Our culture is losing the art of silence, and with it the intrinsic human understanding and capacity for prayer. Silent dwellers, by creating spacious times of physical silence in their lives, slowly recover the human capacity to be with themselves in a caring gentle way. For, it is in silence and solitude that one learns – or regains – the human quality of being in God's presence always.
So long as we do not die to ourselves, and so long as we are identified with someone or something, we shall never be free. The spiritual way is not for those wrapped up in exterior life.