Islam & NLP - Neuro - Linguistic Programming - Introduction. English subtitles
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There is a word for getting to know yourself: adventure
Islam & NLP for optimal communication
Discover your origin here and now
We all have our own model of the world
As a guest at Secret Garden
I would like to talk to you this evening less from the head and more from the heart. As you may notice, I am always looking for answers: what else is there.The more I learn from Islam, the more I understand myself, the world around me and how my body and mind connect. That is a common thing in Islam and NLP. NLP is an attitude, a curiosity, a curious attitude about everything.
Why am I here? Why do I exist? What does my life add up to this world?
This all is what Islam means to me, it's not about: "oh I have to do this...I must do this, if not then I end up in hell ..etc.." This way of thinking, this way of living and practicing Islam sounds very horrible to me. What a difficult life it must be, if you choose to lead it that way. Keep yourself all the time in this "prison world". Everything you do is a must and nothing is out of your heart, out of passion, out of love. Horrible!
Communication, there are many books about this topic. Best way to conclude all these books is a saying of the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him: "If you have anything good to say, say it, if you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t talk at all" Leave everyone in his/her value. Other quote of the prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h.: “if you find yourself among people who talk in very negative ways, ways that Allah won't approve, then ask them to change the subject if possible, if they refuse, leave them and come back when they are ready and willing to change the subject" If they refuse, fine! You as a Muslim, it’s not your task to force the world to change! The world is not yours to change or to enslave! Note how the prophet says that one can come back when the group is ready to change subject. He didn’t want to part people. He always choose to believe in the goodness of people and in the bond.
Allah created the good and the bad and it's up to us to make the choice.
The very first word that was ever revealed to the prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel was: "read!". The prophet was held firmly by the angel and he was asked to "read". Read in the classical Arabic means read, discover, educate yourself etc.
A human body and mind is not an accident of nature. You being here on this planet is not by accident. You have a mission. You can never say: "hey! I am what I am and I cannot be changed!"
Your ego, your soul is like a wild horse. This horse needs to be tamed first or at the very least Halter-broke. This is your soul. This is how it behaves if you don’t train it! Appreciate your fellow human the way he/she is. You are not here to change people. You should realize that we all have our very own model of the world. We have one big beautiful blue planet and Within this planet, we all live in our own little blue sub-planets if you will. What is the best way to communicate? If I say something to you, what does it do to you when you receive my message....that is one of basic attitudes of NLP: to learn from a model you respect a lot. Learn from his or her way of doing things that help get results. Think about what Fritz Perls said:"I am not in this world to live up to others people's expectations nor do I feel the world must live up to mine." Your life, your way of life and your model of the world. I am not your Creator and your are not mine Creator. We don’t owe each other an explanation about our lives and the choices we make. We are on the same level. Your choices, your life, as long as the choices you make are not affecting my life and creating limits to my life. Don’t expect from me to be what you want me to be. Don’t expect from me to change and to become someone you prefer me to be. You don’t have to like me, but that is different than wanting to change me. ...Where are you standing now and where would you like to be? You are at point A, how can you get to B? Skip the endless talking and get in action! The beating heart if NLP is observe, watch and learn from your role model! Choose someone that achieved something ecological..... my thing that I passed on to my child, my poison, my ideas! I forced my ideas on my child! Because children are neutral, everyone that comes to this world is objective and then we change it in The first years of life....if you are not happy then what’s the reason? why are you not happy? you as a human soul were made in heaven! you are made from goodness and there for you should be able to feel good! Islam teaches us that we should feel good and lead happy lives because we were made in heaven. So how come so many of us feel so depressed, bitter and angry? you come to this earth and you forget who you should be and how you should be. That is strange! you were created from something beautiful and you turn into this bitter human. That doesn’t make sense! This is also one of the teaching of NLP: every human be is capable of being happy! That is what we were made for, to choose how to lead our lives and to be happy! If you can’t do this, then something went wrong in the process, then you must be damaged in a way or another. Then there must be something or some one that is keeping that happiness away from you. "Oh people! Your god is One and your father is one, Adam..." by the prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. By saying this, the prophet focused on what we have in common and not what separates us from each other. The prophet did not say: "Oh wait! you have brown eyes, and you have blue eyes, no! he said : we are one! ...if you think you want to be better than me or you think you can beat me, then show me that you can do more good than I do! Show me for example how you can take care of your fellow human in better ways than I do. Show me then that you can bring more good things into this world then I do! Only then you can be better than me! In terms of making the world a better place. Only this make it a good competition! That is what Islam teaches us, we have within us everything we need to become an almost perfect human being! Allah appreciates those who educate themselves! Allah appreciates people who work on improving their life and their souls on regular