December 3, 2025 • 19 mins
Craftsmen Online is proud to introduce the debut of our new affiliate, “A Mason’s Work Podcast.” Join Bro. Brian Mattocks for episodes that discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men’s issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well. Best part: the episodes are no more than 10 minutes and you get a few during the week!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Opinions and views shared during this program are of those
individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official position of
a Grand Launch, Concordant Body, a pendant Body, a Masonic authority,
or Craftsman Online dot Com.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only Masonic
podcast and joshed by the krat Logivi York. I'm your
host write worship for Brother Michael Arsa And you're probably wondering, Hey,
a Craftsman Online Podcast episode on Wednesday? Did Arci have
a little too much egg?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
No, this is a special occasion as we mark the
debut of a new affiliate, a Mason's Work podcast hosted
by Brother Brian Maddox. Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hey, how are you? From the RC?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
And this is the by product of a couple beautiful
conversations that Brian and I had And at the end
of this episode you're going to get a little dose
of his podcast at Mason's Work so that you can like,
follow and subscribe it as well, however you choose to
get your podcast. But let's start here. Brian, like give
us the thirty thousand foot level review or overview. What
is a mason's work and how did you come up
(01:20):
with it?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well, hopefully you all know what a mason's work is
because you were raised in the craft, and I know
it's kind of a pun. The idea is, when I
became a mason, I was looking for the roadmap for
that whole promised good men better thing. And when I
didn't see the sort of hard roadmap for like, Okay,
(01:42):
go here and then do this and then do that,
I saw this kind of I was raised into the
vacuum of that sort of master mason experience where you
don't really know what to do next. And then there's
a bunch of petitions for re pendant bodies like writ
in your Faith. So I said, well, I'm not going
to be able to give those appendent bodies the time
(02:02):
and attention they need because I'm still on quest number one,
which is good men better. So maybe I should start
helping myself in that process. And so I started making
sort of headway personally on my journey to become a
better person, and then using the craft to do so.
I worked through a lot of the relationship stuff comes
(02:27):
with getting over your stuff, as it were, and then
I brought that back to my lodge and they were
surprisingly receptive, and I took that and as a sign
that I should keep going. And then I started a
podcast about a year and a half ago where I
only focus on using the symbolism of the craft to
(02:50):
unpack yourself and become better.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now. I got turned onto your podcast by another Pennsylvania brother,
and I was like, oh, this is cool. Like episodes
are no more than ten and it's completely different than
the style of podcasts that you would hear here on
the Craftsman Online podcast, where your format, not conversational, is
more you. And what I like to describe is it's
like that personal mix between like a personal therapy session
(03:16):
and a personal life coach success session where for me
as a runner, I put this on and I listened
to it in seven minutes and I'm like, Okay, this
is a great way to start my day of really
kind of taking the working tools and the things that
I like about freemasonry and finding ways to practically apply them.
Not that that's to limit what your podcast is about,
because you also ask fantastic questions and you get into
(03:39):
your own topics and discussions, and it makes me it's
very thought provoking, and I feel the best way to
describe your podcast to a brother or just someone who
has an interest in Freemasonry who's never listened to it
before is think of the daily Stoic and if there
is a kind of a version of that for Freemasonry,
this would be it. But for Masons, especially as Masons,
(04:01):
if you had a good experience with your Masonic education
coach or your lodge education mentor or success coach or
whatever it's called when you were going through your Catechism
ritual study, right, if you really enjoyed that and now
you kind of miss it because you need to seek
it on your own, You're going to dig a Mason's work.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well, thank you. That's kind of the intent, right was
We're not here to do this work alone. I mean,
I have opinions just like everybody else. One of those
is that true fraternity emerges from the growth that you
go through in self development and things like that with
(04:40):
other people. That companionship is important, but it's something you
can get in a lot of different places. When you
work with brothers and you have time and you learn
their burdens and you help them negotiate kind of what
they're going through really get a much much richer Masonic experience.
(05:03):
You get this sort of if you were playing video games.
It's like an experience multiplier. Right. When I can help
somebody else kind of go through their stuff, I get
to learn from their mistakes, which is really great. And
you kind of have to believe that fundamentally, if you
believe in any of our ritual it was designed to
(05:25):
tell you a story. So you learn from a brother's mistakes.
