Everything I've been given, from every breath that I take involuntarily, from every blink that happens to protect my eyes, everything that has been given to me in my life, I owe the thanks to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Where Allah mentions in the Holy Quran, in nadenullah Islam, that religion with Allah is Islam. But if I were to look at it from this perspective, the great debt that I have is Islam. It's something that I owe. I owe to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to fulfill my Islam to the best possible means, to my best ability. Now, we sometimes fall into this great danger of thinking and believing we're self-sufficient, that I've got it all, and I start to see myself above what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has created. And this is this is a bit of a bit of a problem. I mean, if we go right back to the beginning, that original kind of drama that played out, and shaitan's drama, where he questions Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and he says, Oh, hang on a minute, but you created me from fire, and I'm better, I'm better than the creation of Adam. Why is it that you're not prostrating? I've commanded you to prostrate, why are you not prostrating? And his response, but I'm better than him. Subhanallah, this self-sufficiency, this tendency to move towards arrogance once we think we've got there, once we think we're something great, can be so, so detrimental to our faith and so dangerous. So I have to try to stay focused on my purpose. I need to stay focused on the divine goal, the one that is embedded within Tawhid, the very foundation of our entire deen. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us the purpose right there in the Holy Quran, that the entire purpose of creation is to come towards worship, to worship and understand Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And worship is anything in his name and for his cause. You know, sometimes we have this tendency to think, oh, I need to worship God. We automatically go to I need to pray, I need to fast, I need to read Quran, I need to pray, I need to fast. Absolutely. These are tenets of our faith that keep us grounded in our faith, keep us redirected towards our purpose, keep us reminded of why we're here. But then it has to keep moving. The salah has to be manifested in other aspects of my life. My recitation of Quran, my tidabur of Qur'an, my understanding of Quran has to be manifested in my life. Where to from here? What are the impacts of it? You know, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in nassala, tanha an al-fahsha iwal munkar, he's guaranteeing your salah if done properly. If it's real salah, then it should keep us away from faqshah and munkar, from from things that are wretched, wrong, appear to be wrong, and are understood to be wrong. So if I am able to uphold prayer five times a day, but I'm at the same time able to cheat, lie, you know, take things that are not mine, speak ill of others, something is not right. And chances are my prayer needs a refocus. So we look at this idea of worshipping Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as our purpose. This is our driving force. This is our divine reality in dunya. And we look at the oneness in his creation that we see everything he created as one, everything he created. And it's not about just one, it's a system based on oneness in all aspects that are greater than myself. It's greater than the me. I don't see me as the pinnacle of everything that this world has to offer. I see myself as part of the whole. It's not about me, but it is me that's able to understand what it's all about. SubhanAllah. So it's precisely what makes the human being the esteemed creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. When He mentions to the angels that when I breathe my spirit into him, then you shall drop in prostration to him. It's for what this human can become, for the potential that lies within this human. That if I if I complete this real ultimate creation of mine and I breathe into him my spirit, then you will fall down in prostration. And we we see after that that the angels throw back almost like a question, they're a little bit confused, but are you really going to place on this earth that which is going to spill blood, create chaos, and where he's singing your praises and praising you, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala replies in the most beautiful form. Inni alamu mala ta'alamun. That I know something that you do not know. I know something that you do not know. Gala inni alamu mala ta'alamun. Subhanallah. If that isn't enough to give us, I think, strength of belief. You know, sometimes someone just needs one person to believe in them. Looking at the Holy Quran and trying to see the perspective of how important the human being is in God's creation, if we really understood it, we hold ourselves to a higher stint. And Imam Ali's got these beautiful sayings around this line that you are something greater. Don't sell yourself to anything less. Don't sell yourself to your desires, don't sell yourself to temptations, don't sell yourself to the glitter and glamour of this world that we all know as a fact is just temporary