basis. When Allah created us, He decided He wanted to create something that contains a part of Him within it. And so He created us! Do you know how Allah created us? ..a beautiful story actually! with a beautiful moral. The human was made out of different sorts of clay! different colors! perhaps was this clay taken from different worlds. Allah mixed all of this and from it He created Adam. What can we learn from this? Could this mean that diversity is good? You, who is sitting there with your blond hair, you next to her with dark hair.....you are exactly the way you meant to be created. It was Allah's intention to make us all different in some ways! That is our origin. we were created from diversity. So I am not an accident. I am not just anyone. I was made the way I was on purpose. I was made in heaven. I am not just your next best thing! I am it! I am a human! Don’t come and insult me. if you choose to insult me, you choose to insult HIM. You choose to insult something that was made out of perfection. How dare you? how dare you insult something that was made in heaven? something that was made out of perfection. something so beautiful that has led to us. How dare you say things like: "you are black, so you are not welcome", "you are blond, so you are not welcome", "you don’t believe in god, so you are not welcome", "you are a Christian, so you are not welcome" or " you re Jewish, so you are not welcome" how dare you? How can you insult or hate your own kind? He or she was created from the very same clay. How dare you to insult something that was created by the Noble Hands of Allah? Latterly, Allah said that He will put effort and energy in making us. This time He didn’t say: "be and it was there" , He wanted to make effort to show and learn us that when you believe in something, you put your effort and energy into it. So this is what Allah thinks of us. That we are His most beautiful creation! there for no one has the right to say to another: "you are less then I am or I am more then you are". If you want to act big and dangerous to scare people, ask yourself this: am I doing this for my god or for my ego? You are certainly not doing so for Allah, in His name, because He has ALL the power and He can defend Himself perfectly. If you have troubles with another fellow human, don’t say that this is not your problem. He can drop dead if he likes, no! It's also your problem. You were involved in contact that caused this reaction. So the least you can do is ask yourself what you could have done in differently to get another response. You always go back and study your actions and learn from your mistakes. Everything that is going on around you and that may seem as the truth and the only truth to you is just an illusion. Realize that this is always your version of reality. Your truth and not THE truth. This is the outside world, the impulses you receive. It goes thru your life filters and only then it reaches the brains. So who are you to claim that your truth is the only truth.....or is it because others think I should be someone I am not, identity. or is it because others expect me to live their lives instead of mine? not what I want and not what makes me happy, my mission. Because if I can't live toward my goal in my own life then I will never be able to get receive the right guidance from Allah, from above. You will then never be able to connect with the universe the way you should. There for it's very important to lead your life and go after your own goals, your own mission. And if you don’t get , you can’t pass on what you don’t have. ...I feel cold, I feel hunger, do I have to think about missions and goals while I am still here feeling hungry and unhappy? Your soul is like a wild horse that won't surrender without a fight. A wild horse wants to be and stay free forever. A wild horse does not want to be halter-broken. This is your soul in a raw version. This is what Islam teaches us. If you want to control this wild horse, then you will have to work hard. Train it, educate it. Then you must shape and reshape your soul. Your souls is like a spoiled little child. The soul wants to have fun and only fun, all the time....take your soul from the level where it wants to be bad and naughty to the level where its willing to receive feedback....and now we come to the last stage, the pure soul. This is a soul that is in full control of itself. That is how Allah challenged us, He asked us to train our soul and take it from the ground level to the highest level. Do not leave your soul in the evil mood, but instead train it and take it to the stage where it becomes pure and wise....so that you won’t say things anymore like, hey if I hit then it’s your problem. to become this person that is aware of his/her actions and always aware of better ways he can use to make contact with others. Those are the 7 stages of the soul in Islam. So what Allah is basically saying is: if you don’t educate yourself, then you can’t refer to yourself as Muslim. This is what Qur’an teaches us. ..respect the model of the world of others. If you choose to see the world only in your way, what happens then what this only way is blocked one day? then you are trapped. How did I manage to lose contact with the other? we should all be able to make report in excellent way. We have the same origin. How is it possible that two people, two objects made out of the same origin, can't work together? ....absolutely! it's difficult when you get stuck in the why-question. (Emir: what I mean is that people stay too long trying to answer the why-question). Emir told me that a lady called to ask why I have chosen to do my pilot about Islam & NLP and not just NLP. Like I have said, there are so many books about Islam, so I am not here to promote this religion. That is not my goal, at least not in this case. But I am also not here to teach NLP. I am not here as an Imam (which I am not). I am here to hopefully....I am still working on this..so I am happy....I am also learning to improve it while I am sharing it like now....when so many people dare to claim that religion is a bad thing that puts walls between people, how come? how can we cure religion? Religion is supposed to be something else. something good. Religion used to be different. Religion was healthy and we made it sick. How hard is it to say: this is my life and that is your life. As long as we don’t harm each other? I don’t understand why this seems impossible to some people.
