A Mason's Work

Brian
00:01

One of the strengths of the Masonic symbols in general is that they are not prescriptive, not overly prescriptive. They don't tell you exactly what to do. They give you guidance and direction on how to consider certain courses of action, but they don't tell you what to do. An example of this might be encompasses a circumscribe. Your desires within due bounds towards all mankind. They don't really tell you what due bounds are. They assume that you're going to apply rational faculties, emotional intelligence, things like that to solve for what that really means to you at a personal level and contextualize that within the world at large. The same thing is true with things like the 24 inch gauge, which again, gives you guidance on how you might spend your time broadly, but not specifically in any one of those things. Doesn't provide you vocational guidance. It doesn't provide, it doesn't say what it means to relieve worthy and distressed brethren.

Brian
01:03

It doesn't say really what it means for refreshment and rest either. So as you consider the symbols in freemasonry, it's important to understand that because of that vagueness, it really, they are, are, are much more like prompts perhaps in a sort of modern, you know, AI based or, or large language model based kind of situation. You would use these symbols as prompts to help you explore the concept. They're, they're not gonna give you much more guidance than that. This is where freemasonry functions as sort of a middle ground between your own internal space and your faith. So when you're, you know, out there in the outside world, Freemasonry gives you that symbolic interchange to then go those prompts to then go back into your core belief, set your, you know, consciousness, your, your sort of identity and ego and all that kind of stuff, and really filter out what set of actions is appropriate to you.

Brian
02:11

So don't, you know, when you, when you're looking around the room or you're looking at these symbols, don't take the perspective that they are in them, in and of themselves definitive. They are, again, part of a, a structural language that you can cognitively push against. So you can think around them, you can use them to help you get around difficult concepts or situations or, or decisions or courses of action you're about to take. When you do it in that way, you're really using the Masonic symbols, I think, the way they were intended to the best of sort of our knowledge. But the same thing is true with non-MS symbols as well. So all symbolic languages should, should have that in common. You'll, you'll know the difference when you start working with the symbols. If the symbol comes

Brian
02:58

With itself a checklist, it's a little more prescriptive and not, not useful as a thinking prompt. Whereas if it doesn't come with a ton other than kind of an intent, implied meaning or a perspective, that's when you know you've got a symbol that you can add to your toolkit to evaluate or, or analyze situations or behaviors. So with that, we'll see you next time.

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