A Mason's Work

You're the only one who can work your stone. There are so many people out there that are going to try and convince you as you are undertaking your work that there are solutions out there, that can solve the problem for you. You get into, any sort of consumerist society and you find very quickly, they make their money based on exacerbating problems and then trying to sell you solutions. And and I think it's important, to understand that you are gonna be able to leverage those solutions only after you've committed to doing the work internally that comes with, moving your sort of, conscious understanding forward. As you start to do the internal work of, of a man, you're going to find that very it it isn't very often that you're gonna need meaningful external tool.

Right? So if you decide to do time management for real, you may or may not then profit from, things like a day planner or something like that. But, up until you make that decision, you will often find yourself buying these solutions, in an attempt to make the problem or the symptoms you're experiencing go away, without having sort of addressed the underlying issue that's causing it. And then you end up with a pile of, stuff that you never use or never capitalize on. Same thing is true with all sorts of magic pill solutions.

Things like New Year's resolutions, things like, you know, any of the the planning apps on your phone or any of the sort of nurturing and support objects that you might create around you, typically don't work until you've committed to solving the problem for real. Now how do you do that? How do you go and solve the underlying issue? It really requires meaningful introspection. There is, a a a truth that very, that's very difficult sometimes to deal with, and that is that the consequences or the symptoms you're experiencing in your everyday life are, not only caused by you, but they are reinforcing something, underlying that you actively want.

You are either, for example, fearful of the challenge that you're trying to face, so you will pooh pooh the effort that it's gonna take to get there. I say, now I don't that's that's not that kind of work isn't for me, or you'll dismiss, some of the smaller, kind of, detail type, objections that come up. You'll you'll make those or you'll overblow those as part of the process of dismissing doing the actual work. So, you know, as you struggle with the the real sort of symptoms you're experiencing in your life, mission one is to get to root cause and work your stone. If you don't do that, no one can do it for you.

People the gift that the external world can give you, the gift that your your brothers in the lodge can give you is the awareness and feedback on your own behavior, but they can't work your stone for you. You have to do that yourself. So as you start to embrace this understanding, you're gonna, you know, start finding yourself sort of mentally avoiding looking in some of those darker corners, but I'll tell you, the courage is worth it, the risk is worth it. The suffering that you experience in this context is limited, and the upside is infinite. And any finance guy will tell you, if you can get a situation where the expense is limited and the upside is limitless, always take those bets.

With that, we'll see you next time.