13.

Questions and Answers

When people ask me questions, I answer them as clearly as I can. I’m glad when they tell me that these answers are helpful, but I know that the truly helpful answers are the ones they find by themselves.

 

Q: I feel overwhelmed by the number of judgments I have. How could I ever possibly have time to investigate all my beliefs?

A: Don’t undo all of them. Just undo the belief that’s causing you stress now. There is never more than one. Undo that one.

If you really want to know the truth, there is no idea that can’t be met with understanding. We’re either attaching to our concepts or investigating them. How do I know which one to work with? Here it comes now.

One of the things that I understood about the thoughts appearing inside me was that I was someone to be trusted with them. I was the vessel that they could appear in and finally be met with unconditional love. The same thoughts also came to me through my children, when they were free to tell me how they felt. They came through every other form of communication. They couldn’t come fast enough for me, because I knew what to do with them. From my children’s mouths or from my mind, I put them on paper, and I inquired. I treated them as what they were: visiting friends, neighbors I had misunderstood, who were kind enough to knock on my door again. Everyone is welcome here.

Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, and turn it around—just one at a time.

 

Q: Does freedom always come right after you do The Work?

A: It does in its own way, but you may not recognize it. And you may not necessarily notice a change on the particular issue you’ve written about. For example, you may have written out a Worksheet on your mother, and the next day you find that your obnoxious neighbor—the one who’s been driving you crazy for years—no longer annoys you, that your irritation with her has completely disappeared. Or a week later, you notice that for the first time in your life, you love to cook. It doesn’t always happen in one session. I have a friend who did The Work on being jealous of her husband because their little boy preferred him to her. She felt a small release after doing The Work. But the next morning, while she was in the shower, she felt everything give way and began to sob, and afterward all the pain around the situation was gone.

 

Q: What does it mean if I keep needing to do The Work on the same thing over and over again?

A: It doesn’t matter how often you need to do it. You’re either attaching to the nightmare or investigating its validity: no other choice. The issue may come back a dozen times, a hundred times. It’s always a wonderful opportunity to see what attachments are left and how much deeper you can go.

 

Q: I’ve done The Work many times on the same judgment, and I don’t think it’s working.

A: “You’ve done The Work many times”—is that true? Could it be that if the answer you think you’re looking for doesn’t appear, you simply block anything else? Are you frightened of the answer that might be underneath what you think you know? Is it possible that there’s another answer within you that could be as true or truer?

When you ask “Is it true?” for example, you may not really want to know. It could be that you’d rather stay with your statement than dive into the unknown. Blocking means rushing the process and answering with your conscious mind before the gentler polarity of mind (I call it “the heart”) can answer. If you prefer to stay with what you think you know, the question is blocked and can’t have its life inside you.

Notice if you move into the next story before letting yourself fully experience the answer and the feelings that come with it. It can be helpful to catch thoughts that begin with “Well, yes, and . . .” or “Well, yes, but . . .” Thoughts like this indicate that you’re shifting away from inquiry. Do you really want to know the truth?

Are you inquiring with a motive? Are you asking the questions to assure yourself that the answer you already have is valid, even though it’s painful? Do you want to be right, or to prove something, more than you want the truth? It’s the truth that set me free—for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Acceptance, peace, letting go, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They’re not goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth. If you’re inquiring with other motives, such as healing the body or solving a problem, your answers may be arising from old motives that never worked, and you’ll miss the wonder and grace of inquiry.

Are you doing the turnaround too quickly? If you really want to know the truth, wait for the new answers to surface. Give yourself enough time to let the turnarounds find you and time to experience their effects. If you choose, make a written list of all the ways that the turnaround applies to you. The turnaround is the grounding, the reentry into life, as the truth points you to who you are without your story. It’s all done for you.

Are you letting the realizations you experience through inquiry live in you? Live the turnarounds, report your part to others (so that you can hear it again), and make amends, for the sake of your own freedom. This will certainly speed up the process and bring freedom into existence as your own life, now.

Finally, can you really know that inquiry is not working? When the thing you were afraid of happens and you wonder why there is little or no panic, stress, fear, or suffering—that’s when you know it’s working

 

Q: When I’m doing The Work myself, and I sense that I’m blocking inquiry, what can I do?

