What Did We Lose Along the Way?

What happens when a young Freemason starts asking whether progress sometimes costs us more than we realise?

In this episode of The Masonic Mic, we sit down with Bro. Michael Galloway — mechanical engineer, Junior Warden, full-time father and one of Christchurch SRIA’s newest Zelators.

At 32, Michael might seem an unlikely advocate for old traditions. Yet much of what drew him to Freemasonry was precisely its ability to carry ideas, symbolism and human connection forward through generations.

And there is a certain poetry in discovering that Michael also happens to work on the development of modern steam engines.

From ritual, ancient stories and the effects of an increasingly digital world, to community, responsibility, suffering, truth and what he describes as “a ladder to climb,” this conversation moves well beyond the usual question of what Freemasonry is.

Instead, Michael asks something more interesting:

What have we gained through progress — and what might we have lost along the way?

Thoughtful, occasionally strange and frequently philosophical, this is a conversation about preserving what matters without becoming trapped in the past.

And, naturally, about finding somewhere you can ask the "batshit crazy" questions and still get a serious answer.

Masonic Frequency on Frequency.

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Transcript

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Why An Old Lodge Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:02

What does such an old traditional Freemasonic lodge offer such a young man?

SPEAKER_02 0:14

The people who pay attention to it and aren't caught up in the romance of the new technology tend to notice that you've lost something along the way. Everything's a trade-off. It's where you can ask the batch of crazy questions and get serious answers. Right. That would sum it up pretty well. There you go. There you go. Because some of the most interesting answers come from the craziest questions.

Meet Michael And How He Joined

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Brother Michael Galloway, greetings.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Glad to be here. Glad to get the chance to join in and share and learn as I go.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

How did you become a Freemason?

SPEAKER_02 1:03

I was always curious about it, uh, well, for some time before I had the opportunity to be proposed. I think the impression I had pre-formed was somewhere where the tr where some traditions of the past had been preserved and hung on. It was something that had survived and continued for hundreds of years at least, and that there was value in that that had been lost to the wider society. And so that was what I was seeking. It's comfortable when you're used to one to move into another. And not that I was like, ah, where are they? Where are they? Although there was a little bit of that curiosity. It was, oh, this is interesting. And then just trying to get the hang of it. And then the more I did, the more the feeling of value started to come through in just the Blue Lodge stuff itself and the the brothership and community there. For some context of where my life was at the time, I can't remember exactly which year it was that I was initiated, but I think it was either the year I became a full-time single parent or the year after. And I was I joined the local ham radio club and got my ham radio license, and I was hanging out there, and one of the guys there mentioned in passing to another person that they were a Freemason. Like some comment came up, and and like when the third guy wandered off, it's like, I've been interested in joining for a long time. And I was friends with this guy, and he was like, Oh, really? And so just he did the do you believe in an ultimate being question? And then it just went from there. And yeah, he proposed me, and I met Brother McGill, who's our current master, and he thought I sounded like a good fit, and then I came along and did the initiation and then worked my way up and then got shoved into InnerGuard and worked my way along and constantly feeling like I'm scrambling to get the hang of it and not screw up, and noticing every word I don't feel like I got right, but then so many people have said, Oh, you did that really well. So it was the first time I did it. You did it really well. And it's like, oh well, I guess I must have then. If everyone was old, it wouldn't stand out anymore. And it's like I have wide-ranging eclectic interests. There's a lot of value that I've been getting, like the the Toastmasters like element of standing up and learning to read out something from a script from memory and present that well, and the just the moving around the lodge and things like that, the confidence of trying doing something and then having others say, Well, you did that well, and the sort of personal growth element of that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

What drew you as a younger man to such an old establishment, such an older thing, and what does it offer someone of your age? I don't know, you must be you're a lot younger than I am.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Um 33 this year, 32 now. What a great number.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Great number, it is interesting, interesting number.

