My sense of what is important in communication has changed thru the years. Perhaps it is because we are maturing. It seems to me that the most important thing is my communication with God and Spirit which needs constant attention.
That is why so many of us here spend so much time in listening to the voice of spirit and stilling our own thoughts so it is possible and we are receptive.
taking parts of what you said out of context, sorry in advance, but I just thought,
I wonder if we make this communication with God harder than it needs to be. I mean meditation does take will power, concentration, and it's not easy to clear restless thoughts.
God is right here right now, can we not let Him work thru us always and not worry so much that we need to contact Him thru meditation?
This is not a knock on meditation, to me it helps a lot to bring me closer, even PY says to bring that feeling with you after meditation and hang on to it...
It is very difficult to find this 'connection' without meditation that is because the world constantly crowds in with information and stories that make us believe the senses and what they witness is true. In this world we have nothing but the senses to validate our experiences. But the senses do not tell us the truth but rather take us further into Maya.
When we are able to withdraw the senses and the biological and mental processes we can enter our true identity in spirit. This can only be done by entering these states of consciousness that take place during meditation and deep ecstasy. Quite often this experience percolates into our conscious state if we have been practicing meditation for some time.
God is obviously working thru all of us at some level. The point is this: How much are we conscious of the fact that God is working thru us in our actions motives and thoughts? Many of us believe that our actions are directed by God and are far from that reality. One only has to look at all the wars going on in the Mideast to witness this.... and they all believe they are carrying out God's will! Something is very skewed in our thinking to believe that we know God's will but to have strife with those around us simultaneously.
We can practice his presence in our daily activities and in our service which can help our contactand to gain awareness when we carry out our activities during the day. Most of us-including me-need constant reminders; From my point of view this is one of the main purposes of spiritualportal.net
SI; You speak of 'worrying' about contacting God in meditation. My worry? Yours? Both of ours? Wouldn't that be a bit of a contradiction? i mean the point is to get beyond worry! Hope we are not worrying about it! Yogananda spoke of the cause of worry as a result of being too much in the senses and too much in the nerves. Perhaps it would be better if we thought of it as intensity and remembrance in our practice.