EP48 – Your Lord or Your EGO?

My teacher and mentor took me through a very interesting concept: ubudiyah, from abd, a servant, and yabud, to worship. It sits in Surah Al-Fatiha, the first chapter of the Quran:
إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ
It is You we worship and You we ask for help (Quran 1:5). You're either obedient to your Lord or obedient to your ego, and in this episode I explain why obedience to God is empowering, not restricting.

Then the analogy my sheikh gave. You want to drive from city A to city B, for me Gothenburg to Stockholm. The vehicle is your irada, your will and your capacity to do the thing. The GPS is the Quran and Sunnah. The sharia is the turn by turn directions. You still need the effort, like the Bosnian man who walked all the way to Mecca for Hajj. But effort without direction is pointless, and that's why we need to schedule our time around salah.

Chapters
0:00 Cold open
0:22 The Barakah Blueprint intro
1:23 Who I am and why this podcast
2:26 What ubudiyah means
5:26 Obedient to your Lord or your ego
7:17 The GPS and the vehicle
8:47 Effort: the Bosnian who walked to Hajj
9:54 Start with a phone
11:10 The Quran and Sunnah as your GPS
13:12 Schedule your time around salah

Mentioned in this episode
Quran 1:5: https://quran.com/1/5
Quran 12:53: https://quran.com/12/53
Senad Hadžić's walk from Bosnia to Mecca: https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/pilgrim-walks-from-bosnia-to-haj-1.1092752

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