I'm sitting at lunch in Ohio. It's a little place called The Nest. They serve sort of all sorts of

vegan, fair, and healthy foods. And I'm there with Byron Katie. I'm pretty excited about this because

Byron Katie in 1986, she had an epiphany. She was agoraphobic. She was an

alcoholic. She was addicted to codeine and all sorts of other substances. She couldn't barely go outside.

She, her self-esteem was so poor that she wouldn't even sleep in a bed. And there she was on the floor one

morning. And a cockroach climbed over her ankle.

And in that very moment she saw the source of the universe, the source of all suffering and how to alleviate that suffering.

And she codified that vision into a method of inquiry called The Work that's helped tens of thousands of people.

And so I'm sitting there at lunch with this wonderful salmon salad.

And I'm thinking this is a great opportunity to glean some sort of enlightenment in this moment.

And so I asked Katie, I said, Katie, what is

enlightenment? And just like that, there's silence. Katie's not afraid of silence. She sat there,

kind of chewing away on some vegan delight. It reminded me in the moment of my many trips to Japan. I used to go there

quite often as a businessman. And I would sit in some ivory tower with a high-powered Japanese executive.

And it was very different than my experiences in the United States. See us here in the Western world,

we want to fill space with words.

We're very uncomfortable with silence. That's a whole other topic. We'll talk about silence.

In Japan, the silence was treasured. It was actually seen as a sign of respect that they were

contemplating the idea, contemplating and digesting what you've said to come up with a thorough

and thoughtful response, not a reaction, but a response. And after my many trips to Japan, I got

quite used to this silence. And so I sat there with Katie, unperturbed, relaxed in the silence, and finally after masticating a hundred

times to get the most possible nutrients out of her vegan delight, she said, Jeff, what makes you

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