Talking with God as one talks with a good friend is not mentioned much in the LeM of Rav Nahman. The first place is vol. 2. And even there not anything more than saying it is a great thing.
Then at the very end it is brought up as the main thing to be doing all the time.
You can say that it simply was not known to Rav Nahman how important it is until the end of his life.
And in fact that seems clear from the Conversations of Rav Nahman.
The emphasis comes from a very short two paragraphs in LeM vol II section 96 that the greatest Avodat Hashem ("service towards God") is to do hitbodadut. "And since most people are not able to do this much, at least it is necessary to command them to do it at least an hour a day. But for one who really wants to serve God, it is the best thing to spend the whole day talking with God as one talks with a friend."
But I have had mixed feeling about this. At first, when I started taking the ideas of Rav Nahman more seriously I went in for the Hitbodadut thing also. So instead of learning Torah I would go out into the fields and forest around Safed to spend the whole day "doing Hitbodadut."
Then I noticed that in Breslov, that is people that were consciously following the path of Rav Nahman, there seemed to be a need to be spending more time on learning Torah. And on the other hand I noticed that "learning Torah" also did not seem to bring people to a higher moral and spiritual level.
It was hard to put it all together. Another thing that made it hard to figure out was that in fact the beginning of this period in Safed when I was concentrating on Hitbodadut, I felt a tremendous surge of energy, what then I would refer to as אור אין סוף ("the infinite light of God"). So after all is said and done, I have to agree that the Hitbodadut thing is just as important and even more so that Rav Nahman said it is.
So it is the best thing to have a balance between Hitbodadut and learning Torah.
At any rate, in Torah thought, Learning Torah is what one must do if he can. Taking away any time from learning Torah is forbidden except for doing a commandment that can not be done by anyone else.
In fact I sometimes would hear the old Yidish expression: "Abi Nisht zu learning" [anything but learning]. That is one ought to sit and learn Torah and trust in God for parnasah. But if parnasah doesnot come, then one ought to work. But the idea is that learning Torah iswhat one ought to spend his tome and energy on.
[However in my case I have an expanded idea and a contracted idea of what learning Torah means: I.e. it includes Mathematics and Physics as per the Rishonim like the Inb Pakuda and Rambam. But also a contracted idea because the Oral Law mean the actual books handed down to us by the sages of the Mishna and Gemara. Everything after that is not, "The Oral Torah."
