The Rough Ashlar Series – Part II: When Our Roughness Meets the World

At the relational level, the Rough Ashlar is revealed through feedback, friction, and the way our unfinished edges land on other people. This episode explores how to invite honest feedback without collapsing into people-pleasing, how to ask better questions that generate real insight, and how compassion grows when we remember that everyone else is also in their own rough ashlar phase. Here, growth becomes a shared project: our work on ourselves is informed and refined by the people around us.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Use specific, open-ended questions to turn feedback into real relational insight
• Build a trusted “feedback team” to help expose blind spots and growth opportunities
• Remember that others are also rough ashlars, and meet their unfinishedness with compassion

💬 Featured Quotes

(All quotes verbatim from the transcript, with start timestamps.)

• 0:00:00 — “The relational interplay of the rough ashlar is very, very interesting when you start to sit down and think about it.”
• 0:00:12 — “There is a lot going on when people give you feedback or when you solicit feedback or when you interact in the world that it's really difficult to put names and causes and origin stories behind all of the things that are happening.”
• 0:00:29 — “If you're trying to create meaning in this world and understand what's happening, you need to begin to develop relational understanding with how your behavior might be perceived and that could be creating outcomes and etc. etc.”
• 0:00:58 — “Those feedback loops first and foremost as we talked about in the previous episode can be done on your own. It can also be done with other people. You can ask for feedback on how you might handle the situation differently.”
• 0:01:50 — “The questions that you are going to want to ask like a good diagnostic, a diagnostic, are questions like how might I have approached this situation differently.”
• 0:02:30 — “You are looking for logic and a rational understanding of a situation and if you are pursuing self development you will get a social capital based response or emotional response where folks are reluctant to give you honest and genuine feedback.”
• 0:03:21 — “In the same place, that relational component of the rough ashlar, this is also the origin story of compassion.”
• 0:03:54 — “You are on your way from one place to another and so when we find someone whose behavior really drives us crazy, again look inward first to find out if there's opportunities there to grow.”

🔗 Explore Related Episodes

• The Fellow Craft Mason Series – Part II: The Work of Connection
  Explores the relational dimension of the Fellow Craft’s journey, focusing on connection, social capital, and how our work interacts with the people and systems around us.
• Staying Unfinished – Holding Tension Between Work and Result
  Reflects on living inside the ongoing process of growth, echoing how relational feedback keeps us aware that we and others remain works in progress.
• The Lodge and the Open Space: Making Room for Growth
  Uses the image of the Lodge as prepared space to explore how we create room—internally and communally—for honest conversation, feedback, and transformation.

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.

The relational interplay of the rough ashlar is very, very interesting when you start to sit down and think about it.

There is a lot going on when people give you feedback or when you solicit feedback or when you interact in the world that it's really difficult to put names and causes and origin stories behind all of the things that are happening.

If you're trying to create meaning in this world and understand what's happening, you need to begin to develop relational understanding with how your behavior might be perceived and that could be creating outcomes and etc. etc.

Then you get into the seven level arts you talk about communication strategies and skills and all that stuff. But for now as the rough ashlar you want to be mindful of things like feedback.

Those feedback loops first and foremost as we talked about in the previous episode can be done on your own. It can also be done with other people. You can ask for feedback on how you might handle the situation differently.

You can get that kind of reciprocal relationship out of your logic experience or out of your church or out of your synagogue or temple or what have you.

You should be able to start to use other people that you trust and that you like to help you gain valuable insight into the areas where you can possibly grow.

When you are out soliciting feedback from others there are good ways to go about that and there are bad ones. The first good way to do it is to ask about a specific situation.

The questions that you are going to want to ask like a good diagnostic, a diagnostic, are questions like how might I have approached this situation differently.

The important thing to note is you do not want to ask do you like how I did this or do you like how I did that or did you not like it.

Yes or no questions are almost always from a social kind of relationship perspective met with responses that are less than useful.

You are looking for logic and a rational understanding of a situation and if you are pursuing self development you will get a social capital based response or emotional response where folks are reluctant to give you honest and genuine feedback.

In corporate environments we do things called 360 degree feedback where someone will go out and ask on your behalf for a bunch of people's perspectives on how you interact in situations.

You want to build your own team of folks who will tell you what is going on and where your opportunities for development are.

That is not to put the peril of your development but to allow you to start collecting meaningful data to figure out what those situations are.

In the same place, that relational component of the rough ashlar, this is also the origin story of compassion.

When you see other people, when you interact with other people and they do stuff that inconveniences you or you don't like or makes you angry, drives you crazy, whatever.

Understand that they are all themselves in their rough ashlar phase kind of perpetually.

This is a thing that happens, this is a thing that every one of us is experiencing at all times.

You are on your way from one place to another and so when we find someone whose behavior really drives us crazy, again look inward first to find out if there's opportunities there to grow.

Then look outward with compassion and care and say listen, they're working on their stuff, they're still figuring their biz out and that's okay.

As you go through this, you'll begin to understand that we are all in that rough ashlar phase and that all of our behaviors and all of the things we're doing are best guest, best efforts given the constraints of a system that you can't see most of.

As you move forward with this again, particularly if you involve others in the process, be mindful of what that looks like and how it works and try and approach it with compassion for yourself and with others.