A Mason's Work

[00:00] So, good news. You've caught yourself in a lie or mislead or deception of some capacity. Now what? Like, what do you do? The trick here is to avoid running directly to self-judgment, self-deprecation, or some other analytics kind of process.
[00:26] That's later. The first thing we have to do is, again, not evaluate. It's to move to collecting more information. This is where the reflection phase comes in, and it's really quite important.
[00:42] And when we're busy looking at these challenges that we have in our life, the thing that we can't see more often than not is the pattern, the behavior pattern that supports what's going on.
[01:02] What behavior pattern supports the lie? What behavior pattern supports the truth? What behavior pattern underlies all of the things we do?
[01:11] So, as we're busy trying to figure out, you know, we've caught a lie, and we want to go to that place where we start to put the stuff together, we have to spend time sitting in that lie, effectively.
[01:29] We have to sit there and, or that mislead. Again, lying has this implication. The mislead, though, is really important.
[01:39] So, we reflect on things like, what does this mislead protect? What is hiding underneath of those stories we tell ourselves?
[01:55] We want to collect data. We want to go back through our own understanding of our own personal history and try and find more data.
[02:07] You look through maybe your, you know, long ago history, your way, way past, you know, when you were a child, your ancient history, your personal ancient history, I guess, let's say.
[02:23] More ancient for some than others, no doubt.
[02:27] And start to collect stuff.
[02:30] We want to do this from a, from, with the secretary's apron on, and we want to do it in the preparing room as a place to operate.
[02:43] The preparing room, again, is about non-judgment.
[02:45] It's about not being defensive, not being aggressive.
[02:50] It's, it's about allowing these things to happen and come through without, you know, meaningfully processing.
[03:00] Uh, you want to have, you be open to the experiences as they come up, as you sit in reflection.
[03:06] We want, what we want to do here is also at the same time, put on that secretary's apron, understand the difference between facts and feelings.
[03:15] Between what is true and what is felt.
[03:18] And in those conversations, those mental reflections, by separating these out, we'll begin the process of essentially creating a data pile.
[03:30] Information that we can look at in the analysis phase.
[03:34] When we go back into the examining room with all of this information, with all of this understanding, we can determine what our next steps are.
[03:42] But until we have more supporting evidence, we can't get there from here.
[03:49] So what does this really mean?
[03:52] When you've caught this mislead and you're ready to look at it, you want to sit.
[03:58] Now I have a tendency, uh, to literally, I have a, I have a meditation cushion and I sit and I reflect.
[04:06] Uh, I think about what happened to think about all of the supporting causal steps, the things that happened before my reaction or before the, the, uh, the lie or the mislead came out internally.
[04:19] Before I went defensive, before I went offensive with, you know, blaming the world.
[04:26] So I'll sit, uh, and, and just be quiet.
[04:30] Right.
[04:31] I'm not going to get attached to the thoughts.
[04:32] I'm going to let them come up and let them go.
[04:35] I'm going to just keep track of them.
[04:36] Like, here's, here's the recurring themes that I'm noticing.
[04:39] Here's the things that keep coming up.
[04:42] Every time I reflect on this situation, those recurring themes are going to be useful as we get to that analysis phase.
[04:48] That, uh, that part where we start to figure out what to do with what we know, but right now collect the data, right?
[04:57] Maybe write down.
[04:58] If you're not a, if you're not the kind of person who wants to sit and reflect, maybe you sit down and write out the timeline.
[05:04] Hey, here's, here's what led up to this place where I thought it was important to tell myself something that wasn't true.
[05:13] Here's the circumstances.
[05:15] Here's the, the events.
[05:16] Here's the relationships.
[05:19] Here's, uh, here's why I think, you know, or here's the, essentially the, the, the milestones led up to it.
[05:28] You don't want to get into why that's in the analysis phase.
[05:31] Um, it's really easy to kind of jump to analysis without enough information.
[05:35] And so you want to be very sensitive to having as much knowledge as you can in that reflection phase.
[05:42] Your mind will naturally gravitate to that analysis.
[05:47] Um, but without enough information, you'll jump to conclusions and those become, um, their own kind of stratified and solidified edifice that you'll have to try and figure out how to deprogram or undo later.
[05:59] So, so again, it's really important that you take the time to reflect here and collect as much information internally as you can.
[06:09] You may also find that you can collect data externally.
[06:12] Hey, can you tell me more about kind of what was going on here?
[06:15] Cause I was unable to see it from where I was sitting and that's okay too.
[06:21] As you begin this reflection process, uh, collect as much data as you can.
[06:25] And we'll talk more about how to deal with it tomorrow.