and not lasting, and in many cases has an opposite effect sometime after. So in this human, there is the potential of a Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. There's a potential of a Ali and a Zahra and a Hassan and a Hussein. And maybe the angels saw the potential of other than these, saw the potential of the evildoers, saw the potential of the oppressors. But the elevated status of this human being is associated with his or her free will. This is what distinguishes us. This is what this is what rises us or raises us above that of an animalistic form. It's his ability to be resolute, to be determined, that becomes the equivalence of our humanness. And I'll say that again. Our ability to be determined, our ability to be disciplined, to be resolute in our lives is equivalent to how human we are. And this is mentioned beautifully in the 40 hadith of Imam Khomeini. If only I follow my base desires, I am but an animal. If I'm only following everything that my desire is telling me to do, then it makes sense why from a scientific lens we see the human being as intellectual animal. Because if I don't use that intellect, if I don't use that free will, if I don't use that determination that I have been gifted, then what is the difference between me and an animal that is completely guided by its desire? So using my free will, I rise above the animalistic tendencies. I in some cases will make haram for myself what is halal. For only we can do that. I can stop eating, drinking in the month of Ramadan using my will, using my willpower. You know, an animal can't do that. So there has to come a time where I recognize I am more than an intelligent animal. I am more than a social animal. There's something greater instilled within me through divine mercy that I need to tap into and start making use of that potential. So to stay focused on our purpose, we need to be able to see the bigger picture. That we are part of something greater. We are part of something greater than just myself, greater than just me as an individual. And in Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he coins this term as interdependence, being the highest level of maturity. That I'm able to see the importance of we instead of just I. And this is a bit hard sometimes. In a very, you know, in a society that heavily focuses on individualism, on the me, myself, and I. How can I break through that and start to see the collective importance of we? That it's about all of us. It's not just about me. That it's going to take more than me, even if I look at it in the most simplest form, in just happiness. It's going to take more than just me to achieve that happiness, to achieve that goal. And Islam is based on this very approach. I mean, a brief reflection on Surah Al-Fatiha, the oft-repeated verses, um al-kitam, fatihatul, this beautiful prayer that we have at the beginning of the Holy Quran, embedded in every single one of our salah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is reminding us every day, iyaka naabudu, we worship you. I'm praying alone in the corners of my room. No one else is there. It's me speaking with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But in my speech, I say we worship you. Wa iyaka nastaheen. We need your help. We need your support. We need your guidance. Guide us, not me. It's never about the me, subhanAllah. The Holy Prophet did not struggle for more than 23 years. We can collectively say his entire life. Because he was always aiming to uproot injustice and evil. He didn't do it for himself. He could have picked himself up, gone somewhere quiet, but he consistently remained determined. In San Al Kamil, completely full of determination and resolution. SubhanAllah, to the highest peak. Nothing could shake him because he knew the purpose. He knew the bigger picture. He knew where he fit into this. So it wasn't about achieving something. It was about a collective growth towards truth, towards haqq. So his dawah was dawah towards haqq, towards truth, towards waking up and recognizing the reality of this world. It wasn't for numbers. It wasn't for subscribers. It wasn't to have more Muslims in the world. So, you know, we climb up the chart of the most. No, it's the quality. It was the quality of a life that would be lived if he understood the message of Islam. SubhanAllah. Now there's something psychologically beneficial on keeping the bigger picture in mind. When I see the purpose, the minor obstacles, the smaller, you know, the tiny problems in life suddenly start to diminish. It's not a big deal. And there's a beautiful example you could you could kind of reflect on when it comes to travel. You know, when we travel, especially, you know, we're on the other side of the world, so anywhere you want to travel, you're looking at a few hours. It's not comfortable. Whether it's transit times, whether it's you know sitting down, you don't know who you're going to be sitting next to, you don't have someone behind you who's going to have like an annoying cough the whole way through. There's going to be a crying baby in front of you, whether you like the food or don't like the food. If you like the attendant, you don't like the attendant. If there's turbulence, if there's