…the soul at this point now has both the substance and the habit of the spirit of meditation.  The goal of reasoning and meditation on the things of God is gaining some knowledge and love of God.  Each time that the soul gains this through meditation, there is an action.  And just as many actions, of whatever kind, end by forming a habit in the soul, many of these actions of loving knowledge that the soul has been making one after another from time to time come through repetition to be so continuous in it that they become habitual.

God wants souls to achieve this end without the intervention of actions by setting them at once in contemplation.  So what previously the soul was gaining gradually through its labor of meditation on particular facts has now through practice changed into a habit of loving knowledge, of a general kind, and not distinct as before.

Therefore, when the soul gives itself to prayer it is now like one to whom water has been brought, so that he drinks peacefully, without labor, and is no longer forced to draw the water through the aqueducts of past meditations and forms and figures.  Then, as soon as the soul comes before God, it makes an act of knowledge, loving, passive, and tranquil, in which it drinks of wisdom and love and delight.  –St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.