This is exactly what we do. And so on the show,
I try and surface as many of the mistakes I've
made or the discoveries I've come across that kind of
you can't fit that back in the bottle as it were.
You can't go back developmentally, once you know a thing,
it's kind of hard to regress. And that's just sharing
(05:47):
the experiences and learning that I get in my everyday
for the Masonic Journey.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
One of the things we talked about in one of
our mini phone calls and text message chats is a
definition in a word that you like to use. And
I'm like, oh my gosh, I run the risk of
being someone who is into the meta. What is the
meta when it comes to Freemasonry? And how can Masons
avoid getting stuck in the meta.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
The meta conversation about the craft When you're talking about freemasonry,
you're not doing it, for lack of a better way
to say it, right, if you are talking about the
history of the craft and things like that, and you
can't functionally apply that to how you're going to achieve
your Masonic goals and objectives, you're doing the metawork. It's
(06:33):
mistaken for action, right it is, So I call it
productively unproductive in my case, for example, right when I'm
actively avoiding doing a thing, and this happens a lot
because I'm a work in development, I have a client
project do or something that I'm working on, I will
go and do something that seems productive, like the laundry,
(06:56):
as a surrogate for actively doing the thing I was
supposed to do. We do a lot of that in
the craft. We talk about free mason as a surrogate
for the work of the craft, which is again the
growth and self development, the community engagement, the being a
good brother. Because we don't talk much about that either,
how does it what does it mean to really care
(07:16):
for a guy? Like? How do you do that without
trying to do their work for them? Right? How do
you parent? How do you lead? How do you do
all of that stuff?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
How does that best expressed in a group of men
trying to make sense.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Of Once I understood your definition and the way you
use that word, I'm like, you know, Brian and I
are on the same page for a lot of things here.
And that's what again makes this so exciting is that
we're coming together. You're joining the Craftsman Online podcast Network.
We're excited to have you on here with the Mason's work.
You're going to get your first sample as a listener
of this podcast immediately following this episode, along with all
(07:58):
the links in the notes for this episode on how
to like, follow, subscribe, do all those things so that
this podcast can end up in your player on your phone. However,
you get your podcasts every couple of days because your
release schedule is what like every two or three days,
I think, so.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I do three episodes a week. The kind of built
in guarantee is that none of the episodes are longer
than you know, ten minutes, enough time to walk the dog,
but not you know, have the dog pass out because
of the walk. The idea is a lot of the
craft is so dense and so rich and so wonderful.
I tell people it's like I'm old enough to remember
(08:35):
the commercials on television when you couldn't skip them or
any of that kind of stuff. There was a commercial
for a tomato sauce called Prego, and the tagline for
Prego was It's in there, right. There is so much
stuff in the craft about how to live, how to grow,
how to care for each other. What does it look like?
It's all in there, and all I'm doing is discovering
(08:55):
it and sharing.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
That's kind of the point I was making earlier about
your show and why I got hooked because I immediately
sorted listening to your back catalog. I started with episode one,
was just like, oh, seven minutes, bang bang, bang bang,
just like just let Apple Podcasts do its thing. When
we're going through that guided education process, and I know
it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but for the most part,
(09:17):
there's those three degrees structure and you're kind of building
to show the proficiency to move to the eventual being
raised to master Mason. And when you have that process
that's in place, it's very easy to get guided education.
But once you become a master mason and it's like
hey boo, now you know all the secrets of masonry
and here's all the working tools and go at it.
(09:37):
If you don't have that foundation of other guys around
you and your lodge, Let's be honest, a lot of
us don't anymore because of some of the things that
you and I both agree on that unfortunately freemasonry has
in some instances become more of a social club or
we look at ritual as a dirty r word and
nobody wants to do it because we believe that to
be proficient and ritual means that you have to know
(09:58):
the difference between an UH or an AM and a
B or a B and not really the actual understanding
of the work. Right. That's where your podcast comes in
and kind of fills that lack, that crack in the cement,
and for guys that feel stuck because they came into
this fraternity like we both did, and we're told you're
(10:18):
going to get these tools to become a better man,
and you find out that it's about personal development. And
now there isn't this grand lodge subscribed course that you
can get on that shows you how to do this.
