The Main Quest Is Freedom Not Achievement

Show Notes

There is a particular kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with how much you lifted, how many meetings you sat through, or how many miles you drove. It comes from the sustained effort of managing how you are perceived, adjusting your words before they land, and running the background calculation of whether the version of yourself currently on display is the right one for this room. Brian Mattocks opens this week's arc by naming what that tiredness actually points toward, and why he believes the single most important work of a man's life is the pursuit of interior freedom.

This is not freedom from obligation or responsibility. Brian is direct about the difference. The man who abandons his commitments in the name of authenticity has not found himself. He has found a more comfortable exit. The freedom under discussion here is the capacity to respond to the conditions of your life from what is actually true in you, rather than from a script so long-running that it stopped feeling like a script. It is the kind of continuity that Freemasonry has always called being plumb, recognizable to yourself across every context. Brian's book, A Mason's Work by Brian Mattocks, treats this as the operative core of the Craft, and this week begins applying that framework in full. The episode also includes a frank conversation about mental health resources and when self-development work requires professional support.

Key topics this episode:

• The two experiences of freedom: deep friendship and flow states, and why they are the same thing
• Interior freedom versus abdication of responsibility
• The plumb-line of continuous identity across different contexts
• Why the self-development work of the lodge rolls back to this single central question
• When to seek professional mental health support and why doing so is a practical act of strength
• The week's thematic arc introduced: what are the chains, where did they come from, and what would it cost to put them down

If you have ever wondered why you feel drained after a day where nothing particularly hard happened, this is where to start.

