Transcription
Sleeping and waking up with a smartphone by your side. It's like you have a casino by your bed that you've been constantly, you've been conditioned to wake up and pull down the lever and see what comes up, and you've been doing that your whole life. So having that by your bed, I don't know if it's a good idea. Buy one of those old alarm clocks that, and it does the job.
[Music]
When most people wake up, they wake up reaching for their phones. They wake up thinking about what they need to do that day, what their task list is. It's a sense of anxiety, stress, just go, go, go. Even just as the day is getting started, there's not a sense of peace. So, how do you change that? How do you transform when you wake up from pressure to peace?
I think the key thing is waking up. The first words that escape your mouth has to be "Alhamdulillah." Alhamdulillah, gratitude belongs to God who gave me life after he took my life, and to him I will return. If that sentence escapes your lips the moment your eyes, the morning consciousness returns to your mind, it's very difficult for you to have the same morning as anybody else. You've just remembered that you, your life was taken, your life's been restored to you. Today is another chance, and you started with the remembrance of God.
Um, when we think, when we look back to the Prophet, peace be upon him, he would wake up. His morning routine was actually in the darkness of night. In fact, you could say that everything important in the history of Islam, some of the greatest, most important moments happen in the darkness of night. Moses comes to the burning bush in the night. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, ascends to the skies in the darkness of the night, and he wakes up in the darkness of the night to have a conversation with God, to have that conversation which is going to be his nutrition, his fuel for the day. As a matter of fact, one could say that if he doesn't have that time, that private time between him and his maker and the Almighty, he doesn't have the fuel to carry himself out through the meetings, the tribal leaders, the multiple wives, the many, many different duties that he has all throughout the day, all the conflict he's going to have.
What's going to carry you through all of the go is that there has to be a non-negotiable portion of time for remembrance. So his night prayer, the Fajr prayer, and the time until sunrise where he would sit in his place just purely in the remembrance of God. This was a non-negotiable time for him before any distraction and notification. No, everybody knew, don't bother me. Don't bother him at this time. Don't send him a message. Don't tell him there's anything about to happen. This is the time between him and his Lord.
One might think that, you know, a momentous day like the Battle of Badr might be an exception. It's a war, the first military expedition between the Muslims, the nascent Muslim community, and the Mecca disbelievers. They're coming, a huge avalanche of people. You might think that that night he's got to be stressed. He's got to be planning, you know, like enemy lines, where we're going to be situated, the geopolitics, discuss the intelligence. But in that night, in the early hours before dawn, he was flat on his forehead saying, "Oh Allah, my Lord, if these people pass away, who is going to worship you on this earth?" And he started preparations for battle just at the crack of dawn. He didn't sacrifice his remembrance time, not even on the day of battle.
So that is the, um, the solace. I mean, personally, you may know this, you may not, but I, I always advise everybody, you need one of these. This one happens to be the CAT S22. Okay, but you need a dumb phone. Everybody needs a dumb phone. You have a smartphone, fine. You have your work things on there. Whatever you need a smartphone for, that's fine. You need a dumb phone that you take to your room, you wake up with. And you need to be able to switch between modes. This is what works for me. It might not work for anybody else.
What works for me is I have two modes. Uh, like right now for this conversation, I don't know where I put it. Put it in a bag somewhere, turned it off, it's gone. The only way someone can reach me is by calling my mobile. No notification can reach me. Nothing. And that's going to be the case for the next few hours. I've turned it off. And for me to turn it back on is significant friction. I don't trust myself because I've been molded by these technological habits. I grew up in the digital generation. So I don't trust myself around these devices. So hence I need to be able to snap out of it and snap back into it. This is what works for me. It's something else might work for you or somebody else.
>> So if the Prophet, peace be upon him, had a smartphone, his notifications would be endless. His phone would be dinging all the time. If that's the appropriate, the the right word. Uh, so you know how would he, if he was, uh, here with us today and he had a smartphone, right? How would he deal with that?
