A Mason's Work

[00:00] this entire series of episodes, we've been building something, a mindset, threshold practice,
[00:09] a minimum viable environment, and how to create a group experience where the threshold
[00:14] is crossed and elevated work begins.
[00:18] And I want to name kind of what all that's been in service to because every one of these
[00:26] steps isn't the point.
[00:30] Everything we've built this week, preparation, the environment, the threshold, all of it
[00:34] has been infrastructure for a single moment, the present moment, the moment you stop managing
[00:44] and start being.
[00:46] We've spent a lot of time creating this space, but to live in that space, to begin the process
[00:55] of doing that work is something that as a culture, we tend to avoid because we talk about this
[01:02] productivity outcome focus.
[01:03] What we're really doing in the present moment is surrender.
[01:13] And for a lot of work, a lot of people, that word carries a big negative charge.
[01:19] Surrendering to the present moment doesn't mean losing all your faculties.
[01:26] It doesn't mean giving up.
[01:30] It doesn't mean giving your will over to someone else.
[01:36] What it means is it's a letting go, a divestiture of the back and forth tension of needing something
[01:51] to be done so much so that it distracts you from doing it.
[01:57] This is the creation of flow.
[02:01] You have set the stage for all of the work to start, and now you have this opportunity
[02:10] to begin that flow experience.
[02:14] That clubhouse example we talked about in episode three, when the moment took over and the environment
[02:20] disappeared, that was not like perpetual optimizing.
[02:25] That was surrendering to the present moment.
[02:29] You stopped managing the experience and became a part of it.
[02:34] We have a name for what that feels like in the lot.
[02:41] And we call it being on the level.
[02:44] That means everyone's operating.
[02:47] It's not a metaphor for fairness or a description of how we resolve inequalities in society.
[02:57] It is a description of the state that we are in.
[03:03] We are all operating on the work at the same level.
[03:09] There is nothing above the work and nothing below the work.
[03:13] It is the work on the level.
[03:16] When we do this together, the experience as a group is profound.
[03:26] We talk about it a little bit in our ritual, this notion of sublime silence, that when the
[03:31] temple in Jerusalem was built, that no tools of metal or iron could be heard, that in sublime
[03:40] silence, our ancient brethren reared the sacred temple.
[03:43] So we talk about this experience.
[03:47] And when we get the environment set correctly, when we create space correctly, sublime silence
[03:54] emerges.
[03:55] Now, I want to be quite clear.
[03:57] It need not be silent.
[03:59] So I was recently passed with creating a program for our new members.
[04:05] And the cleanup crew had just as much fun, you know, blasting ACDC and moving chairs around
[04:12] in a elevated state as you would have had if you had attended the event and eaten the dinner.
[04:21] The elevated experience does not, again, doesn't need to be silent per se.
[04:26] It needs to have everyone operating on that level.
[04:33] When you have surrendered to the moment in this way, the work is obvious.
[04:38] The challenge is manageable.
[04:40] The people you're doing it with are all on the level.
[04:43] The entire experience becomes this highly codified and concentrated memory that you don't necessarily
[04:54] remember how many things you did or what the nature of how the work divided out.
[05:00] You're not thinking about the transactional mechanics of any of it.
[05:04] You are thinking about the experience and the transcendent experience of having surrendered
[05:09] to the work and achieve something great by yourself or with others.
[05:13] And that leads us to our topic for next week, where I will see you then.