Building Faith Safeguards from the Tricks of Ego and Satan Q&A
From the Realities of Mawlana (Q) as taught by Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi.
أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمْ
A’uzu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan
In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘aalameen, was salaatu was salaamu ‘alaa Ashrafil Mursaleen, Sayyidina wa Mawlana Muhammadul Mustafa ﷺ. Madad ya Sayyidi ya Rasulul Kareem, Ya Habibul ‘Azeem, unzur halana wa ishfa’lana, ‘abidona bi madadikum wa nazarekum.
Atiullah wa atiur Rasul wa Ulil amre minkum. Always a reminder for myself, ana abdukal ‘ajeez, wa dayeef, wa miskin, wa zhalim, wa jahl, and but for the grace of Allah (AJ) that we’re still in existence.
أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُم… ﴿٥٩﴾ …
4:59 – “…Atiullaha wa atiur Rasula wa Ulil amre minkum…” (Surat an-Nisa)
“…Obey Allah, obey the Messenger, and those in authority among you…” (The Women, 4:59)
Question 1: Sayyidi I’m trying to get the kids to fast. What’s the best age to encourage that? In some communities they make kids fast from age of four.
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: Yeah, four I don’t think you even got the mental capacity. They have to be cognizant and understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish then otherwise it’s just you know hunger, screaming and crying of why you’re abstaining.
So as soon as you have the ability seven, eight years old and you are basically training, ‘This is the month we don’t eat,’ and then you say, ‘Okay let’s not eat till 7 o’clock or till 12 o’clock, 11 o’clock lunch time,’ is basically cutting out the snacking. If that goes okay, they’re able to do that then you celebrate that they break their fast at noon time and then say, ‘Okay let’s, if you can we continue again until the time that I have to break my fast?’ So every family try to do it in a way in which their children are capable and slowly introducing it and give a gift every day that they accomplish it. As Allah (AJ) is offering you paradise, offer them daily gifts. If other religions have a one day a year in which they want to bring gifts and they make the whole world light up for those ridiculous events, you make 30 days of gifts for Ramadan. Put the lights within your house of Ramadan lights and this is 30 days of gift giving and everybody to their budget.
So you can put bag of candy and goodie bags and whatever it is and make it a very festive and beatific occasion. Or if they’re older and they want an allowance to buy something then say, ‘Okay, every day you fast here’s our Ramadan chart and these are what you’ll be getting every day for your fast.’ So we reward and a system of rewarding is how Allah (AJ) lures adults. That you get paradise, you get lights, you get your du’as (supplications) to come true, you get your rizq (sustenance) to be granted and to be purified and sustained. Same thing then we do to our family so that it’s a very festive and beautiful occasion and even nice if their friends see it. ‘Oh what is that?’ Say, ‘We have 30 days of gifts. You guys are poor, you get one day. We have 30 days.’
So it’s excellent for da’wah (religious propagation) too especially living in the West, inshaAllah. They make big thing about their one day celebration so make it like, ‘Our religion is great. Look, we have 30 days of gifts, join our religion’ [everyone laughs]. Really, kids they go crazy thinking, ‘Oh I want to have this, I want to have that,’ they make such a big celebration but if all their kids saw that we have 30 days of gifts they’re going to go back to their parents, ‘Why you don’t join this group? They have 30 days of gifts,’ inshaAllah.
Question 2: Sayyidi when sitting in a bus or train we can’t ask for madad (support) as explained very well in the Timeless Reality book. What can we do as a means of protection?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: It is keep yourself in wudu (ablution) before you got on the bus and the train.
Keep your ta’weez (prayer for protection) and all your protections and make your madad and support and don’t fear anything. There’s nothing to be protected against. The teachings are not to make people scared but to keep people to be strong. So what’s going to happen to somebody when you get on a bus or a train? Somebody going to come to attack you because…? Don’t be scared. Allah is (AJ) with you, Prophet ﷺ is with you and whatever energy you feel is uncomfortable, alhamdulillah Allah (AJ) wants you to carry something. As soon as you get off, you wash, you go home and it continues.