no turbulence, what does it actually matter at the end of the day? You might feel slightly frustrated, you might get annoyed. But are you going to go into a complete meltdown and give up on life because your seven-hour flight was not as you expected it? No. Why? Because it's not the flight that counts, it's the destination. So when you go through something difficult, you might console yourself by just saying, look, it's a few more hours, we'll get there. If you ever travel with children, we do it all the time. We're almost there. Let's, you know, occupy ourselves with this, keep yourself busy with that. We're almost there. Imagine when we get there, imagine what we're going to do. You keep your site yourself busy because you're focused on the bigger picture. We need to start looking at life like this. Look at the bigger picture. What am I aiming for? What are we collectively aiming for? If we're going to get caught up on everything that happens, she said this, he said that, she done that, he looked at me like this. Well, I hate to break it to you, but we're actually really missing the bigger picture if that's still the mindset that we're stuck in. And if it won't matter in a few years' time, don't give it more than five minutes of your time. Why dwell on something? Why allow yourself to be held back and deterred from the actual goal of your creation when it's not even going to matter in a couple of years' time. In CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, there's this activity that sometimes we do with clients called perceptual positioning, where you try to look at a recent situation that happened from multiple positions. And I'll end this episode with this and see if you can maybe relate to it, maybe use it for your most recent negative interaction. Let's say that, you know, it could have been an argument, could be with someone you loved, could be with someone you didn't even know, could be a road rage moment, it could be with a parent, whatever. But if you can take yourself back to the last uncomfortable incident you had, you know, let's say a moment of pressure or a moment of frustration that you had with someone and go through that scenario and just recall it in your mind. What happened? What did it feel like? What did it sound like? Where were you? What did they say? What did you say? Try to just really bring that moment back to your mind. Even if you have to pause the podcast for a moment, give yourself some time to think, go for it. And once you've been able to kind of filter that through your mind, I want you to pause. And now you're going to step into the other person's shoes. The person you were having that problem with, the person you were confronting, or the person that confronted you, or whatever it is that the situation was, I want you to jump into their shoes. And now I want you to run through that exact scenario, but this time it's their perspective. I want you to see it from their perspective. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What is what you're saying sound like? What is what they're saying sound like? And once you've been able to kind of go through that and mentally visualize it, I want you to step out of their shoes. And now we're going to step into a third person's shoes. It's not you, and it's not them. It's just someone standing there in the room, in the car, on the road, in the shop, wherever you were, and they're just watching. What does this person say? What do they hear? What do they hear you say? What do they hear them say? What does it feel like to them? And take a moment to come out of that. For the most part, usually, through perceptual positioning, it shifts your perspective. That's the point of it. That for as long as I'm looking at it just from my point of view, I've got all the facts. I know why it happened, I know why they done it. But if I'm able to step out of my shoes for a moment and step into theirs, or step into someone else's just watching, unbiased, maybe, just maybe, I can start to see this so-called problem from another lens. And maybe, just maybe, it's not actually as big of a deal as I originally thought. You see, our role models all lived for more than themselves. It was never just about themselves. And they were the ones who really lived, and dare I say, continue to live. They're the ones that are still alive. Hundreds and hundreds of years can pass by, and these people won't die. They connected themselves to something greater than themselves. They connected themselves to the eternal, to the ever-living. And subhanAllah, through his memory, through his legacy, he's left them alive. It's really incredible. We pray to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to grant us tawfiq to see life in the lens that the Holy Prophet and the Ahnul Bayt saw life through. Allahumma Ja'al Mahia Mahia Muhammadin wa'a Muhammad. Wa mama'i Mamata Muhammadin wa'ani Muhammad. Alhamdulillah, Wama to Fiki Illa Billah. Thank you for being here. If today's episode gave you something to think about, I hope it stays with you beyond this moment. Purpose grows through reflection, and peace follows when we return to what truly matters. Until next time, may your life be guided by purpose and ground. It in peace, a salamani.