Soul Food for College Students: The Pursuit of Happiness | Class 5

And so kind of a little bit of a reminder for those of you who have not been here before, we're speaking about the pursuit of happiness.

And I discussed how we have a four-tier approach of getting there.

So the first level is knowing yourself.

Because if you don't know who you are, then you will never know what demons you have to fight.

If you don't know who you are, then you will never know what types of things you are inclined to.

You will never know what gives you a sense of contentment.

And after the knowledge of self, you're able to have the knowledge of Allah .

Because you are able to identify the obstacles, right? Very simple example, if you want to do something, if you want to attain a specific job or a specific skill, When you plan to get there, the first or maybe second discussion you're going to have are, what are my blockers? What are the things that are going to stop me from getting there? And what do I need to do to overcome that? That's going to be the first question, right? So similarly over here, we learn that the first question you have to ask is, what are my blockers? And once I understand that, then you're able to achieve a level of knowing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

And once you know Allah , the next thing that is so integral to understand for happiness to be achieved is understanding the world that we're part of.

We have to know where we are.

We have to know what the purpose of our existence in this universe is.

And last week we kind of talked about the temporality of this world.

We talked about how, you know, this world will cease to exist.

We talked about the different things that we should value.

And I want to go a little deeper in that and kind of reflect on our state.

Like reflect on where we are, where our mind and our heart is, and what might be stopping us from getting where we need to go.

And I wanted to start off with a hadith of the Prophet .

The Prophet of Allah , he said, إِنَّ الْغِنَى غِنَى النَّفْسِ He said, true contentment, true self-satisfaction.

And in this sense, we're actually maybe even particularly talking about from the financial lens.

True satisfaction, what is the definition of being rich? He said, when your soul and your heart feels rich.

That is when you achieve contentment.

That's when you achieve true happiness.

And so kind of a little bit of a reminder for those of you who have not been here before, we're speaking about the pursuit of happiness.

And I discussed how we have a four-tier approach of getting there.

So the first level is knowing yourself.

Because if you don't know who you are, then you will never know what demons you have to fight.

If you don't know who you are, then you will never know what types of things you are inclined to.

You will never know what gives you a sense of contentment.

And after the knowledge of self, you're able to have the knowledge of Allah .

Because you are able to identify the obstacles, right? Very simple example, if you want to do something, if you want to attain a specific job or a specific skill, When you plan to get there, the first or maybe second discussion you're going to have are, what are my blockers? What are the things that are going to stop me from getting there? And what do I need to do to overcome that? That's going to be the first question, right? So similarly over here, we learn that the first question you have to ask is, what are my blockers? And once I understand that, then you're able to achieve a level of knowing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

And once you know Allah , the next thing that is so integral to understand for happiness to be achieved is understanding the world that we're part of.

We have to know where we are.

We have to know what the purpose of our existence in this universe is.

And last week we kind of talked about the temporality of this world.

We talked about how, you know, this world will cease to exist.

We talked about the different things that we should value.

And I want to go a little deeper in that and kind of reflect on our state.

Like reflect on where we are, where our mind and our heart is, and what might be stopping us from getting where we need to go.

And I wanted to start off with a hadith of the Prophet .

The Prophet of Allah , he said, إِنَّ الْغِنَى غِنَى النَّفْسِ He said, true contentment, true self-satisfaction.

And in this sense, we're actually maybe even particularly talking about from the financial lens.

True satisfaction, what is the definition of being rich? He said, when your soul and your heart feels rich.

That is when you achieve contentment.

That's when you achieve true happiness.