Why Tradition Beats Novelty

SPEAKER_02 4:21

It's in some senses the opposite of one current of the dominant cultural mythology. So Steve Jobs had an attitude that the past should not just be moved forward from but actively discarded in order to bring forth the new. Like he put forward the iPhone and is like, discard the old, just throw everything old out and start again. And the idea that that was the best way to achieve the best result. But that misses a lot. Our culture, if you trace it right back, goes right back to Babylon and Egypt, right? There's traces that go all the way back beyond what we understand, both beyond what we can physically trace. And it's like English as a language has so many loan words from other languages, from Latin and Greek and French and Irish and all sorts. And then these days we're picking them up from Asian languages as well. And dismissing that heritage is not just a loss in the sense of loss of connection to the past, but there's real value in what's been brought forward. And like to use the the Bible as a sort of obvious example, that was if you compare that to modern university education, uh, you get a different book every year through high school, through undergrad, through postgrad, through PhD. You've got different educational materials at every stage. The Bible and many other books which are less well known in many other traditional sources, it's one book that does that whole thing. And so the information density in there is enormous. And you can trace that form of information transfer back to oral histories in Hunter Gatherer Society as being the prime example. But take a nursery rhyme or children's story that survived today. Like Jack and the Beanstalk is oh, someone climbs a magic beanstalk and kills a giant and lives happily ever after with the gold. Okay, children's version. Okay, he finds something beyond the the usual, uses it unwisely, and then meets a great oppositional force, overcomes it, and gets resources that he can bring back to the community to the benefit of all. And it's a journey of gaining wisdom through having the consequences of a reaction that's clobber you. But point being there's layers and layers of meaning within such a simple story that's commonly told today. But then there are other stories and other messages, and Freemasonry's full of those where it's like, okay, take a charge. Okay, second-degree working tools, picking that one because it's one of the few that I've had the time to learn so far. But you've got the square, the compass, sorry, square, plum rule, and level. Okay, they're tools for for bringing stone into form. Not not the tools for removing the material, but the tools for measuring how well the material has been removed.

Symbols, Stories, And Western Meditation

SPEAKER_02 7:44

And like this is already going down layers. It's like it's not just something to check squareness, flatness, and uprightness, it's what do they mean? How do they actually perform? And then you've got the more detailed explanation of it that it's guide our morals and actions to guide us to walk justly and uprightly, not turning to the left or right from the paths of virtue and so on. But within that, if you read that more closely and meditated on it, and I chose choose that word deliberately, the word meditation does not have an Asian root. Despite the like modern idea of meditation, being you sit there mindful, put your fingers together in a pose with legs crossed in an uncomfortable way. It's like, no, no, that's Eastern meditation. Western meditation is discursive meditation. It's the reason the Bible is divided up into verses, because you've got to pick one verse and let hold that in your mind whilst sort of steering your mind away from distractions and explore that one verse out. And then when you do that, people tend to come up with similar insights. So you pack it all in and say, Oh, okay, here's a concept which, when explored by several different people, gets this set of insights that I want to convey. You can't write those insights down. You can write, you can describe the insights, you can give someone the keys, but until you put in the work, until you come into the lodge and walk around it and it starts to appear in your own mind, you can't perceive it. The how did that one go? The heart must must be made to conceive before the eye can be allowed to perceive. Because if the eye perceives beforehand, then you won't get it, and it will all you'll see is the physical embodiment as opposed to the moral or spiritual embodiment.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

The draw to Freemasonry is knowledge. Is that what you're saying? Or would you say that it was not pure knowledge?

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those one of the few active traditions which gives a link back to that deep origin in history. And a lot of people have moved on from this or that other tradition where this one's still continuing that forward. The the landmarks are still being defended against encroachment, and people who may have like the odd fellows and so on, there are various other fraternal orders that are less popular or less less patronized today, at least as far as I'm aware, and in this region, of course. The people who utilise those kinds of traditions have gravitated towards Freemasonry in this area as one of the few that's still continuing. And of course, it's only a small portion of the population, but for that portion of the population, it's an essential thing. And that's the draw, that it still carries that tradition forward, still carries that sacred knowledge forward.

What A Young Mason Gives Back

SPEAKER_00 10:53

As a young man, what do you give to Freemasonry then? What can what do you personally provide? Well, there's the obvious sort of fulfilling officer positions in the lodge. So for our listeners, you are at the moment you're the junior warden, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah, I was inner guard and then junior deacon, and while I was junior deacon, I ended up doing a lot of the senior deacon jobs at the same time. So it's like, oh, why don't you just skip to junior warden? And they're like, Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, so you're now a junior warden. Are you looking at the senior warden's office as a a next step?

