Early life pilgrimages, that is to say, changes of state brought about during infancy and adolescence, are guided - indeed, groomed (or brainwashed) - by parents, teachers, priests, politicians and gurus of all kinds, but adapted, more or less, by the unique innate capacities and drives (i.e. toward uniqueness, i.e. to become an original True Self) of the pilgrim. Those early life guides, i.e. parents, teachers, priests and politicians, ‘lead’ (i.e. ‘groom’) according to their lights (and which shone yesterday or shine elsewhere toward their goals).
Fundamentally, early life ‘guides’ lead towards their goals (that is to say, to their salvation triggers) and not to the pilgrim’s end state, though that fact is disputed by them. Early life guides first lead, then mislead the pilgrim.
The early life pilgrim who realises early on, at the latest by the age of 20, that the goals of her elders cannot, must not be her (final) goal, in other words, that she must create her own path to her own goal, upgrades her chances of success.
For “goal” read: output (in oriental lingo: karmic residue)
Example: Buddhist monks emulate/follow Siddartha Gautama