Psychedelics, Synapses & Spirituality | Mufti Abu Layth

we've got wasim and then we're going to wrap this up can you hear me good mufti i can actually i can hear you very clear this is the clearest anybody's been actually tonight that's my fancy gaming headset all right whoa where are you joining us from wasim i'm from toronto toronto yeah i'm doing it you know with the games you know with the game headsets they don't work with regular devices do they like ipads and knife or like phones and stuff yeah yeah they do they do do they the wireless ones the oh no this

isn't wireless this one's i got a wired one oh right okay okay yeah yeah but i would i would assume they do i would assume they can connect bluetooth or whatever no because a lot of the good ones i've seen you know with all the dolby surround sound and everything yeah they usually say requires windows or something to operate so they usually say like requirements oh no if you want the the surround sound yeah yeah yeah you got it you know the problem yeah yeah yeah then you have to i i could hear these guys sneaking up behind me when i'm playing games you know so it's all right this that's something i've got to get into you know what i've

gotta i gotta start playing some games i guess i actually brought these ages ago uh to think you know what maybe i should try playing some games sometimes never really got around to it wow yeah how was everything mufti yeah things are good so talk to us we'll see what's uh what's on your mind i came on at probably around the two hours and 50 minute mark i just saw you i was like oh okay just because i'm actually new to you know you seem like you have such a beautiful community here you know oh it's it's a pleasure to have you on board man it's uh it's so good so okay yep yeah talk to us so you came on yeah i i uh i caught like when i came on i

think it was the brother his last name was khan yes yeah he was i think you were talking about gangs and like yeah yeah that kind of stuff that's an issue here too and so i i heard is it as bad in in canada it depends i get the impression that america is kind of like certain parties america is another level i used to drive trucks like tractor trailer trucks like uh like lorries lorries as you guys call them yeah yeah right yeah but uh and i'd be although there's some parts of the states you go to and you'd think you drove into a third world country okay yeah but was it dangerous in a dangerous sense it can be i've driven

through areas like in cities where they tell you don't stop at red lights just drive through if it's nighttime oh wow yeah yeah that's in the states or they have the signs prisoners may have escaped like all kinds of crazy stuff in the states yeah yeah just so you know yeah yeah in in other news some psychotic prisoners may have escaped but i i grew up in a really poor neighborhood a lot of my friends were involved in gangs you know i can't i actually yeah yeah i kept myself pretty blessed i think a big part of why i was able to kind of stay out of it

uh was probably because i had you know two parents there to guide me in in certain ways or just to not allow me to get too involved but uh i mean i've been like i've been i've had my like i just been coming into like where i lived was like at a time it was like a lot of tamil diaspora had like moved there from this from civil war in sri lanka oh and so there was a it was in the you know late 90s early 2 late 90s early 2000s i mean just from like a lot of the gang stuff is like you don't really i mean just another person you don't really have a choice like sometimes you're just born into it you know it's

your neighborhood you live in like i was walking in one time and you know carpools up side and they pulled me right in my head right in the window and they said hey are you from gilder and and this is where i lived i lived in gilder they thought it was tumble right in the sum in the summertime i get quite what what were they they were tamil as well yes yes but it was a it was a another tumble gang oh right okay okay yeah and they put a gun so it was like the home beef which they've brought back over here no it wasn't even it wasn't even a spillover it was two separate tunnel gangs so they were both right and but it was and this is a case of mistaken identity oh yeah you as a oh

they put a gun to they put a gun to my face oh yeah wow bloody oh yeah yeah yeah and i'm like i live here man like just trying to go home right like guys i don't roll with you know you got to be like i don't roll with with any i don't roll with gilder boys like i'm not not part of the gang here i just live here man like you know but but it's sad you know my neighbor that i lived next to on my i lived on the 15th floor of a of a high-rise building it's really old busted up building and he he went to jail for attempted murder another one of my best friends went to jail for uh grand theft auto uh you know a lot of poverty and

when you don't have options or opportunities it really it really doesn't allow people to grow and be themselves and then you and then you add on top of that broken homes and like no community isolation you know it really is quite uh in fact there's actually a really popular uh like a really big gang in toronto they're called the halal boys

