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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr. Kanwal Akhtar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you. Today we're going to be talking about how your set point affects your worship. Now you have to remember from part one what your consciousness set point is. It's the baseline that you're operating from. And in my program we measure this as an SQ score or soulful intelligence quotient. This SQ score represents your default operating level, the wavelength at which you interpret life. A low SQ means chronic dysregulation. A higher SQ means regulated perception and access to choice. In the month of Ramadan, we are working to elevate our set point, and worship is one of the primary technologies that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave you to recalibrate your nervous system. In this episode, I'm going to explore how Ibada can either be performed from survival mode or used as medicine to come out of survival mode. It can be used to raise your SQ and refine your perception. When I say your consciousness set point is low, I'm not speaking metaphorically. A low SQ is chronic nervous system dysregulation. It is your body living in prolonged survival mode, and despite of popular belief that this is your personality or it is weak amon, it is not that. It is not moral failure or a cumulative effect of your past mistakes. It is a collection of thoughts that you are having at any given moment. Chronic dysregulation is a system that is adapted to threat and all of your thoughts and perceptions are either detecting threat or protecting you from it. At a low set point your thoughts feel factual, urgent, convincing, because your nervous system is primed for danger, and you may call it being realistic or being cautious, but underneath all of it is where your body does not feel safe enough to access choice and thought. In this state, your interpretation engine is compromised and you're working with a very narrowed perception. Chronic dysregulation explains the exhaustion you feel as a woman where your body is cycling between fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. And even if you're high functioning and highly productive, you can be in survival mode. A low set point just means that your system is overloaded, and when overload becomes normal, you forget what regulation looks like, and you think that rest is unsafe or unfamiliar and peace feels foreign. In this state, raising your SQ is not abstract self-improvement. It is teaching your body that the present moment is not the past and it is expanding your window of tolerance. If a low set point is chronic dysregulation, then a higher set point is regulated perception. And the difference between the two determines whether life feels like a constant threat or your engaging with it with dignity. And yes, as suggested, it is a skill that you can learn and adopt. A low consciousness set point of chronic dysregulation does something very devastating. It creates an invisible but a gaping distance between the creator and the creation. You are not separated from Allah by sin, as much as you are separated by survival thinking about the sin. And until that set point rises, you will keep mistaking your survival thinking as the punishment of your sin, and you will keep mistaking your fear and tension for having high faith. This is where I find a lot of Muslim women saying things like the more hardships you go through for the sake of Allah, the bigger the reward, isn't it? Now for sure that is true. If you're going through a hardship with high iman, there is reward for you, and that's something I cannot even claim to know what it is. But what I am bringing your attention to is where your set point keeps your subconscious mind engaged in hardship. Your mind will look for hardship, create it, and it will try to survive hardship, even when hardship doesn't even exist outside of you. It gets created almost in anticipation. From a low consciousness set point, you do not see the ease, even if it's right next to hardship, which is promised by Allah in Sura ninety four IF five and six Fainna Marl Ursri Yusra Inna Marsri Yusra. So surely with hardship comes ease, surely with that hardship comes ease. You are not metaphorically separated from Allah, you're experientially disconnected due to dysregulated perception. When your nervous system cannot register safety, and without safety you cannot feel closeness, that's when the system is constantly overloaded, and Allah's love and mercy does not feel accessible. In that case you might keep increasing your ritual hoping that it will close the gap. But the gap is not behavioral, it is not action based. It's physiological, it's based on your inner perception. You're trying to reach Allah with your nervous system that has not been yet taught to connect to Allah through that ritual. You can be highly vigilant and conscious about worship and still be dysregulated. You can pray on time, fast, read Quran consistently, and your nervous system can still be operating in survival mode. And this worship performed from a low consciousness set point does not mean it's invalid, I'm not the judge for that. The problem is not your sincerity either. But during Ramadan, we are trying to turn Ibadah into regulation, and that takes on a whole new meaning. For many of us we turn to Ibadah as a way to regulate ourselves, and many of us have reached that point, Hamdalillah, and it works beautifully. When Sulah slows you down and you have kushru and connection, when Quran softens your perceptions and brings you ease, but sometimes that does not happen. Sometimes you pray and you still feel agitated, sometimes you make dua and you still feel restless. That does not mean that it's from Allah, and it does not mean that you're lacking faith, it means that your nervous system may need additional support to come back online that it hasn't received yet. Ribada overall is meant to elevate you, but if your body is deeply dysregulated, that might not be the only option for you. It may need gentler entry points before you can fully receive the elevation. And if worship does not immediately regulate you, it is not a moral indictment, don't treat it as such, it is not a punishment, it's not hypocrisy from your part, it is just information. The obligatory act that might feel distant do not need to be abandoned in this journey. They are your anchors, but the way you approach that worship is going to need to shift. Your intention to raise your consciousness set point is its self worship. When you engage in this deskia, when you seek self regulation, when you refine your perception, you are performing ivada. It is just happening internally. That elevation has that downstream effect on every act of worship that you engage in and every relationship you are in in your life. The higher set point increases the quality of your salah, the quality of your patience, your marriage, your leadership. Your refinement is the essence behind your worship. Some people perform rituals, other people