Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states: “Spiritual fulfilment is possible only when we strive with all our body, mind, and soul to live in conformity with Allah’s will. Stated differently, we cannot attain fulfilment or felicity in life unless we strive to fulfil the very purpose of our existence. The purpose of our existence, as defined by our Creator and Lord, is none other than rendering worship unto Him. Allah says in the Qur’an, “I created the (species of) jinn and humankind solely to worship Me.” (Az-Zariyat: 56). So no matter how accomplished and successful we are in life, we will never gain fulfilment unless we conform strictly to the above stated purpose, for it alone will determine our ultimate success or failure.
I list below a few tips to help us achieve the goal of spiritual fulfilment:
1. The first step towards spiritual fulfilment is to sincerely repent of all sins. We must always recognize our weaknesses and limitations and ever flee to Allah and act before Him like a helpless child entreating His mercy and forgiveness.
2. Purify our heart, mind, and heart of all base thoughts and destructive emotions, beliefs, and concepts. This is not possible unless we guard our faculties of tongue, stomach, hands, ears, eyes, hands, feet, and mind of all sins, both outward and inward, and thus rid ourselves of all diseases such as pride, jealousy, malice and ill-feeling towards others, backbiting, lying, clinging to this world, anger, self-righteousness, pretension, vanity, vainglory, obsessive love of the world, power, and wealth, and so on.
3. We must observe the laws of Allah openly and secretly.
4. We must role model ourselves after the Messenger of Allah by emulating his excellent morals and behaviour such as simple life-style, magnanimity, generosity, his attitude, noble morals.
5. Celebrate dhikr (remembrance of Allah) consistently.
6. Develop the habit of reflecting and contemplating, and think of the transient nature of life. Meditate frequently upon death and afterlife and visualize standing before the Lord of the worlds for reckoning.
7. Develop the virtues of sincerity, truthfulness, gratitude, patience, generosity, simplicity, humility, magnanimity, love of Allah.