yeah oh yeah oh man they they're they're like serious they will kill you yeah like no way okay but that's not halal though guys guys guys that's for the harambees you guys are the halal boys yeah yeah you're mixing up the there's a lot of there's a lot of like uh non-muslims too that are part of it what's interesting is is uh serious gang by the way we're not we're not joking i'm not i am not joking it's it's serious yeah yeah when i was a kid in the neighborhood that i lived in uh in this where the school that i went to a lot of the gang violence there was another gang called palace palace yeah yeah seriously

yeah and these guys these guys were these guys were serious some of them were like hafiz office of the quran and they were like gangsters like full of cakes [Laughter] and then like i heard that you see so this this way you need to correct my kind of general trivia about canada so some of the canadians that i was speaking to uh friends look at that era of all

so they were telling me that you see the um they said that the deseas who live because they were we were discussing and they were doing this kind of contrast with the uk and they said well that this is that live in canada the the pakistanis are all kind of very uh educated very professional all into like working like they're not uh of the kind of working class or that kind of stuff or even that kind of gang thing and he said that this was more in canada it was like the seek thing was like that and because what what had happened is

the reason the conversation began they were asking about pakistanis in the uk and i mentioned that how because the pakistani here unfortunately it's it's it's not very pleasant the kind of because it didn't because they came from rural backgrounds so the education was not big on this on on the horizon and then they just got into a lot of drugs and stuff like this so they seem to in many ways very visible or dominate even some of those fears so when we were speaking about this he said oh that's really strange because he said you know he said it's the absolute opposite because he asked what are like

the indian community in the uk like like sikhs so i said well i mean that they're there as well and they generally are better like they're more involved in education in careers they're a bit more kind of towards that kind of middle classy kind of stuff and he said well that it's the absolute opposite in canada and i said so this so is it or it's it's a mix like depending so like you got like toronto proper and then you've got suburbs like scarborough which is like a working class uh like you know working poor kind of like neighborhood then you got mississauga it's another big city just over a million people just uh west

of toronto like kind of connected well what's it great yeah and then and brampton too this is all they call it the greater toronto area all this all these areas and so those areas you're right it is and marcum north of toronto is all like generally business class like immigrants [Music] and and so they're better off and you know usually if you do get like drugs and it's just usually kind of like more like you know people wanting to chase this like yeah yeah you know it's like this dream this tony montana dream or whatever right but yeah but in like the area in it like in scarborough in the neighborhood that i grew up in i mean it wasn't a lot of pakistanis there

was some i had some friends but there are definitely some indo pakistanis also tamils like somalis like it's a very toronto's got the most diverse uh city in the world so over 100 over 140 languages spoken in toronto what the hell yeah wow it makes it makes for great food but it's it's uh but i mean i think i just wanted like my my thing was i just it's so important to just you know they're human beings man like my friends that that got involved they were good people you know they were good people that

unfortunately didn't have good choices to make and you know and sometimes that they didn't have the you know some of us are kind of lifted out by maybe it's not even apparent when we're being lifted but by people around you like you mentioned it could be parents it could be maybe elder family could be siblings it could be friends it could be somebody maybe an opportunity some point somebody got you on you know what you tag along with me this is my work thing this is what i do and you start to learn you get out of an environment because a person is so

contained it's just it's restricted to his environment yeah yeah for sure i mean i i could have easily fallen into dealing drugs very easily it was it was a possib it was a very good possibility but i just knew that if i ever got caught my dad would kill me like he would have taken me back he would my my family's from up in india my dad's family's from european india but both my parents were actually born in guyana in south america okay oh in south america yeah yeah so my which is like part of the like guyana is the only english-speaking it was a

british colony and so basically after slavery was ended they brought like indentured workers from india this is pre-partition right oh yes yes you know they this is like trinidad and in indonesia yes yes yes paul part of the west indies what they call the muslims yeah yeah yeah yeah and so yeah there's you know my parents were working class like my parents my dad was i remember or was it is it what's his name uh or is it russell peters russell peters yeah yeah when he when he's making a joke about that he's saying like okay so the guy that came up with that idea to say i know we need like labor and he goes have you ever looked