SPEAKER_02 11:27

I hadn't thought that far ahead, but others had been. And so I had you're doing well. What are you thinking of after senior warden? It's like, well, the lodge, of course. Well, that was what was thought of for me. So it's like, ah, well. You'll do well at that, I think. The only concern I have, which it's too soon to be able to tell how it will work out, is full-time single parents needing babysitting help and so on, and it's like going visiting and fulfilling the master's duties. Okay, I would need to figure that out, and like I would not be able to be a the sort of master who just takes charge and does a whole lot of things. Okay, here's the things we need to do. I'd probably be more of a coordinator than a leader, but I think I could probably not screw it up. I imagine it takes a lot of time, and like I never saw it as something that was optional. Like the the relationship had okay, I was blind to red flags, let's say, and my ability to tolerate the situation ran out, and there were friends who had seen it coming who'd already offered a couch to sleep on, so I ran away and slept on the couch with my son, and then we built up from there.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Is that one of the main reasons why younger folk aren't joining Freemasonry, or is it a lack of understanding what Freemasonry is to the younger per

Screens, Social Hunger, And Real Community

SPEAKER_00 13:00

younger person?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Or what comes to mind is there's some things I was looking at recently to do with how screen addicted everyone is these days. And I'm not just talking about doom scrolling on Instagram or something, that when you grow up watching when you grow up interacting with a screen in a digital world, you're not getting what your brain has evolved to need in interactions with other people. It's like you don't eat fruit and vegetables, we'll have some vitamin C. It fills some of the gap, but it's not the same thing. Similarly, oh here's YouTube. That doesn't give you the subtle social cues in response to your own actions which people need in order for the social brain to mature. Rather, it gives you a a face that is is the same irrespective, it's not responsive to your own actions. And so that can lead to great a great sense of self-loat self-loathing and irrelevance because people see that their needs and their actions are not responded to as though they are of no importance to the world around them and to the internet, you have no importance except as a consumer and source of money. Getting on that path to start with becomes more difficult. And but on the other hand, I can see a very bright future for Freemasonry, not in a broad sense, but in a concentrated sense. So as the downsides of that play out, I would expect to see those who are a little bit more aware seeking something more, like, oh, this doesn't feel right. What am I missing? And then something comes up and some number of people, oh, Freemasonry, what the hell is that? I've heard about it. There's been a bunch of crazy stories on the internet, but I've seen plenty of those, so I don't believe everything on the internet. What is it? Well, we get together and we talk. So talking to people like friends. Well, that I need friends. Could I come along? And then it sort of builds from there. And then you get that real, those little communities and the visiting, which unfortunately, due to my time constraints, I haven't been able to indulge in much. I need to arrange specific babysitting for my son in order to do any lodge activities.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Okay. Because you're also a very you're a very learned fella. You also attended university, so you've got a degree, I believe, or more than one?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Okay. And so you are currently in in a field, I guess, that supports that, I imagine. I'm not sure what you do for this. We're timing.