A: Continue, if you’re up for it. I know that if even one small honest answer or turnaround is allowed to surface from inside you, you will enter a world that you don’t even know exists. But if your intention is to be right, rather than to know the truth, why bother continuing? Just realize that the story you’re sticking to is more valuable to you now than your freedom, and that that’s okay. Come back to inquiry later. You may not be suffering enough, or you may not really care, even though you think you do. Be gentle with yourself. Life will bring you everything you need.

 

Q: What if my suffering is too intense? Should I still do The Work?

A: Suffering is caused by attachment to a deeply embedded belief. It’s a state of blind attachment to something that you think is true. In this state, it’s very difficult to do The Work for the love of truth, because you’re invested in your story. Your story is your identity, and you’d do almost anything to prove that it’s true. If you’re hurting, put your proof on paper and investigate that proof. I refer to The Work as checkmate. Inquiry into self is the only thing that has the power to penetrate such ancient concepts.

Even physical pain isn’t real; it’s the story of a past, always leaving, never arriving. But people don’t know that. My grandson Racey fell down once when he was three years old. He scraped his knee, and there was some blood, and he began to cry. And as he looked up at me, I said, “Sweetheart, are you remembering when you fell down and hurt yourself?” And immediately, the crying stopped. That was it. He must have realized, for a moment, that pain is always in the past. The moment of pain is always gone. It’s a remembering of what we think is true, and it projects what no longer exists. (I’m not saying that your pain isn’t real for you. I know pain, and it hurts! That’s why The Work is about the end of suffering.)

If a car runs over your leg and you’re lying in the street with story after story running through your mind, chances are that if you’re new to The Work, you’re not going to think, “’I’m in pain’—is it true? Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” You’re going to scream, “Get the morphine!” Then, later, when you’re in a comfort zone, you can sit down with a pen and paper and do The Work. Give yourself the physical medicine and then the other kind of medicine. Eventually, you can lose your other leg, and you won’t see a problem. If you think there’s a problem, your Work isn’t done.

 

Q: There are thoughts that I feel I shouldn’t think—nasty, perverted, and even violent thoughts. Can The Work help me to not think them?

A: How do you react when you believe that you shouldn’t think certain thoughts, and you do? Ashamed? Depressed? Now turn it around—you should think them! Doesn’t that feel a bit lighter, a bit more honest? Mind wants its freedom, not a straitjacket. When the thoughts come, they aren’t meeting an enemy who is opposing them, like a child who comes to her father, hoping that he’ll listen, and instead the father screams at her, “Don’t say that! Don’t do that! You’re wrong, you’re bad!” and punishes her when she approaches. What kind of father is that? This is the internal violence that keeps you from understanding.

I can’t meet you as an enemy and not feel separate, from you and from myself. So how could I meet a thought within me as an enemy and not feel separate? When I learned to meet my thinking as a friend, I noticed that I could meet every human as a friend. What could you say that hasn’t already appeared within me as a thought? The end of the war with myself and my thinking is the end of the war with you. It’s so simple.

 

Q: Is inquiry a process of thinking? If it isn’t thinking, what is it?

A: Inquiry appears to be a process of thinking, but actually it’s a way to undo thinking. Thoughts lose their power over us when we realize that we aren’t doing the thinking anyway. Thoughts simply appear in the mind. What if there is no thinker? Are you breathing yourself, too?

The mind can only find its true nature by thinking. What else is there? How else is it going to find itself? It has to leave clues for itself, and it comes to realize that it has dropped its own breadcrumbs. It has come out of itself, but it hasn’t realized that yet. Inquiry is the breadcrumbs that allow it to return to itself. The everything returns to the everything. The nothing returns to the nothing.

 

Q: It seems that when I really go inside, my answer to “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” is always “No.” Is there anything we can know for certain?

A: No. Experience is just perception. It’s ever-changing. Even “now” is the story of a past. By the time we think it or tell it, it’s already gone.

From the moment we attach to a thought, it becomes our religion, and we keep attempting to prove that it’s valid. The harder we try to prove what we can’t know is true, the more we experience depression and disappointment.

