| Subject: THE DIFFERENT MASKS |
Author:
Maryse
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Date Posted: 14:35:06 03/17/11 Thu
In reply to:
Danny
's message, "Re: You guys NEVER heard about THE DIVINE RIGHTS OF RESPECT & FREE EXPRESSION?" on 07:18:21 03/17/11 Thu
THE DIFFERENT MASKS
The mask is the first layer of the personality which must be penetrated, accepted and released on the transformation journey. Yet the fact that we must come to grips first with the mask does not mean that we can dispense with it easily or once and for all. We will continue to have a mask until we are ready to reveal and take responsibility for our lower self and are simultaneously able to identify with our higher self. Only then will the defenses of the mask no longer be needed.
THREE TYPES OF MASKS
The pseudo-solution of the mask is usually based on a distortion of one of the three divine principle of LOVE, POWER, or SERENITY. In the Unified state, these principles operate in harmony. Steeped as we are, however, in duality and ignorance, we tend to see these principles in opposition to one another. We unconsciously choose one of these divine attributed to emulate in an attempt to appear PERFECT – perfectly loving or completely powerful or entirely serene.
However, because we are attempting to create an impenetrable, invulnerable perfection as a defense against the vulnerable imperfections of human life, these attributes turn into their distortions. Love becomes dependency and submission, power becomes control and aggression, and serenity becomes withdrawal. In the distorted state, these attributes do contradict one another.
1) THE MASK OF LOVE
The mask of love is an attempt to extract love from others by always appearing to be loving. The personality becomes submissive, dependent, appeasing and self-denying in the hope of guaranteeing, controlling and buying love and approval from others. The false belief of such a mask self is that it must be loved at all costs, and therefore the personality is deliberately made weaker, more helpless or subservient, than is really is. Security and self-esteem are then imagined to rest on securing and possessing the love and approval of others.
The need for protective love has certain validity for the child, but if this attitude is maintained into adulthood, it is no longer valid. Since he does not cultivate the faculty of self-responsibility and independence, his need for love and his dependency can actually make the person helpless. He uses his entire psychic strength in order to live up to the ideal of himself so as to force others to comply with his needs. He complies with others so they will have to comply with him. His helplessness is the weapon.
Such a mask self complies with the real or imagined demands of others in order to receive their approval, sympathy, help and love. He may use his subservience as a weapon to create guilt in others in order to force their protection and caretaking of him. Or, he may use his mask of virtue to feel superior, and contemptuous of others. All these are, of course, distorted ways of trying to get his need for self-worth met.
The person with the love mask may see the world as full of benign protectors (“big daddies” or “big mommies) from whom he needs to seek protection. Or he may be disappointed idealist, viewing himself as one of the few good people left in an uncaring world. The love mask will always project being “good” or “nice”. Often, along with that will go a significant streak of moral superiority, feeling better than other people. He is weak and needy, or he is a nice guy, but he is taken advantage of by the bad bullies of the world.
The effect on the personality of such unconscious self crippling is a deep resentment and bitterness. Others are blamed for his lack of fulfillment, and the secret resentment of others creates a double hiding. In order to stay “true” to the idealized self-image, he must suppress his resentment and bitterness, along with hiding his original imperfections (and strengths). The love mask then carries a double guilt. He feels guilty about his real faults, and then adds to that the guilt for pretending to be more loving or nicer than he is. Such an inner climate is unable to generate AUTHENTIC LOVE, which can only thrive in an atmosphere that is open, spontaneous and guilt free. To revive the capacity for true love, the person must admit his negative feeling, including resentment and bitterness and learn to take responsibility for both his needs and his limitations.
2) THE MASK OF POWER
The mask of power is an attempt to get control of life and others by always appearing completely independent, aggressive, competent, domineering. Falsely reducing life to a struggle for domination, the power mask is attempting to escape from the vulnerability experienced as a child. Security and self-esteemed rest on winning in all situations and becoming free of human needs and weaknesses. The power drive is idealized, and love and contact are rejected.
Denial of the real needs for warmth, comfort, affections, caring and communication results in a frantic drivenness, an inability to relax and accept life and others as they are. Unable to admit mistakes or weaknesses, the power mask is obsessed with competition and the drive to win. He tends towards a pessimistic and cynical view of human nature which justifies his idealization of selfishness and domination. He also places a great value on self-control, but may act out his negative feelings while justifying them as the “way of the world”. And he is often plagued by a secret sense of shame and failure, precisely because it is impossible to surpass everyone in all respects, or to win and dominate universally. He compensates for this by striving yet harder to dominate, and by blaming others for his failures.
3) THE MASK OF SERENITY
The mask of serenity is an attempt to escape the difficulties and vulnerabilities of human life by always appearing completely serene and detached. In fact, what the person really pursues is the distortion of serenity, which is withdrawal, indifference, evasion of life, noncommitment, cynical worldly detachment, or false spiritual detachment.
Very often, this pseudo-solution is chosen because the child was unable to make either of the “love” or “power” masks work for him. Unable to gain the needed love through submission, or the needed self-assertion through aggression, he withdrew altogether from the problems inside and outside himself. Underneath the withdrawal, he is still torn and insecure, believing that neither self-assertion nor love is available to him. But all of this is effectively denied by an attempt to withdraw to a vantage point above his inner storm.
