A Mason's Work

At the behavioral level, the Rough Ashlar represents the unshaped material of our habits, reactions, and instinctive responses. This episode grounds the symbol in everyday experience—how imperfection appears in our behavior, how it becomes visible through interaction, and why noticing our roughness is the first step toward meaningful refinement.

🔑 Key Takeaways
  • Roughness shows up as unrefined habits, reactions, and instinctive responses
  • Being “unfinished” is natural; awareness is what makes growth possible
  • Behavioral refinement begins with honest evaluation of the self
💬 Featured Quotes
(All quotes verbatim; consecutive fragments combined where appropriate to represent full coherent ideas.)
  • 0:00:08–0:00:13 — “There's a very good chance that you'll be running into folks that are not perfect, and you'll be looking in mirrors relatively soon and you'll find there's opportunities for yourself as well.”
  • 0:00:21–0:00:36 — “At a practical and behavioral level, the rough ashlar really speaks to the habits, reactions, and I would say emotional sort of responses—the visceral responses, all of the things that are kind of not the way that they're going to need to be to optimize your behavior.”
  • 0:01:55–0:02:06 — “Importantly, as one of our core values is charity, be charitable with yourself when you're evaluating your own rough edges. That whole approach, that whole understanding that we are works in progress should inform both your treatment of yourself and the treatment of people around you.”
  • 0:02:12–0:02:17 — “How many times have you tried to correct someone else's behavior before looking at your own?”
  • 0:02:24–0:02:41 — “In the context of a timeline or a rough order of operations, you will go back in every kind of situation where you are trying to grow and develop and look at everything as if it's always a rough ashlar.”
     

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 when we evaluate the symbols for this week, we're going to be talking about the rough

ashlar.

And there's a very good chance that you'll be running into folks that are not perfect

and you'll be looking in mirrors relatively soon and you'll find there's opportunities

for yourself as well.

At a practical and behavioral level, the rough ashlar really speaks to the habits, reactions,

and you know, I would say emotional sort of responses, the visceral responses, all of

the things that are kind of not the way that they're going to need to be to optimize your

future growth and development.

This doesn't make them bad.

So I want to be quick, clear.

The rough ashlar and the fact that you're off ashlar does not mean that you are in any

way broken, not good enough, insufficient in some capacity.

I will tell you now, this may surprise you.

No one emerged from the womb, fully articulate, able to play every musical instrument and

are ready to go out and kick butt.

This is not a thing that happens.

There is always a beginning and you are perpetually in somewhere in your arc of development and

growth, a rough ashlar in some capacity or another.

Even when you think you've got something licked or you're an expert or you really know

what's going on, there is very likely an opportunity to refine your behavior.

Importantly, as one of our core values is charity, be charitable with yourself when you're

evaluating a rough ashlar.

That whole approach, that whole understanding that we are works in progress should inform

both your treatment of yourself and the treatment of people around you.

How many times have you tried to correct someone else's behavior before looking at your

own?

This is an important thing to remember as you start working with what that means.

In the context of a timeline or a rough order of operations here, you will go back in every

kind of situation where you are trying to grow and develop and look at everything as if

it's always a rough ashlar.

That perspective, again, is not to imply judgment or harsh evaluation or nor should it be

used to beat yourself up or beat up other people for that matter.

The world has plenty of that going on without you participating.

You should be on your own team.

At the same time, that doesn't mean you shouldn't establish what your goals are and how that's

going to work.

When you start doing this exercise to determine what your rough ashlar is, for some people,

it's very difficult to figure that out.

What I will tell you is one of the best things you can do to start to figure out where your

rough ashlar is is look at the things that cause you emotional upset or pain.

There is a good chance that those are the results of a place where are the outcomes of a behavior

that you could modify or improve.

This doesn't mean you can take responsibility for everything, but it does mean that there's

a good chance that if you're upset with someone else's behavior, if you're upset with something

going on in the world, that it is reflective of something that you have going on internally

or some capacity that you have yet to fully develop.

This speaks to a couple of other tools that we have, like as above so below, we'll get

into those in future episodes, but for now, just fine, you might find it useful to sit

down and look for those opportunities to notice, to call out the areas where you want to improve.

From there, you can start moving forward and growing and developing.

We'll get into some more of that relational, what a relational rough ashlar looks like as we move forward.