But you know worrying about everywhere we go and every step that we’re going to make for what? Make ourselves to be strong and to fear nothing. Everything is just an illusion from shaitan (satan). That’s why we started tonight is to tell you that the gate of entry is shaitan playing with people. So now shaitan put fear and rules by fear. If you understand that concept then you understand the power of faith and the power of meditation and contemplation to build your faith.
So he told everybody, ‘You’re going to die,’ and nobody could see the enemy. There’s an unseen virus and he convince you, ‘You’re going to be dead.’ As a result, people’s own power of manifestation made them to be sick and cautious, very fearful. Well your own fear and the physiology of fear is you’ll weaken your own immune system by believing what he’s saying. But if you take it as, ‘Okay people are going to be sick. “HasbunAllahu wa ni’mal Wakil.” I’ll increase my zikr (Divine remembrance) and take my necessary precautions.’
حَسْبُنَا اللَّـهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيلُ
3:173 – “HasbunAllahu wa ni’mal Wakil” (Surat Aali ‘Imran)
“Sufficient for us is Allah, and [He is] the best Disposer of affairs.” (The Family of ‘Imran 3:173)
Stay away from people because those people whom are weakened and become weakened, they will become sick and spread things. So means that shaitan operates through the brain and making people to have fear. But you don’t say it doesn’t exist, say no it does and shaitan going to manifest it to be even stronger and more spread out until everybody sees that fire and now is petrified by the fire.
So faith and spiritual practices to build the faith so that you’re certain. Not that you’re talking from your lips that you believe but in your heart the certainty of your faith and the power of your faith is you know, ‘Although I walk through the valley of death I know that my Lord is with me.’ But you have to be able to say that, that the Lord is with you by your good deeds and good actions not because you just want to say it but you have to believe it. So this even more.
Everyone says, ‘Oh don’t do the Ramadan. Oh it’s so hard, so hard.’ New people. Say, ‘What hard?’ This is a illusion of fire, enter into it. Now go back in our lives and think about everything else that was an illusion. That oh there’s going to be a lot of people doing bad things and bad energy in this place, okay but you have your ta’weez, you have your practices, you’re not engaging in anything bad, you’re taking a ride home from work and from work back to your home. Oh, what’s going to happen with you? It’s shaitan‘s illusions and delusions, make your connection, inshaAllah.
Question 3: What does it mean by Ramadan opening the reality of taste?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: What does it mean? It means that when you’re hungry, yeah and you think like what that date is going to taste like.
But let’s say that Ramadan was like all your life and every day you’re thinking, ‘I wonder what that date tastes like?’ Then you read a book ‘It’s very sweet, it tastes like candy, it tastes a little bit like molasses, a little bit like brown sugar, tastes a little bit like this.’ So you’re 30 years you’re reading about that until one day you say, ‘I wonder what this date tastes like?’ This is the reality of spiritual practices. So when we’re asking in Ramadan to fast, we’re not only asking, ‘Ya Rabbi oh I just you know I don’t want to be hungry,’ but Allah’s (AJ) opening something by abstinence.
So abstain from a life of tasting food and taking only pleasure in eating; you live to eat, we live to eat we don’t eat to live. Anyone who wants to test ‘Eat to Live’, you do 40 days of lentil. So you say, ‘I’m going to eat, I’m going to eat to live,’ because after five days of lentil, you can’t stand it because it’s not exciting for your nafs (ego) anymore. You’re then literally eating just to survive, then your spiritual power begins to open. So then this has tremendous realities.
Ramadan then is an opening time in which Allah (AJ) will open the senses. The one who enters into fasting they make intention,
-
- I want to fast with my ears so that my spiritual ears open.
- I want to fast with my eyes so my spiritual eyes open and meditate.
- I want to fast with my sense of touch and began to abstain from too much pleasure in my touch. Don’t need to go too many places. Need to put myself in some un-comfort and discomfort.
