“Wondrous is the affair of the believer for there is good for them in every matter and this is not the case with anyone except the believer. If they are happy, then they thank God and thus there is good for them; and if they are harmed, then they show patience and thus there is good for them.”

When you think about being harmed, when you think about what are the possible responses that you can have in that situation, patience certainly is an idea that is very likely to come up, right? It's like okay, I've been harmed, I'm struggling with something, I'm dealing with some kind of adversity in my life, I have to be patient.

When you think about being harmed, when you think about what are the possible responses that you can have in that situation, patience certainly is an idea that is very likely to come up, right? It's like okay, I've been harmed, I'm struggling with something, I'm dealing with some kind of adversity in my life, I have to be patient. But I know for the longest time for me, when I thought about being patient, it was just sort of gritting my teeth, tolerating the situation and doing the best I could to survive through it, to get through it. I didn't want to be in that situation, and I didn't think that there was anything good in that. I just wanted to be able to get through it. And there was definitely the sense of stress and tension that I experienced in my mind and heart as I attempted to practice patience in the face of that adversity. And honestly, that's how I saw most people in my life practicing patience. In fact, I would even say maybe all the people I saw in my life, until very recently... I started noticing that there is a different way we can be patient. And I think that different way of being patient is actually what this saying is talking about.

In this quotation, we're talking about a state of affairs where there's good for me in every matter. We're talking about this being the case for the believer. Now, I mean to say a little bit about the believer and what the believer believes. This believer has deep trust and faith in this idea, that there is good for them in every matter. In one of my earlier broadcasts, I shared the quote by John Adams, “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise”. And I think that's the perspective that the believer that's being referred to in this quote takes, i.e. that in every problem, there is an opportunity. And so what's the opportunity that we have when we are feeling harmed or thinking we have been harmed or experiencing some kind of harm in our life? Well, according to the saying, the opportunity is the opportunity to practice patience. But what's so great about the opportunity to practice patience? If all it is, is that we're gritting our teeth and just tolerating our way through the situation, what's great about that? See, I don't think that's so great. So if I'm not practicing patience in that way and that is not the true opportunity, then what is the true opportunity in the practice of patience?

I think this is where another teaching in Islam comes in very handy, to help us better understand how we can better practice patience. This is actually a notion that is both a teaching that's present in the Quran, and it's also something that the Prophet Muhammad practiced in his life and taught all Muslims. There's actually an Arabic phrase that pretty much all Muslims have memorized in Arabic. And it literally translates to, “I seek refuge in God”, (“'audu billahi minash shaytan nirrajim”). The extended version of it is, “I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan”. Right now, let's focus on the idea of seeking refuge in God and what does that really mean? Why are we taught to seek refuge in God as one of the first responses that we make to facing hardship or feeling like we're in trouble and difficulty? I actually looked up the definition of refuge, like just the dictionary on Google. Like what does refuge mean, you know? And the refuge is defined as,

“A condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger or trouble.”

Refuge is a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger or trouble. It's a condition of being safe or sheltered. What we are doing by seeking refuge in God, what we are actually doing is we're seeking safety. We’re seeking shelter from danger, trouble, pursuit and whatever is bothering us or hurting us. That makes sense. Interestingly, when you think about the believer and what he believes… so again, as a Muslim, not only have I been taught to believe that there is good for me in every matter, but I've also been taught to believe that God loves me. God takes care of me. God is ever present in my life. And in fact, there's a beautiful verse in the Quran that talks about how God is closer to me than my jugular vein. And that is always true. That is always the case. There is never a time when God abandons me or just leaves me to my own devices. Leaves me by myself to deal with things on my own. That will never happen. God is ever present, always loving, merciful and compassionate towards me.

The moment that I seek refuge in God, I'm actually reminded that I'm already in refuge with God. Isn't that amazing? Yes! It’s like here I am seeking refuge in God. And that reminds me, that I'm already in God's refuge. Because God never abandons me, God never goes away.  God is always there to help me, love me, protect me. I am already in God's refuge. Remember, refuge is a condition of being safe and sheltered from all danger and trouble, right. So I'm now realizing that I am already safe, I'm already sheltered. What a relief. As soon as I seek shelter in God, I realize that I already am in the shelter that I'm seeking, then I'm able to relax. 