This is why we are losing guys within five six
years because they're not getting that initial thing that they
were told was going to help make them better, although
(10:38):
some would say they are, but you have to be
able to seek it on your own. And for those
of us that don't have the time or can't make
those connections, that's where podcasts like A Mason's Work steps
in to help out.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It's important to recognize and understand that the structural elements
of the craft, the administrative elements of freemasonry, are what
most meant experience as the craft. You are kind of
what's left in an organization. A lot of the intellectual
sort of backbone of the craft I would say has left,
(11:10):
but is basically just has not stuck around for the
various reasons that that has happened. When we start meaningfully
talking to each other and using the symbols of the craft,
we can rebuild the experience, that connective tissue that animates
the rest of the administrative it right, So there is
a room for all of these things. It's not either or.
(11:33):
I know a lot of guys right now in an
age where the social media has kind of kicked in
and you know, meeting remotely has kicked in that a
lot of folks are still looking for that warm, meaningful
connection where they can just have a place where they
can say, hey, listen, I'm just going through it right now.
I don't need you to fix it, but if you've
(11:54):
got any pointers so I know where to look, that'd
be awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
People that visit your website will some of the items
that you've created that can take you from feeling stuck
into and being very passive in how you practice Framemasonry
into making it a very active and meaningful part of
your day and that true guide and personal development to
becoming a better version of yourself. That discussion is still
(12:18):
to come. Let's talk about the episode that we've got
queued up to introduce A Mason's work to Craftsman Online
podcast listeners.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The episode that I'm about to work on for you guys,
I'm very excited is something that I've talked about a
little bit on the show before. One of the things
that happens when you learn something new is you tend
to have to learn it over and over again. You'll
learn it once, like maybe I should only say positive
(12:47):
things to somebody whos struggling right or something like that,
or maybe I shouldn't try and stick my nose in
something that you know I don't belong involved in, or whatever.
But you'll learn that half a dozen different times, have
a dozen different ways. That recursive nature of learning is
something that I'm going to talk to you a little
bit more. Even in the areas where you thought, oh man,
(13:10):
I already knocked the edge off of that stone, I
think I'm square there, there might be more opportunity to
keep learning that lesson over and over again and look
for it. So today in our episode of Mason's Work,
we're going to talk about that recursion.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Welcome to a Mason's Work, the podcast where we review
Masonic symbols and illustrate how they can be used to
solve problems in everyday life, with your host, Brian Mattox,
a proud member of the Craftsman Online Media Network.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Hian, thanks for listening to this special episode of Mason's
Work for the Craftsman Online listeners. I wanted today to
talk a little bit more about what Brother Narcy and
I kind of alluded to in the episode, and that
is the recursive nature of the way we learn things.
It is very likely that you can look back in
(14:05):
your own sort of mental landscape and remember situations where
you learn something multiple times, the same thing multiple times.
You may have learned easy, kind of high level concepts
like maybe I shouldn't be greedy, or you may have
learned concepts like maybe I have to take action here
(14:31):
when I really really don't want to. And you found
your courage, and when you find your courage to learn
and grow, that's going to change shape and dimension over time.
