A Mason's Work

So, in yesterday's episode, we talked a little bit about towards the end, about understanding

how your behavior and other people's behavior kind of relates to each other when it comes

to staying grounded and centered.

With the plumb and at a relational level, it's the ability to repeatedly and consistently

say the things that you need to say, do the things that you need to do to strengthen

and develop relationships in a way that increases essentially that grounded centeredness.

When we talked a couple weeks ago about the principle of correspondence and about as

above so below and how things connect to each other that your internal states reflect

your external behavior, the plumb is sort of the mechanism by which you can test these

things.

So you can take that principle and say, okay, if I want to change the relationships I'm

having in the world, I'm going to have to change myself first.

How can I move my behavior relationally more in a plumb way?

How can I move it more to a grounded centered, truthful interpretation?

And then how can I use that out in the relationships in my life?

What would I need to change and how I communicate?

What would I need to change in all of the other ways that my behavior manifests?

What would I need to do to get the people around me to a much more stable, much stronger,

much more grounded foundation?

You may or may not have a strong understanding of the relationships that you're cultivated

by virtue of your behavior and the plumb will help you get to that.

If people keep treating you badly or keep treating you well or keep treating you in a way

that you like or don't like or whatever that feels like, there's a good chance that

reflecting on the plumb and how essentially your behavior is grounding that relationship

will help you move that conversation out of self-blame or blaming others and into a place

where you can start to assert and build the world that you really want.

And that's one of the big kind of gifts of using the plumb when it comes to building

the relationships in your life.

It is building a grounded and firm understanding based on mutual respect, based on being

reliable and consistent with your own behavior and being plumb with your values, being true

to yourself.

And in that capacity, then you start to build the relationships that will stand the test

of time.

If you think about it, the dynamics of a concept like trust, trust requires a couple of things

in it, doesn't actually require the thing that you expect.

Being in a trusting relationship means that you comply to the thoughts someone else has

about your behavior.

If you're a scoundrel, people can trust their idea that you're a scoundrel.

That may mean they're not going to trust you with their stuff, but it means that they

have a correct estimation of who you are as a person in a way that allows them essentially

to have that referential integral we talked about, that firm and meaningful understanding

of who you are.

That does not mean I'm going to trust you with my wallet.

It means I'm going to trust that my estimation of who you are as a person is accurate.

And the plumb is a useful tool for effectively looking not just internally, but externally

as well.

How is this person's behavior anchoring their identity?

What are they doing?

What can I trust about them?

What is their gravitational center look like?

Knowing that, I can then behave accordingly and gain more autonomy and agency on my own.

It's a difficult thing to do because oftentimes with the plumb, it's easy to let go of that

for just a second and start putting yourself in other perspectives without essentially

trying to understand their center of gravity.

What's driving that behavior?

You'll look at the behavior and you'll see how it impacts you without looking at what that

behavior looks like from the inside out on another person.

Without that empathetic projection, you really never get the ability to meaningfully understand

other people.

You only understand people through the language of your own discomfort or joy or hurt or

happy or whatever.

So the plumb used in that relational capacity also kind of gives you the ability to start

trying to not diagnose people, not try and justify or explain away, but to really just

give you an understanding of how other people will be operating in your sphere and accepting

that for what it is so that you can stay true to your purpose and do the things that you

need to do.