Oct 23 M 12

HH 12 10/22/23

 I was very late to class and had to stay outside for a long time. When I walked into class I greeted the teacher and everyone and he said next time I’m late I will wait outside the whole class. So I walked in and took a seat. As soon as I sat down I noticed what they were talking about. They were talking about the 8 seconds on the bull. That when you're meditating and focusing on your phone call with god it is very hard to just focus on god and nothing else. That’s why they call it 8 seconds on the bull. Because it is very hard to sit on a bull. Because when you sit on a bull they will do anything to get you off of them. The next concept that we learned about was the number 12 phone call. Phone call is your talk with God or your prayer. When you're calling someone on your phone it goes “ring ring, ring ring.” That’s how it should be while your praying. But when you're drifting off it could go ring ring, hmmmmmm what should I eat for dinner, ring ring, what should I wear. You are trying to talk to god. Not to anything else. WHen you're talking with someone you give them your undivided attention. The same goes for god. Next we talked about the numbers in Islam. 

All the numbers mean something in Islam. All the way up to 99. But we talked until 11. 1 stands for one god. There is only one god. 2 stands for Quran and hadith, 2 angels that stand on your shoulders and the 2 angels that will greet you in the grave. 3 stands for like 3 rotations like subhana rabbi al-althim. 4 stands for The 4 books: the Quran, Bible, Torah and Injeel. The 4 khalifas: Abu bakr (A), Umar (A), Osman (A) and Ali (A). Then the 4 angels: The angel of death, The angel that will blow the horn on the day of judgment, The angel that brought down the Quran in verses and is now retired, and the angel that controls the weather. Then the 4 rakats. The 5 stands for The 5 prayers and The 5 pillars. The 5 prayers: Fajr, Duhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Ishaah. Fajr is before sunrise. Duhr is when the sun has reached its highest point. Asr is early morning, Maghrib is sun set.And Ishaah is night time. The 6 stands for the 6 beliefs: God, Angels, Books, Prophets, day of judgment, and living according to the prophets (hadith). The 7 stands for the seven levels of heaven, the seven levels of hell, seven rakats of prayers in all the prayers except for fajr. I don’t remember 8, 9, and 10 because we were going very fast and I could not keep up. But 11 stands the minimum amount of thikar if you’re doing thikar. Then a level 2 person came and asked for the difference between the blue book and the green book. He said you didn’t have to add this in the essay but I wanted to because I am going to go into level 2 eventually. So he said that the green book is all just one perspective, just one person. The blue book is many perspectives into one book to give you as many angles as possible.

When you have something that you need to do you use what you can with what you have. The example that LG gave was the prophet using the miswak. He needed to clean his teeth otherwise he would get sick so he used what he had to clean his teeth. He tried many different things but miswak worked. It still got the job done. It didn’t harm him so he used it. It works just as well as a toothbrush. He then talked about making the world a better place to the ebay of your abilities. Whether that’s not wasting food, not using plastic. Just anything that you can do to make the world a better place. Then he talked about “I love god and I love you always” not I love you. I love you ALWAYS. Like when you tell your parents you love them you say you love them always. Because it’s not like you love them 6 days of the week and you decide on Sunday you don’t love them. Your love with your family is unconditional love. It will last forever. They will always love you. Just like with god. God will always love you. Then LG talked about PAPA: Prophet, Allah, prophet, and accountability. I didn’t really get that no matter how much I asked questions so I was just gonna research it because I didn’t want to waste class time. Then LG went to level 2 to sum up what they learned today and The teachers in our class summed up everything with us. They basically made us go through our day multiple times and asked us questions about it.

Then he talked about bags and S – bucks. Each time you pray you get a bag. You make the world a better place when you get a bag. You do a good deed and you get a bag. The 5 prayers that you get every day you get free bags. It’s your choice if you take it. Then we did one final inspection or reflection on ourselves.

Then the last thing that we did was a closeout pledge. The closeout pledge was news to me. But it was Surah al-asr. But we added our own little twist. And the last ayah was the first ayah. In the next week we will make mistakes unless we practice patience and do good deeds. Please make us one of those people. I did my own reflection on the class. And before I went in I did not want to be there. But when the class ended I wanted to continue it. So instead of me being anxious about the next week I should just be prepared.