Good examples of this are essentially, as you grow and develop,
you are capable of more complex problems. You're capable of
(14:53):
solving or addressing larger and broader issues than you were
perhaps when you were a child, and so as that happens,
your scope increases. But our radar for the kind of
issues that we've already solved doesn't necessarily expand at the
same rate as our capacities do. So what do I
(15:17):
mean by that. I mean to say that when you
look at the lessons that you've learned over the course
of your life, the way you came to those lessons,
more often than not, was through a condition that you
were suffering from. But the nature of that suffering changes
(15:38):
again as you grow, and you may not recognize the
issues that recur later on in your life as matching
ones you've already solved once when you were younger, And
when this happens, you essentially have to learn the same
lesson again in a slightly different context. As you do this,
(16:00):
you tend to find that you have to learn that lesson,
whatever that lesson might be, probably once when you were
a child or very young, once or twice as a teenager. Yes,
you can learn as a teenager. I'm sure all of
you that have made it through it successfully learned quite
a bit. You also will learn that same lesson probably
(16:20):
in your young adulthood, then middle age, then you're senior age,
and then your twilight years, et cetera, et cetera. Those
kind of inflection points help you essentially in that they
because the context of your experience changes so significantly at
each of those kind of major phases of your life,
(16:41):
you have to update your roadmap for the things that
you're suffering from to match, so you can essentially not
have to go through all of the suffering all over
again that you've gone through to get from sort of
point A to point B.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
If you will.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
So, how does this work for us as Mason's Is
there a way to shortcut that process or are there
tools that we can use to essentially help us do
that context switching more quickly so we can kind of
get to those places faster and say, oh, yes, I've
already learned this once, or oh yes, I know what
this looks like. And the short answer is the aprons
(17:19):
in the lodge will help you. And so the aprons
in the lodge, the enterpriice, fellowcraft, the master mason, and
all of the aprons of all of the officers are
effectively roles that you can take on. If you imagine
a loge room, for example, and you'll have everyone in
that loge room sitting in a different position. They all
(17:42):
have a different view of the truth in the center
of the room, they all have a different perspective. Each
one of those aprons represents a perspective that you can
take to help you look at a situation. That same
structured approach of sort of putting on each apron conceptually
in your mind as you address situation you're struggling with
(18:04):
or facing your life. That process of walking through those
aprons effectively should help you identify recurring contexts over and
over again, because each of those aprons represents a way
of thinking, and a way of thinking that, if used well,
can help you identify these recurring patterns. So, if you
(18:28):
listened to our episode today and you like what you've heard,
you'll find on the sort of main feed for A
Mason's Work a lot of these perspectives from these different
positions than the Lodge. They'll find a lot of perspectives
that use the tools as well to help you essentially
get to this faster level of recursive learning and grow
(18:50):
and evolve as a person, thereby better fitting you as
living stones, et cetera, et cetera. So thank you so
much for listening, and I hope to find you on
a regular listener list. If you want to find more
about our work at A Mason's Work, just visit our
website or podcast at Amazonswork dot com. And thanks again.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
The views represented in this podcast are those of the
speaker alone and are not representative of any grand or
subordinate Lodge.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Hi, Brian here, I wanted to thank you so much
for listening to this episode. If you have any suggestions
or guidance for further episodes you'd like to see or hear,
whatever the case may be, Please don't hesitate to reach
out to me at amasonswork dot com and we will
try and incorporate your suggestions into a future recording. Thanks
The Commons.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Opinions and views shared during this program are of those
individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official position of
a Grand Launch, Concordant Body, a pendant Body, a Masonic authority,
or Craftsman Online dot Com.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only Masonic
podcast and joshed by the krat Logivi York. I'm your
host write worship for Brother Michael Arsa And you're probably wondering, Hey,
a Craftsman Online Podcast episode on Wednesday? Did Arci have
a little too much egg?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
No, this is a special occasion as we mark the
debut of a new affiliate, a Mason's Work podcast hosted
by Brother Brian Maddox. Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hey, how are you? From the RC?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
And this is the by product of a couple beautiful
conversations that Brian and I had And at the end
of this episode you're going to get a little dose
of his podcast at Mason's Work so that you can like,
follow and subscribe it as well, however you choose to
get your podcast. But let's start here. Brian, like give
us the thirty thousand foot level review or overview. What
is a mason's work and how did you come up
(01:20):
with it?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well, hopefully you all know what a mason's work is
because you were raised in the craft, and I know
it's kind of a pun. The idea is, when I
became a mason, I was looking for the roadmap for
that whole promised good men better thing. And when I
didn't see the sort of hard roadmap for like, Okay,
(01:42):
go here and then do this and then do that,
I saw this kind of I was raised into the
vacuum of that sort of master mason experience where you
don't really know what to do next. And then there's
a bunch of petitions for re pendant bodies like writ
in your Faith. So I said, well, I'm not going
to be able to give those appendent bodies the time
(02:02):
and attention they need because I'm still on quest number one,
which is good men better. So maybe I should start
helping myself in that process. And so I started making
sort of headway personally on my journey to become a
better person, and then using the craft to do so.