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Creators and Guests

Host

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

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] So you probably have a friend, maybe you don't see them often, maybe it's been months, but
[00:06] when you do, you finally sit down together with nowhere to be and nothing to prove, something
[00:12] happens.
[00:14] The air changes, your shoulders drop about half an inch, and part of your brain that's
[00:19] always running the calculation on how your words are landing and whether or not you said
[00:23] the right thing and whether or not you're coming across the right way goes quiet.
[00:30] Not silent, just quiet enough that you can finally hear yourself think, you know that
[00:36] feeling, you've probably had it.
[00:38] Probably also had this other one, that moment where maybe it was physical, maybe it was creative.
[00:43] You were in a conversation that caught fire in a way you didn't plan.
[00:47] You went for a run and everything just felt aligned.
[00:52] Where what you were doing and who was doing it felt like the same thing for once.
[00:59] where the effort dissolved into motion and time did the thing that it does.
[01:06] Maybe like when you remember when you were a kid, it just stretched out.
[01:10] When you stopped watching it, you just kind of flowed.
[01:13] Uh, and that moment of complete presence where the performance requirements dropped, uh, was
[01:21] just you doing the thing fully.
[01:24] Both of these experiences feel different on the surface.
[01:30] One's relational and one is solitary.
[01:32] One's about being known by someone else.
[01:35] And one's about being lost in something larger than yourself, but they're really both of the
[01:39] same experience.
[01:41] There are both moments when the weight lifted the, the chains.
[01:46] And that's the exact same word for them.
[01:48] Kind of went slack for long enough that you remember what it was like to be free.
[01:56] The question we're going to talk about this week is a simple one.
[01:59] It's not simple to answer, but it's simple to ask.
[02:02] What are the chains?
[02:04] Where did they come from?
[02:06] What would it cost?
[02:07] And would it be worth it to finally put them down?
[02:09] Here's what I want to propose.
[02:14] The only real work, the only quest that actually matters across the length of your life is becoming
[02:21] free, not free from obligation, not free from responsibilities.
[02:28] That's not freedom.
[02:29] That's abdication.
[02:31] The man who walks away from his responsibilities in the name of authenticity hasn't found himself.
[02:36] He's just found a more comfortable way of getting out of the problems he thinks he's created.
[02:42] In freedom, I'm talking about, um, this interior experience, this freedom to respond to the conditions
[02:49] in your life from what is actually true in you, rather than from a script you've been running so long
[02:59] that you forgot you wrote it.
[03:01] It's the freedom to show up in a room, any room as the same person.
[03:06] Not identical in every context.
[03:08] The way craftsmen use different tools and different work, but continuous, uh, plumb, if you will,
[03:16] recognizable to yourself, not performing for one version here and containing another version
[03:22] of yourself there and putting guardrails up over here and wondering at the end of the
[03:27] day, why you're so tired and all you did was talk to people.
[03:29] That freedom is the main quest, uh, of life.
[03:35] Everything else, the relationships, the work, the lodge, the self-development practice, everything
[03:39] we've ever talked about on the show.
[03:41] Those are all kinds of sub quests and expressions of this main one.
[03:46] They're important quests.
[03:47] Every one of them I believe in, and you should too, but they all roll back to this central question.
[03:57] Um, this is important.
[04:03] You want to be able to gain this freedom, this agency, because for most people, they've been
[04:14] doing this work in type of costume.
[04:18] Most people don't question this directly, not because they're, you know, in curious or because
[04:25] the costume is, uh, you know, anything in particular, what really has happened is this script that
[04:33] we tell ourselves is so pervasive that it stopped feeling like a script and it kind of got paved
[04:42] over and turned into what we think is our personality.
[04:45] But there's something underneath, uh, and when nobody needs anything from you, all of that
[04:53] script kind of falls away.
[04:55] You've probably had this experience like we talked about in the beginning.
[04:59] So we're going to work to uncover this stuff.
[05:03] Uh, as we do, there are some things that we need to have, uh, an honest sort of conversation
[05:10] about, uh, first things first, um, with mental health stuff, uh, get mental health help.
[05:22] If you need it, how do I know I need it?
[05:25] When the thoughts or emotions that I'm experiencing involve harming someone else or harming myself,
[05:31] that's a immediate indicator.
[05:35] You need to talk to somebody who kind of can help you through this, uh, asking for help,
[05:40] getting and seeking aid in these situations is not weakness.
[05:45] It is strength.
[05:46] It is, uh, there's, there's no benefit here by toughing this stuff out.
[05:51] You're not going to, you know, have resilience through this process in such a way that you're
[05:58] going to gain capacity meaningfully.
[06:01] You're just going to get yourself more tired.
[06:03] And then as you get tired, your impulse control wears down.
[06:07] Getting help here is the single greatest act of courage and kindness to yourself and everyone
[06:15] around you.
[06:16] If you need help, seek it.
[06:19] When we start getting into some of these things, these stories we tell ourselves about the way
[06:23] the world works and the way we work and the way we have to change in order to adapt to the world.
[06:27] We think we see strong emotions are going to come up strong things.
[06:32] You're going to have strong feelings.
[06:34] That's a good indicator.
[06:35] You're doing something right here.
[06:37] But again, in the event that it exceeds your capacity to safely process, get help.
[06:45] In fact, you should probably get help anyway, if only for efficiency sake.
[06:51] There's a good chance that a mental health practitioner can help you move through this
[06:53] stuff at twice the rate of speed of self-development.
[06:57] You're still going to have to do the work.
[06:59] The work amount is the same.
[07:00] So don't be afraid that you're taking the easy way out.
[07:04] It's whether or not the work is bashing your head against the wall or getting skillful
[07:10] guidance and advice.
[07:12] As we go through this stuff, we're going to try and surface what the cost of putting on
[07:19] all of these stories and masks is to interact with the world.
[07:23] All of these sort of shims, these layers that we've added to our daily experience that leave
[07:30] us drained and de-energized by the end of the day and out of touch with who we really are
[07:36] as people.
[07:38] Not all masks are bad.
[07:39] Not all of our adaptive behaviors are awful.
[07:42] We're going to get into all of that over the course of this week.
[07:45] So to be clear, we're going to try and increase our freedom.
[07:52] And in the process of doing that, it's going to bring up some stuff that we may need to deal
[07:56] with and we may need help to do that.
[07:59] And you may not.
[08:00] And either way is entirely okay.
[08:04] We're going to work together.
[08:05] And to the extent that, again, this stuff gets too heavy.
[08:11] Don't be afraid to reach out to a mental health professional and get the help you need.