at indians it's like it's like okay we could do your accounts for you yeah it's so funny but he's canadian he's connected yeah yeah he's canadian it's crazy because you know i have a lot of i mean i have a lot of relatives and they don't speak about it but like when you see them like they're they look pretty white they got gray eyes and it's because you know their mothers their grandmothers wow yeah because they worked on plantations so they were probably raped right like their grandmothers and stuff so so it's kind of sad because but they almost carried as a badge of honor some of them like like oh you know i'm fair i'm this because you know the culture we

live in yeah but uh yeah a lot of crazy stuff when you look at our history you know um yeah it comes back to the you see it comes back to this this base of suffering for the human journey and this and that it's in interesting because the whole thing today was about that the journey must go on and and i think you see there there is a um a nobility in embracing the suffering but then at the same time not in perpetuating or in kind of extending like you're not

like so many of these uh tragedies and so much of this suffering is is afflicted by one people on to another or one person on to another it's not you know this there's already suffering life already necessitates suffering even if people ain't going to be afflicting it onto you yeah which is enough which is really the suffering that a person supposed and then on top of that you've got you know people just yeah it's makes you think yeah it's sad the other thing that i i find i love that you talk about is uh psychedelics

because uh i had sent you i think i sent you a just an article about uh psychedelics and islamic architecture i don't know if you remember oh yes yes oh my name is yeah that's it that's it yeah yeah yes yes yes oh of course yes i'm thinking right now you know i didn't recognize that that was you but i was thinking that oh i because your picture is there i was thinking oh but it's familiar and i'm trying to put a place to it but okay yes of course that was really it was a fascinating article

uh if you i don't know maybe if you google that i could put it i could i'll put it in the link i'll try and find it and put in the link and then uh it's an amazing article on it's not so so big it's about uh psychedelics the link the correlation between psychedelics and islamic art and he takes a look at certain massages the masjid in shiraz the masjid in different places and how when you look at it it is i mean it definitely unmistakanly appears as kind of psychedelic art to yeah yeah definitely it's it's very interesting for whatever reason it's not letting me i think when i when this chat

ends i'll be able to do it yeah yeah then you'd be yeah yeah it's it's it's been a it's been a huge benefit to me like i i probably do uh i do mushrooms i when i feel the need like i kind of wait to feel it's a very sacred thing for me i'm a very like particular ritual it's a sacred thing you know yeah i end up doing twice a year maybe yeah i i don't like uh to me obviously people can you know people do whatever they want to do but to me i see as almost like it's it's almost it's like a sacrilege borderline

to be doing these things just like as a joke or as uh yes like i see them as very sacred i i don't know anybody that would do like for me i never come to come down from a trip on mushrooms and be like yeah i'm gonna do this tomorrow like it's like man i'm putting i'm putting that together for the next like three to six months of the year like processing everything that happened you know like yeah uh but something like this i realized my headphones just went dead so one second i'll have to put these in yeah right so i think what it did was

what one second let me just go into the bluetooth yeah hey can you hear can you hear me right yep it dropped dead so all right where are they here they are okay see if they connect uh nope did it not connect okay huh did it um i think you know this is the problem with apple devices as well they they can't they don't connect with multiple devices

so let me just once i can try to connect it now not still can you hear me um not yet [Music] what is it connecting to is it connecting to this phone why is it not connecting to that let me take this bluetooth off let me try it now

let me see right i don't know what the hell this is doing could honestly this this is uh just or actually you know what i may be able to just suck it in

be able to actually just put this on a cable maybe that could oh yep you're back yeah okay i could just connect it with the cable i've got a charging cable for some reason you know the this yeah so alright this one one second yeah yep sorry you were saying yeah yeah there's one there's one experience i did what uh uh i don't know you must know of terence mckenna of course of course yeah and so he talked about the heroic dose and i was like yeah i'm gonna do this