I worked through a lot of the relationship stuff comes
(02:27):
with getting over your stuff, as it were, and then
I brought that back to my lodge and they were
surprisingly receptive, and I took that and as a sign
that I should keep going. And then I started a
podcast about a year and a half ago where I
only focus on using the symbolism of the craft to
(02:50):
unpack yourself and become better.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now. I got turned onto your podcast by another Pennsylvania brother,
and I was like, oh, this is cool. Like episodes
are no more than ten and it's completely different than
the style of podcasts that you would hear here on
the Craftsman Online podcast, where your format, not conversational, is
more you. And what I like to describe is it's
like that personal mix between like a personal therapy session
(03:16):
and a personal life coach success session where for me
as a runner, I put this on and I listened
to it in seven minutes and I'm like, Okay, this
is a great way to start my day of really
kind of taking the working tools and the things that
I like about freemasonry and finding ways to practically apply them.
Not that that's to limit what your podcast is about,
because you also ask fantastic questions and you get into
(03:39):
your own topics and discussions, and it makes me it's
very thought provoking, and I feel the best way to
describe your podcast to a brother or just someone who
has an interest in Freemasonry who's never listened to it
before is think of the daily Stoic and if there
is a kind of a version of that for Freemasonry,
this would be it. But for Masons, especially as Masons,
(04:01):
if you had a good experience with your Masonic education
coach or your lodge education mentor or success coach or
whatever it's called when you were going through your Catechism
ritual study, right, if you really enjoyed that and now
you kind of miss it because you need to seek
it on your own, You're going to dig a Mason's work.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well, thank you. That's kind of the intent, right was
We're not here to do this work alone. I mean,
I have opinions just like everybody else. One of those
is that true fraternity emerges from the growth that you
go through in self development and things like that with
(04:40):
other people. That companionship is important, but it's something you
can get in a lot of different places. When you
work with brothers and you have time and you learn
their burdens and you help them negotiate kind of what
they're going through really get a much much richer Masonic experience.
(05:03):
You get this sort of if you were playing video games.
It's like an experience multiplier. Right. When I can help
somebody else kind of go through their stuff, I get
to learn from their mistakes, which is really great. And
you kind of have to believe that fundamentally, if you
believe in any of our ritual it was designed to
(05:25):
tell you a story. So you learn from a brother's mistakes.
This is exactly what we do. And so on the show,
I try and surface as many of the mistakes I've
made or the discoveries I've come across that kind of
you can't fit that back in the bottle as it were.
You can't go back developmentally, once you know a thing,
it's kind of hard to regress. And that's just sharing
(05:47):
the experiences and learning that I get in my everyday
for the Masonic Journey.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
One of the things we talked about in one of
our mini phone calls and text message chats is a
definition in a word that you like to use. And
I'm like, oh my gosh, I run the risk of
being someone who is into the meta. What is the
meta when it comes to Freemasonry? And how can Masons
avoid getting stuck in the meta.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
The meta conversation about the craft When you're talking about freemasonry,
you're not doing it, for lack of a better way
to say it, right, if you are talking about the
history of the craft and things like that, and you
can't functionally apply that to how you're going to achieve
your Masonic goals and objectives, you're doing the metawork. It's
(06:33):
mistaken for action, right it is, So I call it
productively unproductive in my case, for example, right when I'm
actively avoiding doing a thing, and this happens a lot
because I'm a work in development, I have a client
project do or something that I'm working on, I will
go and do something that seems productive, like the laundry,
(06:56):
as a surrogate for actively doing the thing I was
supposed to do. We do a lot of that in
the craft. We talk about free mason as a surrogate
for the work of the craft, which is again the
growth and self development, the community engagement, the being a
good brother. Because we don't talk much about that either,
how does it what does it mean to really care
(07:16):
for a guy? Like? How do you do that without
trying to do their work for them? Right? How do
you parent? How do you lead? How do you do
all of that stuff?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
How does that best expressed in a group of men
trying to make sense.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Of Once I understood your definition and the way you
use that word, I'm like, you know, Brian and I
are on the same page for a lot of things here.
And that's what again makes this so exciting is that
we're coming together. You're joining the Craftsman Online podcast Network.
We're excited to have you on here with the Mason's work.
You're going to get your first sample as a listener
of this podcast immediately following this episode, along with all
(07:58):
the links in the notes for this episode on how
to like, follow, subscribe, do all those things so that
this podcast can end up in your player on your phone. However,
you get your podcasts every couple of days because your
release schedule is what like every two or three days,
I think, so.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I do three episodes a week. The kind of built
in guarantee is that none of the episodes are longer
than you know, ten minutes, enough time to walk the dog,
but not you know, have the dog pass out because
of the walk. The idea is a lot of the
craft is so dense and so rich and so wonderful.