The misconception of the serenity mask is that problems will go away if we can effectively deny them. Security and self-esteem are believed to be achieved by rising above all difficulties, being “cool” and unaffected by life. The person with a serenity mask idealizes aloofness and detachment and may have contempt for the struggles of other “mere mortals”. The effect on the personality of such massive denial is numbness and secret despair, often covered over by either a cynical view of life or an ungrounded spirituality. The life force shut down and the energy flows slowly. The capacity to engage in meaningful work or in fulfilled relationship is often impaired.
The emotional self-betrayal of the withdrawal mask is almost complete. The feelings of the real self are trusted so little that only a small degree of engagement with life and others can be tolerated. Often the person withdraws into the intellect or into an inner spiritual life. Someone may have had genuine spiritual experiences of inner serenity, touching the place in their higher selves of true inner peace. However, when this higher self reality is used to protect or defend against those aspects of the self that are not yet evolved- the places of anxiety or competitiveness, pride or separation, of vulnerability or confusion- then this serenity is being used as a mask. Whenever we pretend to be calmer or more detached than we truly are at any given moment, using our serenity to cover up and deny our emotional reactions, then we are in the serenity mask.
Unlike the love or power mask, where feelings are often exaggerated or manipulated to serve a purpose or create an impression, the serenity mask has feelings that are still undistorted, but they are hidden, and need a lot of encouragement in order to be revealed. The transformation of the serenity mask is a step-by-step process of risking the real self, of stepping out into life.
4) THE COMBINATION MASK
Sometimes the mask of love, power and serenity are mixed in the same person, which causes tremendous inner confusion since they pursue contradictory goals and idealizations. Whereas the love mask pretends to be all-loving, and to deny strength and independence, the power mask denies the need for love, pretending to be all powerful. Preferring to be “above it all”, the serenity mask engages in neither the struggle to love nor to battle to dominate, regarding both with contempt. While the love and power masks go in different directions, they are equally false, rigid, unrealistic and unrealizable. Nor is the combination of these masks any closer to reality.
Many people do have contradictory personality ideals. Their lives may be compartmentalized, such that the power mask rules their lives in their business world, for example, while the love mask runs their lives in intimate relationships or vice versa.
USING DIFFERENT MASKS AS DEFENSES
Though we each have a principal mask, or characteristic defense, we may also use any one of these three mask defenses when threatened. When feeling backed into a corner, even someone with a submissive (love) mask may revert to a defense of aggressive self-will (the power mask) to get their way and avoid “defeat”. If the threat is great enough, we may try to avoid the situation altogether, reverting to the defense of withdrawal (serenity mask).
Or in spite of having a primary mask of power or serenity, we may find an area of hidden weakness, which leads us into submission and self-betrayal (the love mask).
By exposing the masks, we begin to heal ourselves. By further confessing the methods we have used to manipulate, we can cleanse ourselves. The healing of the mask is principally a matter of relinquishing our pretenses and exposing the hidden aspects of our feared weakness, vulnerability or rage that underlie the defense.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE MASK SELF
The mask is doomed to fail and to create more misery than it was designed to prevent, because it is based on the essential misconception that we can avoid the imperfections, disappointments and rejections characteristic of the human realm. When we recognize these inevitabilities, and assent to feeling our human pains, flaws and struggles we begin to lessen the attachment we have to the mask.
Transformation of the mask includes the process of grieving the death of our idealized self, realizing that this false self is actually already dead. It is a lifeless, nonvital version of ourselves that must be let go if we are to become who we really are. To release the mask also requires that we re-experience the childhood hurts that gave rise to the mask.
THE MASK AS A DISTORTION OF THE HIGHER SELF
The mask is always a distortion of genuine higher-self qualities of the personality. We draw on our real strengths – love, power or serenity- in order to fashion an imitation which keeps people away from the intense vulnerability of our true higher self. Out of fear of our vulnerability we depend on the lower self and mask to “protect” us.
The true qualities of the higher self are then distorted by the lower self into and “imitation” of the higher self which we hope will make us both invulnerable and acceptable to others. The fear in the lower self distorts a true capacity for love into submission and dependency (the mask of love). The self-will of the little ego of the lower self distorts true power into aggression and control (the mask of power). The pride of the lower self, which seeks to rise above the ordinariness of being human, distorts serenity into detachment and withdrawal (the mask of serenity).
The fear that our true selves are unacceptable is what made us create the mask in the first place. And yet we learn that the mask –because it is phony and hence unattractive – actually brings about the very rejection from others that we most fear, thus re-creating our original childhood hurts. When we are caught in this vicious circle, this rejection makes us redouble the effort to have a more perfect mask, thus creating yet more rejection and so on. The principal antidote to the mask is to learn to accept and love ourselves as we are; then we can finally release the fear of not being loved and accepted by others. And then the genuine higher self qualities can be reclaimed in their original form. When we emanate our true higher self, we find that people are attracted to us, thus setting in motion a benign circle of reinforcement for being our true selves.
When we penetrate the mask, we come face to face with both our lower and higher selves. When we stop trying to avoid our faults or our greatness, our evil or our true goodness, then we can see ourselves more truly as we are. Honest self-acceptance creates the basis for genuine self-respect, which replaces the false self-esteem built on the idealized self-image.
When you muster the courage of becoming your real self, even though it would seem so much less than the idealized self, you will find out that it is much more. And then you will have the peace of being at home within yourself. Then you will have security. Then you will function as a whole human being. Then you will have eliminated the iron whip of a taskmaster whom it is impossible to obey. Then will you know what peace and security really mean. You will cease to seek them by false means.
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