In the Epilogue I ask how a person knows whether anything is happening.

The tangible criterion, I think, is clarity, and a steadily increasing ease in the flow of the routine you keep, above all the first morning practice. In that one, he had told me, the practitioner comes under strong attack from himself.

Which makes honest self-assessment difficult. So he told me not to trust my own verdict on it.

He also asked me to set aside recurring periods of withdrawal, which he called periods of observation. Not retreat from life. A stocktaking, and an attempt to straighten the line again.