experience regulation. On the outside, both of their actions look identical, both stand in salah, both recite, both are doing azgar, but internally something very different is happening. And the difference is not in the act, the difference is in the operating level. For a lot of us, ritual performed from a low set point might feel mechanical to you, pressured, and the body is present, but the nervous system creates a sense of threat. You're reading the Quran, you're completing the pages, and the act is technically correct, but if your inner arena remains unchanged, your nervous system is dysregulated. Regulation, on the other hand, will shift your state. This is where the act of Irabada penetrates your subconscious mind. The same type of dhikr that you might be doing before with a regulated nervous system becomes a stabilizer for racing thoughts. Worship from a higher operating level expands your inner arena. It creates space between trigger and reaction outside of the acts of worship. It takes out the sense of urgency, it widens your perspective. And here, while you're performing from devotion and all of your acts look sincere, but you're also being reorganized by them internally. This is why two people can engage in the same act of worship and have completely different outcomes. One might continue to be anxious, rigid, self-critical, and the act itself doesn't change. The other one might become softer, clearer, more regulated, more grounded. When your consciousness set point rises, worship does not remain to be something that you do. It becomes something that refines you. And the goal of Ramadan to me is not just ritual accumulation. It is regulated elevation of those rituals. The acts might look the same. The difference is at the level from which you're operating from, the level from which they're being performed. A regulated nervous system is not a luxury, it is not self care culture, it is not a soft skill, it is an absolute necessity. When we say this body is your amana, we reduce it to the visible flesh and blood, what we eat, how we dress, our basic hygiene. And yes, your body is muscles and skin, but it also carries within it your very profound and strong nervous system. It carries your stress responses, it carries the imprint of your past experiences. So the physiological wiring that determines how you interpret the world, that too is your amana. Regulation cannot be performative, not because Allah demands perfection from you, but because perception depends on your state. A chronically dysregulated braced nervous system will narrow your vision and it will only work to amplify the threat that might not even be real. It pushes you into fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses, and you can intend to think well, to assume good, to trust in Allah, but your physiology might be doing something completely opposite. The difference between ritual and the regulation with ritual is what the Quran repeatedly calls us to do, and that is to ponder, to observe, and to reflect, and this creates the very required regulation that we all need. You cannot deeply contemplate when your nervous system is flooded. So then I want to define this concept with the three layers of worship. From the famous hadith of Jibril, the religion is described in three layers Islam, Iman and Isan. Most people think of worship in a single layer, what you do, but worship operates from three distinct layers, and if you only focus on the first, you can increase your activity without increasing your elevation, without increasing your consciousness set point. So the layer one is behavioral, what you do, that is Islam. This is the visible layer, the actions, the measurable acts. The Tahajud, the Taravi, the charity. This is the layer most communities emphasize because it is observable and accountable. You either prayed or you did not, you either fasted or you did not. This is measurable, very structured, very disciplined, and this is the layer that matters deeply, because the behavior is what anchors you, it shapes your rhythm, it anchors your commitment. This behavior is the container, and without this container there is no scaffolding of growth. But the behavior itself, like I told you before, does not guarantee your elevation. You can increase layer one dramatically and remain internally unchanged. Then comes layer two, the nervous system, the state you are in. This is your Iman. This is the invisible layer, it is extremely powerful. It is the physiological and the psychological state you bring into the act. Are you grounded or rushed while you're performing your worship? Your nervous system is what determines whether worship lands or it becomes hurried and pressured. If you enter Salah in a fight mode and it constantly feels tense and rushed, your act is there but your engagement is suboptimal. If you enter Salah while you're regulated, the same prayer will heal you. In this layer of Ibada, the act does not change, your state does. Then there is layer three, the perceptual layer, the interpretation you assign. This is the level of Isan, and this is the highest layer. This is where your consciousness set point should be operating from. This is the meaning you assign to the act of worship you're engaging in and how you get to experience it. This is what creates a difference between the hardship that you experience in Ramadan as ongoing punishment or outcome of purification. Layer three determines if your worship elevates you or leaves you tethered to hardship. Two people can perform the same act in the same state and still assign a different meaning. One sees growth and the other one sees inadequacy. One sees mercy, the other one sees judgment through their own self judgment. Layer three is where the potential lives where your highest set point can be. This is the life of Yassan, the disciplined perception, an upgraded internal operating system. All these three layers matter. Layer one without layer two is just mechanical acts, layer two without layer three is emotional but mostly dysregulated emotions if it remains unchecked, and layer three is where the mechanics meet the elevation of your soul. When all three layers align, the behavior, the regulation and the refined perception, worship is truly transformative for your own sake. While the same worship might live in your daily schedule as actions, it also reorganizes your nervous system. It elevates your consciousness set point. It changes how you experience Qadr itself. InshaAllah in this month you accumulate a wealth of rewards through your acts of Rabada, all while refusing to let gravity win, and you raise your consciousness set point and let your worship reorganize you. With that I pray to Allah, Ya Allah, do not let my nervous system distort the mercy that you have on me. Do not allow my fear to speak louder than your promise of mercy. Upgrade my perception so I can see the ease with the hardships. Raise my set point of perception and make my worship reorganize me only to get closer to you. Amin Yarabul Amin. Please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.
