Spiritual Skills
A person's beliefs have a strong influence on his ability to develop spiritual skills. If he is skeptical and continually attributes anomalous experiences to coincidence and "natural explanations", he will weaken his abilities through negative reinforcement. This will also discourage spirit guides that may be trying to help him. Each person is born having spiritual skills, but our societal attitudes result, in this way, in most people losing awareness of their natural abilities as they mature. Therefore it is necessary to undo the effects of living in an unbelieving society.
To develop spiritual skills, a person must be accepting of the phenomena and must continually look for spiritual influence in his life in the form of coincidences, hunches, and other unusual phenomena. In this way he will increase his awareness of spiritual influence in his life and notice more and more the activity of his spiritual skills. This positive feedback will lead to improvement and enhancement of his spiritual skills. Therefore it is necessary to err on the side of credulity rather than skepticism.
There is the risk of incorrectly attributing coincidence to spiritual influence, however this risk must be borne. One must always maintain an awareness of this risk and never take rash or unwise actions based on supposed spiritual influence and never allow belief in infallibility to take hold.
The regular practice of meditation and relaxation is also helpful in the development of spiritual skills. These practices calm the mind and allow one to notice subtle thoughts, impressions, and sensations that may be associated with spiritual phenomena.