Building Modern Steam Engines For Resilience

SPEAKER_02 15:52

I've been lucky enough to get a job with a startup developing and building for sale modern advanced steam engines. No electronics, but a self-managing border and firebox, which is an advance. There's a current gap in the market for taking a solid fuel and turning that into useful spinning shaft power. Uh previous systems that were implemented, like there's wood gasification that has consistency and reliability issues. Uh, a enthusiastic operator can run a car to drive across a continent just powered by wood. But its only widespread use has been during wartime. Um there's been use in the Soviet Union, but it's not it's not that reliable long term. Like uh oh, tars that are produced by the combustion of the wood to produce the flammable gases like carbon monoxide, need to be removed, and da da da. There's various stages to it. You can get more energy out of wood into the spinning shaft through wood gasification, but a steam engine is simpler uh and more reliable. The catchphrase that the boss came up with at one point to describe the goal, which the investors didn't seem to uh latch on to, funnily enough, but energy sovereignty. Uh, we want to give people the ability to uh solve their own problems. Like if you take a steam engine to a Pacific island where importing diesel to run the grid is very expensive, they can grow a lot of wood. And you can burn that, and it can be crop waste, it could be anything, really. And you burn that, and you've got spinning shaft you can run your generator with, and it's just as maintainable as a diesel engine, uh, but it just keeps running. And you take it to the Chatham Islands, you take it to any remote area, you set it up as an emergency generator, and instead of saying, Oh no, we're we're most of the way through the emergency diesel, it's like, well, that hill that we covered in trees a few years back is just waiting for this generator to need it, or that that plot of trees. And it's like, oh, well, if we run out of those, we can start chopping down hedges, right? We can still run the hospital. There are those who are convinced that more complexity is the answer to the problems, and then there's things like a company in Canada producing tractors from remanufactured diesel engines with no electronics. Like you look at a John Deere tractor and it might stop in the middle of the field because they turn it off via satellite because you're behind in your payments for it.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Whereas the tractors that this company in Canada are producing, they're using engines that everyone already knows how to fix. They will just go and there's no electronics to break down. You can, of course, add this or that gizmo, and I'm sure they've got optional add-ons. Like with the steam engine, it would be easy enough to add GPS steering to that because a GPS steering unit is a motor mounted in the steering wheel. That's already set up as an add-on. That should be easy enough for us to include. So you've got a working prototype where you got we have some demonstration models of the boiler. Yep. Uh we've got one demonstration model for the for a larger version of the boiler that was going to be used to re-boiler a heritage locomotive, but then COVID hit and the heritage line stopped running. Oh, I see. So we've used that to test the performance of the boiler. We've got a firebox for the A35 tractor that we're working on that's been tested to see how the fire responds and how what happens if you feed wet wood into it. Like we know we can feed damp wood, like freshly chopped trees, no need to dry it. When the wood has been sitting in the in a puddle for a month or two, then it doesn't burn quite so well, but we can still burn it. It's quite modular, is it? No, it's actually very integrated. So the you've got the firebox, you've got the boiler, you've got a pump that pumps water around the boiler, which is part of the new development. You've got the automated control system, which is entirely mechanical, which controls the water level in the boiler. So you've got no operator having to carefully watch a sight glass. There is no sight glass. You've got the temperature, the pressure in the boiler being monitored constantly in order to control when to damp the firebox. So all you as the operator have to do is make sure the firebox stays full of fuel and the water tank full of water, and it takes care of everything else itself. It's hard to take one part out because the pump feeds the boiler, and there's several stages to that, and the engine is mix is structurally integrated into the shell of the boiler. The shell of the boiler doesn't actually contain any pressure, it's just structural container for the pipe work. So if there's any failure, it's a burst pipe inside a steel shell, so it's fundamentally safe. And I'm rather enthusiastic about this, as you may

Tech Change, Digital Lodges, And Vinyl Ownership

SPEAKER_02 21:08

have picked up. One thing on the AI and screen time and how it will end up going, that when mass book printing first came about, there were people decrying how young people today are just sitting around and reading books instead of discussing things. And oh, it will be the death of memory because people just look it up in books. And I'm not against the idea of new technologies, but it the rate of change. It's like it takes a generation or two to discover and start working out the kinks of any new technology. Like how long did it take after the invention of the car before the invention of the seatbelt and the invention of road rules and driver's licenses and things like that? And first cars were slower. So there was a uh developing period there. Yep, you're absolutely right. Yeah, if you handed everyone a supercar who'd never even seen a car, I think there'd be a higher injury rate. And I don't think so. But again, I wouldn't be surprised to see it tried.

SPEAKER_04 22:06

If you were to step it up slowly, add more digital elements to a lodge very slowly. How far to fully digital do you think you could get? For example, I think a fully digital lodge would be people behind their screens and they would perform their roles behind a screen. But what would the next step look like? Robots.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That'd all be robots.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

That would not be the next step. Oh really? Like, would you have integrated tablets into the pedestals of the junior and senior warden and the worshipful master prompts in the air or th you know, I'm just spitballing at the stage.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Or Google Glass, so you can read the charges off straight off. Well, if you've got to have some sort of VR goggles, you don't even need to be in the same room.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

And that's what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure that's that that's why we'll survive because we are social animals. We need that context. We need to be able to have the all the ranges of the senses, not just the visual. So you need to s you know those subtle, subtle things like the slight you know smell, the hearing, and the feel of them, you know.

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Not you know, that that's why Well that you bring up a good point uh with s with with the sense of the O factories.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:23

Second sense and isn't that something we don't typically do in a in a lodge meeting.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

But some in the S RIA. In the S RIA, do we?

