Acquiring a spirit of prayerful silence is vital to the interior life. It requires a real desire to detach all thought from the outside world to center only on the Divine Presence.  For most of us, devoting time to a daily practice of “quiet prayer” is hard given everything always calling for our attention. It can be done. Despite the world’s constant disarray, we can learn how to be still to know that He is God. My pursuit of cultivating time for “quiet prayer” began with Saint Teresa of Avila’s work “The Interior Castle.”  A gift from my father, I read the profoundly inspiring book while on an annual family trip to Montauk, Long Island (July 2007).  Captured in my journal is the mystic’s description of a “magnificent castle” with multiple dwellings present within the soul.  Avila saw this beautiful image in a vision. She elucidates, “The…