Prayer is a personal connection with God. In this life it's faulty and filled with our own biases and preferences but progress through this imperfection is essential.
Meditation is a fine tool for clearing away inordinate attachments to the objects of sense but in the Christian view, this is only preparatory for the personal union with God. The purification is necessary because nothing impure can be in God's presence.
Prayer is also a gift of God, not a matter of one's own efforts. However, our efforts are necessary, and other things being equal, more effort will get more progress.
The four pillars of prayer are humility, patience, discernment of and obedience to God's will for ourselves individually, and the soul of it all, charity or love.
You can keep looking within, because the kingdom of God is within you, but realize that the God you find within is also the same God who exists outside of you.
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Fear and love, always.