The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry from The Meaning of Masonry by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.

“By perfecting his conduct, by struggles against his own natural propensities, the candidate is working the rough ashlar of his own nature into the perfect cube, and I would ask you to observe also that the cube itself contains a secret, for unfolded, it itself denotes and takes the form of the cross.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “Now the man who so develops himself, speedily becomes more conscious of the difficulties of his task, more sensitive to the obstacles the life of the outer world places in the way of the spiritual life. But he is taught to persist with fortitude and with prudence, to develop the highest within him with ‘fervency and zeal.'”
  2. “What is meant is that complete self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion which, as all religions teach, are essential before the soul can be raised in glory ‘from a figurative death to a reunion with the companions of its former toils’ both here and in the unseen world.”
  3. “In the schools of the Mysteries, when aspirants for the higher life were wont to quit the outer world and enter temples or sanctuaries of initiation, prolonged periods were allotted to the practical achievement of what is briefly summarized in our first degree.”
  4. “But in order to find the ‘perfect points of entrance’ to this secret (and we are told elsewhere that ‘straight is the way and narrow the gate, and few there be that find it’) emphasis again is laid in our teaching upon the necessity of complete moral rectitude, of utter exactness of thought, word and action, as exemplified by rigid observance of the symbolic principles of the square, level and plumb-rule.”
  5. “By the assistance of these lesser lights within us, a man is enabled to perceive what is, again symbolically, called the ‘form of the Lodge,’ i.e. the way in which his own human nature has been composed and constituted, the length, breadth, height and depth of his own being.”