Spiritual contact: then and now (from willed control and external authority, to soul and love)

Spiritual contact in the past - for example the forms of monasticism, or the various formal magical systems - desired to re-establish contact with spirits (and perhaps the divine). But nearly-always the practices recognized the pitfalls and dangers of adults reverting to fully immersive and spontaneous Original Participation. 

Indeed, if fully established, OP would be a form of psychosis.  

Yet until the modern era, during which adults increasingly became alienated from the spiritual (and the divine); Original Participation remained intermittently strong. Therefore, the dangers were pretty effectively averted by a combination of training conscious will-power, under control by a structured external system of authority. 

For instance; spiritual exercises (e.g. of St Ignatius of Loyola, but other monastic traditions can often be interpreted analogously) developed willed-control and direction of the imagination; and also the process was undertaken in obedience to an explicit and structured hierarchy of external authority.   

But as Original Participation weakened over the generations, the imposition of control and authority largely extinguished and replaced spiritual contact - leaving merely everyday conscientiousness and obedience operating in a mundane bureaucracy.  

Now that OP has all-but disappeared for most people, most of the time (except in dreaming sleep, intoxication, mental illness etc - i.e. impaired consciousness); those who desire to establish and experience spiritual contact need to develop new practices that are both effective, and also tend to avoid the pitfalls resulting from spiritual passivity and open-receptiveness. 

Instead of developing a focused and conscious will-power to direct spiritual practice from the level of muindane personality; the aim could be to locate and work-from the real-self: the immortal and eternal soul which is in contact with the world of spirit. 

And instead of external authority structures; spiritual processes need to come from within love; on a Christian understanding of love as personal affiliation and commitment deriving from the choice of harmony with divine creation. 

(And not abstract/ universal/ generic/ willed love, nor the mere emotion of love; but from a soul-level endorsement and priority of actually-existing inter-personal, and inter-"Being", love.)