a mason and a man

My brother, Masonry means much more
      Than the wearing of a pin
   Or carrying a paid up dues receipt
      So the Lodge will let you in

You may wear an emblem on your coat
      From your finger flash a ring
   But if you're not sincere at heart
      This doesn't mean a thing

It's merely an outward sign to show
      The world that you belong
   To this great Fraternal Brotherhood
      That teaches right from wrong

What really counts lies buried deep
      Within the human breast
   Till Masonic teaching bring it out
      And puts it to the test

If you practice out of Lodge
      The things you learn within
   Be just and upright to yourself
      And to your fellowman

Console a Brother when he's sick
      Or assist him when in need
   Without a thought of personal reward
      For any act or deed

Walk and act in such a way
      That the world without can see
    That none but the best can meet the test
      Laid down by Masonry

Always live up to your trust
      And do the best you can
   Then you can proudly tell the world
      You're a Mason ans a Man

                                                     ~ Author Unknown

gnostic thomas

According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "The kingdom is inside you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, you will dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty." Thomas's Jesus is the dispenser of wisdom, not the resurrected Lord.

In The Book of Thomas the Contender, Jesus said, "For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge of the depth of the all."*

 

The heart of the problem for the Gnostic is ignorance. But Jesus redeems man from such ignorance. Stephan A. Hoeller says that in the Valentinian system "there is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from so-called sin, neither is there a need for a blind belief vicarious salvation by way of the death of Jesus." Rather Jesus is the savior in the sense of being a spiritual maker of wholeness.  

Unlike the canonical gospels, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection are not narrated and neither do any of the one hundred-fourteen sayings in the Gospel of Thomas directly refer to any of these events. Although Thomas does not articulate every aspect of a full-blown Gnostic system, some of the teachings attributed to Jesus fit the Gnostic system.

Christ comes, not as a Redeemer, but a Revealer. He gives a metaphysical assist.

 

 

what is a mason?

A Mason brings to mind a certain kind of man, who's thoughtful, caring, considerate, and all too uncommon these days. But that's exactly what Masons are.................................

a rare and special man who deserves the best our lives can bring.

some entertainment

I found this video from guilherme.tv and I am really impressed on the creativity of this. This is a promotional short film for a project known as M Island.

leadership in motion

On Saturday, March 10, 2011 the Illinois Council of Deliberations had their annual leadership seminar in Bloomington at the Marriott. This is where Scottish Rite Valleys talked about the future of membership and our mission to the communities we serve. Our sense of community is great. Our goals for leadership are entrenched in our historical roots. Freemasonry aided in the idea of free thought and freedom from tyranny. Freemasons helped forge a nation and break the bonds of foreign rule.

As we talked about our future, we had a sense of our mission, a mission of responsibility to ourselves and our social conscious. I present this whole idea in this video:

This frankly is what Freemasonry stands for. This is very meaningful. I had the honor of attending this function and have shared a portion with you.

freemasonry molds the form

True Freemasonry is esoteric. All that we have is a link, a doorway, to a place not of this world. Freemasonry has nothing to do with form, but realizes that form is molded by and manifests the life it contains. The esoteric student may pass into the unknown, but he is seeking to mold his life that the form will glorify the God whose temple he is slowly building as he awakens the workmen within himself and directs them to carry out the instructions which have been given to him by the God that he finds within himself.

biblical prophesy and reformation

Bible prophecy. Who identifies with it these days? Is there a correct Bible interpretation? As the Bible became more accessible to people at the end of the Dark Ages, people were seeing the prophecies for themselves. Do you suppose they took the Bible literally? Were they taught to take the Bible as it was written? When the Protestant Reformation was starting, the Protestant powers that be were passionate about the literal Bible. How did this aid the Protestant ministers in their aim to educate the masses?

The rise out of the Dark Ages was the result of making the Bible available to everyone. The Protestant teachings were based on historical teachings of prophesy. As the Reformation teachings spread, the Papacy was forced to defend itself against the overwhelming evidence of Biblical prophesy. The Papacy needed to steer people away from this interpretation. It did not want to be seen as the enemy of Christ!

The Papacy began a counter-reformation that led to the formation of the Jesuits. The Jesuits became the teaching arm of the Roman Catholic Church. Revolution was at hand, and the Catholic leadership knew it. This also led them to create the Holy Office of the Inquisition which persecuted those who would not give up Reformation teachings. The Jesuits had their work cut out for them. They used two doctrines aimed at the Reformation.

1. Spanish Jesuit Alcazar began teaching that the events depicted in the prophesies were already fulfilled in the early persecutions of the Christians by the Romans. This was the Preterist interpretation.
2. Spanish Jesuit Francisco Ribera began teaching that the events depicted by the Prophets were still in the future and that the fulfillment of prophesy would come just before the second coming of Christ. This was called the Futurist interpretation.

In the book of Revelation, 5 main players are featured. These 5 are usually identified as Satanic.

