Rather than "How am I doing?" [about your pratice] the real questions are "Where am I still shutting down in fear and self-protection?" and "Where do I meet my edge, beyond which I'm not ready to go?" Practice is about noticing and experiencing these places — not with heaviness or guilt, but just as stuff to be worked with — and then seeing how to take small steps beyond them. . . . To practice with difficult decisions, we must leave the mental world and enter the heart of our experience.

Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water