I tell people it's like I'm old enough to remember
(08:35):
the commercials on television when you couldn't skip them or
any of that kind of stuff. There was a commercial
for a tomato sauce called Prego, and the tagline for
Prego was It's in there, right. There is so much
stuff in the craft about how to live, how to grow,
how to care for each other. What does it look like?
It's all in there, and all I'm doing is discovering
(08:55):
it and sharing.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
That's kind of the point I was making earlier about
your show and why I got hooked because I immediately
sorted listening to your back catalog. I started with episode one,
was just like, oh, seven minutes, bang bang, bang bang,
just like just let Apple Podcasts do its thing. When
we're going through that guided education process, and I know
it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but for the most part,
(09:17):
there's those three degrees structure and you're kind of building
to show the proficiency to move to the eventual being
raised to master Mason. And when you have that process
that's in place, it's very easy to get guided education.
But once you become a master mason and it's like
hey boo, now you know all the secrets of masonry
and here's all the working tools and go at it.
(09:37):
If you don't have that foundation of other guys around
you and your lodge, Let's be honest, a lot of
us don't anymore because of some of the things that
you and I both agree on that unfortunately freemasonry has
in some instances become more of a social club or
we look at ritual as a dirty r word and
nobody wants to do it because we believe that to
be proficient and ritual means that you have to know
(09:58):
the difference between an UH or an AM and a
B or a B and not really the actual understanding
of the work. Right. That's where your podcast comes in
and kind of fills that lack, that crack in the cement,
and for guys that feel stuck because they came into
this fraternity like we both did, and we're told you're
(10:18):
going to get these tools to become a better man,
and you find out that it's about personal development. And
now there isn't this grand lodge subscribed course that you
can get on that shows you how to do this.
This is why we are losing guys within five six
years because they're not getting that initial thing that they
were told was going to help make them better, although
(10:38):
some would say they are, but you have to be
able to seek it on your own. And for those
of us that don't have the time or can't make
those connections, that's where podcasts like A Mason's Work steps
in to help out.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It's important to recognize and understand that the structural elements
of the craft, the administrative elements of freemasonry, are what
most meant experience as the craft. You are kind of
what's left in an organization. A lot of the intellectual
sort of backbone of the craft I would say has left,
(11:10):
but is basically just has not stuck around for the
various reasons that that has happened. When we start meaningfully
talking to each other and using the symbols of the craft,
we can rebuild the experience, that connective tissue that animates
the rest of the administrative it right, So there is
a room for all of these things. It's not either or.
(11:33):
I know a lot of guys right now in an
age where the social media has kind of kicked in
and you know, meeting remotely has kicked in that a
lot of folks are still looking for that warm, meaningful
connection where they can just have a place where they
can say, hey, listen, I'm just going through it right now.
I don't need you to fix it, but if you've
(11:54):
got any pointers so I know where to look, that'd
be awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
People that visit your website will some of the items
that you've created that can take you from feeling stuck
into and being very passive in how you practice Framemasonry
into making it a very active and meaningful part of
your day and that true guide and personal development to
becoming a better version of yourself. That discussion is still
(12:18):
to come. Let's talk about the episode that we've got
queued up to introduce A Mason's work to Craftsman Online
podcast listeners.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The episode that I'm about to work on for you guys,
I'm very excited is something that I've talked about a
little bit on the show before. One of the things
that happens when you learn something new is you tend
to have to learn it over and over again. You'll
learn it once, like maybe I should only say positive
(12:47):
things to somebody whos struggling right or something like that,
or maybe I shouldn't try and stick my nose in
something that you know I don't belong involved in, or whatever.
But you'll learn that half a dozen different times, have
a dozen different ways. That recursive nature of learning is
something that I'm going to talk to you a little
bit more. Even in the areas where you thought, oh man,
(13:10):
I already knocked the edge off of that stone, I
think I'm square there, there might be more opportunity to
keep learning that lesson over and over again and look
for it. So today in our episode of Mason's Work,
we're going to talk about that recursion.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Welcome to a Mason's Work, the podcast where we review
Masonic symbols and illustrate how they can be used to
solve problems in everyday life, with your host, Brian Mattox,
a proud member of the Craftsman Online Media Network.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Hian, thanks for listening to this special episode of Mason's
Work for the Craftsman Online listeners. I wanted today to
talk a little bit more about what Brother Narcy and
I kind of alluded to in the episode, and that
is the recursive nature of the way we learn things.
