Spirituality is about being aware of life as it is. It is the study of life with awareness. Everybody might be talking about concepts that they have no experience in, and they can talk about these concepts, and you can hear and affirm these concepts but.. where is awareness, where is their/your actual experience?
Start from your own experience, and explore each claim or concept you are interested in scientifically, with awareness. Can you stick to the practice with awareness, can you go to the full depth of the experience? Sometimes it will feel difficult to do so. Doubts will happen. But is awareness there? If so, then you are progressing spiritually. When you truly understand whether something is placebo or not, through direct awareness of it, you will definitely be able to move on with it. Now, you haven’t gone into these claims with awareness yet. So, doubt arises: ‘Can they be true? Or maybe they are placebo?’.
When our awareness naturally expands, our energy system begins to get stronger, get filled with more energy. Certain experiences naturally open up as this happens. Don’t force it, just learn to expand yourself through awareness, and things will happen when they are supposed to.
This article can teach you a practice that can support you to recognize what awareness is, and how to stay as awareness.
If you make it a priority to live your life staying as awareness in this moment, you will spiritually develop faster than a monk in a monastery who just semi consciously repeats a mantra or a person who can astral project but in a state of escape from this world and their mind/body/emotions. Through the practice of living as awareness, you will gradually understand leaks in your energy system, heal them and those experiences that seem out of reach will start happening on their own. No other practice can replace living as awareness, because awareness needs to merge with form for understanding to evolve. Learn the concepts and start practicing. The practice itself only can evolve you.