PRACTICAL ADVICE FROM PRABHAVANADA

How long it will take you to gain liberation depends on your qualifications, i.e. how far along you have progressed spiritually, how long you have worked at it.
 
If you are new to it, you should intensify your effort gradually.  Do not try to do too much.  Don’t get carried away, particularly in the beginning when you are most keen.  Otherwise, when you don’t seem to be making much progress, you will get discouraged.  Don’t meditate for fifteen hours a day, day after day, for instance.

Also, do not anticipate liberation.  When and under what circumstances it occurs is not predictable.

Understand, meantime, that liberation is not what you imagine it to be.  It is unlike any other experience you have ever had, with the key word being experience.  Liberation is something that is experienced, as opposed to something that is understood intellectually, as with God.