Brian Mattocks
Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D
Appears in 252 Episodes
Reintegration and the Seed of Joy
Twelve of the fifteen fellow craft in the legend turned back. They recanted, submitted to consequence, and reintegrated. From the outside, their culpability was not ob...
How to Redirect a Conversation Without Destroying It
Knowing the meta conversation is happening and knowing how to interrupt it are two different skills. Brian Mattocks works through a three-stage approach for redirectin...
The Fellow Craft Who Chose the Wrong Exit
The men at the center of the third degree legend were not villains at the outset. They were skilled craftsmen contributing real labor to a significant project, with st...
Every Hour the Stone Sits Unworked
There is a particular kind of meeting most people have sat through without being able to name what went wrong. It starts with genuine energy, a real problem, people wh...
Harm Reduction, Agency, and Closing the Loop
Brian closes the arc by bringing the full lodge process back to the launch space: how do you actually respond once a fear has been named, triaged, examined, and prepar...
The Preparing Room Is Not Optional
Brian addresses one of the most common mistakes people make when trying to do real internal work: skipping preparation. When a fear or challenge arrives and you are im...
Three Questions That Test a Fear's Credentials
Not everything that feels like your fear actually is. Brian walks through the examining room as a structured process for interrogating incoming fears before they are a...
Triage: How the Persuivant Routes Your Fears
Once the Tyler has passed a signal inward, the next question is where it goes. Brian draws on the role of the Persevant, known in most jurisdictions as the Inner Guard...
Naming Fear Activates Your Inner Tiler
Brian Mattocks, author of A Mason's Work, opens this arc by examining what happens after you successfully name a fear. The act of naming changes everything, because it...
The Power of Naming the Fear
In the conclusion of our series, we strike the "final death blow" to the shadow's control by giving it a name. By identifying the specific fear driving your patterns, ...
Slaying Dragons via Responsibility
When we catch the shadow in action, it often speaks the language of blame. Today, we discuss the "outrageously uncomfortable" but essential technique of reclaiming age...
Why the Shadow Exists
Shadow work can feel heavy and strenuous, but the reward is the difference between "freedom and slavery". We examine the mechanics of how the shadow forms as a rationa...
Identifying the Shadow
We introduce a central concept of Jungian psychology: The Shadow. This represents the parts of our behavior that have become invisible to us—the "rough parts of the st...
Building Capacity in the Mundane Middle
We begin the week by challenging the idea that strength is built during a crisis. Just as you wouldn't wait for an emergency to start going to the gym, the capacity to...
The Force Multiplier for Gratitude
Internal gratitude is a powerful force, but it remains incomplete until it is expressed. In our final installment for the week, we discuss how moving gratitude from an...
The Perfectly Imperfect Foundation
Today we address the "alluring problems" of gratitude: toxic positivity versus perpetual cynicism. Using the Masonic symbols of the Rough and Perfect Ashlars, we discu...
Surrender-Gratitude
Moving from the "shallow end" of appreciation, we explore the "deep end": Surrender Gratitude. This is a profound, heart-centered experience that emerges when the ego ...
Appreciation and Appreciative Inquiry
Gratitude exists on a spectrum. In this episode, we dive into the "shallow end"—which isn't a negative term, but rather the essential starting point: Appreciation. Thi...
The Business Case for Gratitude
We kick off the week by threading together our recent topics through the lens of gratitude. While often dismissed as a "soft" concept, gratitude has measurable, object...
Surrender and The Level
In our week-long journey from outcomes to process, we arrive at the ultimate goal: the present moment. This episode defines the state we are trying to achieve through ...