In question 1, the lie can be seen and admitted. When we ask “Is it true?” we often come to find out—as we investigate the statements on our Worksheet, sentence by sentence—that none of what we have written is true. That is meeting each thought with understanding. We innocently believed our own thinking. We didn’t have a way to understand that it wasn’t true.

When you ask yourself question 1, your mind begins to open. Even to consider that a thought may not be true will let a little light into your mind. If you answer, “Yes, it’s true,” then you may want to ask yourself question 2, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true?” Some people get very agitated, even angry, when they say, “No, I can’t absolutely know that!” And then I might ask them to be gentle with themselves and just experience that understanding for a moment. If they sit with their answer, then it does become gentle, and it opens to infinite possibilities, to freedom. It’s like stepping out of a narrow, smoky room into open space.

 

Q: How can I do The Work if no one around me is doing it? Won’t they see me as detached and uncaring? How will my family be able to adjust to my new way of thinking?

A: No one around me was doing The Work when I began; I did it alone. And yes, your family could see you as detached and uncaring. As you come to see what isn’t true for you, and as you experience question 3 (“How do I react, what do I say and do, when I believe that thought?”), there is such a shift inside you that you may lose the most essential agreements with your family. “Charlie should brush his teeth”—is it true? No, not until he does: You have ten years of proof that he hasn’t been brushing his teeth regularly. How do you react? For ten years, you’ve gotten angry, you’ve threatened him, you’ve given him “the look,” you’ve gotten frustrated, you’ve laid guilt on him. Now the whole family is telling Charlie to brush his teeth (just as you’ve taught them to do through your example), and you’re no longer participating. You’re betraying the family religion. When they look to you for consent, you can’t give it. So now they may begin to shame you for not shaming him, just the way you taught them to do. Your family is an echo of your own past beliefs.

If your truth now is kind, it will run deep and fast within the family and will replace betrayal with a better way. As you continue to find your own way in inquiry, sooner or later your family will come to see as you yourself do. There’s no other choice. Your family is a projected image of your thinking. It’s your story; nothing else is possible. Until you love your family without conditions, even as they shame Charlie, self-love is not a possibility, and therefore your Work is not done.

Your family will see you as they see you and will leave you to work on them all. How do you see yourself? That’s the important question. How do you see them? If I think that they need The Work, then I need The Work. Peace doesn’t require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

If you want to alienate your friends and family, go around saying, “Is it true?” or “Turn it around” if they’re not asking you for help. You may need to do that for a while, in order to hear it for yourself. It’s uncomfortable to believe that you know more than your friends and to represent yourself as their teacher. Their irritation will lead you deeper into inquiry or deeper into your suffering.

 

Q: What do you mean by “Don’t be spiritual—be honest instead.”

A: What I mean is that it’s very painful to pretend yourself beyond your own evolution, to live a lie, any lie. When you act like a teacher, it’s usually because you’re afraid to be the student. I don’t pretend to be fearless. I either am or I’m not. It’s no secret to me.

 

Q: How can I learn to forgive someone who hurt me very badly?

A: Judge your enemy, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around. See for yourself that forgiveness means discovering that what you thought happened didn’t. Until you can see that there is nothing to forgive, you haven’t really forgiven. No one has ever hurt anyone. No one has ever done anything terrible. There’s nothing terrible except your uninvestigated thoughts about what happened. So whenever you suffer, inquire, look at the thoughts you’re thinking, and set yourself free. Be a child. Start from the mind that knows nothing. Take your ignorance all the way to freedom.

 

Q: You’ve said, “When you’re perfectly clear, what is is what you want.” Suppose I save all month to go to a good restaurant so I can eat grilled lemon sole. The waiter brings me braised ox tongue. What is is not what I want. Am I confused? What does it mean to argue with reality?

A: Yes, you’re very confused. If you were clear, what you’d want is braised ox tongue, because that’s what the waiter brought. It doesn’t mean that you have to eat it. How do you react when you think that he shouldn’t have brought you braised ox tongue? Until you project that you have to eat it, or that you don’t have enough time to reorder, or that you have to pay for what you didn’t order, or that there has been any kind of injustice, there’s no problem. But when you believe that he shouldn’t have brought it, you might become angry at him or feel some form of stress. Who would you be without your story as you face the waiter? Who would you be without the thought that there’s not enough time or that the waiter made a mistake? You might be a person loving the moment, loving the apparent mistake. You might even be calm enough to repeat your original order with clarity and amusement. You might say, “I appreciate you, and what I ordered was grilled lemon sole. My time is limited, and if you can’t serve me the grilled lemon sole and have me out of here by eight, I’ll need to go elsewhere. I prefer to stay here. What do you suggest?”

