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.

1. Ujub - to be proud of one’s spiritual state
2. Riya - to show off
3. Kibr - arrogance
4. Hasad - envy
5. Bukhul - miserliness
6. Kin - to be vengeful
7. Kufr - faithlessness
8. Bid’at- to distort religion and tradition
9. Kufran-i ni’met - to deny the giver of gifts or to belittle the gifts
10. To be disatisfied and complain about one’s state
11. To cease to have hope for Allah’s Mercy
12. To be sure of Allah’s punishment
13. To condone tyrrany and help tyrants
14. To speak against decent people
15. To keep the heart attached to this world
16. To keep wanting to be a leader
17. To expect approval and compliments
18. To fear criticism
19. Not to be able to prevent oneself from wanting
20. Instead of wishing to learn the truth, being an imitator
21. To fawn over people for personal benefit
22. To be happy about disasters that fall upon people, even your enemies
23. To be a coward
24. To be angry
25. To be a tyrant
26. Not to keep one’s word
27. To believe in bad luck
28. To think unjustly about people
29. To love one’s property
30. To be overly concerned with the world and the worldly
31. To be ambitious
32. To lead an irresponsible life
33. To mix oneself into affairs that do not concern one
34. To be undignified
35. Not to keep the time of one’s devotions due to laziness
36. To be shameless
37. To lament the loss of things
38. To gossip
39. To be stubborn
40. To be an egoist
41. To be a hypocrite
42. To cheat
43. To be brutish
44. To be dishonorable in relations with women
45. To be lustful
46. Not to accept one’s error and continue insisting on it
47. To be afraid of poverty
48. Not to believe in destiny or to talk about destiny
49. To make oneself depressed
50. To take pleasure in belittling others
51. To be indiscriminately happy
52. To be insincerely kind and fawning over rich people
53. To be disdainful of the poor
54. To boast and be proud of one’s past
55. To show off one’s physical prowess
56. To belittle others
57. To like to talk long unnecessarily
58. To be self centered in conversation
59. To forget about one’s own shortcomings and be preoccupied with the shortcomings of others
60. To exclude from one’s heart the fear of Allah and the shame and sadness of one’s state
61. In distress to make excuses and to fall back on and encourage the nafs
62. To decline to help in a struggle for Allah’s sake
63. To pretend to be friends with one’s enemy
64. To cheat in one’s work
65. To set traps for others
66. To identify with the world to the extent of forgetting Allah
67. To take pleasure in people’s suffering
68. Not to suffer because of one’s mistakes