As salaam alaikum Reader,

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I pray this message finds you well.

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I'll get right to the point...Did you know that your teeth can get weak as a result of not eating enough hard or even tough food?

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Did you know that our hips, particularly in women, get weak and brittle as a result of overcompensating for weak abdominal muscles?

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What does this say, at least to me, about our nature generally and 'mental health' specifically...?

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If we misuse our faculties, we break them. Teeth need hard, difficult food to eat. They need to bite and chew and be put to work. It's what they were made for and depriving it of fulfilling its purpose actually makes it less able to fulfill its purpose. We end up with this weird self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. If you are afraid to eat hard things because it will damage your teeth, you will by definition damage your teeth and subsequently be unable to eat hard things. In the case of teeth, even if you ate all the calcium in the world, but you didn't eat hard food, you would still have weak teeth because you are telling your body (by way of eating soft food) that you dont need strong teeth! Your body won't waste time supplying minerals to places that aren't using them. As a matter of fact, that calcium will build up in the blood and cause very serious problems if it has no where to go, and you only tell it where to go by what you do. Your actions are the communicator of what is needed where.

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As for hips..it happens that especially for woman as a result of pregnancy , our abdominal muscles go through extended periods of relaxation (not the relaxing kind of relaxation but the physiological type of relaxation) as the hormone relaxin softens our muscles during pregnancy. This puts pressure on our back and hip to compensate and work overtime to support our bodies while the relaxed abdominal muscles make space for growing babies. If we don't strengthen these muscles again post-birth we end up having a prolonged , if not permanent, period of time where the muscles in the hips and back are now doing not only their normal job to support the body, but they have taken on the major job of the abdominal muscles as well. These abdominal muscles wrap around from our backs to stomach and they are meant to be the corset of the body and its main support. Prolonged pressure on the back and hips contribute to a weakening of all of the muscles in those groups...back and abdominal, and hence osteoporosis and brittle hips, most especially in women in older age.,

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Using our faculties for other than their intended purpose contributes to atrophy and acute stress of those faculties.

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Our minds need to contemplate the truth of God. Our hearts are the loci of faith and the knowledge of God.

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Using our minds to do the hearts work will break it. The mind cannot fully know God as He is beyond our rational comprehension. Ultimate Truth, al-Haqq, Ultimate Reality is not a game of mental gymnastics. Ultimate Truth is revealed upon the hearts of the one who seeks it from the Source as a favor from Him. Allah tells us in Quran that this book is a guidance for those who are pious. (2:2) Allah later says of piety (Taqwa) (2:127):

To break the mind we need only to misuse it, making it the ultimate path to knowledge of God and truth. To break the mind we can stress it to do a job it cannot do effectively over a long period of time. The mind can assist, and it is meant to assist. It can understand to a certain point, but it has a lane it must stay in. The mind is sharpened by its submission to God, it is developed by contemplating the truths revealed to the heart, that is its zone of excellence.

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As for ultimate reality, love, happiness, purpose, satisfaction...these are in the domain of the heart. It is via that heart that we find tranquility with the words of Allah, that we find piety and guidance by the permission of Allah.

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The heart has its capacity that supersedes that of the mind. The knowledge of God was revealed to the hearts and this fed and expanded the faculties of the mind. May Allah allow us to use His gifts appropriately as a matter of gratitude and getting the most from them.

May Allah forgive me if I misspoke and continue to guide us all.

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Wa salaam alaikum

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PS-I'm working on a 'Self-love Detox E-book' available for free soon. Look out for more info forthcoming insha'Allah

Also, Hamd & Shukr planners are available at plan-barakah.com​

Check out thepathtopresence.com for more articles, media, and classes.

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