Here is a little exercise for you: try to make a sandwich from bread crumbs and shredded cheese. Not an easy thing to do, is it? In fact, it is pretty much impossible. You wonder why anyone would even try to do such a silly thing.

    Yet that is the way many people approach spiritual development. They like something they read in one book, so they add it to their practices. Their friend are in some meditation class, so they join too and add that. They see a story on television about a group following some practice out in the desert of Arizona, so they start doing that as well. They end up chanting in Sanskrit in a Native American sweat lodge or doing kundalini yoga and fasting on a mountain top in Utah.

    It's great that these people are at least trying to grow spiritually, but this piecemeal approach is about as likely to produce meaningful results as trying to make that sandwich from shredded cheese and bread crumbs.

    To get meaningful results in your efforts at spiritual growth you need to follow a complete program. While they may differ somewhat from one school to another, any reputable school has a complete program that, when followed regularly and entirely, produces results. But grabbing just the bits and pieces you like from several schools, teachers or books is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle using a handful of pieces taken from each of five or six boxes. So find a school or teacher that you trust and follow one set of teachings. If you find that you simply cannot accept that school as legitimate, than move on to another school, but follow the full disciplines from that school when you do.