Arguing with reality means arguing with the story of a past. It’s already over, and no thinking in the world can change it. The waiter has already brought you the braised ox tongue; it’s sitting in front of you on a plate. If you think that it shouldn’t be there, you’re confused, because there it is. The point is, how can you be most effective in this moment, given that what is is? Accepting reality doesn’t mean that you’re going to be passive. Why would you be passive when you can be clear and have a wonderful, sane life? You don’t have to eat the braised ox tongue; you don’t have to keep from clearly reminding the waiter that you ordered grilled lemon sole. Accepting reality means, in fact, that you can act in the kindest, most appropriate, and most effective way.

 

Q: What do you mean by “There are no physical problems—only mental ones”? What if I lose my right arm and I’m right-handed? Isn’t that a huge problem?

A: How do I know I don’t need two arms? I have only one. There’s no mistake in the universe. To think in any other way is fearful and hopeless. The story “I need two arms” is where the suffering begins, because it argues with reality. Without the story, I have everything I need. I’m complete with no right arm. My handwriting may be shaky at first, but it’s perfect just the way it is. It will do the job in the way I need to do it, not in the way I thought I needed to do it. Obviously, there needs to be a teacher in this world of how to be happy with one arm and shaky handwriting. Until I’m willing to lose my left arm, too, my Work’s not done.

 

Q: How can I learn to love myself?

A: “You’re supposed to love yourself”—is that true? How do you treat yourself when you believe the thought that you’re supposed to love yourself, and you don’t? Can you see a reason to drop the story? And I’m not asking you to drop your sacred concept. Who would you be without the story “You’re supposed to love yourself”? And “You’re supposed to love others”? Just another toy—another toy of torture. What’s the direct opposite? “You’re not supposed to love others.” Doesn’t that feel a little more natural? You’re not supposed to love others yet—not until you do. These sacred concepts, these spiritual ideas, always turn into dogma.

 

Q: What do you mean when you say that you are my projection?

A: The world is your perception of it. Inside and outside always match—they are reflections of each other. The world is the mirror image of your mind. If you experience chaos and confusion inside, your external world has to reflect that. You have to see what you believe, because you are the confused thinker looking out and seeing yourself. You are the interpreter of everything, and if you’re chaotic, what you hear and see has to be chaos. Even if Jesus, even if the Buddha, were standing in front of you, you would hear confused words, because confusion would be the listener. You would only hear what you thought he was saying, and you’d start arguing with him the first time your story was threatened.

As for my being your projection, how else could I be here? It’s not as though I had a choice. I am the story of who you think I am, not who I really am. You see me as old, young, beautiful, ugly, honest, deceitful, caring, uncaring. I am, for you, your uninvestigated story, your own myth.

I understand that who you think I am is true for you. I was innocent and gullible also, but only for forty-three years, until the moment when I woke up to the way things really are. “It’s a tree. It’s a table. It’s a chair.” Is it true? Have you stopped to ask yourself? Did you ever become still and listen as you asked you? Who told you it was a tree? Who was the original authority? How did they know? My entire life, my entire identity, had been built on the trust and uninquiring innocence of a child. Are you this kind of child? Through this Work, your toys and fairy tales are laid aside as you begin to read the book of true knowledge, the book of yourself.

People tell me, “But Katie, your happiness is all a projection,” and I say, “Yes, and isn’t it beautiful? I love living this happy dream. I’m having a wonderful time!” If you lived in heaven, would you want it to end? It doesn’t end. It can’t. That is what’s true for me, until it’s not. If it should change, I always have inquiry. I answer the questions, the truth is realized within me, and the doing meets the undone, the something meets the nothing. In the balance of the two halves, I am free.

 

Q: You say that The Work will leave me without stress, without problems. But isn’t that irresponsible? Suppose my three-year-old child is starving. Won’t I see her from a position of no stress and think, “Well, that’s reality,” and just let her starve?