When you are able to relax in this knowing that you're completely safe, and loved, and you are in God's refuge, it has so many benefits. Number one, it immediately fills my heart with gratitude. Our relationship with God actually deepens and becomes even more loving. We grow to love God even more. You know it’s because you realized, “Oh my gosh, I'm being loved right now! God is taking care of me right now”! And through that care, through that sheltering that God is giving me in this moment, the refuge that God is giving me in this moment, that's actually God loving me, right? And so when you realize that, when you recognize that, it increases your sense of love for God and your appreciation of God, and you become even more grateful for all the amazing blessings that God has given you in your life. 

Another amazing benefit is when you are in the situation of feeling challenged or harmed, but you are still able to now relax knowing that you are safe, you're taken care of, you’re loved, you can now shift your focus to thinking about the opportunity that's in this problem, right? Remember, every problem is an opportunity in disguise. If you're still worried about the problem, it's very difficult to see the opportunity. But once you're feeling relaxed and safe in refuge, then you can easily shift your focus to thinking about the opportunity. Where is the opportunity, what are the solutions? What are the next steps that I can take to help resolve the situation? 

And the thing is that you also realized and recognized in that moment that you don't have to figure all this out by yourself. You're in God's refuge! He’s there to love you, take care of you, guide you. There’s no reason to be stressed. You can just relax and focus on the opportunity, the solution and the bright side.

That was the main point I wanted to make from the perspective of what Muslims believe and think. But I also want to just take a little bit of time now and talk to you about this idea from a different perspective. So in case you're not a Muslim or you just don't share the same beliefs or concept of God that I have or that I believe in, you can still learn from this and really allow this to inspire you and benefit you. So how can you look at this in a different perspective, that's not so Muslim and Islam specific? 

This reminds me of a quote by Albert Einstein, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe”. Our beliefs have a causal, direct impact on our thoughts, which have a direct causal impact on our feelings, which have a direct causal impact on our behaviors, which have a direct causal impact on the results and the circumstances that emerge in our life. And this has been proven over and over again through research in Positive Psychology, among other disciplines. This causal chain or this causal link between our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, actions, and the results that emerge in our life… this is actually a really key and important idea so I will just tell you again what this causal chain is.  

It goes from beliefs, lead to your thoughts, lead to your feelings, lead to your actions, which are directly causing (in part) the results that you see in your life. So if you want to change the results in your life, you need to think about how you can change your behavior, your feelings, your thoughts, and your beliefs in a way that would support the different results that you want to see in your life.  And if you want to make change fun and easy, which is, I assume, something that you want, that's why you're watching this broadcast now, that's why you're interested in what I'm talking about... what beliefs can you/must you have to actually support this outcome of being able to stay calm and relaxed in the face of adversity? And creating this outcome of being able to experience making change as fun and easy now... what beliefs support that?

Well, I'll tell you, if you believe that this universe is a hostile place, that belief does not support making change fun and easy, it just doesn't. And it doesn't support being able to stay calm and relaxed in the face of adversity either. So if you have any chance at all of being able to experience change as fun and easy, or being able to stay calm and relaxed in the face of adversity, you must realize, recognize and believe that we live in a friendly universe. If you believe in a loving, kind God like I do, who loves me, not just theoretically, but is actually actively present in this loving way in my life, that belief also allows me to believe that I live in a friendly universe. But if you don't believe in that kind of a God, or in God in that way, then what evidence can you find that you live in a friendly universe?

Well, you know, there's a lot of different evidence I'm sure that you could find if you really look for them. I want to encourage you to find as many different types of evidence as you can find that help support the belief for you that you do live in a friendly universe. I will just give you one example of evidence that I found for myself. This was like when I was a teenager... I was in a very different place in my life, I was actually very traumatized. I was in the process of healing from the trauma of having experienced child sexual abuse. I mean, that healing process is, in some ways, of course never ending, always ongoing. But in my teenage years I was not peaceful at all, I was suffering and trying to emerge from being the victim of child sexual abuse. And so, I will say that my faith in God in those years was not as deep as it is now. I did not experience God as an ever loving presence in my life at that time. To think about God in that way was like a wish or dream. I wished I could experience God like that. I wished I could experience that kind of love. But that wasn't my reality at that time. I had to find other things to give me comfort and to give me hope in my life. And one of the very first things that I found that gave me comfort and hope was reading books.

