Freemasonry and the sense of spirituality

1. It seems that in a time of relativism there is little space for matters of spirituality and faith; according with the dominant message escaping the media, people look for more material things and envy what they cannot have. The financial crisis that strikes allover the world may be a good warning for the need to return to the real and important things that made Man the recipient of Creation and a manifestation of God's power and will. But we should not take this for granted as whenever the public senses that the crisis and difficulties are moving away will return to the customary consumerism or self-reliance. But this may be also illusional, because in the next corner of the road, people will be confronted with the unexpected and the opposite of what they presume is their normality. 

2. Freemasonry has role to perform, educating Men and making them better human beings, as we say, friends of the wealth and the poor along they are good people . This teaching comes from every religion and creed and even is taught to children whose parents have not experienced the need for a divine guidance, and say they are atheists. I am always astonished the way people

 declare this without making any effort to perceive the consequences of this statement. Commonly, it comes from an absolute ignorance of the utility of spirituality and the way it complements and supplement our physical dimension.

3. Normally the comment I made is not to rush things; give people time to time and let life be the best teacher. I have seen it happen around me along the years; it happen also with me. There is a time in life of humans when are full of ourselves: we presume to know everything, we have opinions on everything, we give lessons to others, even when they have ask not for it. There are some politicians in Portugal that match very well this paradigm of ignorance: we call them [I don't know the English expression] os fala-barato. The category applies to people that talk, talk and talk; they are experts on everything and they expect the audience to listen and have no say. 

The experience of life is everything, and is not by hazard that in the Asian cultures the opinion of the elders is taken in high regard, because people that lived long has normally something to share. The scholar is in the Asian tradition an old man that is followed and silently heard. In Europe is a young spoiled kid that preaches science like a parrot, normally  in the most irreverent way. 

4. This led me to the point to share the view that we need in the Western World a new awakening, a new return to spirituality, to a minimal sense of the divinity that rest within ourselves. Because there is out there a crisis of values, of believes, of trust and only that return to spirituality may help humans, and their communities. The pursuit of spirituality is although an individual path. I don't believe in conversion or gospelization as such; only those who already open to spirituality or religion may experience the touch if Light; not those who are closed to it. But that search of the other part of our inner-self must be done with an easy mind not with a torturous mind. The danger to fall into dogmatism and sectarism is large and unequivocal. The more strict religious sects are full of people that were before unbelievers [many former communists] that become puppets in some machiavellian trap disguised under the veil of religion and faith.

5. So this passage to the other side of the human dimension should be done carefully, step by step, preserving always our freedom of mind and will. This is what we learn in freemasonry, although we don't talk or discuss religion. We embrace religious people, but people from all religions, not that special or chosen one. In a sense we share a certain secularist tradition that came from the 17th Century Enlightenment and whose teachings and philosophical principles we incorporate in our doctrine. We say doctrine, not dogma, because we don't have dogmas, we are adogmatic and that is something that make us different from other spiritual orders. Freemasonry is a trace of union - a rope that hangs in the ceiling - and unites people of different believes, creeds, races, nationalities and idiosyncrasies. That is why we feel like a family, a large family. A family where is everybody is different and special. A family in unity.