All of these senses can open. So every Ramadan Allah (AJ) opens the servants of muraqabah (spiritual connection) and tafakkur (contemplation) their different senses because they’re fasting with all their senses. If they’ve been trained by us and by these realities they know that they should be fasting with all their senses. So that one year Allah (AJ) will begin to open the fast of their ears in which they’re not hearing bad. As a result of fasting in Ramadan they begin to hear their soul and consciousness more and more and becomes stronger and stronger. So all of it, all of it has a deep reality, inshaAllah.
Question 4: Please forgive my ignorance. Please tell us deeply about what is annihilation into annihilation?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: InshaAllah, you have to get the meditation book [A Timeless Reality].
That as soon as you annihilate and take a path in which to be nothing, Imam Ali (as) described that, ‘Even in my annihilation, there’s annihilation.’ We’ve describe many times that when you start to meditate, people become delusional in which they’re sitting, closing their eyes, visualizing that the sword of paradise is coming to them, jubba (robe) of paradise is coming to them, ‘I’m traveling here, I’m getting this, I’m doing that.’ Now that meditation became delusional. So that wasn’t the way.
The intention was ‘I’m nothing, I want to be nothing.’ I don’t need to get the first right to the foods and to the vegetables. I took a path in which to be nothing. I don’t get angered by everything because I was disrespected, I became nothing. As the same time very nafsani (egocentric) is then meditation. In which you visualize yourself with your shaykh and ‘I’m nothing and that your light and energy come and make me to be nothing, melt away to be nothing.’ As you’re meditating more and more in that ocean of power like a fire that comes onto you to melt you in which, ‘I don’t exist’ and see ourself now dressed upon the shaykh.
That the shaykh is dressing upon me and that I’m nothing and I’m ceasing to exist and that my shaykh exists in my place. As a result of that dress continuously, as soon as I meditate and there’s some sort of a gift is coming to me, a jubba is coming to me, a horizon is opening, ‘I’m nothing. I’m not that one. I’m asking just to enter into an ocean of power like lightning everywhere and that lightning to dissolve me.’ So many temptations will come to the servant in their mind and the mental temptations and those have to be fought as to not think they’re something.
Don’t describe your dreams, don’t describe anything to people because that’s a way of trying to be delusional to people and trying to control people through your nafs. You may not know because the nafs is riding you. Not the person asking the question but people. Right? The nafs is riding us like a wild bull, riding everywhere. So he’s doing things to people they don’t even know it’s being done to them. So if you go around talking about your dreams, what in reality are you doing? You’re saying that, ‘You know how high my status is? I met with this, I met with him, I met with them, I met here, I met that. That, respect me.’ That’s why the nafs is saying it. You say, ‘No, but that’s not the intention Shaykh.’ Well, you’re not the one talking. Your nafs is. It’s not your soul sitting on the chair. If your soul saw those things and then got an opportunity to sit on a chair of authority, it would never speak like that. But that’s when your nafs sits on the chair, ‘I want to tell everybody. You know what I saw, it’s like this, I went here, I went like this, I went like that.’ So that what? ‘Respect me.’ Because now the nafs is becoming stronger.
So annihilation into our annihilation is an immense intense process in which to catch yourself at every moment in which not to talk about the self, not to glorify the self, not to elevate the self. That to be nothing and in that ocean to be like a water in an ocean of lightning so that you become feeling the lightning, one with the lightning. It’s an ocean of power in which you enter in nothing is anywhere but a lightning and enter into that lightning to that it hit you and you become one with that power that coming and vanishing, coming and vanishing.
Not that we entered into visual states and we’re sitting in associations and things are coming. That is not the way of annihilation, that’s just the ego playing games and making your mind like a video game fantasy movie and you just fantasizing endlessly. So that very, very dangerous and very, very tricky.
This state of annihilation they talk about is – be nothing and just fire like an energy overwhelms you. Your energy comes so strong things can you know, you’re sweating, your clothes are wet, everything because you’re heated up, you get heated up person. So it’s not in the mind delusional thinking, ‘I’m seeing all these great things,’ but literally they transform into heat, inshaAllah.
