UT.. Two ways to learn

https://youtu.be/PC9zuzh4x3E Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions, are the most obedient and the most generous. Dear brothers and sisters, I am doing this series of reminders called Universal Truths. I call them the Four Truths. And we spoke about two of them. What was the first one? Time passes. First one, time passes. Second one? Leave your likes. Leave your likes. Liking doesn't matter. Liking doesn't matter. Right? Because everything beneficial is usually painful. So if you say, I will do only what I like, you will never learn anything. Third, truth. Truth. There are two ways to learn life lessons. There is a smart way and there is a dumb way. There is a stupid way. The smart way is to learn from others. The stupid way is to insist on making the mistakes yourself. The smart way is smart because what you learn from the other is the extraction, is the learning, is the essence of what he learnt. He suffered the pain, he suffered the expense. After the pain, he thought about it, he conceptualized it. What he is teaching you is the essence of that. You get it for free. The stupid way, just because I fell into a hole and I learnt something, does not mean that if you fall into the same hole, you will learn the same thing. You may learn nothing. You may just break your leg. Right? So it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that if you make the same mistake that your father made, you will not learn anything. It doesn't mean that if you make the same mistake that your father made, your mother made, your uncle made, your teacher made, that you will learn what they learnt. No. The learning is not related to the mistake. The learning is not related to the hole you fell into. The learning is related to what the person does with that. Because experience is not what happens to you. Experience is what you do with what happens to you. So the learning is not related to the mistake. Learning from others is simple. It's free. And learning, insisting on learning yourself is risky and costly and painful. But guess which one most people try. Especially in this culture. This culture is based on the fact that you are not a person. On the worship of the self. This culture is based on what you call raising the self-esteem of the child beyond all reasonable limits. A child has done nothing. He's just born practically. He's in grade A. Or grade 1 or grade 2 or grade 3. He's 5 years old, 7 years old. And he's told, man, you are the best in the world. Oh, you are fantastic. So he's already best in the world in grade 1. Now where does he go from there to? Right? If you're already the best, then there's only one direction you can go to, which is downhill, right? Now obviously, if anyone wants to argue the opposite and say, should we abuse children? I say, go get your head examined. I mean, it's not a world of two opposites, right? Nobody says abuse children. But this is abuse of children to give them this false impression that they are the best. They're not the best. They're nice kids. So learn. But to learn from others, you need humility. You need to be humble. You need goal clarity. You need to be clear as to why you are listening to that person. You can't just sit there and let the sound come. No. You must look for things. You must take notes. You must ask for clarification if you need clarification. What does not help is a know-it-all attitude. Oh, I know everything. These old people, old fogies, old school, they don't know anything. They don't know how to talk to people. They are from back home. America is a different place. You've heard all these things, no? They don't know how to talk to people. What do I care? What does not help is impatience. What does not help is disrespect towards the people. What does not help is disrespect towards the teacher in imagining that you can remember everything. You don't take notes. Or you just make a video. Or you record voice. And you think you can learn. You can't learn. If you want to learn from people, value experience. Because Rasool Allah said, لَيْسَ الْخَبَرُ كَالْمُعَيْنَة He said, the khabar, the information is not like actually seeing. So the person, the older person, the more experienced person has seen, for you it's only information. That's why another thing in Arabic, اسأل زَوِي الخِبْرَةِ وَلَيْسَ الْمُتَعَلَّمِينَ He said, ask the experienced. The experienced, not merely the educated. There are many young people who stayed with Rasool Allah . There's Ibn Abbas, there is Anas bin Malik, RadhiAllahu Anuma, right? They literally stayed with him in his house. And then there were others, Mu'adh bin Jabal, Abdullah bin Umar, Mu'adh bin Abbas bin Malik, Mu'adh bin Abbas bin Malik, and others, who wouldn't stay in his house, but they were with him all the time. There are many, if you read the seerah, there are many cases where they said that Rasool Allah held the hand of