A Mason's Work

The comparison engine does not switch off. Every episode this week has been clear about that — and just as clear that judging yourself for running those comparisons is its own version of the same problem. So the honest question at the end of all of this is: if the mind is going to contrast and evaluate regardless, what is the most useful thing to point it at? The answer, working through the plumb, the level, the square, and the compasses together, is to compare present behavior against your own intended expression. Not against other people, not against a past self operating in entirely different conditions, but against the question of whether what you are doing right now reflects the best version of what you are actually here to do.

The square's instruction to square your actions by the square of virtue becomes concrete when virtue is understood as function — does the thing do what it is designed to do? Does your behavior, right now, in this moment, perform as intended for who you actually are? The plumb says stand up rightly. Together these tools turn the comparison engine toward a target it can genuinely reach: the gap between your current execution and your own authentic standard. That is a comparison that produces motion instead of paralysis.

There is a point in this process where language starts to fall short — where the understanding being transmitted is closer to presence than to proposition. Brian references the Masonic phrase \"I did not so receive it, neither can I so impart it\" and the opening of the Tao Te Ching for exactly this reason. The mechanics can be described. The experience of actually running the comparison engine against your own self-expression, rather than outward at the world, is something that arrives more than it is explained. It is worth finding.

• How to redirect the comparison engine toward your own standard
• The square and virtue as functional measures of present behavior
• The plumb as a guide for in-the-moment self-assessment
• Comparing to \"not self\" as a Masonic and contemplative concept
• Where language reaches its limits in transmitting this understanding
• What it looks and feels like when the comparison engine is finally working for you

The work is waiting. So is the clarity that comes with doing it this way.

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• Tim Dedman
• Jorge