1. The Great Red Dragon
2. The Leopard
3. The Lamb-Like Beast
4. The Image of the Beast
5. The Scarlet Colored Beast

The Bible identifies the Great Red Dragon as Satan (at face value). The color is red or flame-colored. It is often associated with Lucifer, another name for Satan, by some, but not all. There are revelations that Lucifer has nothing to do with Satan, or is the opposite of Satan. Here's a question: Is Lucifer Jesus? One to ponder! For sure, Lucifer was made to give Satan another identity, so that deception, made easy, was called out for the faithful. Satan, obviously full of deception and deceit, is surely among us on Earth and has filtrated or even has control of the three Abrahamic religions.

There are those who have identified Satan, but always seem to call the Evil One Lucifer. Go figure.
Satan is identified by the following characteristics:

1. To exalt self above God.
2. To be worshiped as God.
3. To rule and not to serve.
4. To spread lies in order to gain followers.
5. Accuse others of his own guilt.
6. Rebellion brought into the open.
7. Never repents or gives up.

The Red Dragon devours the man-child which is interpreted as Christ.

The Leopard, through historical interpretation is the Roman Catholic Church. What are the characteristics of the Papacy (Roman Catholic Church)?

1. Exalts man in the place of God.
2. To rule over rather than serve using church government.
3. The pope is like God and is worshiped as God.
4. To spread lies and falsehoods to gain followers.
5. To work secretly until able to work openly.
6. To silence or even kill enemies.
7. Never repents, but refines and polishes the plan to attain goals.

These characteristics are very similar to Satan's.

The Lamb-Like Beast has been identified as the United States of America. What was this entity during the Reformation? Some other nation that believed in freedom no doubt. This beast has two horns representing Republicanism and Protestantism. The characteristics:

1. Republicanism; or freedom from kings and tyrannical governments.
2. Protestantism; or the separation of church and state, and freedom from oppressive and apostate churches.
3. Manifest a peaceful attitude.
4. Speaks like a dragon; or becomes Satanic, destroys Liberty.
5. Exercises military power over all Earth.
6. It compels all Earth to worship the Lamb-Like Beast.
7. Persecution and death to all who do not make concessions or bow to its decrees.

The Image of the Beast is a replica of the Roman Catholic Church. Could this be a Protestant denomination? This entity is the most powerful since the Roman Catholic Church had its peak during the Dark Ages and fell from its power during the Reformation.

Speculation has me wondering if the Reformation had not happened, would the confusion over Lucifer and Satan ever happened? There were those who recognized Lucifer as "the Bearer of Light", which he is. Lucifer was not to be worshiped. There was no need. The Illuminists do not worship God. They are becoming God. They are on a quest to become God. This quest has to do with much, realizing the bicameral mind must function as that, a bicameral mind, so the voices of the gods may be heard.

Any "god" which demands worship is evil. Beware the Abrahamic religions. Their teaching spans thousands of years and that dogma is engrained deeply in the Abrahamic psyche. Know the Gnostic Gospels and you will have your own reformation!

the bicameral

The brain is "bicameral" or two-sided. The two-sides (called hemispheres) communicate via a super-powerful connector called the corpus callosum. The left hemisphere is specialized in verbal-linguistic tranduction of speech and analytical thinking (logic, math, cause & effect, language, & sequential thinking). The right side plays more of a role in holistic-metaphorical information transduction such as imagery (art, dance, intuition, subjective, spontaneous, holistic, & dream imagery). The primary role of creating imagery is carried out by the right side. 

Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize for his brain research. Basically feeding different information to each side of the brain at the same time. His research concluded that each hemisphere could work independently of each other at the same time. 

Researchers have come a long way toward understanding the mind. They have discovered, for instance, that under stress the brain will convert nerve signals into "messenger molecules" who then in turn direct the endocrine system to produce steroid hormones, that can reach the nucleus of various cells and cause them to change how the body’s genes are written out. These genes will then direct the cells as to how to make a variety of molecules which are used in growth, metabolism, sexuality, and the immune systems. In other words, the mind can rewrite genetics.

Barbara Brown, a physiologist at Veteran’s Administration Hospital (in Sepulveda) wrote a book New Mind, New Body. Barbara Brown’s research was government funded. Her book got the public interested in biofeedback. Because of repeated success at getting patients to control such things as their heartbeat, Dr. Brown is convinced that a person’s heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, glandular responses are all subject to a person’s will.

The abilities of the human brain to control the body have been seriously underrated by people. Bio-feedback researchers in the 1960s were surprised to find out that if a single nerve cell’s activity is placed upon a screen so that the subject can see its activity graphed, the subject will be able to mentally identify that cell apart from any other nerve fiber cell, and will be able to have voluntary control over that single cell apart from any other. Just to show how complex the body is, a single nerve fiber cell will have 600 connections. This mental feat is simply mind-boggling for researchers.

The heart is controlled by the mind and works with the emotions of a person. There have been people who have literally died from a "broken heart." This is a historical fact. It has been well-documented that the mind can control the blood flow to various tissues and in this way change temperature in various different parts of the body.