Those who step into this road do not do so for any cause, but rather for love. [……] looking for compensation in the road of obedience is a fatal poison. If you were to walk on this road for a thousand years and your obedience was not accepted, and then it occurred to your mind that it should have been accepted, you would have been a status seeker…you will not be a realizer in this road until you abandon your status with both the Real and creatures.

Someone says, ” I don’t want status with the creatures, I want status at the Threshold.” Do not seek for status either here or there! Bind up your waist and, like a man, find the broom of solitariness and disengagement. A thousand times a day sweep this threshold of your own dreadful existence. If it should happen that you stay at the threshold for a thousand years and then it is said to you, “Go, for you are not worthy of Me,” you will have been given your due.

Shaykh Ahmad Sam’ani (d1140CE)