One way I like this think of Orthodox worship is that it is God's love language. Protestants (I'm a convert) would emphasize so much that what we did be "from the heart," by which I get that they meant sincerity, but the problem is that a key Christian truth is that we don't understand God and our hearts are corrupt. So in the OT, God revealed how to love Him. When the NT Church was founded, the Apostles didn't teach anything like "do whatever is in your heart," they instead had a new version of the same OT service, with the Eucharist as all the sacrifices rolled into one, because Christ fulfilled them all. These parallel not only the services of the OT, but the heavenly services described in Revelation. The services did not conform to the people, but the people conformed their hearts to the services, the content of which was mostly readings from scripture.
The services had beauty, but not to the degree that they stirred up emotional zeal (and early Christians specifically warned against making the music too stirring). The services were not about making us logically think or have emotional reactions, though this happened secondarily, but they were intended to transform us on a much deeper level, a level that scripture calls in Greek the "nous" (which might be translated spirit). When the West began to lose touch with this concept, and finally the Roman Catholic Church broke off communion with the Eastern Churches, they slowly replaced it with rationalism (starting to technically explain what were previously left as mystery, like the Eucharist and the accomplishment of the Cross) and emotionalism (the sensual art and Stations of the Cross). Eventually, this was taken to it's logical conclusion in the Reformation, where the whole focus became about learning a logical teaching and singing emotionally stirring songs. This has taken even sadder forms in the mega-churches and health'n'wealth gospel of today, losing a lot of the point to take up one's cross and being left simply with a comfort session of fun music and declaring what God tells me I will get for "believing."
I've noticed that what is done on Sunday psychologically determines the definition of spirituality for a person's week. If a person gets emotionally stirred by U2-style songs on Sunday (which I used to be very attached to, and some songs I still do love!), the person has to do everything they can through radio and motivational verses to try to keep that emotional high through the week, which they interpret as closeness to the Lord because that was their Sunday encounter with Him. When the service is hard and doesn't gratify the rational or emotional mind very much, and that is "spirituality," then the parishoner sees the rest of their difficult week as just as capable of containing the spiritual life.
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