The benefits of membership are broad and frankly have always been poorly defined. One reason for this is if you ask two Masons what the benefits of membership are to them, they will rarely give you the same answer. The reason for that is simply that there are SO many combinations of advantages to membership that each member takes what he wants from the opportunity presented to him and is unaware of the rest of the rest of the benefits as they are simply less relevant to him. Below is a precis of the benefits of membership to help you:
The Benefits
It has long been known and accepted that people need to feel; in control, competent and connected in order to achieve psychological growth. Freemasonry delivers all of these factors in abundance:
Autonomy
Everyone needs to feel in control of their own behaviors and goals. The sense of being able to take direct action that will result in real change plays a major part in helping every individual feel self-determined.
Personal Competence
We all need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills. When people feel that they have the skills required for success, they are more likely to take actions that will help them achieve their goals.
Connection or relatedness
People need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to other people This has more recently been included within “self-determination theory” and there are many books on the subject. However, unlike Freemasonry, they tend to encourage “reward based behaviour”, but implementing this means that people begin to feel less in control of their own behavior and intrinsic motivation is thus diminished whereas Freemasonry empowers and thus motivates individuals.
Leadership Skills
Once someone has begun their path towards stronger psychological growth they automatically begin to develop their Leadership Skills and these skills are ones that can be easily transferred into a business or commercial environment.
Respect
No one automatically gains respect from their peers; they earn their respect by demonstrating that they value them and prioritize their own growth. They can earn more respect by improving their communication with peers by sharing details of important decisions. Gaining the respect of peers is as important in Masonry as it is in business, because it improves overall morale and can provide greater motivation increasing productivity.
In brief, Masons; Listen to their peers, Show Respect, Offer encouragement, Act consistently, Admit their shortcomings or failings, Recognize successes, Seek constructive criticism and offer and receive feedback.
Teamwork
A Mason will naturally find himself amongst some members who are more experienced and some who are less experienced. This affords him the opportunity chance to be mentored in his own progress and concurrently to offer mentorship to those less experienced than himself. This is the basis of true teamwork and builds his own confidence and self-worth.
Nurturing Environment
Working in a nurturing environment naturally minimizes biologically and psychologically toxic influences but more importantly, teaches, promotes, and reinforces prosocial behavior, including self-regulatory behaviors and all of the skills needed to ensure we remain productive members of society.
Self Confidence
Anyone lacking a sense of self confidence has an opportunity to thrive in such a nurturing environment and as they peak at their own level of competence, will naturally push at any preconceived limitations and find themselves admired and respected by their peers, thus boosting their self belief.
Self Knowledge
With self confidence boosted, the Mason is encouraged to look within and he can start to seek his inner enlightenment and what Masons refer to as the ‘knowledge of himself’. When a man loves himself, he is truly enabled to love others. To be emotionally connected with your own core values is to become emotionally intelligent and self-aware.
Spirituality
Having been guided to improve his relationship with his peers and then with himself, we are further enabled to begin our investigation into our relationship with our Maker, to investigate the ‘spiritual’ aspct of our nature. There are no Religious teachings within Craft Masonry, but as every member professes a belief in a Supreme Being and meetings include members of many different faiths, we are reminded to be tolerant of all Religious beliefs and to examine more deeply our own spiritual nature.
Community Action
Our efforts with our communities are all about assisting members of our local community to achieve a number of objectives, including:
- Helping the community to share knowledge, skills and ideas.
- Building community resilience which helps the community ultimately to support itself.
- Focussing on early access to services or support, cross-sector collaboration and building partnerships.
- Maintaining and creating wealth by helping people off the streets and into employment.
Social Inclusiveness
All of this allows the Freemason to interact with members of his community, build lasting relationships with community members, share ideals and exchange ideas, set goals and achieve them through effective collaboration.
Generosity and Kindness
Although they are often confused, unlike Charity, Benevolence is a disposition to do good or to deliver acts of kindness.
Wide Community Support
We all have very differing circumstances and not all Masons are in a position to make financial donations, but benevolence comes in many other forms, which might include donating our time our skills or our advice all of which improves self-worth.
As well as many charitable acts, Freemasons work in the community providing advice, care and assistance to improve the lot of those who might have been less fortunate than themselves.
Charitable Giving
Many people donate to charity on a regular basis. This might be because they would like to make a difference or have a positive impact on the lives of others but either way it makes them feel good about themselves.
Donating is a selfless act, so charitable giving will improve your self-esteem and self-worth. By donating money to charity, you will achieve a huge sense of satisfaction and personal growth as it feels good to help others and provide them with essential resources.
