A Mason's Work

Sometimes finding compassion is tough and the process of doing that isn't really well

documented.

So I wanted to take a second to help others from the craft get a protocol for finding

compassion.

And so this protocol is one that you know with anything.

How do you know where you learned it?

I've picked it up along the way and maybe to work for you.

So this applies the use of the fellow craft apron and an understanding of logic at

at least a high level.

So logic, music, kind of both relate.

The finding compassion is in a lot of ways a process of trying to understand what's going

on in the world, what's going on in their life.

And a perspective that I have found useful is that every human being that you're likely

to meet could have at one point been you.

Somewhere in their life, they went left instead of right, they zigzagged and bam, that's

where they are and why they are.

That branched understanding allows you to do some sort of internal alchemy kind of stuff

where you can turn the lead of suffering into the goal of understanding.

Let's do a little bit of work.

So if you look at someone's behavior and you say, okay, well, I have no idea where this

person's coming from using that sort of branched understanding as a high level backdrop.

Start doing a little bit of creative storytelling.

So let's say you have somebody who is maybe being rude to someone in the service profession.

Now, you can, it's an unjustifiable behavior like I'm not trying to ever advocate on behalf

of being rude to service professionals.

On the other hand, we want to approach this individual with compassion.

So how do we do it?

Well, let's imagine a scenario where the only logical conclusion is that behavior.

So maybe they were weight staff and maybe they had a traumatic experience in their past

that they can't let go of and they think that this is the way weight staff or service professionals

are supposed to be treated.

Or maybe this is the way someone in their life expressed love and caring compassion

to them was through this abusive behavior.

And that's the only way this person understands the expression of love and care.

Now again, I'm not trying to justify or excuse the behavior.

When we look for compassion, we're not looking to eliminate the responsibilities and accountability

for someone having sort of morally objectionable behavior.

What we're trying to do is understand them first at a human level.

From a human level, when I understand their behavior and the causes of their behavior,

I can approach them as a brother or what have you and begin the conversation from a solid

foundation of care.

This approach to compassion is pretty, I guess, common in a lot of the more sort of service-based

traditions.

You'll see it throughout a lot of the Eastern philosophies.

But when you are struggling to do this, putting on that logical perspective and trying to

find a scenario where this is the only rational logical behavior will help you, I think, significantly

understand, again, not to rationalize the behavior, but understand where it comes from so

that you can then offer the best kind of care moving forward.

When you do this, you do it for others.

You get more skill to do it for yourself.

Part of the reason that we analyze others' behavior is because in a lot of cases, those

behaviors, again, are just places where someone else is a zygdance that is act.

Someone else made a left turn, a sever right turn.

If you take this branching perspective, it becomes a lot easier to learn from others,

like a force multiplier, you get the benefit of their lived experience in your learning.

At the same time, you get to move past the judgment phase so you can engage with people

in the most caring and compassionate way.