Advice from Habib Ali al-Habashi (may Allah have mercy upon him and benefit us by him)
I counsel you by Allah to do your utmost to consistently perform extra acts of worship, especially the sunnah prayers before and after the compulsory prayers. Beware of leaving them. Give life to your night by rising to pray in it and give life to your day by fasting during it. Perform extra acts of worship in abundance for it is the means of attaining Allah’s love: “My slave continues to draw close to Me with extra acts of worship until I love him.”
This love leads to the slave attaining the greatest form of representation of Allah [on the earth] such that his attributes merge into the attributes of Allah, as the end of the hadith testifies: “When I love him, I become the hearing with which he hears, the sight with which he sees..” So drink from this pure spring and don this ample cloak. Strive to remove the faults of your lower self which prevent you from being accepted.
Travel to your Lord in a state of lameness, humility and brokenness. Do not witness your own actions, but say with your tongue and your heart: “What am I and what are my actions?” The one who understands the verse: He is but a slave upon whom We have bestowed Our blessings[1] will be safe from the false claims of his lower self. Had it not been for Allah’s immense generosity, no-one would have witnessed or attained anything. A person’s actions are merely an expression of their slave-hood. Allah’s gifts [are not bestowed in proportion to a person’s actions but] are purely from His bounty and generosity. Witness your shortcomings, however high your state is. Be a slave to Allah and not your desires. Recite litanies in abundance: a portion of the Qur’an, the litanies of the earlier scholars and the litanies of the heart. You gifts you receive are according to the litanies that you recite.
[1] Al-Zukhruf, 43:59