Alongside this sense of self-esteem and self-worth, giving to charity will also help your depression levels and positively increase your mood, due to this psychology of benevolence.
Medical studies have shown that giving money to charity actually has a positive on the brain, triggering pleasure sensors and leaving a sense of satisfaction. These are the effects similar to those experienced when giving a loved one a hug.
Supporting individuals
Support is available to individuals and their families. This applies to both the families of Freemasons and individuals and families unconnected with Freemasonry.
Resource Pooling
One person’s charitable donation can positively impact more people’s lives than an individual can ever comprehend. With Masonic donations, resources are pooled and huge sums are collectively raised which assist in national and world emergencies (such as floods, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and the Tsunami appeal) and the emergency vehicles and recent long-reach fire engines supplied to the London Fire Brigade to help ensure that a Grenfell Tower scenario never happens again.
Freemasonry is one of the largest donors to charitable causes in Great Britain, second only to the National Lottery, Freemasons donate an average of £30 million to good causes every year.
Like Minded
Studies indicate that we have a natural desire to mix with like-minded individuals The interview process for Masonic membership has been formed and fine-tuned over centuries to fully ensure that any candidate for Lodge membership not only acts, but indeed thinks in a similar way to the rest of the existing Lodge members.
Social Grouping
Just like when we were younger, as adults we need to feel a secure attachment to other adults. It is comforting for us to know that someone will be consistently available, especially in time of physical or emotional needs and it’s gratifying to know that they are already within your circle of friends.
Emotional Connection
Masons will; listen to each other, care about each other’s needs and desires, exhibit sympathy, show an interest in each other’s skills, hobbies and background and perhaps most importantly, share openly and not be judgemental.
If a Mason feels that he personally is unable to assist a Brother in need, then there are specialists within each Lodge to turn to who specialise in; Mentoring, Charity, Family Support, Spirituality or simply Inclusiveness.
New Friends
With so many like-minded individuals in a room together, a newly made Mason will find himself in an environment where he can easily make a number of new friends.
Reflection
Many of us are so busy trying to forge ahead with our lives that we rarely take the time to slow down and be at one with our thoughts. Also, we often tend not to recognize the importance of self-reflection and the impact it can have on our lives.
Escape from daily pressures
Self-reflection helps us process our inner thoughts and feelings. When we allow ourselves to cycle our thoughts around in our heads, we tend only to confuse or frustrate ourselves more. Getting our thoughts clear in our mind can help us understand why we’re feeling a certain way and can in turn, make those feelings easier to navigate.
“The inner-self pretty much knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge we face is to silence the mind.”
Time to Relax
Masonic meetings offer the opportunity to meet behind closed doors without interruption or distraction. A time for group solitude. No mobile phones, no email and no outside influences of ANY kind. There is just one person outside the door to call your attention if there are any serious issues that require your attention.
Many people who say they they don’t believe in meditation, DO admit that they often find themselves arriving at a destination in their car with little or no memory of how they got there. This IS a form of meditation, but the motorway is a very dangerous place to practice it!
Without interruption and with a ‘mystery play’ unfolding in front of you that you are so familiar with that you possibly know all of the words, the mind is free to slip into healing mode without entering the sleep phase.
Membership
The need to belong is the acknowledged human emotional need to affiliate with and be accepted by, members of a group. This might manifest itself initially as a need to belong to a peer group at school, to be part of an athletic team at college, to be accepted by co-workers in employment, or to be part of a religious group. However it manifests itself, it is a real and basic human need. This is why football, rugby and motor racing supporters feel such a sense of comradery. It is fundamentally the same with Freemasons.
A sense of belonging however, involves much more than simply ‘liking’ or being acquainted with other people (eg a Facebook group). Belonging is founded on gaining acceptance, attention, and support from members of the group as well as providing the same attention to other members.
Brotherhood
The need to belong to a group can often lead to individuals adapting their behaviour, their beliefs and their attitudes as people strive to conform to and indeed improve the standards and norms of the group. Thus within Freemasonry, the use of the term ‘Brotherhood’ and the statement and very real feeling that Freemasonry “Makes Good Men Better”.
In social psychology, the need to belong is an intrinsic motivation to affiliate with others and become socially accepted. This need plays a part in a number of social phenomena such as self-presentation and social comparison which itself fires aspiration, feeds confidence, drives motivation, forms attitude and builds self-belief.
Friendship
With this level of belonging, it’s little wonder that the Lodge room is a perfect environment to nurture a number of life-long friendships.
