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Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir—may Allah sanctify his soul—said:

“Become detached from created beings through Allah’s judgment, from your desires through His command, and from your own will through His action. Only then will you be fit to become a vessel for the knowledge of Allah.”

I say: His judgment encompasses both His creation and His command. That is, become detached from worshipping created beings and relying upon them by worshipping Allah and relying upon Him. Do not obey them in disobedience to Allah Most High, nor attach yourself to them to obtain a benefit or avert harm.

As for detachment from desire through His command, and from one’s own will through His action, this means that a person’s actions should conform to the revealed command rather than his desires, and that his will concerning what Allah creates should follow Allah’s action rather than his own wishes. A person’s will sometimes concerns his own actions and sometimes concerns created things. In the first case, it “is governed by the command,” while in the second, “he is to have no will of his own.”

This must, however, be qualified: he should have no will that he has not been commanded to have. Otherwise, if he is commanded to will one thing rather than another among the matters subject to divine decree, he should will what he has been commanded to will, whether or not it accords with what has been decreed. This is a point on which some wayfarers may err.