It is very likely that you can look back in
(14:05):
your own sort of mental landscape and remember situations where
you learn something multiple times, the same thing multiple times.
You may have learned easy, kind of high level concepts
like maybe I shouldn't be greedy, or you may have
learned concepts like maybe I have to take action here
(14:31):
when I really really don't want to. And you found
your courage, and when you find your courage to learn
and grow, that's going to change shape and dimension over time.
Good examples of this are essentially, as you grow and develop,
you are capable of more complex problems. You're capable of
(14:53):
solving or addressing larger and broader issues than you were
perhaps when you were a child, and so as that happens,
your scope increases. But our radar for the kind of
issues that we've already solved doesn't necessarily expand at the
same rate as our capacities do. So what do I
(15:17):
mean by that. I mean to say that when you
look at the lessons that you've learned over the course
of your life, the way you came to those lessons,
more often than not, was through a condition that you
were suffering from. But the nature of that suffering changes
(15:38):
again as you grow, and you may not recognize the
issues that recur later on in your life as matching
ones you've already solved once when you were younger, And
when this happens, you essentially have to learn the same
lesson again in a slightly different context. As you do this,
(16:00):
you tend to find that you have to learn that lesson,
whatever that lesson might be, probably once when you were
a child or very young, once or twice as a teenager. Yes,
you can learn as a teenager. I'm sure all of
you that have made it through it successfully learned quite
a bit. You also will learn that same lesson probably
(16:20):
in your young adulthood, then middle age, then you're senior age,
and then your twilight years, et cetera, et cetera. Those
kind of inflection points help you essentially in that they
because the context of your experience changes so significantly at
each of those kind of major phases of your life,
(16:41):
you have to update your roadmap for the things that
you're suffering from to match, so you can essentially not
have to go through all of the suffering all over
again that you've gone through to get from sort of
point A to point B.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
If you will.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
So, how does this work for us as Mason's Is
there a way to shortcut that process or are there
tools that we can use to essentially help us do
that context switching more quickly so we can kind of
get to those places faster and say, oh, yes, I've
already learned this once, or oh yes, I know what
this looks like. And the short answer is the aprons
(17:19):
in the lodge will help you. And so the aprons
in the lodge, the enterpriice, fellowcraft, the master mason, and
all of the aprons of all of the officers are
effectively roles that you can take on. If you imagine
a loge room, for example, and you'll have everyone in
that loge room sitting in a different position. They all
(17:42):
have a different view of the truth in the center
of the room, they all have a different perspective. Each
one of those aprons represents a perspective that you can
take to help you look at a situation. That same
structured approach of sort of putting on each apron conceptually
in your mind as you address situation you're struggling with
(18:04):
or facing your life. That process of walking through those
aprons effectively should help you identify recurring contexts over and
over again, because each of those aprons represents a way
of thinking, and a way of thinking that, if used well,
can help you identify these recurring patterns. So, if you
(18:28):
listened to our episode today and you like what you've heard,
you'll find on the sort of main feed for A
Mason's Work a lot of these perspectives from these different
positions than the Lodge. They'll find a lot of perspectives
that use the tools as well to help you essentially
get to this faster level of recursive learning and grow
(18:50):
and evolve as a person, thereby better fitting you as
living stones, et cetera, et cetera. So thank you so
much for listening, and I hope to find you on
a regular listener list. If you want to find more
about our work at A Mason's Work, just visit our
website or podcast at Amazonswork dot com. And thanks again.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
The views represented in this podcast are those of the
speaker alone and are not representative of any grand or
subordinate Lodge.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Hi, Brian here, I wanted to thank you so much
for listening to this episode. If you have any suggestions
or guidance for further episodes you'd like to see or hear,
whatever the case may be, Please don't hesitate to reach
out to me at amasonswork dot com and we will
try and incorporate your suggestions into a future recording. Thanks
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