Building Builders!: Random Building Thoughts

-------------- CHALLENGE --------------

Have you Truly Earned your Rite to Pass? You might want to ask yourself first, "What must you do to Truly Serve an Apprenticeship?" You'd be surprised at not only what it takes but how few actually do the Work necessary to become Passable! Here are just a few of the many Tasks required to become Proficient in this Degree:

_1) Proficient in Following through on Obligations/Commitments

_2) Proficient in Setting Moral Compasses

_3) Proficient in Divestment of Vice & Superfluity

_4) Proficient in Emotional Management

_5) Proficient in Keeping Passions within Due Bounds

_6) Proficient in Circumscribing Desires

_7) Proficient in Time Management

_8) Proficient in Establishing & Maintaining Suitable Standards & Boundaries

_9) Proficient in Manifesting Seven Key Virtues in all Thoughts & Actions

10) Proficient in Production & Cultivation of Brotherly Love & Affection

How do you measure up? Have you Earned the Rite?

For Further Light:

Suitable...

-------------- CHARACTER --------------

When I'm ultimately Condemned

let it be for Conspiring

with Good men

to make the World

a Better Place.

-------------- MARBLES --------------

Masonry:

Keeping the Right Marbles

& Losing the Wrong ones.

-------------- ALLEGORY--------------

Athelstan [Boy's name; Germanic]: meaning "Noble Stone"

-------------- VIRTUE #5 --------------

I disagree!

These are but four of the five Virtues

that Plato mentioned in his writings.

The fifth virtue Plato mentioned is Piety

(a.k.a. "Reverence")

of which without this Virtue

the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Agape) are unfounded.

This too is mentioned in scriptures.

-------------- RUFFIAN --------------

You may be a Ruffian if…

...you view passions and desires

as burdens to dismiss, repress and deny

rather than valuable assets

to recognize, understand and direct.

-------------- CHALLENGE --------------

Explore, Evaluate and eventually commit to paper your Understanding of the distinction(s) between "Freedom" and "Liberty".

1) To what do they distinctly refer?

2) How might they be similar?

3) How are they distinctly different?

Can you capture and write out these?

-------------- CHARACTER --------------

EA Work - Heart Development (Soul part 1)
FC Work - Head Development (Soul part 2)
MM Work - Spirit Development

...Word to My Brothers!

-------------- MYTH --------------

"People have the notion of saving the world

by shifting things around,

changing the rules,

and who’s on top,

and so forth.

"No, no!

"Any world is a valid world if it’s alive.

The thing to do is to bring life to it,

and the only way to do that

is to find in your own case

where the life is

and become alive yourself."

— Joseph Campbell,

The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers (book) (p. 149)

Image: Photographer Liba Radová and friends.

-------------- FIRST NATION!!! --------------

"This is the first nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of simply warfare. These were eighteenth-century deists, these gentlemen. Over here we read, ‘In God We Trust.’ But that is not the god of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason."

-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (will Bill Moyers)

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

-------------- WHAT WE NEED --------------

“We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet. A model for that is the United States. Here were thirteen different little colony nations that decided to act in the mutual interest, without disregarding the individual interests of any one of them.

“That’s what the Great Seal is all about. I carry a copy of the Great Seal in my pocket in the form of a dollar bill. Here is the statement of the ideals that brought about the formation of the United States. Look at this dollar bill. Now here is the Great Seal of the United States. Look at the pyramid on the left. A pyramid has four sides. These are the four points of the compass.

There is somebody at this point, there’s somebody at that point, and there’s somebody at this point. When you’re down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you will be either on one side or on the other. But when you get up to the top, the points all come together, and there the eye of God opens.

“This is the first nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of simply warfare. These were eighteenth-century deists, these gentlemen. Over here we read, “In God We Trust.” But that is not the god of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason.

“All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

“…they come from a certain quality of mythology. It’s not the mythology of a special revelation. The Hindus, for example, don’t believe in special revelation. They speak of a state in which the ears have opened to the song of the universe. Here the eye has opened to the radiance of the mind of God. And that’s a fundamental deist idea. Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off from his source.

“Now back to the Great Seal. When you count the number of ranges on this pyramid, you find there are thirteen. And when you come to the bottom, there is an inscription in Roman numerals. It is, of course, 1776 that the thirteen states declared independence. The number thirteen is the number of transformation and rebirth. At the Last Supper there were twelve apostles and one Christ, who was going to die and be reborn. Thirteen is the number of getting out of the field of the bounds of twelve into the transcendent. You have the twelve signs of the zodiac and the sun. These men were very conscious of the number thirteen as the number of resurrection and rebirth and new life, and they played it up here all the way through.

“…This is not simply coincidental. This is the thirteen states as themselves symbolic of what they were.

“’A new order of the world.’ This is a new order of the world. And the saying above, ‘Annuit Coeptis,’ means ‘He has smiled on our accomplishments’ or ‘our activities.’

“He, the eye, what is represented by the eye. Reason. In Latin you wouldn’t have to say “he,” it could be “it” or “she” or “he.” But the divine power has smiled on our doings. And so this new world has been built in the sense of God’s original creation, and the reflection of God’s original creation, through reason, has brought this about.

“If you look behind that pyramid, you see a desert. If you look before it, you see plants growing. The desert, the tumult in Europe, wars and wars and wars-we have pulled ourselves out of it and created a state in the name of reason, not in the name of power, and out of that will come the flowerings of the new life. That’s the sense of that part of the pyramid.

“Now look at the right side of the dollar bill. Here’s the eagle, the bird of Zeus. The eagle is the down coming of the god into the field of time. The bird is the incarnation principle of the deity. This is the bald eagle, the American eagle. This is the American counterpart of the eagle of the highest god, Zeus.

“He comes down, descending into the world of the pairs of opposites, the field of action. One mode of action is war and the other is peace. So in one of his feet the eagle holds thirteen arrows-that’s the principle of war. In the other he holds a laurel leaf with thirteen leaves-that is the principle of peaceful conversation. The eagle is looking in the direction of the laurel. That is the way these idealists who founded our country would wish us to be looking-diplomatic relationships and so forth. But thank God he’s got the arrows in the other foot, in case this doesn’t work.

“Now, what does the eagle represent? He represents what is indicated in this radiant sign above his head. I was lecturing once at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington on Hindu mythology, sociology, and politics. There’s a saying in the Hindu book of politics that the ruler must hold in one hand the weapon of war, the big stick, and in the other the peaceful sound of the song of cooperative action. And there I was, standing with my two hands like his, and everybody in the room laughed. I couldn’t understand. And then they began pointing. I looked back, and here was this picture of the eagle hanging on the wall behind my head in just the same posture that I was in. But when I looked, I also noticed this sign above his head, and that there were nine feathers in his tail. Nine is the number of the descent of the divine power into the world. When the Angelus rings, it rings nine times.”

-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

-------------- THE "NO" QUESTION --------------