If your not a fan of that ritual a simple method I used to use is to visualize a pillar surrounding you that only allows the energies you are working with to pass through and gather around you, link to the energy with relevant symbols and see it floodinging into the pillar until you reach your limit.
After your done ground the energies into the earth and deconstruct the pillar. This exercise as simple as it sounds gets you used to gathering, moving, grounding and later mixing energies. Granted that last one can be like making high yield explosives from scratch but it works.
Anything you need energy raised to charge candles, sigils, talismins ect can be done with this.
Edit. As an sidenote i forgot to mention while working with energies in this or similar manner it helps develop the senses needed to interact with it as a byproduct of the work. No real need to focus on developing any one sense. It can be a bit distracting trying to distinguish on type/layer of energy from another outside of ritual at times.
