Umbrella of Darkness - Healing through Emptiness

Last two weeks I attend a talk by Yasmin Mogahed in Kuala Lumpur. Honestly, I never heard of her before. I'm not someone that you know often going to religious talks. But you know, when you have good friends they gonna bring you to good place. Alhamdulillah for this rizqi. So my girlfriends asked me to come with them to this talk. The topic was "Umbrella of Darkness - Healing through Emptiness". MasyaAllah I'm really grateful for the opportunity to learn such meaningful knowledge, InsyaAllah  would like to share with you some of the input that I got during the talk. I will try to simplify the points so it will be easier to understand.

When we are facing problems, there are three factors that gonna determine on how we gonna react or how the problem is affecting us. It doesn't matter what kind of problem we are facing. It could be a problem n relationship, it could be financial problem. It could be anything. In this situation we gotta do some analysis.

What we have in our mind and how we react to our problem are co-related to each other. So, here are few factors that we must think through when we are in hardship.

1. Internal vs External - Does the problem happen internally? Is it entirely our fault or do we blame other people for it?
2. Stable vs Unstable - Do you think you will always be in bad condition or do you think that it is bad now but it will get better some day?
3. Local vs Global - Local is when you think that you are facing one problem but there is a whole lot other thing that is doing fine. Global is when you think everything is bad because of one problem. A simple example, you might have a terrible heartbreak from a relationship. If you think locally, only that one point of life is affected, or bad. But you have millions of other things that you can be happy and grateful with. You still have rizqi from God, you have your parents, a lot of other things you could see the beautiful creation of Allah, etc. 

So basically address this factors and it will help us on approaching and react to our problem. Sometimes we do ask why bad things happen to good people? The answer to this is 

"No matter what happen always have a good opinion of Allah"

So why bad things still happen to good people? 

1. You must remember that anything that happen to a believer is not bad. We are a believer to Allah, to Islam right?
2. Allah didn't give us what we want to protect us. One good example given by ustazah Yasmin was an incident involving her toddler. He get off from the car by his own and he wanted to close the door by himself. But he was in the position that if he close the door he would slam his head. So ustazah as a mother know this would happen, of course her toddler didn't know. So ustazah picked up her toddler and close the door instead of letting her toddler doing it. What was the reaction of her son? He was crying so bad because he didn't get to close the door right? But would ustazah, as a mother know that bad thing would happened let things be? No, she reacts, she didn't allow it. This is a good analogy when we said Allah want to protect us. Who knows what will happen if we continue doing what we suppose not to do. 
3. We got hardship because Allah either wants to purify our sins. A hardhip in dunya to replace the worse punishment in akhirat, InsyaAllah.
4. To raise our rank. It could be our ibadah are not enough for Allah to raise our rank so he give us trial in dunya. 
5. To make us feel humble because every rizqi are from Him. We don't want to be like Karun that were getting a lot of wealth but later become too proud and said everything happen because of his own hardwork, not from Allah. 
6. To bring us back to Allah. Because when we are in hardship we turn to God for help, for forgiveness.

Allah mentioned that with hardship is ease. So as a human we must focus on what we have instead of what we don't have. We want to eat cakes but a piece from the whole cake is missing. Are we going to make a fuss from a piece that is gone or are we going to appreciate the rest of the cake that left? And always remember, no live is perfect. Everyone has their own trials given by Allah.

So how do we go out from hardship? Remember that Allah gonna solve our problem but we gotta do our part. We work to overcome our problem and we tawakkal to Allah. People said time gonna heal a broken heart. It's wrong, it's bullshit. How do you treat a gunshot wound? By letting time to heal it? Time only gonna make the wound get worse, infected. We treat it, we go to the doctors, we take medicine. And after all of that we tawakkal to Allah that the wound would recover. I see a lot of opinion given on twitter about depression. People with no experience said just recite quran, salah, pray to Allah that the depression will go away. Well it's true but it's wrong. Of course we have to salah but we have to work to treat it. Go to psychologist, have a treatment take a medicine if needed and at the same time, tawakkal to Allah. Pray, recite quran, salah. We turn to Allah for our problem but we work hard as well to try to solve our problem. 

How do we differentiate a trial an punishment that is given by Allah to us? If it is trial, we become closer to Allah. But if is punishment, we distance ourselves from Allah but even if it is punishment we can always come back and repent. Allah Maha Pengampun. 

How to be positive and grateful inspite of trials we are facing? Practice of gratitude. When you wake up, think about all that you can be grateful of. And always helps others that are in pain. To survive in this world, other than work hard to solve any problem, maintain our salah, dua, and Quran InsyaAllah, we will manage to go through every trials and hardship we are facing. 

Another interesting knowledge that I got during this talk is istikharah. Unfortunately people doing this only on choosing life partner. We do istikharah when we have try our best and we want Allah to show us the way, to lead us. Allah didn't promise us dream as His answer, of course there is a Hadith about dream as the answer to istikharah. So how do we know if Allah is showing us the right way?That this is the right thing to do? Let say if we are working on something, we work hard on it and we did istikharah at the same time but there is block on the road you are pursuing. You solved it and another block coming. That is the answer to your istikharah. Or at the same another option is open easy for you. That is the answer to your istikharah. I have my share on istikharah before my job interview last year. I had a feeling of if this is the right job for me to pursue. I did the istikharah and I go to the interview. Alhamdullilah, I got the job, my interview went smoothly. And I actually miss my first interview appointment.  It was my mistake. I was supposed to go for the interview a week before but I wrongly read the date. I was watching a debate between Trmp and Hillary when the HR called me asking why am I not in the office for the interview. But Allah make it easier for. The company give me the second chance for interview and I actually get he job. 

Work your ass off and put your trust in Allah. Orang melayu kata rezeki takkan datang bergolek. 

I had a heartbreak last year. A terrible a heartbreak that changed my life 100%. It took such a long time for me to recover from my sadness and I don't think I've completely redha and forgive the person who did me wrong. But this talk by ustazah wake me up from my long sadness that I should keep the driving analogy. We need to drive forward but we need to rear view mirror to look at the back. Do not let the pain of our past stop us from moving on with our life. I re analyse my problem. It is unstable, because I will get better and the problem will past, it is local because I have a lot of other good things in my life. And instead of addressing this externally, I finally forgive those people who did me wrong and address this internally. I work hard to move on. I become closer to my family and friends, I went to this talk, I shop because well women are happier when we shop, I went for holiday, I'm enjoying my life and at the same time I pray to Allah that this sadness will go away, and Alhamdulillah, I'm living happily now. Happier I guess. No boyfriend yet but happy 🤣

I wrote this based on my understanding it might have mistakes here and there but I hope everyone can make us of this.