A Mason's Work

In this episode, we redefine charity's essence, moving beyond financial and time-based acts. Join us as we explore charity as a mental construct, embracing kindness, patience, and self-understanding. Uncover how charity impacts your emotional and mental spaces and gain insights to carry through your week. Enhance your life by being more charitable to others and yourself, crafting fulfilling and compassionate relationships.

Key Points
• Charity is more than financial donations.
• Explore charity as a mental and emotional construct.
• Being charitable means being kind and patient.
• Avoid making charity an attention-seeking behavior.
• Reflect on charity's role daily.

Best Quotes
00:27 - 00:41
• "There is tons of different definitions of charity, and one of the more important things to consider when it comes to charity as a concept is not necessarily how that charity is expressed."

00:58 - 01:04
• "You can go pathological with all sorts of behaviors, and charity is one of them, believe it or not."

01:48 - 02:02
• "Think about charity, think about how you're using it as either maybe a attention getting technique on the behavior side, or as that you're, you're perhaps harder on yourself than, than maybe you should be."
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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.

Brian:

I was facilitating a discussion at the lodge, a couple years ago now, and we started talking about the idea of charity. The concept that charity is, it's a lot of different things. It's not simply speaking, for example, like donating money to a cause or, you know, giving donating blood or anything like that, working in a soup kitchen. There is tons of different definitions of charity. And one of the more important things to consider when it comes to charity as a concept, is not necessarily how that charity is expressed.

Brian:

And what I mean by that is, focusing too much on the financial contributions or on the time contributions will lead you down a path where that behavior itself isn't necessarily productive. You can, go pathological with all sorts of behaviors, and charity is one of them, believe it or not. So, more importantly, as you explore the concept of charity, I think it's important to understand that that is a mental construct as well. That charity, applies to, your emotional conditions, your mental conditions, being charitable towards, the people around you in terms of perhaps being more patient, being more kind, being charitable with yourself, and understanding that, you know, you're still figuring it out too. And that's okay.

Brian:

As you work through the concept of charity and really start to internalize what that means, I think you'll find that there is a lot of great, working material there. So think about charity. Think about how you're using it as either maybe a attention getting technique on the behavior side or as that you're you're perhaps harder on yourself than maybe you should be, charity kind of plays in all of those domains. So think about it as you go about your week.