A Mason's Work

Desire is not inherently hedonistic or destructive—it is a force, like a line waiting for form. In this episode, we reframe desire as emotional geometry: a function that becomes meaningful only when given direction, boundaries, and proportion. By understanding the shape of our longings, we can refine raw appetite into purposeful action.

🔑 Key Takeaways
  • Desire is a neutral function—it seeks, without judgment
  • Geometry teaches that form, proportion, and boundaries make raw energy useful
  • Shaping desire is the work of maturity: turning impulse into purpose
💬 Featured Quotes
  • 0:00:00 – “Today I want to talk about desire. We oftentimes demonize things like being desirous… as being hedonistic or inappropriate.”
  • 0:00:15 – “It’s important to understand that the function of desire, sort of mentally as a construct, is not any of those things.”
  • 0:00:24 – “The desire function… the seeker function… the ‘I want to go find out’ function is non-judgmental.”
  • 0:00:38 – “Understanding how desire works allows us to use it to our best advantage.”
🔗 Explore Related Episodes
  • The Hoodwink and the Unknown: Learning to Trust Yourself (Ep. 126)
    — Explores risk and trust, both of which shape the course of desire.
  • Depression, Endurance, and Growth: How to Know Which Is Which (Ep. 128)
    — On discerning between different internal drivers, echoing how we interpret desire.
  • The Rough Ashlar and the Burden: Making Sense of Challenge and Suffering (Ep. 127)
    — Shows how raw states (like desire) must be worked into refined purpose.
   

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.

So in recent episode we talked a little bit more about kind of getting firm emotional

understanding and understanding some of the emotional mechanics.

Now I want to go into some of the specific emotions that you might experience or some of

the kind of drivers or things behind your emotional conditions that become important to understand

how they work and use them to your sort of best advantage.

So today I want to talk about desire.

We oftentimes will demonize things like being desirous of things.

We'll demonize them as being either hedonistic or inappropriate or in some cases short-sighted.

It's important to understand that the function of desire sort of mentally as a construct

is not any of those things.

It is non-judgmental.

So the desire function, the seeker function, the I want to go find this and get it function

that you turn on in your brain when you see something that looks good or looks like

something you want is just that.

It's a function in your brain.

It is very much like a programming language.

It's a subroutine.

It is a thing that you execute when you find something that is going to deliver some value

to you in some way.

What's important is a couple of things if you want to kind of study the mechanics of desire

for just five seconds in your head and reflection.

There's a couple of truths about desire that are important to know.

The first is desire can never be satisfied.

So you can desire things all day every day.

The moment you get it, desire doesn't go away.

It just goes on to the next thing.

It's the function of desire is to desire.

It has no point where that function sort of eliminates itself from the human mind.

It will always be there and you always want something.

You always want to eat or to move into the shade or move into the sun or move into the

warm or move into the cold.

Whatever, right?

You're always going to want something.

And it doesn't really desire.

It doesn't really care if that ever gets satisfied in a lot of ways.

It just kind of wants.

You order something from a provider on the internet and you don't get there.

Before you know it, it doesn't solve the desire problem.

So truth one about desire is desire is always there.

Truth two about desire and this is also kind of equally important.

Desire is nonjudgmental, right?

You will desire things regardless of whether or not that desire is moral, rational or in

any way good or productive, right?

Desire just grabs it and goes.

It doesn't care.

So it's important to understand that your desires, regardless of what they are, are not necessarily

coming from a place that is indicative of your character or your quality as an individual.

They just show up.

It just shows up and does that.

It shows up in desire stuff.

The longer you sit in meditation or the longer you sit in quiet and watch the operation

of the desire as a function, the crazier stuff comes up.

The crazy, you know, the mind creates these amazing little wonderful scenarios that just

try and keep pulling you into something to get you a desire.

Again, none of them make sense.

None of them are rational and that's okay.

What's important about desire is understanding when to give it the wheel and let it kind

of do the driving versus when you just kind of let it sit there and say it wants stuff.

So, when desire should be in charge, it should be against a rational, meaningful goal that

you have.

It should be aligned to helping you achieve your overall objectives.

Desire is oftentimes activated whenever you feel maybe like you're having a bad day.

Desire kicks in and wants to kind of medicate.

It wants to fix it.

It wants to make you better.

So this is where desire is used to as a sort of a mental function to go find the sex,

the drug, the rock and roll.

It's the place where that sort of function will kick in to try and make a bad day better

because nobody likes sitting in the middle of a bad day.

But it's important to only use desire where it's appropriate, right?

To only activate that sort of seeker function, that desire is function.

And it's going to help you move your life to a better spot and not indulge the desire

function on stuff that's just sort of band-aid solutions.

If you master that, if you can figure this out what it is, how it is, and when it works,

you can really stop being victim to the sort of dopamine cycle that you'll see in a lot

of other, gonna YouTubers and stuff like that.

If you go out and start looking, people are starting to do things like dopamine fasting.

Not understanding that the desire function doesn't care.

It just does what you tell it.

If you give it something better to desire and can work it a little bit, it's going to

be a lot better for you.

We demonize desires, I think.

So as you start doing the work here, understand when and where and sort of why to activate

desire as a toolkit in your arsenal of ways to move you forward and use it to solve the

problems that desire can help you solve.

So what's an example of that?

Great examples would be, you know, desiring longer term outcomes that require short-term

behavior.

So, you know, getting fit.

Turning on desire to help you want to exercise is awesome.

Sometimes that means use the desire function to help you do your meal planning or help

you do your activity planning or help you, you know, literally get in the car and go

to the gym or whatever, right?

That desire function can be used to help you satisfy all of those kind of interim steps

and start using the function to speak to those sort of intervening pieces, those small

pieces so that longer term, the outcomes that you're really driving for, you can meet.

But don't demonize it.

Just use it appropriately and I think you'll find that you get a whole lot further.