A Mason's Work

[00:00] so in to wrap up the secretary conversation conversation this week i want to share with you
[00:06] a personal experience i had uh it wasn't it wasn't a masonic experience it was something
[00:12] that happened in my life um but it speaks to this understanding the secretary function
[00:16] um i was a high school student uh and i went to my english professor and we were you know very very
[00:26] um uh collegial or chummy or whatever and so uh we were talking and at some point i made it known
[00:34] that my life ambition was to change the world uh and he kind of stopped in my stopped me in my tracks
[00:41] and said uh dude you've got to like get that out of your head you're you're not going to change the
[00:46] world it's hard enough just to be happy your objective should be just to be happy um and i
[00:55] recorded that uh memory uh largely based on my response at the time which was like outrage i was
[01:04] like incensed i i was so upset that somebody was in an educational role was essentially telling me
[01:12] that changing the world was impossible and that i should just try and be happy um i i just couldn't
[01:19] process it and so i recorded that memory uh with this just sort of seething contempt uh at the time
[01:27] and over time every time i would revisit that memory i was able to start to to understand that maybe
[01:36] maybe his advice and guidance and counsel uh was was delivered from a different worldview or maybe
[01:44] um maybe my emotional content at a time because i was so full of that vim and vigor you have it as a
[01:51] youth um was just misplaced and what i've been able to do by looking back on those interactions on a
[01:59] regular basis and taking you know peeling off the emotional content the emotional layers of that
[02:04] interaction is understand that hey you know he may not have been giving me lifelong valuable counsel
[02:12] he may have been describing something completely different in terms of his response um he might
[02:18] have been uh that might have been him what he was currently wrestling with that might have been his
[02:23] present appetite in the moment that he told me those things it doesn't really matter what kind of all of
[02:29] the emotional content was uh there was some wisdom in what he said uh and that is uh it doesn't matter
[02:37] if you change the world if you're not happy so there's some truth there uh and there's other
[02:43] truths involved as well that came along by being able to look back on this memory and remove that
[02:50] emotional content that came with it by trying to find the layers and layers of insight and wisdom
[02:55] that may have been there and so this little grain of sand that has now become a pearl in my
[03:00] consciousness um is is something that i hold on to and at the same time cherish for both
[03:07] uh how i felt at the time and how i was able to remove the feelings from it over time to understand
[03:14] it from different perspectives when when we take this secretary kind of mind and start working
[03:21] through our own stuff uh and taking the emotional layers and removing them or adding uh you know modern
[03:30] perspectives to old memories uh or taking what you know now and applying it to who you were then
[03:37] to find ways to give yourself that grace and forgiveness um those those bits of work
[03:44] are all enabled by that data recording function and as you get better at this at better understanding
[03:52] how to do the work in the past and work with your own past and eventually get rid of it um you also
[03:59] understand what's worth recording in the present and what makes it to the future this temporal
[04:06] understanding of the role of secretary is something that you're going to organically develop as you
[04:12] work with your past and your present and your future what's worth committing to memory now what's
[04:18] worth keeping what's worth uh letting go of what's uh what's relevant and irrelevant um really starts to
[04:26] shape the ground for the person tomorrow that gets to make a better decision because of the records kept today
[04:34] that is um that is such a powerful thing to start to get your head around uh that we'll probably end up
[04:44] having to talk about it again on multiple episodes of the show but for now understand you get to make
[04:50] those choices you get to determine what's in your history book use it well