Stop Collecting Spiritual Practices. Choose One and Go Deep.
For spiritual seekers tired of sampling techniques that never quite transform
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about what it shifted in you.
If you have tried meditation apps, breathwork workshops, yoga trainings, and journaling techniques but still feel like something is missing, keep reading.
I used to collect spiritual practices the way some people collect books they never read. Meditation retreats. Breathwork workshops. Yoga trainings. Contemplative prayer methods. Forest bathing certifications. Journaling techniques. Body scans, loving kindness practices, walking meditations, centering prayer, lectio divina, visio divina. I sampled them all. I completed the introductory courses. I bought the books and downloaded the apps and bookmarked the guided sessions.
I was spiritually busy.
However, I was not spiritually transformed.
The turning point came when I started walking the Camino de Santiago. Not once, but 5 times. Elements of the same route. The same path through rural France. The same villages, the same hills, the same ancient stones that pilgrims have walked for over a thousand years.
People ask me why I return to the same route.
Why not explore different paths? Why not try the Portuguese way, the Northern route, the Via de la Plata? There are so many options. Why would I limit myself to one?
The answer is simple. Depth.
The Marketplace of Spiritual Variety
We live in a culture that prizes variety.
The spiritual marketplace reflects this. Browse any wellness website, and you will find endless options. 10 types of meditation. 15 breathing techniques. 20 ways to connect with nature. The implicit message is clear. More options mean more freedom. Sample widely. Try everything. Find what resonates.
I understand the appeal.
When I was starting out, variety felt like openness. Trying many practices felt like spiritual curiosity. Who was I to commit to one thing before I had explored all the possibilities?
But variety has a shadow side.
When you sample everything, you master nothing. When you try each practice once or twice, you never get past the awkward beginning stage where it feels strange and produces no obvious results. When you keep switching, you never discover what a practice reveals after months or years of faithful repetition.
The spiritual marketplace sells variety because variety sells.
A new course, a new app, a new retreat. Each one promises something the last one did not deliver. But maybe the last one did not deliver because you did not stay long enough to let it work.
What Returning to the Same Path Revealed
The first time I walked the Le Puy route of the Camino de Santiago, I was overwhelmed by novelty.
Everything was new. The landscape, the rhythm, the physical challenge, the language, the customs, the other pilgrims. I was so busy processing the newness that I barely had attention left for anything else. I came home exhausted and exhilarated, but I could not have told you what the path had actually taught me.
The second time, the novelty had faded.
I knew what to expect. I recognized some of the villages, remembered some of the climbs. Without the constant processing of newness, I had attention available for subtler things. I noticed how my body moved differently in the second week than the first. I noticed how silence changed as the days accumulated. I noticed things about myself that the novelty had hidden.
By the third, fourth, and fifth walks, the path had become a teacher I knew well enough to receive from.
I could feel the difference between one hill and another, not just in my legs but in my spirit. I knew which stretches invited contemplation and which demanded only endurance. I had walked the same path in different seasons, different weather, different moods.
The path had not changed.
I had.
Because the path stayed constant, I could actually perceive my own transformation. This is what depth offers that breadth cannot. When you return to the same practice again and again, you create a stable reference point. The practice becomes a mirror. You see yourself more clearly because you are not distracted by the effort of learning something new.
The Paradox of Limitation
Here is what I did not expect.
Choosing one practice felt like freedom, not limitation.
Before I committed to the Camino, I spent enormous energy deciding what to do. Should I try this retreat or that one? This technique or that one? The endless options created endless decision fatigue. I was always wondering if I was missing something better.
When I committed to one path, that energy became available for something else.
I stopped wondering whether I should be doing something different. I stopped comparing my practice to other practices. I simply walked.
The limitation became liberation.
This is counterintuitive in a culture that equates freedom with unlimited options. But anyone who has mastered a craft knows the truth. Mastery comes through constraint. The poet who commits to the sonnet form discovers possibilities that free verse never reveals. The musician who practices scales for years plays with freedom that the dabbler cannot imagine.
The contemplative who returns to the same prayer, the same path, the same practice, year after year, finds depths that the sampler will never reach.
Depth is not limitation.
Depth is where transformation lives.
Transform: The T in PATH
My personal rule of life follows the acronym PATH.
Present to Sacred Reality
Align with Ancestral Wisdom
Transform through Walking and Learning
Hold Space for Service
The T stands for Transform.
This is where depth matters most.
Transformation does not happen through sampling. Transformation happens through sustained engagement with something that challenges you, shapes you, and reveals you to yourself over time.
When I walk with the mantra May I transform through walking and learning, I am not asking for a quick fix. I am committing to a long relationship with the practice. I am saying: I will stay with this long enough for it to change me.
That kind of staying requires choosing one thing and going deep.
How to Choose Your One Practice
If you have been spiritually scattered, collecting practices, sampling techniques, always wondering what else is out there, here is how you might choose one practice to go deep with this season.
Notice what you return to.
Despite all the practices you have tried, which one do you keep coming back to? Which one calls you even when you have wandered away? That pull is worth paying attention to. It may be pointing toward your one practice.
Choose something with enough depth to hold years of exploration.
Some practices are inherently shallow. You can exhaust them in a few sessions. Others have enough depth to sustain decades of engagement. Walking, contemplative prayer, certain meditation traditions, relationship with a specific landscape. These have the depth to keep teaching you.
Commit for a season, not forever.
You do not have to choose your one practice for life. Choose it for this season. 6 months or a year. Give it long enough to actually work. If after sustained engagement it no longer serves, you can choose again. But give it a real chance first.
Let go of the fear of missing out.
The other practices will still be there. The workshops will still run. The apps will still exist. Choosing one thing does not mean the others disappear. It means you are giving yourself permission to go deep rather than wide, to master rather than sample, to transform rather than merely try.
The Invitation
This year, I am tending 3 domains of attention.
The first is Walking as Spiritual Practice. Within that domain, the Camino is my one practice. Not the only walking I do, but the anchor, the home base, the path I return to when I want to be taught rather than entertained.
Domain 1 is the foundation.
Everything else flows from it.
What is your one practice? What would it mean to stop sampling and start going deep?
You do not need more options.
You need more depth.
Next week, I will share what a recent winter walk in Paris revealed about Domain 1 in action. How walking with a mantra changed what I saw and what the path offered. If you have a practice you have committed to deeply, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Walk With Me
If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026—a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.
In September 2026, I’m leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino, seven days of silence, movement, and practices for metabolizing what sitting cannot, in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine, on a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage path. Details here.
Hit reply anytime. I read and respond to every message.
~ Jeffrey