and you know i went i took i took i took five grams of mushrooms which is for anybody who doesn't know is is quite a lot right and i was home by myself the kids were uh at their grandparents and my wife was away and i said i i took this and i went turned off all the lights laid down in my bed and i was like okay let's see what happens and ah man like i i didn't i didn't like you like you talked it's a very bizarre like alien feeling you you don't exist anymore in the way that you feel like you do i remember feeling this like and and looking and seeing this vastness it's

like i this feeling of like and we get this feeling sometimes but it was so extreme it's like uh what's the word sublime the feeling of sublime like you know i remember feeling this one time i was i was out canoeing in like a river uh yeah and it was it was silent all around and i'm just canoeing the water's still i'm going down this river and i can't see how like the the rivers maybe just like you know three lanes wide right okay three car lanes wide and i'm i'm going down this river and i look down and from the depths i have no idea how deep it is but from the depths i'm seeing these giant boulders just

slowly coming up as i'm going and just below the canoe maybe a foot below the canoe and then this is this is this is actual or not on this this is this is actual right yeah bisexual yeah but but seeing that seeing that leaves you with because then you're thinking oh my god this is deep like these boulders are not small like they're like going 30 40 50 feet down and i'm looking at them saying oh my god i feel so sm it's like it's like a an awe and a fear at the same time and when you when you on these psychedelics oftentimes it's that but so overwhelming

like you're so overwhelmed by this feeling i remember feeling like the vastness of the universe to the point where like this is never going to end like and it's not even your visual it's like a feeling too that goes with it you know like yeah no and this they say qualitative awareness that happens because they've done you know you know if you look at the fmri's and people can google them the brain scans of people when they're on these things yeah their brain is lit up and what's what's amazing is the new synaptic uh

kind of pathways that are being created it's it's crazy because like so the so the way the brain works is that obviously we've got billions of connections synaptic kind of connections throughout but so there's this heb rule which is that you see when an axon axon kind of fires and it takes a particular pathway now a pathway that it has used it is more likely to repeat as opposed to using a unused pathway so it's a bit like and it's interesting because at a macro level one could say symbolically it's like us

like you go to a supermarket and you park your car but the next time you go you probably park it in the same place where you parked it last time but the first time you it's free game you know you park it anywhere but the second time you go you we're creatures of hobby yeah we go back to where we were if people go into a mosque they put their shoes the next time they come they put their shoes again where they put them the first time so in this in some way at a micro level that's like the heb rule in in the brain with the the axons firing so it uses the same one now what happens is with things like the the sacred kind of plants

new networks are created in those moments and you can they can see the scans of where it's on it's all lit up yeah and they're making new and this is why yeah new connections so this is why you have those realizations all of a sudden as well like whoa yeah yeah it's it's uh it's really such an overall and i feel i feel for months after i'm more empathetic with my children i'm more empathetic with people around me it really changes these things are all about wealth they are all about love and positivity and compassion there's a great

documentary i don't know if you have it on netflix in the uk but there's a there's a documentary if somebody's in canada that's watching it's called fantastic fungi i've seen it yeah and it's epic it's very good it's aesthetic yeah the it's it's just it's just fungi are made they predate plants yeah and it's not it's wild yes there's much mushrooms are fungi fungi however they want to see now they this is not part of the plant kingdom no and it's not part of the animal kingdom but it's closer to animals than it is like then plants are to us so it's

so you you have this whole this kingdom it's not even a species this whole kingdom that is like the world's ecosystem because they show it in that fantasy the visuals how it kind of recycles everything how the mycelium kind of networks underground allow the trees to communicate yeah they all work together it's absolutely it's absolute madness it is yeah it's uh it's i go i go every year with my kids we go and we we pick edible mushrooms and plants and we try

and you know forage as much as we can you can i have found psychedelic ones but you know my kids know not to like eat them that's what i was about to say is your kid comes back he goes dad i haven't found the psychedelic but i've got this flying elephant with me there's actually only a few wild edible mushrooms that you can um really eat raw like most of them you need to cook otherwise they're going to give you some sort of gastrointestinal issues but just what uh uh i i i you had a i remember

