In Western Christian teachings, meditation is usually believed to involve the inherent action of the Holy Spirit to help the meditating Christian understand the deeper meanings of the Word of God. In the 12th century, decades before Guigo II's the "Ladder of the Monk", one of his predecessors, Guigo I, emphasized this belief by stating that when earnest meditation begins, the Holy Spirit enters the soul of the meditator, "turns water into wine" and shows the path towards contemplation and a better understanding of God.