"only those of His servants, who are possessed with knowledge, have awe towards God" (Qur'an 35:28)

The circle of personal development starts with learning to develop the mental faculties and capacities so that a person can see reality much more clearly. This crystallisation in thinking is an important stepping stone to higher levels of awareness of God. The Prophet

Muhammad said, "the gaining of knowledge is compulsory for both men and women".

According to Islam, the most important knowledge one can acquire is the knowledge of the self and God, "And be not like those who forgot God, so He made them forget their own souls" (Qur'an 39:19). We can only comprehend God by knowing and understanding his Divine names and attributes. There are three sources that describe God:

1. God's names and attributes are directly manifested in the universe. By reading the book of the universe we can comprehend the qualities of God. Therefore, studying the universe is on an equal footing with the study of the Qur'an.

2. God describes himself to all through the Qur'an. God has the names The Compassionate, All Merciful, All Forgiving, The Pardoner, The Generous, All-Knowing, Giver of Form etc. There is a famous list consisting of 99 names of God. The Qur'an usually gives an observation of a natural phenomena that only God would know and then connects that with one of God's names. In this way, a Muslim has a chance to relate to God in everyday life without the need to place God in human or physical images.

3. The House of Prophethood is the third source that informs us about the Creator. In the case of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is the authorised Messenger of God for our time. Narratives of his sayings about God are found in large numbers in hadi t h^[14] books. For exampl e, t he Pr ophet has sai d, "when a believer takes a step towards God, God takes ten steps towards him. When he walks towards God, God comes running" meani ng t hat God i s ever ready t o recei ve peopl e.

K nowing one's sel f shoul d l ead t o expl or i ng potential human capaci t i es and i nner facul t i es. It al so leads to an improvement i n one's knowl edge of God, kick-starting the path of personal devel opment . One of the key methods of knowi ng God i s t o use our l i mi t ed human qualities as units of measurement t o comprehend the infinity and perfection of God. J ust l i ke we mi ght use the unit of light years t o appreci at e t he vast universe, we use our limited ability t o i nnovat e i n order to understand the boundless Creativit y of God. T here are three sources of self-knowledge:

1. Self-awareness is the ability to stand above one's self and everything that happens around us. We get to examine our make-up and behavi our through self-awareness. Conscience is the faculty that tells us what is right and what is wrong. When listened to it provides objective feedback about ourselves. The commandments of Islam develop and protect these two important human faculties.

2. The Qur'an is the manual for humanity, hence it describes how humans function individually and collectively, as well as describing human limitations and potential capabilities. When one reads the Qur'an, the reader gets the impression that it is custom written for himself or herself, and feels a strange sensation that the author knows the very thoughts of the reader.

3. Muhammad and his example are the best human demeanour according to which Muslims are required to model their behaviour and character.

[14] The Arabic word 'hadith' means a 'spoken word' or a 'saying'. In an Islamic context, it refers to the sayings reported from the Prophet Muhammad. Books that compile these are called 'hadith books'. There are six popular collections of authentic hadith. These are Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Davud, Nisai, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja. Among these Bukhari and Muslim collections have a special place as because of the extremely tough criteria that they have applied in their collections to objectively prove a narrative to be authentic. For example, for Bukhari to accept a hadith as authentic, there had to be evidence that consecutive people on the chain of the narration had lived at the same time period and that they had seen one another. This was one among the 10 criteria he applied. There are over 9,000 narrations when all six collections are combined not counting the repetitions between the collections. Considering that this selection is done from a pool of more than 100,000 narrations, Muslims have extremely high levels of trust in their authenticity.