i think you had a a talk someone had was saying like you know uh you were making the connection with like uh jalaladin rumi and like that maybe they were having some sort of and i i think that's possible he was saying and he was saying like you know oh no this is kind of like no this isn't this is impossible this is from years like basically this idea that years of like dedication to these practices and you know these types of zikr and like i mean it doesn't negate that it doesn't negate it doesn't it it doesn't yeah i know i but you take you take eight grams of mushrooms and i guarantee you there's nothing like it you know i don't i don't care what you say man like you can you can i mean if you took no

don't take [Laughter] but i mean like it's it's a it's it's a very overwhelming powerful experience what are your thoughts following from that on dmt i i have dmt actually i've tried it but the dmt that i got unfortunately is like a lower dose so i haven't been able to really benefit in the way that i'd like but dmt is in everything you just have

to get that inhibitor basically that allows your body to to process the psychedelic part otherwise your stomach acids just kind of break it down i think with uh dmt but the mao yeah yeah but it's uh i've heard it's just i heard it's very a very very uh powerful actually you should check out this guy he's bizarre this is this is man he's he's very bizarre his name is kalindi e i don't know if you heard of him but he's he's actually uh he's this he's from detroit and he studies like all these traditional african martial arts uh he's maybe in his 50s or 60s

and he's just a very disciplined he pushes himself you know really far he's tried he explores all these different psychedelics and uh you know he's an activist and detroit he's really he does a lot of great work but uh he has slowly taken more and more like raised his dosage of psilocybin mushrooms and this is just uh just to let anybody know this is like never even think about doing this this is a guy that's done it for like the last 20 30 years of his life but he's doing like 30 and 40 grams of mushrooms at a time on a trip and what the hell yeah yeah oh man he's i actually don't know i

actually don't know how to take him i mean this guy has stories about like him he's like one story he said he ended up in a desert and he and he saw these two gins smoking a hookah pipe and he's telling the story and i'm like are you nuts man like what are you talking about right and then he's like then he walked over and they said oh we got a we got a challenge for you we got a challenge for you or or a task for you and he's like i don't take tasks from from jinns they're like okay well have a seat smoke some of this and he's like i'm already high i'm not smoking anything else like i'm i'm already here and then you know he's got this long he's got these crazy stories and i think they are his experiences

like i mean for me i think it's i don't know if it's just internal or if it's external i i don't part of me feels like it doesn't even really matter like what's reality you know what i mean like uh you know the universe is i guess like our world is how we perceive it you know i definitely think that it definitely like you know i know the the other brother was talking about like seeing plants breathing and stuff like that like you definitely puts you more in tune like i mean i i was it makes your senses stronger definitely it is in nature and it it definitely the uh the studies i mean a person could just google there's been quite a bit of studies done

by now and what they found is people usually are much more in in in tune with nature they're much more empathic in general they have much more great concern for humanity love compassion they become like they they they will score much higher on all of these fronts but yeah but i do i think it's important to add as well because that i'm not saying i you see i would not say to people go do this stuff uh people it's their own hundred percent

uh 100 it's not for everyone for everyone it's not for everyone and people and freaked out people it's very difficult but i've had i've had times where it's very difficult yeah yeah and and if they're not trained um it could be incredibly terrifying and it could be like living a nightmare from which you can't escape and and it's so imagine it's like saying if you if you didn't if you weren't sure about swimming and you were dropped into an ocean like and even even if you could swim in an ocean like if it's gone wrong

it doesn't matter how good of a swimmer you are an ocean is an ocean so it's these things this is why i do say it's not for everyone and because they can see people sometimes hear the sweet things and and they are wonderful in from the sweet side and they do all of that but if a person is you see if they are of the path the path will kind of call them this is what i always feel that it's a weird way of communicating if people you see those who explore this just like a kind of buzz or a kind of often

it scares the hell out of them and it will kind of like really really can now maybe not everyone but some some people they can have a really terrible kind of trip and and the crazy thing about it is this you know no holds barred it's it's not there is no escaping it there there's no breaks or parameters in that realm no no no it's not like if you're sitting here if you're sitting here and you're going to fall well at most you can just fall this distance but in the in the world of that there are no parameters what you may go through is