>> Yeah, it's an important hypothetical. If we, if we look at the principles in his life, the Prophet, peace be upon him, was able to switch off.
>> He was able to get to a place or a time where nobody can reach him. And if somebody were to reach him, a verse comes like a lightning bolt from the sky to say, "Listen, you just crossed the line." Beduins come late at night outside the Prophet's chambers and they start calling out to him, "Come out, Muhammad." So the Almighty himself reveals the Surah at which the beginning of it is, "Why are you calling out to him?" This is not your, you can't, there's no notifications are off now. Sorry. He's not for, he's closed for business. Those people who are calling out to you late at night outside your house, there are people who are not thinking straight and they're not supposed to be calling you out, you know, raising their voices to call you out. That's not okay. This is your off time.
So Allah himself, the Lord himself, creates red lines around the Prophet's private space. Um, he tells the companions not to visit him at certain times because why? He needs downtime. This is his time to switch off, his time with his family. Without that time, how is he supposed to then do everything he does, even though he is a messenger? So the same way the Prophet, peace be upon him, has time for himself, time for his Lord, and time for his duties and his engagement with the public. Um, what happens is that you can't have time to yourself or time with your Lord if your smartphone is on, notifications are on, and people are dinging you all the time. There's got to be a way to draw the line. Whether it's purchasing a dumber device, whether it's having two phones, whether it's having, you know, a room in the house where smartphones are not allowed, this is my, you know, whatever it is, there's got to be a way that works for everybody hearing this to be able to switch off at some point. And because our minds have been so conditioned by these devices, um, it's going to be a struggle to get there. But know that once you do get there, you will be at the beginning of the greatest blessing you could ever imagine, which is living a life centered around Allah himself. It begins by shutting off everything else that's trying to encroach on that, um, spiritual space that you have.
So it's almost like setting, you have to set a boundary for yourself. Um, you know, because we talk about setting boundaries when it comes to others externally, but it's almost like you have to set boundaries for yourself when it comes to time, when it comes to your device, basically. Like it has to, I mean, nowadays I can't imagine, I think most people can't think about turning their phone off, like that's not a thing. Actually. It's like you almost have to constantly keep it charged.
>> Because there's a fear of what am I going to miss?
>> Yeah.
>> And, um, the thing is that we are often optimizing for this thing of productivity. This term, which is, it's an industrial revolution term. Productivity is a term that was coined in the revolution, in the industrial revolution for machinery. How many units produced per X amount of time per minute per hour, that's productivity. We started using that term for us. So we are now treating ourselves like machines. Whereas in reality, maximizing your output is not about churning out loads of WhatsApp replies and emails per minute. It's not. It's about, um, Allah providing you, divine providence providing you with support. That's what multiplies your output, not you.
And the Prophet, peace, understands this. So he, for him, the night prayer was obligatory. It wasn't optional from the very beginning. It's a second revelation. The second thing he ever hears from Allah is, "Listen, you have to wake up at night. You've got to pray at least half the night, less, more, no problem. But the most important thing is you need, before the day begins, you better, you need to recite the Quran. If you don't do this, how are you going to do everything else? You know, where's the fuel going to come from?"
And so even if the Prophet, peace be upon him, didn't remember Allah for a period of time, even though he is in constant remembrance of Allah, if he's busy in something, military expedition, dealing with a tribe that came from another city, another country, he feels it. He feels the disconnect. So he says, "Sometimes I feel a cloudiness on my heart, and every time I feel that, I ask Allah's forgiveness 100 times." So there's this feeling of, you have to kind of keep tabs on yourself. There's a million things that are going to take you away, but you have to bring it back. Um, and if the, any day that doesn't begin with the remembrance of Allah, the day is finished. And you know it's finished. Like nobody has to tell you. You know it, you can feel it, you can taste it. It's not the same.