Episode 18 - Fourth Mansions 2.1 - Interior Castle, St Teresa of Avila

How can a basin of water be filled? Two ways. 1) The noisy one, with great effort, bringing the water from a distance by conduits. 2) Having a fountain right in the basin, filing it without effort and noise.

Way 1 = meditation = gaining God's love by way of thoughts (images), the work of understanding, our own fatiguing effort, leading to sweetness and satisfaction and loving movements of the will.

Way 2 = Prayer of Quiet, consolations from God = supernatural prayer,  prayer that springs up in the heart by gift of God not by human effort.

This new kind of prayer, this new activity of God is experienced, she says, in the centre of the soul, like water springing up in the basic on a fountain. The centre of the soul is where God dwells. He is pouring this Prayer of Quiet into us. 

Even if we have not experienced what she is describing here, her discussion and example is very useful to us.