-------------- WORKING TOOLS --------------
Your Apprentice Work
Trues your Square,
Sets your Plumb
and Lengthens your
Level.
No other Work Establishes
Better Building Standards.
What standards have you established?
What Symbols Hidden In Plain Sight
Within All Open Lodges
Represent Love, Relief and Truth
For All Brothers to See?
There are more than one set?
I: How do you Deal Effectively
With Masonic Nuts?
R: Easy! Masonic Squirrels!
They LOVE Masonic Nuts!
-------------- CHALLENGE --------------
Stop
Looking for Good Men to Join Masonry.
Seek to Be what you want to
Attract.
It's only when you Do your Work
that They shall find You!
When they find you,
When they find you,
will they find what you want them
to be looking for?
-------------- DIFFERENCE --------------
What you Should do
and what you Actually do
is the difference between Prescription
and Description.
How well are you
administering your prescriptions?
-------------- CHANGE THE PERSON! --------------
Craft Problems are Personal in Nature.
Change the Person for the Better
and so Follows the Craft.
How personal have you gotten?
-------------- ACTUAL VALUE! --------------
What
allows a Master to Travel and Work
is the Perceived Value of his Word.
What allows him to continue to Travel
and Work and hence Earn, Support
and Contribute
is the Actual Value of his Word.
What allows you?
-------------- DESIGNED! --------------
Freemasonry
is Perfectly Designed
to Get the Results that it Gets.
If you Don't
Like the Results that you're getting,
Perhaps you had Better Examine
more closely
Its Systems.
What results are you getting?
-------------- GUARANTEE! --------------
Some
people don't realize that
the very thing they want to change
is the
very thing that
permits them to complain.
And if they ever did get
their wishes,
they would be silenced forever!
-------------- MYTH --------------
“The creative act is not hanging on,
but yielding to a new creative movement.
Awe is what moves us forward.”
―
―
-------------- AWESOMENESS --------------
You'll
never get
an Awesome Masonic Experience
waiting for someone other than
yourself
to Provide it.
Awesome Starts from Within!
What has been YOUR experience so far?
-------------- THEORY 13 -------------- 
-------------- THE DANCE --------------
Theory 13 makes sense of all the Nonsense.
It is perhaps the most Realistic
Origins Theory Investigated
since the Craft's Beginning.
Read it when you want to know
The Craft's biggest Transformative Secret;
Hidden Unrestrictedly in Plain Sight.
Source:
http://www.coach.net/TCU.htm
http://www.coach.net/TCU.htm
Virtues and Vices
are Intimately Entangled
in a Dance
You shall Not End
till Dead.
How well are you dancing with them?
"The secret of freedom lies in educating people,
whereas the secret of tyranny
is in keeping them ignorant."
-- Maximilien de Robespierre Maximilien de Robespierre
(b. 1758, in Arras, France)
-------------- CHIP -------------- 
-------------- THE CRAFT UNMASKED --------------
No.
You Don't have to Get your Ashlar in Gear
just because I made a
Conscious Decision to Work mine.
Just don't get in my way.
You don't
want to deal
with any Chip of mine.
Hello, Coach. I'm posting this here to hopefully stimulate open conversation and invite anyone to comment with their views or experiences.
First, let me say I found The Craft Unmasked to be a very compelling book and perhaps the best, and most logical, explanation of Freemasonry and its origins and purpose that I have come across. I hear echos of Shakespeare saying all the world's a stage. My remarks will reflect that, and those who have read the book will see that.
The idea that Freemasonry exists as a means to teach men Moral Betterment resonates very strongly with me. I have found that to be the very essence of its Rituals and exactly what happens when the duties of each office are applied, sometimes symbolically, sometimes literally, to one's personal life. To fully and truly experience the Transformation, one must take on the character he wishes to be. Too many, though, only wear the mask, removing it too eagerly when the play is over or losing control and breaking character.
A while back, on TSS, someone posted a paper about cognitive dissonance and its role in Freemasonry. Perhaps you recall it. The theory is that Freemasonry creates a bond through the shared experiences of rituals and teachings that challenge us morally and intellectually. Our strong Fraternal bonds are in part in attempt to justify them. But like the effects of cognitive dissonance in general, there are some who won't (or can't) conform because they just don't "get it." Then there are those whose beliefs are so strong that they refuse to conform. In both cases, these are a large number of those who disappear and are never seen in lodge again. I think there's a fair amount of validity in that theory.
One paragraph in your book really stood out for me. Page 48, 3rd full paragraph, that the true purpose of Ritual is to create self reliant men. I used to attend lodge religiously, I practically ate and breathed Ritual, I went through the Chairs. I even found myself involved with Ritual on a Grand Lodge level. I was studying the nuances of meanings of words and symbols. Then events happened within the lodge that challenged my very belief in Freemasonry and what it stands for. I was trying to bend my views to conform, and I found that doing so undermined the very foundations of my own Integrity. I did not recognize what was beneath the masks of others. I stopped attending meetings. And although I miss the socializing, I haven't missed the drama (pun intended) one bit.
Is Blue Lodge designed, as speculated on page 49, to get exactly the results it does, to create self sufficient, self reliant and self regulated men, to provide a forum through Fellowship and Brotherhood for those who have not yet attained that level, to encourage those seeking intellectual stimulation to find it in the world abroad?
I read Unmasked in hopes of finding answers to questions about where I need to be, but only find more questions. I do think I am learning how I got to this point, which is a first step, and I am learning that I am not alone. I look forward to hearing from you and others about your experiences.
Fraternally,
Bro. Jeffrey Blaisdell (Oct 6, 2015)
------------------
My 10/6/2019 Response:
Thanks for the great discussion starter Bro. Jeffrey Blaisdell. I hope the discussion expands. Let's continue with some responses to your initial post.
re: Is Blue Lodge designed, as speculated on page 49, to get exactly the results it does, to create self sufficient, self reliant and self regulated men, to provide a forum through Fellowship and Brotherhood for those who have not yet attained that level, to encourage those seeking intellectual stimulation to find it in the world abroad?
I believe your question has taken out of context the book's words offered on page 49. It doesn't imply what you have shared above. It implied, and sadly so, that the results that we see today ARE what the Organization's Systems were designed to do and that we as a whole are trained to be in conflict, disappointed and upset with the very thing it was designed to do.
re: I read Unmasked in hopes of finding answers to questions about where I need to be, but only find more questions.
I never intended the book to reveal to anyone answers to questions about where they need to be. But to have you share that it raises more questions within you tells me that I have succeeded in my aims.
Thank You!
Coach John S Nagy
Be Well and Travel Light!
-- Coach Nagy ;-)
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