To know, want, dare, and to be silent
The title of this job is no more than a sum of four verbs for the common people. However in those occasions when a chance has been given to make any kind of contact with the so called esoteric books, an automatic notion will appear as this words are together into a special order for a particular reason.
Eliphas Levi in "The Key of the Mysteries" says that the mix of intelligence and courage is the mother to succeed in this world. To begin, one has to know, to accomplish one needs to want, to really want it is necessary to dare, and to harvest in peace the fruits of the own audacity it is required to keep silence.
There are different exoteric or esoteric interpretations that can be given to these words, and with a deeper or superficial evaluation (under the Doric or Compound column), but in the Fellowcraft stage it may be related to one of the first lessons given to the Entered Apprentice in the "Advance Ceremony". The existence of a five step stair that he will have to climb if he likes to enter the temple, being each of them, a symbol of the required conditions to get the admission.
Intelligence will allow him to KNOW the path, the fact that casualty belongs to the reign of illusion, and that everything has a reason to be, a moment and a place, like the Ecclesiastes said. This intelligence is the one that suggest and confirm that its presence -here and now- has an individual and collective meaning.
It is the intelligence that let the brother recognize and process the light revealed to him on his initiation, and KNOW that Karma, considering that as the existence of a personal and untransferable road -which in common terms could be named predestination- is not static, but on the contrary the possibility to change is wide open to him using the mallet and the chisel, giving sense to the freewill he is provided with.
Rectiness on the other side contains itself the notion of stability, which is also part of the meaning of the sacred word of the Fellowcraft. The WANT to remain, the wish to maintain the purpose, decides using the freewill to keep the journey. WANT, as a volitive act is represented in the Fellowcraft's march that confesses that the goal lingers in his heart, because, beyond any detour, he will choose to continue the decision to enter the temple.
Fellowcraft wants what his intelligence and rectiness of his thoughts and feelings advice, which in this case is the discovering of that particular destiny, assumed since the revelation of the letter G, on this grade.
Without this WANT, which requires the identification of the object of his affects and a pure and solid feeling, it is not possible to have any progress at all, because like said in Luke 14, 26-27:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters -yes, even his own life- he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple".
Courage is the third step that has to be reach by the Fellowcraft, which is to be developed for the present and the future, when the time to enter the temple will come. This is what will allow him to DARE, struggle with fear and doubt which as product of his human condition will assault him from time to time. Fear and doubt, because his intuition tells him that the journey is tuff and unknown.
Must DARE to have the nerve and braveness to speak with the heart in his hand, like Christ in Gethsemane; in the moment of sorrow and pain, in that moment in that Silence of God is showed; said: "Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
However this behavior does not mean that it is better to give up or to suffer, but on the contrary, because under the premise that everything has a sense and meaning, the courage to face the bitter drinks, will provide a permanent growth, understanding that not only as a personal improvement but as more important changes in a qualitative manner.
Dion Fortune's says in her "Sane Occultism and Practical Occultism in Daily Life that "...when a beginner starts to liquidate his Karma, deliberately, invoke it and accelerate it. This has a double result: On one hand, a crisis on every life's affair and on the other, a sudden increase on his power to overcome it. After this critical period, there is no more Karma to liquidate, and it will be truth to say that everything works right for those who love the Lord, because his good Karma starts acting with no restrictions, as long as he possess the strength gained during the time in which he had beaten any resistance".
On the basis of learning that must be done in this existence, needed to liquidate the negative karmic bonds, the mason has to DARE in each decision to choose for the one that leads to that goal, no matter if on a first approach it makes no much sense or looks like the road less traveled.
Furthermore, must have the prudence to BE SILENT regarding what he sees with his eyes and with his heart, and that should not be reveal to those still living on the reign of illusions, BE SILENT about the mission and the actions made to accomplish the love to humanity which constitutes the aim of his work on this grade, and act in concordance with what is said in Mathew Chapter 7, 6:
"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces".
Talking about the fifth step, which is located just before the temple's frontispiece, and symbolizes the last of the conditions mentioned by the Worshipful Master, it is to be said that constitutes the center of the work to be done in this grade, and is subject of another essay named: The beautiful work of the Fellowcraft.
Nobody like Richard Bach in his beautiful story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, capture the essence of this fifth step.
His master says to Jonathan Livingston Seagull "You have less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years ..." "We can start working with time if you wish, till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love."
"As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself".
April 09, 2004
Q:.H:. Miguel de Pomar