Question 5: Regarding who sits in the chair, does zikr have to be read out aloud in order for nafs and shaitan to burn? Example as we’re walking around and doing our zikr silently, does this also burn them?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: Sure, because the chair is inside, the chair of authority is inside, is not an outside chair.
So as soon as you’re doing zikr, the seat of the heart becomes very heated and if you do khafi and breathing khafi then that’s very powerful. So the people who can achieve the silent zikr, khafi and meditate and breathe in that state, they ignite their entire being again like I just described – fire. They heat up like a fire. As a result, nothing can sit on that chair.
So the zikr and everything is meant to be silent not meant to be out loud. Sometimes you start in your starting phase a little bit out loud to push away all the bad energies. But once you’re strong in the muraqabah, strong in the zikr, Naqshbandiya is all based on khafi – the silent. But because of the zikr in the West and new people that don’t even know “Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem,” it’s done out loud to attract people. But the actual tariqah (spiritual path) practices, historically practiced is strong in their meditation, strong in the connection with the shaykh and they enter like a state of death and they begin their practices not moving. So that they can leave their body and their practice will be with through their soul. So those are stations that are difficult to achieve but the way is built on that principle. So anytime you move then it becomes a part of the body action and not the soul action but yeah, inshaAllah.
Question 6: Sayyidi can the nafs make one to keep praying more and more when they have their other awrads (daily practices) to do and then feel tired? How to determine if the soul or nafs says that?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: Yeah, first you have to feel if you have OCD.
So if you have some other issues in your mind, you have to be careful of that. Because the spiritual praying is that you prayed and then now you want to pray more and connect and meditate, do your zikrs; everything has to have a balance. If there’s OCD and issues with you know shaitan whispering that, ‘Your prayer was done wrong’ – that’s not from the soul. ‘Now repeat it.’ Say, ‘What?’ Then, ‘Now repeat it.’ ‘Oh, ah. Oh I started wrong.’ Then that’s OCD, that’s the shaitan where say ‘Overly satanic something.’ So anytime somebody has OCD issues, the shaitan is whispering to them, he’s too close to them. ‘Your wudu didn’t count, go do it again.’ Then they go this, go in there and spend 40 minutes coming in and out of the bathroom washing until their skin is like burning from water. Those are OCD issues. That’s not from the soul. So it’s nafs and shaitan both destroying the person.
When you feel that you’re OCD about being clean, go out and put your hands in the soil, in the backyard. Take the mohr that has the holy dirt of Karbala, if you don’t have outside clean soil or take the sand from the beach, put it in Tupperware and keep taking the sand and putting on your hand. Put the sand so that come against what shaitan is making you to fear. Nobody ever died from hands that had soil on them. So whatever shaitan’s whispering to you that, ‘You didn’t do your wudu,’ say, ‘I did my wudu, it was fantastic, alhamdulillah.’ Before they were doing wudu in a cup. So it wasn’t about the water, it was about the intention.
So shaitan is whispering to you then you know you’re under attack and that he shouldn’t be so close, able to whisper. It means then your connection has to be stronger, your meditation has to be stronger. Or if you know there are actual medical issues then you have to have your medication. Because if it’s medication issues then none of your practices will bear fruit without your medication because everything then will be tampered with, every salah (daily prayer) will be wrong, every wudu was wrong, every zikr you did was wrong. Because shaitan is right there playing with you and you need medication and you’re not taking the medication so everything has to have its reality, inshaAllah.
Question 7: Sayyidi what is the best sadaqah jariyah (ongoing rewards charity) we can give i.e. orphanage, well, etc.?
Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi: Yeah, all of them.