put it like this it is your it is open to as far and even beyond your imagination yes yes that is pretty very easy fast and scary yeah it's very early it's very unlike anything and you know sometimes i i mean i always say like like people that like like my friends that have approached me sometimes like if they really want to try it i will like i will just stay with them and let's kind of remind them hey you're okay you know i'm here like trip sitting like yes absolutely yeah and no but it's it's it'll as well people must have often like or they ought to have a trip sitter and they ought to

where they do these things obviously these issues of legalities depending on certain countries it's not an issue and then there's issues of uh the strategy and or coordination like they should be trip sitters they should be people that overseeing people to help them people to because you know the whole thing is a it is sacred and it but just like anything sacred it has a whole practice with it it's not just something yeah you gotta start really start slow if you if you're thinking if anybody's thinking about doing it definitely talk to somebody that's experienced and start very slow

because i mean it it can bring up i've had trips where i've just cried for five hours straight and just difficult you know and and if you're not prepared for that then you probably shouldn't you know like and and and i i the way i though i go into it kind of with the attitude of like uh even even things that are difficult are still good you know like i mean like that's yeah that's true i feel that you see i i do go i mean this is now a different side so that's me talking to people but then there's like my personal thing so my personal thing is and this is just for me not for people i i agree with

that philosophy that there's no such thing as a bad trip that it's only it's always something which will open certain doorways to certain realizations and understandings of the cosmos and of reality but i get it that that's not for everyone and you can't just there because i think this the sensibility of just highlighting because it is true people sometimes may just hear the glamour you know it's like somebody may think oh wow you know you go to a gym and you do is that how it works you know i'm going to jump pick something up dropping on themselves and break you know some serious bones but

although people don't do it as bad in this but in that in when it comes to sacred stuff or medicine plant medicine yeah it's i agree with you man 100 but it's not um it has a calling and yeah i don't know if you've heard of uh salvia divinorum yes yes that that was probably it only lasted five minutes but uh it was like yeah you you smoke it yeah yeah and it

only lasts five minutes i mean it feels um it could feel very long like when you're in it you've got uh i don't know how to pronounce the name psychedelics brought me to islam may allah bless your journey yeah yeah it's i i uh i still joke with my friend i'm like we're gonna wake up because we used to live together i'm like we're gonna wake up in our living room coming out of our trip because it's the first time you realize how powerful these things are your reality you're seeing a different reality that is just as real that is just as

real as more real yes yeah yeah it's not like dreaming no no no no no if it was like dreaming it'd be no problem right it's nothing like dreaming it's like this except more real than this it's such a powerful thing and it's it's been such so beneficial for me like you know dmt is is like that but to the other level it's like advanced yes i've you know i'm it's it's uh

not easy to come by no no no i guess yeah yeah you know in canada uh 5meo dmt is not uh i think that's still legal within canada um 5m which is like the kind of daddy version to tmt yeah right which is basically it's just just sheer death guilty and true death and then just ceasing to exist and then existing and you're like what the hell what's that yeah but you know what it's but it yeah it's

what i do find amazing though i mean what no sorry what i find kind of amusing though is that i get it that these things are not for everyone i get all of that but the control that governments do over stuff like this i find it absurd it's shady too i think i mean the whole anti-war movement was born out of psychedelics yeah and i think i think this i think there's something to i think they realize that you know this this really if we allow people to alter their consciousness these will not be sheeple you won't just have these sheep they will be people

that are gravitate towards love i mean 100 percent yeah like they you know i mean you could not like this russian thing this this thing going on right now it could not happen if people were like on you know if they if people had were you know consuming things that and they were on this kind of state of law this is why like you mentioned the happy era the hebrew era was all about this wasn't it love and spirituality and this is where it came from yeah yeah i think they had it without i think that the problem with the hippie area is that they weren't grounded in really any type of spiritual heritage and that's the problem they're just kind of like

uh you know and and there's there's beauty in that too in exploring this kind of spiritual world but but when you have a framework which we do islamically right like i feel like it can be very beneficial yeah yeah absolutely then it's something else then it's a game changer because you are nested and you are kind of anchored in this this prism of this kind of these these roots of faith and yeah yeah you know there's this there's this uh do you listen to hip-hop at all uh not much not much there's this album by he's a pretty mainstream artist his name's logic