A: Oh, my! Sweetheart, love is kind; it doesn’t stand still and do nothing when it sees its own need. Do you really think that violent thoughts, such as the ones that come with problems, are necessary to feed a child? If your three-year-old is starving, feed her, for your sake! How would it feel to provide for a starving child without stress or worry? Wouldn’t you be clearer about how and where to find the food that is available, and wouldn’t you feel elation and gratitude for it? Well, that’s how I live my life. I don’t need stress to do what I know to do; that’s not efficient, the way peace and sanity are. Love is action, and in my experience, reality is always kind.

 

Q: How can you say that reality is good? What about war, rape, poverty, violence, and child abuse? Are you condoning them?

A: How could I condone them? I simply notice that if I believe they shouldn’t exist, I suffer. They exist until they don’t. Can I just end the war in me? Can I stop raping myself and others with abusive thinking? If not, I’m continuing in myself the very thing that I want to end in you. Sanity doesn’t suffer, ever. Can you eliminate war everywhere on earth? Through inquiry, you can begin to eliminate it for one human being: you. This is the beginning of the end of war in the world. If life upsets you, good! Judge the war makers on paper, inquire, and turn it around. Do you really want to know the truth? All suffering begins and ends with you.

 

Q: Always accepting reality sounds like never wanting anything. Isn’t it more interesting to want things?

A: My experience is that I do want something all the time. It’s not only interesting, it’s ecstatic! What I want is what is. What I want is what I already have.

When I want what I have, thought and action aren’t separate; they move as one, without conflict. If you find anything lacking, ever, write down your thought and inquire. I find that life never falls short and doesn’t require a future. Everything I need is always supplied, and I don’t have to do anything for it.

What do I want specifically? I want to answer your question, because that’s what’s happening right now. I respond to you, because that’s what love does. It’s an effect of the original cause: you. I love this life. Why would I want something more or less than what I have, even if it’s painful? What would I do with it that could be better than what I’m doing right now? What I see, where I am, what I smell and taste and feel—it’s all so fine. If you loved your life, would you want to change it? There is nothing more exciting than loving what is.

 

Q: You sometimes say, “God is everything, God is good.” Isn’t that just one more belief?

A: God, as I use that word, is another name for what is. I always know God’s intention: It’s exactly what is in every moment. I don’t have to question it anymore. I’m no longer meddling in God’s business. It’s simple. And from that basis, it’s clear that everything is perfect. The last truth—I call it the last judgment—is “God is everything, God is good.” People who really understand this don’t need inquiry. Ultimately, of course, even this isn’t true. But if it works for you, I say keep it and have a wonderful life.

All so-called truths eventually fall away. Every truth is a distortion of what is. If we investigate, we lose even the last truth. And that state, beyond all truths, is true intimacy. That is God-realization. And welcome to the reentry. It’s always a beginning.

 

Q: If nothing is true, then why bother? Why go to the dentist, why treat myself for illness? I’m quite confused. Can you clarify this?

A: I go to the dentist because I like to chew. I prefer it when my teeth don’t fall out. Silly me! If you’re confused, inquire and find what’s true for you.

 

Q: How can I live in the Now?

A: You do. You just haven’t noticed.

Only in this moment are we in reality. You and everyone can learn to live in the moment, as the moment, to love whatever is in front of you, to love it as you. If you keep doing The Work, you will see more and more clearly what you are without a future or a past. The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.

But even the Now is a concept. Even as the thought completes itself, it’s gone, with no proof that it ever existed, other than as a concept that would lead you to believe it existed, and now that one is gone too. Reality is always the story of a past. Before you can grasp it, it’s gone. Each of us already has the peaceful mind that we seek.

 

Q: I find it very hard to tell the truth, since the truth is so changeable. How can I be consistent in telling the truth?

A: Human experience is constantly changing, though the place of integrity never moves. I say, let’s begin from where we are. Can we just tell the truth as it appears now, without comparing it to what was true a moment ago? Ask me again later, and I may have a different truthful answer. “Katie, are you thirsty?” No. “Katie, are you thirsty?” Yes. I always tell what my truth is right now. Yes, no, yes, yes, no. That’s the truth.

