[1] One remarkable aspect of talking with God while alone in a wilderness or forest setting is that one relates to God directly. And the ability to relate to God directly is not something that comes easily. If people try to relate to God at all usually it is in some social setting like a church or a synagogue and usually it comes through some intermediary. The social setting usually takes away the actual event of a relationship with God.
[] Now , Yoga tries to resolve this problem by meditation but it seems to me that this also has several problems.
The question of effectiveness of Yoga is that its main effect seem to be to get people into the intermediate zone (illusions) where they stay put.
[] In most of the solutions of relating and gaining some connection with the Divine, one is going through a middle-man or some Mitzvah, and that even when successful has the drawback of coming through a filtered lens.
[] Some try to resolve this issue by learning Torah.
Learning Torah is a half way solution because it is hearing and trying to relate to God through the inspired medium of the Torah.
And yet this can be turned into a business in such a way that it in fact has little to recommend it to the general public.
[] I would have to say that from what I can tell talking with God while hiking alone is probably the best solution to how to get right with God.
But I would say this needs to be coupled with learning Torah (i.e. the Old Testament and Gemara) for it to be effective.
[] The Rambam/Maimonides did try to justify Torah practices on Aristotle.
Up until the time of Maimonides there was a tradition of about a thousand years of justifying Torah through Neo Platonic thought. The cumulation of this process was in the Zohar and the Ari [Isaac Luria].
At any rate, it seem to me that after the basic questions of Kant about synthetic a priori one needs some justification beyond simple Neo Platonic thought.
[] On a personal note I should mention that I got involved in talking with God after I had spent a few years at the Mir in NY. At any rate, for some reason, when I got to Israel and started hiking in the forests around Safed while doing this Hitbodadut [talking with God], something clicked in me.
So I can say from experience that this can be a very effective tool to get right with God. [Besides being good exercise and also being a good way to get in contact with your inner self and find out what you are really thinking and feeling deep inside. People without talking with God /hitbodadut often do not even know what is going on deep inside of themselves.]
