A Mason's Work

[00:00] So this week, we're reaching the conclusion of our exploration of conscious awareness.
[00:05] We're finishing the framework we've built layer by layer.
[00:08] And if you've been following along, we started at the Tuscan stage, that raw pre-evaluative
[00:12] formation, foundation of pure sensation, right?
[00:16] We moved through the Doric stage of labeling and ego.
[00:20] And now we've also processed that through the Ionic stage of sort of reflective intellect
[00:26] and metacognition.
[00:28] Yesterday, we looked at the Corinthian stage of emotional flourishing and aesthetic meeting.
[00:33] Today, we bring it all together for the final order, the composite.
[00:38] Now, architecturally, the composite is an order is a bit of a hybrid.
[00:43] It takes the scrolls and the volutes of the Ionic, and it marries them with the acanthus
[00:48] leaves of the Corinthian.
[00:49] It's the most sophisticated and integrated of the orders in our mapping of consciousness.
[00:55] The composite in our sort of conversation this week represents integrated agency.
[01:03] So what does that mean for our awareness?
[01:05] This is the point where our Ouroboros, or that snake eating its own tail, finally completes
[01:10] the circle.
[01:11] It's the composite stage where the head, the complex understanding of the world, finally
[01:18] meets the tail.
[01:19] That raw Tuscan sensation.
[01:23] Let's look at our difficult conversation example we used one last time to see how the synthesis
[01:27] works.
[01:28] At the Tuscan level, you kind of felt that heat in your chest, the tingling in your fingers
[01:32] or in your toes.
[01:33] When you had a new, this, you know, we're using a conflict as an example.
[01:38] At the Doric, you've labeled that.
[01:41] You've finally taken all those sensations and given them a label called frustration.
[01:45] At the Ionic level, you've analyzed the history of why you felt this way.
[01:50] Maybe you felt unheard.
[01:52] What kind of cause and effect relationships were available.
[01:55] At the Corinthian, you appreciated the sort of complex beauty and vulnerability of the
[02:00] conflict you were having.
[02:02] At the composite level, you're aware of all of these things sort of simultaneously.
[02:07] You don't just have the experience.
[02:09] You're the conscious architect of it.
[02:12] In the composite stage, you recognize that the story you told yourself is just that.
[02:17] It's a story.
[02:18] But you also realize that the raw sensation in your chest is the energy that powers that
[02:23] story.
[02:24] You're not stuck in the high drama of the Corinthian orientation anymore.
[02:28] You're just not reacting blindly like the Tuscan either.
[02:34] You've achieved this level of mastery where you can sense the data and choose the label
[02:39] that serves your growth.
[02:41] You become the architect of your agency.
[02:45] As always, a quick caveat for our health and safety.
[02:48] This isn't clinical science.
[02:49] We're using these architectural tools as an apparatus for our own internal working as Freemasons.
[02:54] The power of the composite is that allows us to move through the world with a mutuality
[02:59] of expression.
[03:00] We stop being the tail wagging the dog where our stories and emotions dictate our reality.
[03:06] Instead, we use this sort of structural understanding, the labels, the analysis as the means by which
[03:11] we begin to express our true selves.
[03:13] The trap of the previous stages was often losing touch with the foundation or getting lost in
[03:20] the details or falling in love with kind of your own reflection.
[03:24] But in the composite, you're the entire experience.
[03:27] You have the strength of the Tuscan, the clarity of the Doric, the wisdom of the Ionic and the
[03:32] heart of the Corinthian.
[03:33] Where the head meets the tail, you begin to realize that the pure awareness you had at
[03:38] the very beginning is the same awareness you have now, only now it's decorated with the
[03:43] wisdom of that journey.
[03:46] When we look across the conscious experience, it's also important to understand that this
[03:52] is further complicated by the fact that your level of conscious awareness may vary based
[03:59] on different domains of your life experience.
[04:02] For example, athletes get to a Corinthian level of self-awareness with their physiology very
[04:11] quickly as part of the process of becoming an athlete and very quickly subjective, but they
[04:16] get to this process as part of becoming an athlete.
[04:19] If you don't have perhaps the necessary requirements in your everyday life, like I don't need to
[04:27] have this level of understanding, it's going to be very difficult to move through it without
[04:31] essentially that external pressure to make that happen.
[04:34] As an athlete, you kind of have to get there from here.
[04:37] Or as a musician, where you have that emotional expression, you have to essentially develop this
[04:42] level of understanding in that domain and get to that Corinthian level of understanding of
[04:48] your own emotional responses in order to better express yourself out in the world.
[04:54] So in each of the various domains, maybe it's mechanical awareness, maybe it's musical awareness,
[04:59] maybe it's emotional content, maybe it's social awareness.
[05:02] You will be at some level of understanding kind of anchored there as part of how you're operating
[05:08] in the world.
[05:09] It's your default kind of approach to solving problems.
[05:13] When you start this process of developing and you find a place where you have made it
[05:19] to that composite understanding where you can be in the present moment and architect your
[05:24] response in a meaningful way that doesn't deny any part of the process, you can then begin
[05:30] to use that understanding to open up other domains of your experience.
[05:34] So you can not be stuck in the Tuscan when it comes to perhaps how you respond to not being
[05:43] able to get some of your needs met.
[05:45] You get to then stop getting so focused on the story you're telling yourself about how
[05:51] you're responding to this other situation in your life.
[05:56] And so as you start working through these and start moving this knowledge from one domain
[06:00] to the other, you help yourself grow from a place of strength to, you know, and resolve
[06:05] some of these other places where you may not have that awareness yet.
[06:09] So as we go through this, we went through this week, you've went through a pretty robust
[06:13] journey of understanding essentially how some of these pieces of consciousness kind of fit
[06:17] together and how you get to that place of presence where you can be in the present moment.
[06:23] Uh, you can own all of that process, both the evaluation, the creation and your response,
[06:29] all, uh, in synchronous response in the now.
[06:35] We're going to talk, uh, in the upcoming weeks about additional ways to leverage that
[06:39] enhanced conscious awareness to create better outcomes for you and the people around you.