Fr. Dwight Longenecker, in Listen My Son: St. Benedict for Fathers, offers a succinct explanation:
Christian contemplative prayer is not detached from the world. Instead, as Cary-Elwes says, it is “a deep longing or attachment with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and all our being for God.” Subsequently the Christian is also attached to all other created things with a love which flows from his primary attachment and longing for the Creator himself. The pure Christian heart is “detached” from created things not because he despises them, but because he loves their Creator more.