68 Blemishes of the Nafs

The 68 Blemishes of the Nafs

To clean the nafs of the 68 blemishes listed below is the beginning of good adab which is the greater part of Islam and of Sufism.

Ujub - to be proud of one’s spiritual state
Riya - to show off
Kibr - arrogance
Hasad - envy
Bukhul - miserliness
Kin - to be vengeful
Kufr - faithlessness
Bid’at- to distort religion and tradition
Kufran-i ni’met - to deny the giver of gifts or to belittle the gifts
To be disatisfied and complain about one’s state
To cease to have hope for Allah’s Mercy
To be sure of Allah’s punishment
To condone tyrrany and help tyrants
To speak against decent people
To keep the heart attached to this world
To keep wanting to be a leader
To expect approval and compliments
To fear criticism
Not to be able to prevent oneself from wanting
Instead of wishing to learn the truth, being an imitator
To fawn over people for personal benefit
To be happy about disasters that fall upon people, even your enemies
To be a coward
To be angry
To be a tyrant
Not to keep one’s word
To believe in bad luck
To think unjustly about people
To love one’s property
To be overly concerned with the world and the worldly
To be ambitious
To lead an irresponsible life
To mix oneself into affairs that do not concern one
To be undignified
Not to keep the time of one’s devotions due to laziness
To be shameless
To lament the loss of things
To gossip
To be stubborn
To be an egoist
To be a hypocrite
To cheat
To be brutish
To be dishonorable in relations with women
To be lustful
Not to accept one’s error and continue insisting on it
To be afraid of poverty
Not to believe in destiny or to talk about destiny
To make oneself depressed
To take pleasure in belittling others
To be indiscriminately happy
To be insincerely kind and fawning over rich people
To be disdainful of the poor
To boast and be proud of one’s past
To show off one’s physical prowess
To belittle others
To like to talk long unnecessarily
To be self centered in conversation
To forget about one’s own shortcomings and be preoccupied with the shortcomings of others
To exclude from one’s heart the fear of Allah and the shame and sadness of one’s state
In distress to make excuses and to fall back on and encourage the nafs
To decline to help in a struggle for Allah’s sake
To pretend to be friends with one’s enemy
To cheat in one’s work
To set traps for others
To identify with the world to the extent of forgetting Allah
To take pleasure in people’s suffering
Not to suffer because of one’s mistakes

These are like thorns growing in a barren field and show you the ugly attributes of the heart which surface and become visible. Avoid them and beautify yourselves with the opposite of every one of these faults, because the prayer which pleases Allah and which brings you closest to Him is to have beautiful adab.