Something often happens a few weeks into this work. You start seeing your selves everywhere, and a voice in you begins to scold. Look how angry you are. How proud. How hopeless. You will never change.

That voice feels like conscience. It feels like taking the work seriously. It is neither. It is one more self, and one of the most harmful, because it makes you look away. No one can watch for long what they are punished for seeing.

It has a close cousin, self-pity. Poor me, it says. I have so many egos, this is so hard, no one understands. The books say that people full of self-pity are always looking for ways out of their responsibilities. Both selves turn the work into a story about you, and both stop the seeing.

The answer is the same as for every self. Catch it. Name it: the scolder, the self-pitier. See that it is not you. Then go back to watching, without punishment.

A good teacher does not shout at a beginner who makes mistakes. Treat yourself the way that teacher would. Kindness does not lower the standard. It is what makes it possible to keep going.

You will slip. Everyone does, for years. The slip does not matter much. What matters is how quickly, and how gently, you come back.