SPEAKER_02 23:33

There you go. And there are already there are already m social movements towards you could say Luddite-like technologies. Like if you look at the arc of the music industry, you had everything on vinyl, and then CDs came out, and then vinyl was expected to vanish, and then you had MP3s and MP3 players, and now you've got streaming, and then there are still CDs, and now vinyls are having resurgence where like the new vinyls are not just black, they're all sorts of colours, but they've still got the shape. And like a guy at work got was quite proud to find a he went looking and found a record player in a second-hand shop and cleaned it up a bit, and he thought the sound was better, and that you can do different things with additional technology. Well, true audiophobes are uh uh uh audio analogue, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

So they can tell the difference. And I know my one of my favourite drummers, Danny Carey from Tool, he has developed a it's called a synthetic or synth synth something something or other. What he's done is he was right into the analog uh organs, what do you call them? The keyboards, keyboards, yeah, yeah, yeah. Synthesizers, and there was one called MOG, M-O-O-G, which was analog. And so he took that technology and he put them into a drum pad. And so if you ever listen to Tool, you can hear, if you if you can hear properly, you'll be able to hear some of these strange sounds, and that's actually him. So he's merged modern technology with old technology, and uh you you're saying a lot of the about the records. A lot of audiophobes will rather listen to records, EPs, LPs, because they can tell the difference between the sound of that versus the digital. I can't myself.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

Not only that, my my daughter's uh 15 and I bought her a record player. Oh, she wanted one, and she's been buying vinyl, and I said, So I I know they sound better, but why are you buying it? And she goes, Well, it's it's physical. It's I get a a big thing, a big record, a big vinyl, but I get a big book, posters, collectibles, oh yeah, with it. So I think, you know, based on what we were saying earlier, it might be Luddite technology, but at the end of the day, when everything is going progressively digital, you talked talked about John Deere before about turning off the old tractors via satellite. What happens with our MP3s and things like that? They'll just shut them down. I think this is actually happening with Sony now.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yes, I was gonna say that I heard that they they shut some subscription service down and people who had paid money to own movies on their system. It's like, oh, you don't own that anymore. You only bought a license to have it for a while. It's like the the emotional impact of this is mine. I've paid for it, and then you took it away from me. What screw you? I'm buying a vinyl. I'm buying something physical, and it's like you have this, you want it, you'll have to come and take it from me. And it's like not necessarily fully enunciated like that, but that idea of I hold this thing, I like it, it's mine.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yeah, yeah. So, where are we gonna get the the Masonic mic pressed into a record?

SPEAKER_04 26:56

We're gonna get rid of the digital uh version of it or I hear there's a a great outfit called Tamu or something like that. You can do all sorts of Tamu, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, there are it's uh French, Italian or something, rather Tamu. Brilliant place. And so, yeah, we and we have that with the lodge. We I don't think we'll ever replace there won't be any replacement for the physical contact and social aspect of Freemasonry that we have. You couldn't you couldn't copy that, I don't think. And so I guess maybe that's why it has survived over the years. I mean, it's whoever you talk to, well however old it is, if it's 300 years old or a thousand years old or whatever it is, I think because we are social animals, I think it will survive. But yeah.

Privacy As A Core Value

SPEAKER_02 27:48

And the privacy as a core value, I think, also contributes a lot to that because it's not so much that as any Mason will know, it's not that anything that happens in the logged room is would be objectionable to the wider world, but it's like this is our thing. We do it privately. This is something that we value. And just like you wouldn't, or 99.9% of people wouldn't feel comfortable broadcasting their bedrooms, most people like to have this is a thing that we do. This is a thing that we don't need to talk about. And if you start pushing to try and find out what happens in our lodge rooms, it's like, well, you're welcome to join as a brother if you if you have an appropriate notion preconceived of the institution. But if you want to try and come in and take over or say that it should be a different way, then it's like, no, thank you. This is our space.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

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What SRIA Is And Why Join

SPEAKER_00 29:26

You did mention earlier that the you're a member of the SRIA. Recently, thanks to you too, yes. Okay. Damn it, the cat's out of the bag, so I I can't I can't come across like our last uh one of our one of our previous guests, and I was asking him questions as if I didn't know, but I I knew fully well. So for our listeners, then would you be able to please expand a little bit as to what the SRIA is and why you decided to join it?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Well, I've only had one meeting. Okay. So it will be a possibly usefully naive perspective. Sure. It's your perspective, so it can't be wrong. Yeah, genuine curiosity and pursuit of truth. That is both strict and loosely defined. Like there's true, there's absolute universal truth, but we can't reach that. There is a lie.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

So then is there actual absolute truth then if you cannot reach it? I digress. So anyway.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

So I can chase that rabbit hole. No, no. Let's look at let's look at let's look at why you joined. Yeah. Let's finish that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

You saw that I had the interest in what SRA would have, and that I guess that I would get on well in the group and both uplift and be uplifted by it.

