A reflection about malediction, calumny and laziness

According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, malediction is the act or habit of speak with mordacity against someone for the purpose of denigration, meanwhile calumny is that false accusation made with the aim to cause damage.

On the other hand, laziness is defined as the vicious of avoid work, waste the time o spend it with no useful meaning, which go hand in hand with the fact that one of the instruments of the Entered Apprentice, according to the Scottish First Degree Ritual, is the 24 inches ruler that symbolizes the 24 hours of the day and represents a good employed time.

The death to the profane world and the rebirth to the Masonic life, implies a starting point to a brand new path, the one that requires, as any new job, the acquisition of the "know how" by means of what our senses perceive, our brothers' experience and what our inner world says to us through what we think or feel.

At his age, the Entered Apprentice realizes that, apart from the ties of his former life that serves him only as a delay, exist one important element that limits his knowledge cravings: "time". Because no matter how hard he tries, it is not possible to make a day to last longer than its 24 hours.

What it is said must not be interpreted however, in a sense that the new life represents a separation from the activities that he used to do during any ordinary day, because it will be an attack against his own nature. On the contrary, it means that in each action, thought or feeling, he should be aware in his mind and in his heart, that is making a journey, and into that situation he must accept no distractions regarding his final and particular destination (of course there will be times when problems will appear, some of then imputable to himself although he didn't realize that, and attribute this to a sort of bad luck).

Under these ideas, and taking apart the fact that laziness is in essence a negative condition, and usually hated for societies, it is to be said that it is opposite to the universe's harmony, in which everything has a meaning, a time and a purpose.

According to this, when the First Warden, indicates in the closing of the first degree's meeting, that a mason must avoid laziness, he is remembering that time is a limited good and taking this as a fact, it has to be employ in the stone work, in the day by day activities he is called to accomplish.

Besides, a mason must avoid malediction and calumny because they constitutes detours in the way (for the very brother and for the other persons). Detours that show how the cause and effect principle acts in every day life.

Finally, a word of warning has to be said about the idea that every human being (an with a special care, a brother) must avoid malediction, calumny and laziness, because it does not mean any kind of restriction of his freedom of choice, because the ability to act without passion, wrong perceptions, illusions (that reign on the occident) and recognize in every fellow a brother that must succeed in his own journey, constitutes the victory of the human kind, the once in a lifetime chance to experiment the freedom to be himself, his true essence with no limitations at all.

April 7, 2003

Q:.H:. Miguel de Pomar