The lower a creature is on the ladder of evolution, the more it is subject to the demands of its instincts, that is, to its natural spontaneity.
Each higher level of development demands a further release from these pressures and their displacement by processes of learning and training.
A child cannot learn to walk without a long period of preparation.
Now this is a relatively simple motor function, and it is obvious that psychological activities, which are more complex and subtle, require even more training and conditioning.
A total spontaneity of love, for instance, rarely occurs in man (in most animals it is a function of the sexual cycle), for the feelings involved are much too complex and are, to a large extent, learned.
Many Jewish sages have noted that the two Hebrew words emunah (faith) and emun (training) are derived from the same root, and they have interpreted this as showing that the soul must train itself in order to be capable of achieving meaningful religious experience.
This need for training, however, does not mean that there is no place for spontaneous religious experience, but rather that such spontaneous experience by itself cannot serve as the basis of the religious life.
Only by cultivating awareness and understanding, by conscious, ongoing preparation can a person draw from the inner resources in his soul the capacity for meaningful and profound experience.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Strife of the Spirit, p.97 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz