Can direct connection to God happen now?

Yes. Not someday—now. This is perhaps the clearest and most tender teaching Jesus left us. When asked when the Kingdom would come, he did not point to a distant hour. He said, "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21, KJV). And in the recovered sayings he is more direct still: "the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it" (Gospel of Thomas 51.15-18). Not coming. Already here. The only distance between you and God is the veil of not-seeing. You do not have to earn this connection, travel to it, or wait for a mediator to grant it. You are already the image and likeness of God—as inseparable from the Divine as a wave is from the ocean it rises in. The connection was never broken; it can only be forgotten, and forgotten things can be remembered in an instant. Jesus taught that this remembering happens within, in stillness: "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret" (Matthew 6:6, KJV). The closet is not a room—it is the quiet beneath your own thoughts, where the mental noise falls silent and what remains is God. "The Father and I, we are one," Jesus said (John 10:30, MEAD)—and this was not a claim he made for himself alone, but a truth he came to demonstrate for all: "that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:22, KJV). Some traditions insist you must pass through the church, the priest, the sacrament, the correct creed. But Jesus established no such gatekeepers. "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Revelation 22:17, KJV). The recovered gospels press this inward turn further still: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you" (Gospel of Thomas 45.30-33). So the answer is a settled yes—not a promise about later, but a fact about now. The Kingdom is not withheld; it is unseen. Sit in the silence. Let the chatter quiet. What you are seeking is already the one who is seeking. That is where the door has always been open. If you wish, I would gladly sit with you in what that stillness practically looks like.