As a young person, a teenager,  I wasn't reading books of deep philosophy or anything like that. I wasn't that enlightened or that smart. I was reading novels, young adult novels and trying to learn from the characters in the books that I was reading. And one day it happened … now I see it as a blessing from God... God put this book before me, I picked it up. It was The Diary of Anne Frank. It was one of the very first non fiction books I ever read or that I remember ever reading. 

Anne Frank was a teenager, a Jewish girl who was living during the era of the Second World War. And because she was a Jew, her family was being targeted by the Nazis. They were in Germany at the time, and in order to escape, her family had to go into hiding in a little attic... in a building that one of their friends gave them. I can't remember exactly how long, but I think it was like, maybe a couple of years or something like that. And so you can imagine being in Anne’s situation where your family is literally being hunted and other people in your community have been caught and killed and tortured. And you have to live with that constant fear of, what if we get caught, and we might get caught any day, any moment, anything can happen. You're stuck in this attic and you can't leave, not even for a little while. 

You can imagine, especially for a young teenager, how traumatic that would be. It was very difficult for Anne. She writes in her diaries about the many challenges that you have to face in that situation. But she writes about so much more than that. Even in that situation, she finds reasons to be happy, reasons to be hopeful, like she manages to find love and peace in her life and in her heart. 

And even though the challenge that Anne was going through was so different from the challenge that I had experienced, there was something that really touched me about her story. She still managed to find hope, peace, joy and love in her life, even while she was stuck in that attic. That gave me hope. If Anne could go through the hardship, the trauma, adversity that she went through, and find hope and love and peace and all that good stuff, then maybe I could too!

And that inspired me to find other biographies… I was like, “Ha! Let me find other people that I could learn from, real people who have been through difficult experiences, who have been through trauma as bad or even worse than what I have experienced. And let me see if I can learn something from them about how they helped themselves heal, how they found hope and peace and so forth in their lives”. And once I began to look for those examples, those stories, those people that could inspire and teach me that way, I started to find them everywhere. 

This is just one example of how you can find evidence in your life that we do live in a friendly universe. You know that we live in a universe where we humans have such an amazing capacity to heal from such deep traumas. I mean, think about people who have experienced rape, who have experienced other forms of abuse, who have lived through wars, experienced torture, experienced starvation, who have experienced severe debilitating illness, sickness, disease, all kinds of things. And no matter what kind of scenario, situation, adversity you can think of, if you look, you will find people who have been able to overcome those adversities. Who have been able to heal from those traumas. And been able to grow into even better people.

And that's certainly very true in my case also. Most people my age have very different priorities in their life. They're thinking about very different things. They have very different goals. But because of the trauma that I experienced, the abuse that I experienced, because of how it impacted me in terms of creating the sense of great suffering in my life that I couldn't bear, I was motivated. My whole life direction shifted, and actually... In some ways, I was obsessed. I was like, I have to figure this out, I have to figure out how I can stop suffering. I have to figure out how I can regain my peace and happiness. I became focused on learning about this and achieving this goal for myself. And because of that I was actually able to achieve it. And achieve it to a point where now I'm actually able to help other people who are suffering, who have experienced trauma in their lives also. I'm able to help them find healing, growth, happiness, and inner peace in their lives. And that gives me even more joy in my life. I am this way because of the trauma that I experienced.

  If you're having a hard time finding evidence, or if you're still in the process of finding evidence that this is in fact a friendly universe, in the meantime what can you do? Just remind yourself,  “This too shall pass! This too shall pass!”.

That was another mantra that I learned, that I found immensely helpful in my life.  When I’m finding it difficult to be patient in this more better way of the believer who realizes and recognizes that they're already in refuge, in God's refuge. So while I'm struggling to recognize that, I can nonetheless still, at the very least, remind myself that this too shall pass. This too shall pass... And that gives me hope. And that gives me strength. 

Thank you for staying all this time with me. Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or comments, please share them. If you found this helpful to yourself, please like and share this video with your friends on whatever platform you happen to be watching it on. And I will see you next week. And in the meantime, Salam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha and Hola!