So many magical courses or curriculums have
"grinding" built into them (to borrow a phrase from gamer culture):
do this tedious thing every day. If you
lose interest, it's your "lower self" trying to prevent you from
evolving. If you miss some days, maybe
you're not cut out for this . . .
That's such a tremendous load of self-serving rhetoric, usually grounded in occult marketing and the personal status-building efforts of the instructor / writer / publisher / lodge. Think of it as a self-protective mechanism that deflects responsibility onto the consumer-practitioner and away from the writer and publisher for offering up essentially recycled, uninspired, dreadful material. And this is the case more often than not because in the occult, as in most other niche marketing areas, familiarity in orientalist drag is what sells.
The more you grind out the curriculum, the more vulnerable you are to the idea that you did something wrong or just aren't talented by the time you get underwhelming results or throw your hands up in frustration. "Don't blame me!" says the occult guru. "I told you Hekate would only materialize in your closet if you recited this mantra 700 times a day for six months and obviously there were some days on which you only recited it 450 times and others when you didn't do it at all! Maybe you should renew your Netflix subscription and accept that you will never be enlightened."
I know this because I'm one of the fanatics who has scrupulously completed a few of those courses and curricula. And I can tell you without reservation that the results seldom live up to the hype. You might come out with a few neat tricks and some insights. You will rarely attain the Knowledge and Conversation of Your Holy Guardian Pigeon. You will rarely see your problems mysteriously begin to vanish as a result of your new spiritual merit badge and / or invisible friends. You will have a certificate suitable for framing.
Here's some UPG you might enjoy: the gods don't care about your willingness to persist in a pattern of practices written by a fellow human. The gods, insofar as they exist within you and beyond you, are probably not delighted when you can finally meditate standing on your head or say 100 Hail Marys while jogging around the cathedral, or spend a stormy night in a tent flogging yourself. And if those things would please them, I'd question what motivates you to venerate gods like that. Maybe you sense that in order to be special (like the guru), you have to do things very different from what you'd normally enjoy doing. Make it hurt and be sure it's weird. Zeus loves that shit.
In hindsight, I think the better way is to take what resonates with you and develop your own path. Make your path unlike anyone else's, even if it is cobbled together from bits and pieces of various systems or comes to you through the machinery of your unique genius. And make it enjoyable. If you're not enjoying the road to enlightenment, the enlightenment you attain won't be enjoyable, either. Avoid deferred happiness in all areas of life, including your spiritual life.