My cousin once called me at two in the morning, very depressed, and said that he was holding a loaded pistol to his head and that the hammer was cocked. He said that if I didn’t give him one good reason why he should stay alive, he would blow his head off. I waited for a long time. I really wanted to give him a reason, and no good reason came to me. I waited and waited, with him on the other end of the phone line. Finally, I told him that I couldn’t find one. And he burst into tears. This evidently was the truth he needed. He said it was the first time in his life that he had ever heard integrity and that was what he was looking for. If I had concocted some reason, because I believed that he shouldn’t kill himself, I would have given him less than the only thing I really have to give, which is my truth in the moment.

I have noticed that people who do The Work for a while get really clear about the truth as they see it. It becomes easy to stand in it and easy to be flexible and change their minds. Being honest in the moment becomes a very comfortable thing.

Do you know anyone who hasn’t changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We’re all like that, constantly changing. It’s simply honest to report that you’ve changed your mind when you have. When you’re afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly—that’s where you become confused. “You changed your mind?” Yes. “Is there something the matter with you?” Yes, I changed my mind.

 

Q: Is it true that I can’t hurt another person?

A: It’s not possible for me to hurt another person. (Please don’t try to believe this. It’s not true for you until you realize it for yourself.) The only person I can hurt is myself. If you ask me point-blank for the truth, then I’m going to tell you what I see. I want to give you everything that you ask for. The way you receive my answer is the way you hurt yourself with it or help yourself with it. I’m just giving you what I’ve got.

But if I think that saying something to you would cause you to hurt your own feelings, I don’t say it (unless you tell me that you really want to know). If I think I’m unkind to you, I’m not comfortable within myself. I cause my own suffering, and I stop for my own sake. I take care of myself, and in that you, too, are taken care of. My kindness ultimately has nothing to do with you. We’re all responsible for our own peace. I could say the most loving words, and you might take offense. I understand that. What I realize is that the story you tell yourself about what I say is the only way you can hurt yourself. You’re suffering, because you didn’t ask four questions and turn it around.

 

Q: So many people, so many souls, are becoming enlightened now. There seems to be a universal collective hunger for this, a common awakening, as if there is only one organism, one being, waking up. Is this your experience, too?

A: I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that if it hurts, investigate. Enlightenment is just a spiritual concept, just one more thing to seek in a future that never comes. Even the highest truth is just one more concept. For me, the experience is everything, and that’s what inquiry reveals. Everything painful is undone—now, now, now. If you think you’re enlightened, you’ll love having your car towed away. That’s it! How do you react when your child is sick? How do you react when your husband or wife wants a divorce? I don’t know about people collectively waking up. Are you suffering, now? That’s my interest.

People talk about self-realization, and this is it! Can you just breathe in and out happily? Who cares about enlightenment when you’re happy right now? Just enlighten yourself to this moment. Can you just do that? And then, eventually, it all collapses. The mind merges with the heart and comes to see that it’s not separate. It finds a home, and it rests in itself, as itself. Until the story is met with understanding, there is no peace.

 

Q: I’ve heard that people who are free don’t have any preferences, since they see everything as perfect. Do you have preferences?

A: Do I have preferences? I am a lover of what is, and that’s what I always have. “It” has its own preferences: the sun in the morning and the moon at night. And it appears that I always have a preference for the thing happening now. I prefer the sun in the morning, and I prefer the moon at night. And I prefer to be with the person in front of me now. As soon as someone starts asking questions, I’m there. He is my preference, and there’s no one else. Then when I’m talking to another person, she’s the one, and there’s no one else. I discover my preferences by noticing what it is that I’m doing. Whatever I’m doing: That’s my preference. How do I know? I’m doing it! Do I prefer vanilla over chocolate? I do, until I don’t. I’ll let you know as we place our order at Ben and Jerry’s.

 

Q: Do all beliefs need to be undone?

A: Investigate all the beliefs that cause you suffering. Wake yourself up from your nightmares, and the sweet dreams will take care of themselves. If your internal world is free and wonderful, why would you want to change it? If the dream is a happy one, who would want to wake up? And if your dreams aren’t happy, welcome to The Work.