A Mason's Work

Some voices within us remain silent—not because they have nothing to say, but because we’ve decided not to listen. In this episode, we explore the act of speaking from the perspectives we disown: parts of ourselves, others we reject, or emotions we avoid.
By adopting the second person in writing and speech, we create space for these exiled parts to speak—not to justify or accuse, but to be heard. This episode offers a practical framework for building internal bridges through symbolic dialogue, one that honors Masonic principles of reflection, connection, and repair.
🔑 Key Takeaways
  • Writing in the second person allows compassionate perspective-taking
  • Disowned parts of ourselves often hold essential emotional truth
  • Symbolic dialogue is a Masonic act of healing and re-integration
💬 Featured Quotes
“The person you dislike may still be right.”  [00:00:16]
“Write from the perspective of the person you can’t talk to.” [00:01:10]
“There’s a version of you that can speak like them.” [00:01:35]
“It’s hard to stay angry while writing with empathy.” [00:02:13]

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.

When we talk about the perspectives, like we did in the last episode, one of the perspectives

that's really the most useful in terms of processing either intense emotions or motions

you're not fully in touch with or even in processing and developing compassion as for

people that you kind of don't seem to gel with.

This is the second person perspective, the dialogue perspective.

Now there's lots of ways to leverage dialogue as a technique.

We're going to do this for this sort of purpose or demonstration.

Much like you would do a playing a role, a role playing game or something like that where

you imagine you are the voice of whatever sort of disenfranchised thing that you don't

like or don't want to believe in or have strong emotions to.

So the way this works in easy steps is you are a, you're going to write yourself a letter.

So think in your head right now of somebody you don't care for, maybe somebody you don't

like very much, maybe a strong emotion that you're not familiar with or not sure how to

process, maybe to a part of yourself that you may be out of touch with.

You're going to write a letter, a note, an email, whatever series of text messages,

whatever, whatever, what you're about to that person feeling or what have you.

Now to be clear, you're never going to send these messages that's not what this is for.

But you're going to write that note and you're going to talk about all of the reasons why

you're uncomfortable or why you dislike this person or why you dislike this part of you.

And in that process, you want to be as comprehensive as you can, right?

That list out, give yourself five to 10 minutes to do it.

That should be more than enough.

But if you really need to think about it as you write, you can go longer if you need it.

And then what you want to do is you want to take the equal and opposite position.

So you want to write then from the position of the emotions you're having trouble with

or from the person that you really don't like or from the sort of intense feelings that

you're having.

And you're going to want to write from that perspective and include in the writing back,

justify the reasons for the response or for the behavior you're pushing again.

So for example, if you don't like your neighbor because they really are super allowed and

you perceive that to be in some way obnoxious or a violation of your rights.

And so you write your letter and you say, look, you're super loud.

I can't stand you.

This drives me crazy every time you speak.

It's like nails on a chalkboard, whatever.

Then you write the letter back from their perspective and you justify all that behavior.

And you say, listen, I am loud because I finally found my voice because nobody else in my

family would stick out for me because it's the only way I know to keep from swinging fists.

Whatever the sort of language is, it doesn't really matter.

The point here is you're writing from that equal and opposite perspective and you're trying

to find ways sort of rationally to justify that behavior.

This is going to be exceedingly hard if you really, really don't like that person or really

don't have, don't like that emotion or don't like that part of yourself.

If you're writing a letter to give it a name, if I'm giving my sort of aggressive feelings,

for example, I give them a name, I'll call them Bill or Steve or whatever.

And I write my letter to Steve, like, man, I Steve, I really hate those aggressive feelings.

You bring that out and it drives me crazy.

When Steve writes his letter back, he's going to write, listen, it's because you're not assertive.

It's because you're not meeting our needs or whatever.

And in that process, between taking those two perspectives, you then go and you write

a third letter.

And you write a third letter that synthesizes both the dis sort of distaste or discomfort

and the rationale or a rationale for that behavior.

And in the synthesis, you're going to write, listen, I don't like this, but I know that

you do it because of x or y or z.

Or I don't like this, but maybe if we could come to terms with how you express that in

a slightly different way or maybe I can sort of finesse my understanding, whatever that

sort of conversational language is in that third way.

What you're really trying to do is you're trying to take these subconscious dislikes and

distaste and make them conscious and then integrate them into your consciousness.

This process was pioneered by a couple of different people in the integral movement.

If you type in like 321 shadow or shadow work or shadow dialogue process, you should

find something similar on Google if you're looking for more guidance in this.

But that dialoging perspective, essentially, which is a role play activity where you

projecting onto that other perspective, does help you kind of understand it further and

take a different position.

And in that process of taking a different position, you actually begin growth and reintegration.

And when we do that, we become more whole and complete.

We become more compassionate and understanding.

And it really brings us to a much, much sort of better place when it comes to processing

data in the real world with compassion and openness and care.