By Erik Marks, Southern California Research Lodge Fraternal Review, February 2020

Dissonance is ubiquitous in life. We feel it, even if we cannot, or choose not, to acknowledge it. Transformation is a foundational Masonic practice. At each step, we are introduced to, and trained in, the usage of tools of transformation.

Our symbols describe the bounds of harmony and dissonance. We labor through psychological alchemical polarities inside each man using ritual to transform our lives. The trivium and quadrivium give us further intellectual tools to contain and understand our inner workings.

More obviously, expressed in the art of music, dissonance occurs as a sonic representation of proportions and ratios described in the geometric and mathematic across time. Dissonance is everywhere and is essential in nature. Dissonance is a clue, a symbol, a signpost, that an internal problem exists and therefore, an invitation to transform.

Some believe that children should never hear musical dissonance. Though for tweens and teens along with millions of others, dissonant music is the resonant tonality which resolves to a concordance with inner reality. Punk rock, hard rock, death metal, and rap, in the ear of someone in psychological or societally-induced pain, is a salve that causes the soul to breathe with ease. It is the mirror, through which the listener can finally feel a harmoniously reflected unity with the creator.

The performer and listener are unified across space and time through the medium. When we hear music that matches our internal state, we know we are not alone. We know, through hearing the music, that someone else had the same emotions and created the sounds that echo in our temple. Misunderstood and often avoided, dissonance is often the gate through which we must pass to ease suffering. It spurs development, individuation, and ultimately, a harmonious, or consonant, life.

Cognitive Dissonance

When our belief structure is at odds with reality, or our actions are not aligned with our espoused beliefs or attitudes, we label the psychological state cognitive dissonance. When we hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas and values, or when our actions don't align, we become stressed and agitated. We may act out our inner conflict against ourselves or others.

Cognitive dissonance is a warning, a sign, an invitation, and an opportunity for change. For those not practiced at noticing this signal, the presence of dissonance between held beliefs and actions is often pointed out by others in our lives. Spouse, friends, and Brothers will herald the problem. Don’t blame the messengers. Thank them and lean on your Masonic training. Take note of your defensiveness and anger and break it off with gavel (and chisel for our British brethren). As initial reactivity passes, find the feelings underneath.

The reason I frequently prescribe mindfulness meditation is to train ourselves to stay present in and for dissonant states to learn the secrets they contain.

Cognitive dissonance happens because it is difficult for us to accept painful, complex, or uncomfortable facts or feelings. It is easier to stay “safe” inside a simplistic understanding which comforts our familial or social upbringing. So, despite the inner conflict, we wrap ourselves tighter inside our idea and dig in our heels by using “positive illusions” or self-deception.

If the conflict is too great, it may never make it to conscious thought, which is known as repression or denial (both of which are unconscious processes, psychological defenses). If we have allowed the dissonance to remain for years, people around us seem to remind us daily. If we are unfortunate, they may give up trying to tell us about the problem they see.

During the mid-1950s, while working on understanding attitude change, Leon Festinger articulated the concept of cognitive dissonance. Festinger is not a Mason, but his suggested strategies for resolving our dissonance can be roughly equated with the degrees in Masonry. Only one set of strategies leads to true harmony —the one that could be seen as our intra-psychic raising to a new level of consciousness.

Entered Apprentice

Reduce the importance of the cognitions, attitudes, or beliefs. Discrediting an idea to be able to keep acting the way one has learned or wants to act, even though one knows it is wrong, is an apprentice’s feeble attempt to avoid change. We might call this “rationalizing.”

Fellow Craft

Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs. More mature, and possibly more satisfying, this strategy remains intellectual, and may not come to fruition in action or real change.

Master Mason

Change one or more of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to make the relationship between the elements a consonant one. Change within oneself; the Master creates harmony by doing the hard labor to change himself.

Moving Toward Harmony

The purpose of cognitive dissonance, just as dissonance in music, is to move towards harmony. There can be internal resistance because those around us hold or enforce the same faulty logic. People can become anxious, feel guilty, feel shame, and act out with substances or rage.

Rather than change, we may try to hide our actions or ideas about a subject that goes against our beliefs for fear we may come to learn we are wrong and therefore must change. We actively avoid conversations or people that convey the feared topics.

People can resolve dissonance by hardening their beliefs or by changing. If the doctor says my cholesterol level will kill me if left unchecked, I become afraid. I experience cognitive dissonance because I don’t want to believe the scary truth of the situation. If I did, I would have to change my behavior. To deflect, I could concoct an idea that the doctor’s assessment is simply motivated by greed. It may be much more psychologically challenging to believe him and choose to change my lifestyle. Both will reduce the dissonance, but only one will save my life.

It’s painful to hear we have anger issues, drink too much, and drive dangerously. It hurts to hear that we’re too competitive, don’t take care of ourselves or others, and act destructively. It feels easier to invalidate and discredit another’s gift to us, rather than to face the truth that we might be wrong.

Throughout the Masonic process, there is the opportunity to break off and expel long-lived cognitive dissonant states. It starts from the moment we petition a Lodge. It is both esoteric and exoteric; the process works on all levels, both conscious and unconscious, both personal and collective. We have multiple chances to open our hearts and minds.

Further, Freemasonry trains us to question and investigate truth through methods collected and perfected over centuries. We are encouraged to weigh the contents of heart, mind, and gut, against the Masonic process and data gathered throughout the world, over time.

Many Masonic meetings may pass with only minutes and meatloaf, because anything Masonic goes below the surface. Below the surface is where feelings and emotions live. To go there will be uncomfortable; it’s waiting to invite self-improving labor. If we feel incapable of dealing with the feelings and doing the work, we will return to rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance, and nothing will progress.

Travel

Travel is essential in Freemasonry and life. Travel is another route to discovering dissonance and the opportunity to change. We are known and know one another, as traveling men. By traveling both literally and metaphorically, we encounter a wider range of the human experience. We meet new brothers who might be quite different from us in how they look, live, and what they believe. Our bond is brotherly love and affection, so we are encouraged to greet and treat one another in this manner. Our mutual work towards harmony could help us stay present for differences of opinion to be shared, and cognitive dissonances to be challenged in a loving way if we did the work.

The inherent exposure in the craft to difference when we travel, exposure to diversity in every form, makes for an almost constant challenge to what we believe. It is Divinity’s request upon our psyche to ensure we are square, plumb, and level with one another through the tenets we claim to hold closest. We are offered multiple opportunities to resolve the dissonance and live in accord with reality: to come to know the truth and end our internal conflict(s). In doing so, we gain a higher capacity to feel, and be, more.

If and when we engage fully, we do so through the belief that there is something larger than ourselves at work in the world. Each Mason is charged to hold to core guidelines of virtue (in the Volume of Sacred Law), which he is to combine with the globally held tools and ideas in Masonry. It is repeated vociferously: we cannot materially err if we keep to these guidelines in our pursuit for truth. It is my sincere hope for us all, that when we meet with something that challenges our beliefs, we will acknowledge the dissonances that appear, and work with them. May we ever move towards harmony through change when we see our ideas and beliefs are wrong.