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1) Watering a garden by well water drawn by hand.
The one praying struggles against distractions, trying to recollect the senses, recentering often. One can get discouraged and give up.
2) Watering a garden by well water drawn with the help of a waterwheel and windlass.
There is more water and with less effort. In prayer, likewise, there is more Divine inspiration and less effort. There are some mystical experiences. One loses appetite for worldly things and enjoys a sense of contentment and peace.
3) Watering a garden by a stream or spring.
The only effort needed in this watering is to channel the water to the right place. The Sister is doing this in her imaging Jesus. In prayer, with faculties at rest, one enjoys much more sweetness and delight than before. The self becomes immersed in silent contemplation, in and outside times of prayer.
4) The garden is watered by downpours of heavy rain.
Here, the self feels only effortless joy in prayer. The Sister's mental prayer, an image of Jesus, would drop. The joy has no object: God has ceased to be an object, and the self enjoys unmediated, pure union with Spirit. No longer can one distinguish between "mind," "soul," and "spirit." Here, this silent prayer has been called the Prayer of Passive Love and Pure Prayer.
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Aridity in prayer weans us off excessive attachment to our senses, expecting the Light to please us with sensible delight. When we get exhausted enough with our efforts to gain sensible pleasure in prayer, we relax, becoming like one resting under the downpours of heavy rainfall - the Showers of Light.
Here, prayer is, not a doing or getting this-or-that. Yet, this is not the same as aridity. Both sensible pleasure and sensible aridity are states of feeling. Union with the Light is beyond and before both. In the lack of attachment to pleasure, inexplicable joy arises. In time, one no longer feels a need for sensible pleasures in silence. When they arise, the self welcomes them; when they dissipate, the self welcomes that equally. One remains in peace, not as a sensory delight, but as a quality of the Light.
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The Sister allowed herself to be loved. This alert passivity is equanimity. Here, body and mind - the I - descends into the heart, the heart one with the Heart of Life.
Devotionally, being with the Beloved in effortless ease, is to be loved by the Beloved. How? The Union of Love is the Fire of Love; hence, all need for explanation becomes ashes, and only Truth remains. Truth verifies Itself by Itself, so to touch Truth is to know Truth. And one cannot explain what happens in the rainfall of Love, for Love is Truth. In time, one neither seeks nor wants an explanation of the Grace of the Downpour.
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