and it was it's like it's like two two albums ago but he has this intro it's very sufi the the intro to it like uh the concept behind it and he's like he's talking to this he's like years and thousands of years in the future something like that on a spaceship and like they're like this thing's questioning him and they're like oh you know and basically what he goes to say is that like you haven't lived fulfilled your life until you've lived as everybody as like yourself as your as you know the poor person as the rich person as like you know hit from everyone from the most detestable to the to the best and it's kind of like

this weird connection that you know we're all human it makes it for me like when i think about these things i i think about like man i used to see like i mean i was out there man like i was ready to like head overseas and like join some sort of majahadeen like group like i have a weird like history and like you know i helped you know i feel like i helped a lot of people kind of look turn away from that too like at least the people that were around me but like uh it's nothing's black and white yeah did this did this stuff help you kind of navigate to away from that and stuff no this was more back then was very like

funny enough i was yeah this is when i was like in my you know 9 11 happened i had like a identity crisis i was very muslim i was like i felt this need to be like wear my kufi and like you know go to school and like i'm muslim what you got to say about muslims you know like it's very complicated and then i'm like what do i actually believe like what do i you know and then you know i think a lot of people went through that when when 9 11 happened and and you know kind of re-engaged with their spiritual heritage and you know and that it was it's a growth it's a it's a it's a you know we all grow and but because yeah you see we grow by

big you see this there's an there's a stage a necessary stage of becoming more or a heightened self-consciousness so whenever that happens there's this kind of growth and or potentially there's there's room for growth anyway to pivot and it's so so when 9 11 happened everybody's kind of looking at muslims so when people stare at you because of something you become more self-conscious of it prior to that you may not be thinking oh you know like maybe you know you're taking it for granted you you are still muslim but

you're not as self-conscious yeah it's interesting because i i feel as well i mean i've spoken about this in on other episodes that since we were speaking about let's say psychedelics that one of the things um sorry one of the interpretations of the uh forbidden fruit was it being a psychedelic kind of uh plant or whatever it is um now because what it results in is greater self-consciousness like in the quran it mentions um that adam ali salam

um following consuming whatever this forbidden fruit is they he becomes and they become self-aware greater self-aware like they already self-aware but they become they have a height like a higher sense of self-awareness that they they get embarrassed that they want to cover the nakedness which is to do with like so shame ties into a higher sense of self-awareness so being more self-aware yeah yeah it's very interesting it's it's very interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't wanna i don't wanna keep you muffy i know it's late and i just wanna like i just want to tell you i'm

very thankful you know for the stuff you put i happened on your stuff uh a a couple of years ago i think it was probably a couple years ago and it was just like salat according to the maliki fick because i i became alaki a long time ago my family my family grew up and you know i was really like it was very theologically minded everything was i could i was like i'll convince everybody that islam is the truth you know it's very like i'll argue with this person and you know all all of my close friends actually became muslim around me right like not because of me this is this is this is not me at all like but like yeah but i think we just had this

sense of community and like we and you know we've all kind of went our own ways and you know we do different things and a lot of it was misguided back then everything was very black and white this is i think theology sometimes does that you think you have the answers to everything and uh you know now i just realize things are a lot more gray but i really appreciate your content and uh it's a it's i think a lot of people a lot of people do because i've always approached it from a more philosophical like now i approach it definitely a more philosophical perspective ibn cena and these these guys are like champions of my mind you know like yeah yeah so

shukran man was him i really appreciate your words may allah bless you and we will stay stay connected and we'll stay in touch for sure inshallah yeah definitely send anything coming to canada uh maybe some point yeah we've got two man this guy there's a lot of people from canada listen i've seen so many people connect to you from from canada yeah yeah i must say i do have uh you know a very heartwarming amount of receptivity from uh canada i see on the whenever i do check the analytics it's it's canada you guys canadians are doing it they are yeah so take care man speak soon much love

yeah so god bless you salaam alaikum people that were seen from toronto you