SPEAKER_04 30:50

But but also the last 28 minutes have kind of proved that. You're a deep thinker. Absolutely. You're philosophical. This is why we uh thought you'd be a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

How does it differ from the Blue Lodge?

SPEAKER_02 31:04

The first thing that struck me, which is probably as much because of the Lodge I joined, the Avon Shirley Lodge that I'm part of is known to do the ritual well, and there's often comments to that effect. And the SRI has has much less of a focus on the ritual, though I'd like to try and do my part well, because I think that there's a ritual is a play in which you are a member or you are a participant. So you are both observer and participant, and the effects that it has on you as observer are somewhat dependent on how well it's performed.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

So it's not as structured, is that what you're saying, or is it its focus is different? So how would you explain to someone in the blue? So a third degree Master Mason, and you say, Oh, have you heard about the SRAA? And they say, Well, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Different symbolism, and the focus is more on the conversations that happen afterwards, the presentation of a point for discussion or a paper, and then the conversation that happens after that being the the main reason for it where the ritual is more in support of that.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Okay, so it's a similar thing, but it's completely different?

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Similar thing, but with different goals. The Blue Lodge, it's the ritual itself is half the goal, and refractory is the other half. So the social aspect of the Brotherhood in Blue Lodge seems from the impression that I've got is half the goal of it. The visiting, the discussions afterwards, the mutual support and aid on both emotional and what other whatever other comes up. While the performance of the ritual, at least in my experience of it at our lodge, is the joy of a job well done.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

And so would you say, what has Freemasonry given you as a young man that you have been able to then use in your everyday life?

A Ladder To Climb In Life

SPEAKER_02 33:18

The first thing that comes to mind, and I often find when I get into these sort of conversations that the things that come to mind don't necessarily have a fully conscious, thought-out reasoning behind them, but they're often the most valuable things like my subconscious handed me something, and I don't know what it means yet. A ladder to climb.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Have you already applied some of that ladder?

SPEAKER_02 33:41

The main thing that comes to mind is now I don't want to understate this. Something to do. Like full-time single parent, right? Get son ready for school, take him to school, uh come home, rush off to work, do work, come home, so on. That's all well and good, but it's easy to to wallow, it's easy to drift. And I think as the animals we are, if we don't have a guiding light, a hobby, then we drift. And the answers that came to mind for some of the questions that I had something that weren't well, that I had something that could was ready to come to mind came out rather poetical, which was interesting. But was it stumbling through the fog of ignorance, seeking glimmers of the light of wisdom, and uh Freemasonry has scattered glimmers all around, which once united grant light? You think subconscious, that's an interesting phrasing.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

That with regards to the SRIA and with regards to the Blue Lodge, what is your Masonic future that you can see? Not what others can see, but where do you see yourself?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Fellowship, gradually growing responsibility and I guess service to fellow man within the lodge. Because that's not just it's not a one-way service, it's reciprocated and appreciated, which is part of the joy of it. And and for the SRIA, the the chance to test those batch of crazy ideas, because you can have infinite crazy ideas, but then if you test one, does it fall over instantly because you missed something in the foundations and then you need to rethink your whole philosophy, or do you find that it's based on something you've heard and actually this lot's good, but that lot doesn't that play out differently? And it's like, oh well, the interpretation I had has a lesson to teach, but this other interpretation has more applicableness. And so that kind of the opportunity to have those deep discussions, like I've started this whole conversation with.

Suffering, Shadow, And Transmutation

SPEAKER_02 36:40

There was something that's been rattling around my head recently along those lines of big questions of the how to phrase this, the change of life's perspective brought about by integration of the infinite into worldview. So many life philosophies depicted in fiction or otherwise, like the idea of praying for worldly possessions, like help me win the lotto, please God. And it's like, okay, take a an infinite number of steps out and look at that in the context of the infinite, and it's like, okay, you're in this mortal life, which is from certain philosophical perspectives, which I would follow, the preschool of the infinite. And the preschool kid is saying, please give me all the ice cream, all of it, please. And it's like, no, that won't be good for you. And it's like, oh, you've got to eat your carrots.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

No, the green beans.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, that's disgusting. And it's like, you've got to go through these hardships in life, but they hurt. Yes, they do. But you will learn. And you've got to practice, you've got to participate in the cross country for school. Oh, I don't want to. It's really hard. It's like, yes, it is. That's the point. That is the point. And there's a lot to be said for learning the lessons that life clobbers you with grace as opposed to resistance, which merely means it's okay, time to repeat the lesson. Not that I could say that I learned certain lessons without a number of repetitions.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

So is life a is life a process of pain?

