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What Traditions Already Do

I sometimes see advice given for those getting into esotericism or spirituality: "take the best and leave the rest", leaving it to the individual as their own independent authority, as if traditions with their teachings and practices as a unit are more baggage than they're worth. But, like…"take the best and leave the rest" is what traditions already do, and which they do better than any individual does. That's exactly why they pass things on from one generation to the next, cultivate things that work well, and let things that don't fall by the wayside. The benefit to traditions doing this is that it's an undertaking that spans multiple lifetimes across generations with community feedback and review, as opposed to just the immediate ideas (and often whims) of an individual on their own without assessment by objective others.

We are all our own worst judges, both for weal and for woe. That's why we go to traditions with established teachers and teachings to build on them as mirrors and guiderails, as opposed to us having to reinvent the wheel while fumbling about in the dark. Besides, even if you think a tradition is "wrong", remember that they've been doing this a lot longer than you have and have reasons for teaching what they do and how. This doesn't mean they're static, but the onus is on us to understand and learn from the tradition, not vice versa. After all, a tradition is literally that which is "given over" (English "tradition" comes from Latin "tradere" ← trans "over/across" + dare "to give"); we are handed down traditions when those traditions accept us and trust us to do so, and we likewise hand down traditions when we are ready to do so after having participated in it and understood it for what it is. Being ready to receive and pass on a tradition, however, requires at least some sense of humility and awareness of how we fit into the tradition, seeing how we can serve the tradition rather than merely figuring out how the tradition can serve us.

All this to say, when people say "take the best and leave the rest" when it comes to practices that develop and are practiced within traditions, what they often end up saying is "take all the fancy promises, avoid all the necessary work/obligations".