“For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so it had been ever since. How blind I had been.” (Page 12, Big Book)
If you’re at the circus and someone calls you, you won’t be able to hear them over the music and the roar of the crowd. You have to exit the circus and stand outside. You can still see the monkeys, the audience, the aerialists inside, you can still hear the roar of the audience, but you can hear now your friend clearly over the phone. To hear God, distance from (although not divorce from) the material is required.