Showing posts with label traveler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traveler. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

What We Are Afraid Of


by RmOlano
6Mar12

 

It 's somewhat amazing how one’s thought could wander after being left alone in a small room after a corpsman poke your arm with needle and attached probes all over your chest. Lying down on a sterile white bed sheet, body half propped up, while looking down to your faded blue jeans and desert boots, the quietness and steady humming of air conditioner induce a trance like effect to one’s situational awareness. What is going on and what is going to happen next when that door opens up. Another tests, another poking or some sort of medically correctness judgment from a white robed authority of human life expectancy? You fight the urge to pull the needle and tubes sticking in your veins and find out if you are somehow forgotten within the chaos of a place called emergency care unit.


It's also somewhat amusing to drive, walk yourself into urgent care unit and "surrender" your physical being to distant people who perform their job mechanically without emotions. Watching the activities of these professionals make one appreciate that not all humans are meant to be like them. Tending broken bones, attending screaming children, calming down impatient old man is a form of art not science. Each case is different as each patient is an individual being. To approach them as a mere number meant a loss of identity and its humanity not only from care giver side but from both from both end. Although there is a truism of a notion that not everyone can be doctors or nurses, there is an equal truth that everyone can be human with intrinsic compassion.


Looking back to times when one have to convince one soul that staying longer on this earth meant and worth something. An inner voice within the deep bowels of one heart is a song about ignoring a fact that going through medical procedure only delay what the future awaits all mortal beings. There is no escape to where we all bound to go.. no matter how many laurels of victory be placed on one’s head nor diadems be placed on one’s chest by Eastern potentate, our sand will keep on pouring until nothing is left behind. Living one’s life with morals and ethics to the fullest is a simple chalice on a supper table and a grail to be discovered for it is the swan dance of a classic dancer, an opus of a writer or dream of a dreamer because unlike time… Life is finite.


Looking to this white clad bespectacled man, throwing medical terms with such precision and ease as if normal man can understand what those meant, the apparition disappeared before one can even comprehend what went on. So again you are left alone and wait and begin again to ponder, to continue where you left off… it seems like a rat race after you see your kids are on their way living or running their own race. So after doing our duty to ensure the continuance of human race by reproducing off springs, what lies ahead for us? it appears like we are swimming the great salmon route, struggling to survive the trek downstream toward great ocean only to fight again to return to the same river to spawn and became nutrient of the great Alaskan wilderness. Yes, there is a delta between fish and man, the difference between salmon and us is our belief that there is a soul within us, a hope that there is something waiting for us Afterlife. An ideal inculcated to our consciousness by our parents that there is something better beyond this experience we call life. So if that is the case, if that notion is true and if there is a place we can all see each other again in an ideal place where unhappiness does not exists, why we are afraid of leaving this mortal world, why don't we accept that passing away is a part of life? why don't we welcome death as a messenger that would translate us from this earthly home to that heavenly domain where the Great Architect of the Universe forever presides? Why or what we are afraid of ? For travelers who seek---this is where we are going to find the final answer for the search of that which was lost. SMIB.

                                                           
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Saturday, April 19, 2008

A Question

by Rudy Olano
Hanford Lodge No. 279
10May06


"I trust this finds you well. I hope you do not find this improper and if so then please forgive me on basis of my age (19), but after reading your posts, you seem to posses an understanding and wisdom that far surpasses many others therefore may I ask the question which you recently asked me:

Is your involvement in the Masonic doctrine part of your search for the Light?"




Answer:

Let me thank you for the very nice words which seems to validate your rationale for apologizing. If you look hard enough you will find that your expectation might be in jeopardy. Nevertheless, in behalf of those who did not received your full attention, allow me if I may, to accept your thought in their behalf.

Somebody said that it is far easier to ask for answers than knowing the question. I indeed asked you a question and your response was quite a statement--- “a subject of every waking moment.” Your question regarding morality did elicit a lively reaction from the group including a fellow with a MA degree in Philosophy. You certainly know how to raise relevant issues--- you know your questions. An advance way of thinking with, should I say, a hint of yearning in Searching for that Which was Lost.

To your question, as my journey is not yet complete so, let me suggest that the answer is the other way around. It is the search for what Freemasonry is all about that I begin to understand that I lost something valuable and that I have to travel over a rough and rugged road bisected with trials and tribulations to find what I am searching for. --- Only to find out that I already know the answer, I just did not want to admit it.

So, here we are, where we started, a question to answer an inquiry. A familiar phrase to all Brethren of the Craft---What came you here to do? One way to answer that is to look deep into our heart----for yet another question.




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*** How pleasant it is to dwell in the knowledge that upon reaching lawful age the young man was properly vouched for and continued his search by knocking and gaining admission. May he find himself in his travel as well. ***

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Finding The Truth

A paper for Sequoia Council No. 228 (AMD)
by RmOlano
SC#228 (AMD)
4Aug07


How do we get the truth though?—Bro RyanM


"Truth is the divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be good and true is the first lesson we are taught in Masonry." From Lecture of First Degree. The first lesson was the first reply to the question that had been directed to us before we were admitted into Masonic Lodge. How do we know that the answer we gave was true? Who else know that the response to query of sincerity which came from our tongue originated from our heart? Did we contemplated, asked questions and listen to ALL voices—loud and soft, numerous and few, cynical and sympathetic or only to those who are blinded with their conviction?

One Great Lesson that Freemasonry teaches us is that when we embark on a travel to foreign countries to earn our wages, we, as the travelers should have the knowledge and skills beforehand to attempt the journey. The hour of departure is always unknown therefore; it is incumbent for the traveler to be ready when the sand run out within our personal hourglass. To prepare for that momentous journey, the Craft teaches us to search for the real Word. We have to look for “It.” Finding the “It” starts with realizing that something was lost. If a seeker denies this fact---then there is no hope or even sense in starting an expedition of grave importance. A conscientious traveler of time must be continuously in quest of further light to know the Truth, for without it, for without the Word, for being devoid of knowledge of the purpose of existence, one may not receive the expected wages upon arrival to that foreign yet familiar Land. Without fixed destination, a ship without rudder often drifts wherever the predictable water flows and random winds blows.

"How do we know then that what we have lodge in our hearts is the truth," my young Brother once asked--- to this I replied, “Welcome to the club.” Meet a group of mortals seeking for that coveted notion which so many hoodwinked adventurers claimed to possess. Bro Manly Hall once wrote that a true Mason go anywhere to find the truth, "he seek high things in lowly places and find lowly things in high places." Each student of the Craft is embarked in a personal journey, a travel through a rough and rugged road, motivated by the desire to find the answer for that which was lost. What is lost can only be defined by individual seeker, it could be the real instead of substitute word, Holy Grail, a fountain of youth or as "simple" as what is the Truth?

The only way to find what you are searching is to start the journey, do not walk with eyes wide shut, and listen to your heart. For you and only you can decide if you reach the end of your search or believe that what you have is the Truth.


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