( Emir: my question/ suggestion: is it people to do this presentation in a different language so that more people who don’t speak Dutch can benefit?) . I can try to do this in English, but as far as Arabic goes....I am not sure...(someone from the audience: I can try to help you to translate this all in Arabic). Great! Thank you!...you are not here to change people. Only people themselves can change themselves. We can only hope they get inspired one day and start this process. It's his or her journey to make and to go thru all the 7 stages of the soul we talked about to get to the level where the soul becomes pure. Only then one can realize how important it is to live in peace and show respect. You can help by asking him questions that will shake his model of the world. ...I am not here to judge you or change you, only thing I would like to know is where do you want to go with this?...if you decide you can’t change the other after you did try, then you can only respect his model of the world. To have respect for the model of the world of another does not mean you have to become the other. It means you look at it from a comfortable distance and you respect it. That is his or her world, fine! But I will respect it from this distance and I stay in my world where I feel comfortable and happy. Think about what Allah teaches us in the Qur'an: if you find yourself in a bad company, give them a chance to change, but if they refuse, then leave. and you can choose to come back if the company improved. Islam believes in the goodness of people and prefers not to keep people apart.
(Emir:...but you have your brains, you should be able to think even if you don’t get guidance..) . But that is exactly what I am saying also. Allah does not say that we are dumb and we can’t think. what He does is translate things for us in a way that we understand the importance of it. For example: when you buy a new TV. set, you get a manual. This manual is important. Without it, you don’t know what button does what. how come we appreciate this? how come we don’t feel insulted then? Why do we see the importance of manuals that come with all kind of devices? I have never heard anyone explaining how this insults his intelligence. I have also never heard anyone explaining how his doctor insulted his intelligence by giving him notes about how to use the medication. If you claim to be smart, then you should be able to go your whole life without any explanations or manuals. Because you are then saying that you have knowledge of everything. I look at the Qur’an as a manual and never as an insult to my intelligence. The holy Qur’an is a manual that teaches me how to use my body and mind in an excellent maximum way. That is how I see it. or if people think they don’t have to think for themselves because Allah already did so...fine....if that is what makes them happy. (Emir: people are most of the time so afraid of religion..) ..you know Emir, it has everything to do with what we project and what we choose to enlarge. Allah has 99 beautiful blessed names. These names are at the same time His qualities. Some of the names are: Friend, Protector, Love, Light...so why would I choose to focus only on the Punisher?..
nothing in your life is by accident. everything you go thru is part of the plan. even the less good things are there to help the process going. You have the choice to stay where you are and feel sorry for yourself or become your very own Marco Polo and go discover your life, take a trip and see what you don’t understand about it and make a list of things you want to examine more. It’s your life we are talking about. isn’t this the least thing you can do? If you don’t make effort to improve your life, body, mind, what else is there that is worth the effort? It’s your life and the least you can do is try to understand it. Yes we do have free will and yes we can decide what way we go most of the time. But on some crossroads, points that we are very important for the process, where we are not allowed to make the wrong choice, Allah steps in and makes the choice for us to prevent our train from going off the rails. Allah would want us to succeed in our mission. We are all stars in this big show called life on earth. we are all important. Those you actually believe they are more important and that the world is involved around them, are to be compared (with all respect) to a clown in a busy circus. A clown that is dying to get and keep everyone focused on his act only. This, while the clown knows that after him there will be another act. You are not alone and the circus is not build around you. The audience is there to see the full programm. To see also what is there besides your act. You are only one part of it. You are very very important in your own act. But you are not the whole programm of the show. If you wish to separate the truth from false, do so by your heart and your emotions. We have the head as instrument to learn the exact faculties, math etc. and we have the heart and the emotions to learn the spiritual things and to connect with the spirit of the universe. Because if you give your heart and your emotions less importance, then you must seriously ask yourself why you have them. Because if you think you can use them only for love for a partner and for material, then they are getting very little credit from you then they should. Remember the ancient cultures, as far as I am concerned, stopped existing because of mysterious reasons. Maya's, Inca's, the ancient Egyptian culture, the ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire. All were very strong cultures that made a difference and left something behind for eternity. We are still trying to understand these cultures. The sad thing is, the people that were living then, were like you and me now. They lived from day to day, street in street out, house in house out, went from one activity to another. They didn’t realize they would leave so many questions unanswered about their lives. And now, years and years after their death, we are here to try to answer the questions for them. From where we are standing now on the timeline, we see and understand more and there for we can answer more questions. I really hope that your life won’t end in this same way. I hope that your life won’t become an assessment for some one else to try to figure it out and appreciate it. thousands of years after your death. It’s your Life, you are here now, your world, you are here and now and it's your assessment!
