[paulsutter]

You may want to choose according to the groups in your area. For example, here in the bay area I'm familiar with San Francisco Zen Center, and Spirit Rock which is up in Marin county but has teachers all over the bay area.

It helped me a lot to have a group to sit with weekly. How you feel about the group is a pretty good way to choose.

The individual schools are really pretty similar. Tricycle is a magazine that publishes articles from teachers from the three major schools of Buddhism. When you read it you realize the fundamentals are very much the same in each school.

Once you have studied for a while you will view guilt very differently. Through equanimity you can learn to see things as they really are without judging them. It's hard to explain through this iPhone keyboard, but I can assure you that it's about the best thing you can do to shift your perspective to become more compassionate towards yourself and others.