Ibn Umar RadhiAllahu Anhu, and he said, I'm going to tell you something before you leave this masjid. Then he taught him Surah Al-Fatiha. There are cases where he put his hand on somebody's back. Right? I'm going to give you a challenge. Go read every seerah book in the world. Go read every hadith book in the world. And find me one single instance where any of these people put their hand on the back of Mr. Salakht. Yeah? He shakes his hand, he puts his hand on the back of the Nabi, Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam puts his hand on the back of somebody. Many such cases. Find me one case where the other person put his hand on the back of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Find me one case. Why not? Why not? I have in this masjid many young guys. Yeah. They come to me. They come on the back. Salamun alaykum, Sheikh. How? They shake your hand, bang on the back. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi wa rajim. For some of them, I'm three times their age, not even twice. I'm older than his father. I'm almost old enough to be his grandfather. And he slaps me on the back. Now what bothers me, if he was slapping me on the back to insult me, I would understand that, right? I won't accept it, but I'm saying I would understand. Okay, he wants to insult me. No. He thinks he's doing something good. He's doing it thinking it is good. So I'm saying what kind of a home do you come from? What kind of parents do you have who don't even teach you these manners? The problem is the parenting. It's not there. The so-called kid. The so-called kid. Please have mercy on yourself. That's why I never object. I mean, when they do that, I mean, I couldn't just, you know. I don't, I know the poor kid. He has no sense. He thinks he's being nice to me. It's not okay to slap your elders on the back. Please go and teach people something. It's not okay. It's not okay to nod at people. You say, Salaam alaikum. Salaam alaikum. Wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. It's dhikr. It's the sunda. Nodding at somebody. My brothers and sisters, really. Now, to do something with your experience, there are four steps. First of all, experience. Experience that whatever is happening consciously, not just randomly sit there. Second thing is, then go out and reflect on it. Think about it. What happened? Third one, extract a lesson from that. This is what I learned. And fourth one, test that lesson. Only then will you benefit from the experience. And that's why I said, the experienced person does all that on their own. And then shares the essence, shares that value, shares that jewel, shares that gold that they extracted with you for free. So value that. In effect, because they are sharing their life with you, while you have nothing to give them in return. You have nothing to give them in return. You are in effect receiving charities, so show it. Show the humility. So ask yourself, in conclusion, ask yourself, who are your mentors? Do you have a mentor? Do you have a mentor? Right? One of our great scholars from India, Sheikh Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi Rahmatullah Ali, he used to say that a person who has no mentor, his mentor is Shaitan. The one who has no mentor, his mentor is Shaitan, is Iblis. Another thing he used to say was, he said, anyone who thinks that he is not in need of correction, anyone who thinks that he is not in need of correction, of Islah, is sitting in the lap of Shaitan. Anyone who thinks that he is not in need of correction, is sitting in the lap of Shaitan. The one who thinks he is not in need of correction, from Islah, from correction, is sitting in the lap of Shaitan. So it's very, very important to have many mentors. It's very, very important to have mentors. So ask yourself, do you have a mentor? Who is your mentor? Who are your mentors? What do you learn from them? Do you have a notebook where you write things down? How much time do you spend with your mentor? And remember, a mentor is somebody with whom you have what I call a mentoring contract. You go to the person, you submit yourself, you say, I want you to be my mentor. I want to be your student. Will you be my mentor? If the person says yes, then the person is your mentor. It is not a public figure. You can't say, oh, you know, the Imam is my mentor. No, no. Imam is not. Imam is the Imam. It has nothing to do with you. Mentor is somebody who has undertaken this responsibility. And then when you sit with that person, that's a formal mentoring session. Right? That is what accessible mentoring is after we become leaders and then edited» when you leave, hid, drop-melt, then you become insulin認 deuts » fidelity of Rover www.AWS.us raw large memos dominoes squat Robo robot locator Skeleton That's very, very important. So we ask Allah to help us to learn before it is too late. As time passes, anyone at any age, anyone at any age,