Prophet ﷺ love the water. That to give people water because it’s a life force. So somebody whom doesn’t have access to water or difficult access to water then it’s a flowing fountain in which we ask that Prophet ﷺ to give us on Yawmul Mahshar (Judgment Day) when the water of Kawthar (The Fountain of Abundance) will be available in which to nourish us, dress us and elevate our status by just the drink of Kawthar to be raised upon the servant. Those are for the servants who have this immense love for Prophet ﷺ. What he wants to give to them? That their life was about helping and trying to sustain and take care of people then what’s offered to them is the Kawthar. That, ‘You gave in dunya (material world) water and we give you in akhirah (hereafter) Kawthar.’ “Inna ‘atayna kal kawthar. ”
(١)إِنَّا أَعْطَيْنَاكَ الْكَوْثَرَ
108:1 – “Inna ‘atayna kal kawthar. ” (Surat Al-Kawthar)
“To thee (O Muhammad) we have granted the Fount (of Abundance).” (The Abundance, 108:1)
So means all of the Companions and Ahlul Bayt (Holy Family) of Prophet ﷺ they are given the right to distribute the Kawthar because they are Kawthari (people dressed from the Fountain of Abundance), their knowledges are all Kawthar. It’s a flowing abundance from the oceans of abundance that’s kathir (abundant) that beyond imagination from the presence of Prophet ﷺ. So as you take the knowledges from them, you’re being dressed by the Kawthar. As you give water in their names then Allah (AJ) inshaAllah give to you access to the Kawthar to raise your status in paradise and in the grave to a lofty station.
So it means then dedicate the wells in the name of Prophet ﷺ, in the name of Ahlul Bayt in the name of your children and inshaAllah that take away difficulty from the children. That when your children’s only action is good and bad, good and bad and nowadays email that their kids are gangsters ‘Doing this, doing that, what should we do? What should we do?’ Make wells in their name so that the people whom are taking from that, taking that barakah (blessing), that barakah inshaAllah dress them, change them. Allah (AJ) write a different destiny for them and intercede for them.
Then the food. That give food so on a day in which we know is opening upon the world, upon the days of difficulty that Allah (AJ) have in our accounts. That when you can’t find food, Allah (AJ) says that, ‘As you gave in dunya for people to have food, I will give to you even in your dunya that if a day comes in which you can’t find something to eat, you have this credit within your account.’ We described a day is coming of immense difficulty in which people won’t find food to eat. Mawlana Shaykh (Q) said it would be so bad that they would go by the graves to dig up the bodies to eat because they can’t find food. But who? The people whom gave out food? No, people who probably stepped on food that they don’t care what they have, what they do.
So again why in the last days they inspire these Naqshbandi charity and charitable works? It is to set ourselves and our accounts. Give food, take care of children, help children so that your children will be taken care of. Feed children. Why we chose this category? It is because they’re dear to Prophet ﷺ. That when you feed them and take care of them, although you worry so much about your own children, you should take care of other children. As a result because this is a mirror, the one whom worries about his own child but helps no other child then is selfish and doesn’t open the way and the system of barakah.
But the one whom busies himself helping other children, Allah (AJ) will help your children because it works as a mirror not as a direct. You feeding your kids, what’s the benefit of that? Then spoiling them with abundance. But go and feed the people whom have no food to eat. That barakah changes the life and the lives of our own children. That’s just dunya. Imagine then all the dress of akhirah and the grave that you meet your Lord again with a companion.
You enter, everyone enters into the grave with a companion and that companion will be their deeds. If it was the badness and bad actions, there’ll be a horrific demon entering that grave with them and they say, ‘Who are you?’ He say, ‘I’m your actions.’ Just the smell of that creature will make it like a jahannam (hellfire) for them, not even to what that creature going to do to them.
But then Prophet ﷺ described for us then make your companion to be blessed like an angel with good deeds. So the one whom fast, there an angel coming to accompany them in the grave that, ‘I’m your Ramadan.’ An angel coming saying, ‘I’m the Qur’an in which you read, I’m the actions that you do.’ So every action will be these immense companions of light that come to make the grave beatific for the servant so for dunya and akhirah to be blessed. So this is the immensity of charitable acts and acts of selflessness, not acts of selfishness, inshaAllah.
Subhana rabbika rabbal ‘izzati ‘amma yasifoon, wa salaamun ‘alal mursaleen, walhamdulillahi rabbil ‘aalameen. Bi hurmati Muhammad al-Mustafa ﷺ wa bi siri Surat al-Fatiha.
Special thanks to our transcribers for their help with transcribing this suhbah.
Original Date of Suhbah: March 23, 2023
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