SPEAKER_02 38:32

No, no. This is a thing that So you're not a nihilist. No. This is an interesting one that I've I'm not at the end of this journey, which is kind of obvious but also needs to be stated.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

If you're feeling pain, then it's not over. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

If you're feeling if you can't transmute the pain into joy yet, it's not it's not over. But it's like, okay. The the idea of this mortal existence being a preschool of infinite life, right? And there's there's various forms of infinite life that various people prescribe to, or lack thereof, which is where I get confused and I try and understand those perspectives. But if you have I mentioned that my first idea for a paper to present at the SRA was the meaning of life. I've since decided that's possibly not the best one because as I've explained. It is. Yeah, well, it's up to that many chapters. Life has suffering. You can't get away from that. But there is undeniably joy in life. Do you not have joy and suffering? That's the thing. Like the image that came to mind was of like cloud layers. Like at the bottom, everything's dark and black. And if you're just lying down, suffering, right? Oh, woe is me. But you struggle, you climb, you stand, your feet are still toasting in the pool of lava. Hypothetically, right? You might find some cooler ground to stand on if you're competent at life. And that's part of the growth process too, to find some find out how to suffer less idiotically. But if you can get your head above the clouds and see that light in the distance, then there is a there is more beauty and joy than suffering.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

Is that an integration of the shadow, of the the suffering, you know, recognizing and accepting it and bringing it into oneself? Is there is there is is is there good in doing that?

SPEAKER_00 40:51

Transmutation.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Yeah, yeah. Because like the there's the integration of the shadow where you tend to perceive those who are portray who who manifest the aspects No, not even that. You put you perceive those you hate as manifesting the aspects of yourself that you have the most shame about. And it makes sense in psychological terms of if you have an enemy, say, of your tribe, of your family, you want to bring forth those strong emotions so that you could do what's necessary to to promote the survival of your family and your tribe on a biological level. Integrating the shadow, you acknowledge the the monster and look him in the eye and see that he is you. I'm not trying to diminish the idea of suffering or the experience of suffering. I've had things in my own life too. There's something beyond that which is yeah, standing up above the clouds, seeing the light. You have something to reach for, something which which reaches back when you reach for it. That that's been my personal experience. And this then gets into the questions of the nature of religious experience or the religious re the spiritual realities behind experiences, and that's a whole nother rabbit Warren.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

What can Freemasonry teach us about suffering?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Choice towards what most would consider suffering in the service of something higher. Right.

SPEAKER_04 42:29

Like truth and fidelity.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

I don't think it's too I don't think it's the idea of betrayal being worse because it's not choosing a lesser of two evils, it's p choosing a greater of a of the goods. The idea of truth and honour and keeping what has been given to you in confidence, that by pursuing that you transmute the suffering, which physical suffer the physical side of the suffering may be rather immutable, but the inner perception of that is mutable by that truth that you choose to follow instead.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

There we have it. And so it's been a pleasure, Brother Michael Galloway.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

You're welcome.

Closing Thoughts And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_06 43:26

Michael Galloway is the sort of man who can start with Freemasonry, pass through Babylon, steam engines, and the meaning of life, and somehow still arrive back at the original question. Eventually. Newer doesn't always mean better. Old doesn't necessarily mean obsolete. And sometimes the things worth keeping are the things that still give us a ladder to climb and a little light to climb towards. As for the really big questions, well, that's what Big Apron is for. I've said too much.

SPEAKER_05 44:20

Thanks for listening to the Masonic mic. The views expressed by our hosts and guests are their own and don't necessarily reflect those of Grand Lodge or any affiliated body. Before you go, be sure to download the Masonica app to stay connected and support the show for more Masonic resources, blogs, and podcasts. Remember to subscribe, like and share. And until next time, stay square.