A Mason's Work

[00:00] So this week, we're moving further along in our exploration of conscious awareness, building on the framework that we've established over the last couple of days.
[00:07] If you remember, we started using the orders of architecture to essentially map to consciousness.
[00:13] And again, as a caveat for anyone listening that is involved in, you know, the health sciences, mental health, any of that kind of stuff.
[00:22] This is all just a fabrication we're using to make sense of this stuff.
[00:27] It's not scientifically accurate.
[00:29] You're not going to take this and go to the doctor's office and say, man, I'm stuck in Ionic.
[00:32] It's not going to work that way.
[00:34] And the reason it's important to you, you understand this is because all of these sort of structural things that we have access to in the craft give us these opportunities to do this evaluation and do this kind of work.
[00:47] But it's a misappropriation of the tool in a lot of ways to send to then try and expect other folks to understand it.
[00:55] We're doing this for ourselves, for our own working.
[00:58] So that caveat needs to essentially be restated occasionally for all of our health and safety.
[01:05] So as we move from that Tuscan stage where that's that raw pre-evaluative sort of pure sensation, we move to Doric where we've got this ability, this sense of ego, this self-development where we get to label and name things and categorize our experiences.
[01:22] Yesterday, we discussed the Ionic order where we move to that first sort of tier opportunity of reflective intellect where we get to unscroll the layers of meaning we've created sort of unconsciously through those labels we created in that Doric stage.
[01:37] Now, in the Corinthian column, the most ornate of the classical orders, the Tuscan was round and structurally strong.
[01:45] The Doric had the fluting and the Ionic had the scroll at the top.
[01:50] The Corinthian is characterized by slender proportions and those beautiful campus leaves at the top.
[01:56] In the mapping of our consciousness, the Corinthian stage moves from that reflective intellect into the aesthetic and emotional flourishing.
[02:07] So what does that mean to us in terms of awareness?
[02:10] If the Ionic stage was the necessary sort of bridge of self-reflection where you begin to ask why you gave something a label, the Corinthian stage is where you begin to experience the sort of full and rich texture of that meaning.
[02:24] It's not just about cause and effect anymore, that relationship.
[02:29] It's about the bloom of the experience.
[02:34] Let's go back to the example of a difficult conversation we used yesterday.
[02:37] At the Tuscan level, it's just the heat in your chest, the tingling in your fingers or your feet.
[02:43] At the Doric level, it's the label.
[02:45] I am frustrated.
[02:47] At the Ionic level, you start to unscroll that story.
[02:51] I am frustrated because I feel unheard, which reminds me of this time that I had where I also felt unheard.
[02:59] And, you know, I have this response.
[03:01] At the Corinthian level, you begin to become aware of the aesthetic of the moment.
[03:07] You begin to see the complexity of the emotion and the beauty of the vulnerability and the deep ornate nature of all of the pieces and how it fits together.
[03:17] It's where the awareness becomes decorated with empathy and value and sort of a mutuality of expression.
[03:26] As Freemasons, we use these frameworks as the apparatus for our development.
[03:31] The Corinthian stage is vital because it allows us to move beyond the data-driven analysis, beyond the strict interpretive sort of storytelling function,
[03:42] and into a much more nuanced way with interacting with our environment.
[03:45] We stop analyzing the label and we start to appreciate the intricacy of the labels themselves as its own form of art.
[03:55] This sort of structure we've created for ourselves becomes the means by which we express ourselves out in the world.
[04:03] But just like I warned you in the previous sort of stages, there's a trap here as well.
[04:07] The trap of the Corinthian is getting so caught up in the ornamentation of the high drama of the experience that you lose your strength.
[04:16] You lose your ability to be connected to the experiences themselves.
[04:20] You get so attached to the beauty or the tragedy of your story or the sort of the story you've developed and told yourself that you essentially start buying into the story so much that you become, in some ways, the tail wagging the dog.
[04:39] You forget the original sensations.
[04:40] The data no longer makes sense.
[04:42] Your situation no longer reflects essentially where you came from.
[04:47] You know, you came from a place that was emotionally abusive, for example, and now you're in this place where those abuses are no longer occurring,
[04:55] but you're stuck in the story and the elegance of that experience that was so nuanced and so central to how you saw the world that you haven't let go of it yet,
[05:05] even though those sort of stimulus and responses are no longer even happening.
[05:09] So we're building these layers again and the naming and evaluating so that eventually we get to the place where in our Ouroboros or that snake that's eating its own tail,
[05:20] where the head itself meets the tail.
[05:23] And the Corinthian is that sort of final layer of adornment before we can integrate everything into the composite.
[05:29] So for today, try and notice the ornamentation in your awareness, the sort of lovely expression and flourishing of your emotional responses
[05:39] and how essentially you've taken an aesthetic sort of interpretation of that ionic cause and effect
[05:47] and turned it into a part of a story or part of who you are, how you express yourself.
[05:52] Uh, this is really, uh, just a, a wonderful place to kind of sit and see how the stories you've told yourself turned into new labels and descriptions of who you are.
[06:04] Tomorrow we'll bring it all together in the final integrated stage of the composite.
[06:09] See you then.