A Mason's Work

[00:00] In yesterday's episode, we identified what it's like to have a rogue Tyler, somebody who's kind of running on autopilot, maybe running from the challenge.
[00:11] And so we have this outer knock and it presents itself as something that we need to respond to in some capacity.
[00:21] The Tyler doesn't really get to decide what to do with what he's found typically, right?
[00:26] That's not his job.
[00:27] His job is to pass the alarm from the outside to the inside.
[00:31] And who gets that alarm is the inner guard or Pursuivant.
[00:34] In our jurisdiction in Pennsylvania, it's called Pursuivant.
[00:38] In other jurisdictions, probably for everyone else in the Masonic world, it is the inner guard.
[00:44] But the inner guard's function is triage.
[00:47] Now, what does that mean?
[00:49] It means he has to route these alerts to the appropriate destination.
[00:53] Now, your jurisdiction may or may not have some of these destinations present.
[01:01] In my jurisdiction, we have a couple of rooms to choose from as to where someone goes.
[01:07] We have an examining room, which is where a potential brother goes to be examined to determine if he's a Mason and can enter the lodge proper.
[01:17] We have a preparing room, which is where a prospect goes to determine to get him ready to then go through the experience.
[01:26] We're hard to enter the lodge proper.
[01:29] And then we have the you can't get in at all or you can get in directly to the lodge because we know you and your brother.
[01:37] Internally, that represents that triage function represents the same kind of stuff.
[01:42] Do I allow this fear, this thing that's being knocked on this, this thing that is past the Tyler?
[01:48] Do I allow that into the examining room, the preparing room, the lodge itself?
[01:56] And he does that triage by a couple of sort of decisions.
[02:01] You're going to conduct this triage on yourself with a couple of things in mind.
[02:06] One, is it a named fear?
[02:07] Is this the fear that we have named already?
[02:11] Because that really does determine a lot, right?
[02:14] If this is something we're trying to process, if this is something we're trying to work with and we know what it is.
[02:22] For example, somebody triggered the fear that we're not good enough.
[02:25] You know, that's the Tyler has knocked on that door and said, hey, you're not good enough.
[02:30] If you know what that fear is, you can let it in and start to work with it, right?
[02:34] You can begin sitting in your lodge and go, OK, what am I going to do with this?
[02:38] How am I going to respond?
[02:38] And this is where the Worshipful Master's Directive, the thing that we're working on this whole week,
[02:44] is to gain courage over these things, these named fears.
[02:47] The Worshipful Master can then let that fear in the lodge and you can work with it.
[02:51] The other places it can go are, if it's an unnamed fear, maybe it goes into the examining room to be evaluated.
[02:58] Or if it's something that you really are not sure, that maybe it's a little bit tender and you need to process and you need to go through that preparing process,
[03:06] it can go routed through that light, through the preparing room.
[03:10] There's lots of ways this sort of routing process goes.
[03:14] And it's based on, are you ready to do the work?
[03:18] Are, is the work sort of well-defined?
[03:21] What is it?
[03:22] Does it have a name?
[03:22] Does it have a character?
[03:23] What is the context of it?
[03:26] And then, you know, what are we going to do from there?
[03:31] Once all of that stimulus from the outside world comes in, we begin the process to sort of agentically respond to the situation.
[03:41] Until we determine what to do with this signal we're receiving from the outside world, we can't do anything.
[03:49] We might go on autopilot and autopilot is what got you here in the first place.
[03:53] So we want to begin that deliberation process.
[03:58] And that persivant is the like speed run to get to a better answer right away.
[04:06] And we're going to talk about this a little bit more as we go through this.
[04:09] The idea here is as you gain a good understanding of what's not what comes in knocking as if you will, we are going to gain agency over it.
[04:19] And then it's going to be something that you can process appropriately.
[04:23] Maybe you're not afraid of it anymore.
[04:25] Maybe it moves from this unconscious thing to a conscious thing, then to a nothing.
[04:31] Right.
[04:31] This part of the process, this triage is sort of that that momentary response, that ability in the moment to cultivate a better answer and where it gets routed from that honor, that first signal where what happens next.
[04:48] That's the persivant's job.
[04:49] We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through the rest of the week.
[04:54] Thank you.