1 0:00:00 --> 0:00:05.600000 We talked in our last episode about the reduction of suffering and sort of how that's the 2 0:00:05.600000 --> 0:00:08.560000 purpose and end of our work. 3 0:00:08.560000 --> 0:00:16.680000 When we look into the day-to-day experience of life, you're going to find that increasing 4 0:00:16.680000 --> 0:00:24.200000 awareness is vital to creating meaningful change for yourself and others. 5 0:00:24.200000 --> 0:00:30.720000 Creating awareness and what does it look like and how does it work is the single most 6 0:00:30.720000 --> 0:00:38.440000 important thing you can do to, again, begin to develop those influence sort of capabilities, 7 0:00:38.440000 --> 0:00:41.800000 the cornerstone of agency. 8 0:00:41.800000 --> 0:00:44.280000 Awareness is always step one. 9 0:00:44.280000 --> 0:00:51.560000 So, when we talk about cultivating awareness, though, not all things are the same. 10 0:00:51.560000 --> 0:01:01.360000 So you'll notice in a lot of the places where people congregate online or post together 11 0:01:01.360000 --> 0:01:11.080000 in social groups and what have you, that people tend to find places where they are going 12 0:01:11.080000 --> 0:01:15.840000 to get confirmation of what they already know. 13 0:01:15.840000 --> 0:01:23.200000 This confirmation bias, as it's called, is relatively easy to get when it comes online 14 0:01:23.200000 --> 0:01:30.320000 or even in groups because people tend to hang out with folks that they are similar 15 0:01:30.320000 --> 0:01:31.560000 to. 16 0:01:31.560000 --> 0:01:36.160000 And in online environments, you're listening to folks that agree with you because there's 17 0:01:36.160000 --> 0:01:40.840000 a dopamine hit there because agreement feels good. 18 0:01:40.840000 --> 0:01:47.480000 And so when we look for awareness, however, the opposite is true. 19 0:01:47.480000 --> 0:01:54.160000 You do not get awareness or gain awareness inside that sort of cognitive echo chamber. 20 0:01:54.160000 --> 0:02:00.920000 Now, when we look at this sort of from a personal perspective, does this mean you should always 21 0:02:00.920000 --> 0:02:04.680000 hang out with folks that don't believe what you believe or what does it mean in terms 22 0:02:04.680000 --> 0:02:06.960000 of developing awareness? 23 0:02:07.160000 --> 0:02:13.200000 There are essentially a couple of different takes on how this might work. 24 0:02:13.200000 --> 0:02:17.960000 The first one is if you constantly hang out with contrarian opinions, you're only really 25 0:02:17.960000 --> 0:02:23.760000 just going to get good at arguing if you are not listening to them, if you are not entertaining 26 0:02:23.760000 --> 0:02:25.640000 them in a meaningful way. 27 0:02:25.640000 --> 0:02:29.920000 That means you have to start, start with your under-premises degree, you have to drop 28 0:02:29.920000 --> 0:02:33.120000 all your mental and metallic substances, you have to drop all your money, you have to 29 0:02:33.120000 --> 0:02:38.080000 drop all of the appearances of superiority that you keep about yourself and everyday 30 0:02:38.080000 --> 0:02:39.080000 life. 31 0:02:39.080000 --> 0:02:43.600000 So you can genuinely listen, you have to become vulnerable to listen. 32 0:02:43.600000 --> 0:02:48.160000 When you do that, you will immediately become less argumentative as a concept. 33 0:02:48.160000 --> 0:02:54.880000 You can listen to things and listen to the environment the way it truly matters. 34 0:02:54.880000 --> 0:03:00.200000 And so step one with meaningful awareness is when you hear somebody's opinion that's 35 0:03:00.200000 --> 0:03:06.680000 not your own, you have to drop all of the trappings of the outside, all of that mineral 36 0:03:06.680000 --> 0:03:11.680000 metallic, all of that reason, you know, the defensiveness, the aggressively defensiveness, 37 0:03:11.680000 --> 0:03:16 the weaponized ignorance, all of that stuff has to go away in order for you to meaningfully 38 0:03:16 --> 0:03:18 cultivate awareness. 39 0:03:18 --> 0:03:21.880000 And it's not easy to do that, to be clear. 40 0:03:21.880000 --> 0:03:30.160000 So when you are finding yourself with a visceral emotional reaction to things in the world, 41 0:03:30.920000 --> 0:03:37.160000 this is also a good indicator that you are having some level of opportunity to gain 42 0:03:37.160000 --> 0:03:40.240000 awareness, whatever that might be. 43 0:03:40.240000 --> 0:03:45.200000 So other ways that you might gain awareness are in reflection. 44 0:03:45.200000 --> 0:03:49.720000 One of the things that I have done with my Masonic work, as you can see on the website, is 45 0:03:49.720000 --> 0:03:54.600000 I've created this toolkit to allow you to externalize your thinking process. 46 0:03:54.600000 --> 0:03:59.600000 So you can take some of these opposing thoughts, these opposing concepts and put them out 47 0:03:59.680000 --> 0:04:04.600000 on the table in front of you and use them as perspectives to solve problems. 48 0:04:04.600000 --> 0:04:09.040000 You need not, you know, pick up this toolkit to do it, you can do it with your own, you 49 0:04:09.040000 --> 0:04:13.920000 know, get to grab some three-by-five index cards, draw your Masonic symbols on them, and 50 0:04:13.920000 --> 0:04:19.880000 use them to start working around problems or working around perspectives to increase awareness. 51 0:04:19.880000 --> 0:04:26.200000 As you increase your awareness of how the mechanics of these problems work, the situations 52 0:04:26.200000 --> 0:04:29.680000 that you're experiencing in your life, the situations you're experiencing in your community, 53 0:04:29.680000 --> 0:04:32.720000 politics, religion, all that kind of stuff. 54 0:04:32.720000 --> 0:04:38.760000 As you start using these tools to help you gain this awareness, you can then begin the 55 0:04:38.760000 --> 0:04:45.600000 process of reflection and analysis and all of the stuff that's going to allow you to 56 0:04:45.600000 --> 0:04:48.360000 essentially create a new set of actions, right? 57 0:04:48.360000 --> 0:04:56.080000 So this AIDA, they used in marketing language, it's awareness interest decision action, 58 0:04:56.080000 --> 0:05:04.160000 or in the case of what we're doing, it's awareness, reflection, analysis and action. 59 0:05:04.160000 --> 0:05:10.800000 You're going to start to really build that agency and begin developing the skills you're 60 0:05:10.800000 --> 0:05:18.480000 going to need to decrease your personal suffering and likely decrease the pain you create 61 0:05:18.480000 --> 0:05:24.720000 in the environment around you by result of ignoring that accidental or incidental suffering. 62 0:05:24.720000 --> 0:05:31.400000 So this should help you develop some agency and build your influence skills and create 63 0:05:31.400000 --> 0:05:34 better outcomes for yourself and the people around you.