The Abdal

The renunciate zealously abandons his life in this world, and the one who trusts in God passionately entrusts his affairs to his Master; and the aspirant is taken up with audition and ecstatic states, and the worshipper fervently renders worship and strives in devotion; and the person of wisdom and gnosis is enamoured of his spiritual wisdom and resolve. Yet those who possess true knowledge and spiritual governance are concealed in the World of the Unseen (ghayb), so that they are unknown to the gnostic, aspirant or worshipper, and they are invisible to the one who trusts in God and the one who renounces the world. For the renunciate abandons [the world] for the purpose of being recompensed; the entruster fides [in God] to attain the object of his desire; the aspirant seeks ecstasy to relieve distress; the worshipper strives hard in his longing for closeness; and the wise gnostic through his spiritual will aims at union. However, the Real God (haqq) only reveals Himself to one who can no longer be described or named at all.

Ibn 'Arabi, The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation, tr. Stephen Hirtenstein, 30.