Wake up, stupid. That’s not to be read as “wake up stupid”. Everyone who finds themselves in the Work has come to it after a shock awakens them from robot life. By shock, I mean an electrical one. Sometime in the past, there was a shock, and that shock caused an initial awakening, an awareness of Being.

There are other ways of delivering that shock, not involving a joy-buzzer or a hairpin and an electric socket. We’ll explore one such way in a moment, but first, let’s assume that you did, indeed, receive an Awakening Shock, for some reason and in some way, however odd.

At first, you didn’t know what to do. All you knew was that you felt an empty ache — there was something you should be doing, learning, mastering, but what? Continue reading →