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Aloha and Good Morning, I last left you in the clutches of the power mask. We
were talking about three primary mask types: the love mask, the power mask
and the serenity mask. The love mask uses a distorted copy of love in a vain
attempt to be loved, to force the world to respond lovingly, which results in
resentment and bitterness and stems from fear. The power mask warps being
powerful into aggression and the appearance of independence to stave off the
risk of vulnerability, which in turn distorts our natural drive into driven-ness
and stems from a rigid, unyielding self-will. Where the love mask results in submission and forced
generosity and the power mask often operations through aggression, domination
and controllingness – the mask of
serenity produces withdrawal, a deep, secret sense
of despair and emotional numbness. |
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In reality, the evolutionary
invitation of limitless, unified Self makes us more aware, more able to accept and heal our
shadow. It doesn’t seek to cover up our humanity, for our humanity is our
greatest gift, the doorway through which we walk to look up into the
“heavens” of our higher beingness, our transpersonal awareness of absolute
oneness, our inclusion in the grand divinity of Spirit expressing itself
through our individualized, self-actualizing consciousness. We become ever
more able to witness all of our thoughts, feelings, and impulses without
judgment and to choose in what fashion to give them life without harm to
ourselves by denying or stuffing the wholeness of our humanity, or harm to
others through projection or transference. From this place of non-judgmental awareness we can take
off our masks and be ever more often present for all that arises in the
moment. We can respond to what’s actually occurring. We can be awake to
whatever misdirecting stories our shadow thoughts associate with what’s
really occurring, without becoming enmeshed in shadow images and thus drawn
into the past. |
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The serenity mask is an
attempt to escape the pressures, problems and seemingly perilous
vulnerability and chaotic messiness of life by appearing to be serene and
unattached, hiding behind a false sense of inner peace and outer tranquility.
Alas, what more often occurs is bouts of indifference, holding back from
life, being noncommittal, cynical or feeling a false spiritual detachment. The serenity mask is often
adopted when being submissive, with its build-up of resentment, and
aggressive, with its accumulation of shame fail to bring unconditional love.
The mistaken logic of the shadow, of the small ego, concludes that the only other choice is to withdraw, to
not feel, to stuff and subsume even the existence of genuine emotions behind
a seemingly superior stance of inner peace, or ungrounded, flighty
spirituality. Our real emotions are replaced by numbness that allows only the
dimmest echo of feeling to trickle through, like listening to a tin-can
telephone without the string pulled tight. The serenity mask even puts itself
above the simmering anger or low-grade depression that is the inevitable
result of such massive denial. The security of ever-accepting, ever-loving Spirit
becomes a distorted mask behind which to hide from the places inside
ourselves that are unaccpeting and unloving, to hide from our human feelings
of hate or rage, to deny our sexuality or cruel, selfish impulses. “No, that’s not me,” the serenity mask declares. “I’m above all that. I’m too spiritually
minded for that to be me.” |
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Our awareness remains in the
present without denying what went before or being deaf to its voice crying
out for recognition and healing. We choose to feel each moment deeply and
gently put aside the serenity mask’s impulse to numbness or withdrawal. We find
the inner “umph” to embrace our evolving, adult understanding that pain and
apparent rejection will not destroy us; but rather, they may serve as another
opportunity to awaken an ever more genuine relationship to our inner
landscape, to experience the internal referent and the smiling softness of
our true Source which is genuinely above the dualistic drama of human
expression. It is totally accepting of our dualism, our darkness and light,
our positive and negative grandeur. It doesn’t hold one above the other, for
both have equal parts to play in the theater of life leading to our standing
ovation of the soul. The positive side of our being deepens into love and
the negative side adds creative, passionate fire that can unfold into
powerful new understandings, insights and abilities. Our shadow side, with
its images, negative impulses, self-destructive tendencies and mask is that
fertile ground for explosive growth and dynamic, passionate living which
sprouts from fully feeling the wholeness of our humanity without attachment,
without becoming enmeshed, without self-identifying with any individual
thought, feeling, action, inclination or conclusion. None of this beautiful,
achingly real humanness is what we are. They are merely moments that arise,
unfolding from the ever-present foundation of Spirit awakening into form.
They are invitations into consciousness and the true, balanced expressions of
our soul’s yearning to love, to be powerful and to experience serenity. Nor
is this a place we suddenly arrive at, but rather an ever-enriching journey
through the spiral of opening to our ever-available all-ness, the limitless
potential that is the “stuff” from which we are made and from which all that
is, is. This is Spirit; this is God. It is within and through all things, and
by all things we must necessarily include our selves! |
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To be this deeply real, this
deeply aware is unabashedly difficult. Only this morning a yet unattended
piece of my shadow-side clawed its way out of my belly and exploded into
instant, disproportionate anger that I found nearly impossible to speak
freely of, though I did the best I could in the moment. Moreover, our images
and shadows have the mesmerizing power of the Pied Piper to call to their own
in our partners, or in the people that dance within the circle of our
energetic embrace, to march the rats right out of their unconscious and into
the space between us. Our shadows call up each other, for the mirrors of our
soul are always two-way affairs. Sometimes I can witness these images arising
without becoming enmeshed and sometimes I can’t – that too is simply part of
being human from moment to moment. We’ve talked about three basic masks. Many of us will
have a “favorite” mask that we look out from most often, but all the mask
strategies are present and available. Sometimes we will clearly be operating
from one or another and sometimes they mix freely, expressing a grab-bag of
emotions and strategies, which causes tremendous inner confusion.
Contradictory forces pull us willy-nilly, hither and fro. Add to that the
ever-present whisper of the higher self calling us to greatness, knocking at
the door of our awakening consciousness and it’s a wonder we can operate at
all. If nothing else, surely this is an unanswerable argument in favor of
God’s guiding presence and love! If not for such godly glue wouldn’t all
these inner forces tear apart the bonds holding us together and wouldn’t we
dissipate into our constituent “pieces-parts”: atoms, energy and soul
smashing into each other like particles in a super-collider! |
