“He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending, wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.” – Nicholas Sparks
We all have a mask that we show to the world around us. How we want to be seen and perceived.
What drives the need for a mask in the first place? Our core beliefs and initial emotional wound get fashioned or molded by our ego into the scaffolding that becomes our identity.
Our identity is the mask that hides our spirit and true nature.
It is a lifeless supplicant that begs for sustenance from the ego. It will take any scrap or shred of evidence to bloat out into what appears to be evidence for its existence. It has no substance and is as empty as a holograph a mere image screaming out to be paid attention to, screaming out to be real.
While the phrase “image is everything” is important for some to live up to, it’s a falsification denying what is real.
What if someone isn’t what they make themselves out to be? They’re not as intelligent, happy, wealthy, attractive, healthy, secure or adored as they’d like to be? They instead self aggrandize and falsify remnants that they tout as the truth in order to fulfill the illusion.
The sheer size of our habit of wanting to be loved, desired, validated, recognized, idolized, accepted to mollify and pacify our lamenting ego is staggering.
It is like a terminal addiction to soothe and distract us from the pain of not fulfilling who we believe ourselves to be in an attempt to kill off the true nature and creativity that lurks within.
It’s shocking to entertain the notion that others can see us for who we truly are not for who we pretend to be so we numb ourselves to the possibility. We lull ourselves into a false sense of security like a small child hiding under a blanket believing that it’s invisible.
The truth is, we can be seen. All our shortcomings, insecurities, dysfunctional patterns of behavior, divinity and creativity are as visible as watching a movie displayed on the big screen at a movie theatre.
Real life is messy. It doesn’t fit into a neat package with a bow. The neat sterile box easily replicated and duplicated is what our ego and the media of our culture would like us to believe.
Truth takes courage. It cuts through the BS that we weave and slices through it like a samurai sword through butter, dismembering what is not truth, or whole. All the extraneous stuff is sloughed off and all that is left is a dazzling transparency that is as light as gossamer. We get to see the real, the raw, the melting, the contorting, transforming and the exquisiteness that is the human spirit. The fire and passion that illuminates everything that is touches.
Taking off the mask is easy. Yes it leaves us exposed and vulnerable.
Exposed as the beauty of our true nature and vulnerable to be our true self.
