unveiling the mask

Below is a short essay I wrote more than eight years ago (on an even older experience), about the masks that we wear in our day-to-day lives, disguising us from each other and even from ourselves.

I have found myself repeatedly challenged -- with increasing frequency -- to "speak my truth." Such a simple directive that requires so much courage and focus! Much of this unfolding will be taking place here on the blog, I imagine, and "thoughts for the spiral" will be an apt title indeed. I hope you will bear with me through this.

This morning, it seems that digging up this archival essay is as good a place as any to begin.

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Unveiling the Mask
2 February 1997

We all wear masks of one kind or another as a necessary part of our daily lives. These are the faces that we present to the world. They serve to protect us, to shelter us, to make our interactions with the outside smoother and less dangerous, to make us less vulnerable to a variety of forces, and sometimes to delude us.

There are many layers of these masks, each of which may serve a very specific and subtle purpose, and different faces are donned for different occasions. These also act as the filters through which we view, interpret and interact with the world, and it is not uncommon to find that we even wear masks to protect us from ourselves.

Consider the phrase "put on a happy face," which is very simply a command to put on a socially acceptable mask to hide what may truly be going on just below the surface. And we have all played such games of hide-and-seek with ourselves, taking refuge behind this mask or that in intricate efforts of self-denial.

The more we are able to strip away these costumes, the more successful we are in seeing ourselves as we truly are.

At least, that's how I see it.

When I was nineteen and in college, I was dating a young man who asked that I participate with him in something which he called "Zen Soulmating."

What this involved was our sitting down close together and facing each other on the floor, then looking into each other's eyes. This may not sound like much to those who have not tried it. Once each person has become comfortable enough with piercing another individual thus and also being the target of penetration, and once each person has become more acclimated to the exercise, something very unusual and unexpected begins to happen.

There is a flood of colors, flashes of light, and shadows of darkness which begin to slice and dance across the other's face. Creatures only imaginable in tales of science fiction and fantasy begin to manifest in the visage facing us. What we see is not only intensely beautiful, but also monstrous and ugly, each appearance and distortion giving way to the next so very quickly that there is no time to consider what might actually be happening.

And this is what happened with us that night.

He was both old and young, full of light and then cast into darkness. He was purple and green and orange. He had no teeth and decaying skin, and then he was as innocent and precious as a cherub.

We had begun to see each other's masks.

It's a fairly intense experience.

This is understandably unsettling at first. Here I was sitting with someone with whom I was deeply in love, only to find such disturbing personages flickering across his face, and to know that he was seeing the same in me. While we were not necessarily cutting through each other's layers to be able to view plainly the true identity residing within the core being, we were able to take stock of each other's filters, and to have a better idea of precisely what we were dealing with in our interaction.

I actually didn't think much about this experience at the time. Towards the end of my college career, however, I began to experiment with this on my own, seated in front of a mirror in a quiet place to look into my own eyes to explore what I might find manifesting on my own visage.

When discussing this with friends, I try to warn them that this delving into self, while very enlightening, can also require a fair amount of courage. We get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly in ourselves, and it is never at all what we may expect.

Others have found that this can also be a helpful exercise for investigating past life connections and energies, and I've even seen the face of a soul twin appearing in this manner, but I'll leave that discussion for another time.

What has been happening recently, however, is very interesting.

About two years ago, I sporadically began seeing auras. I never had any control over when this would happen or how long it would last. I have also never seen colors, as others do -- rather, it is more of a visual buzzing that I will notice surrounding a person's body. While this is intriguing, it is also distracting, as I sometimes find myself more focused on viewing someone's aura than on what that person is saying.

But this seems to have progressed into spontaneously seeing people's masks as well.

It appears that no eye contact is necessary for this to occur, and it's certainly not anything I have pursued -- it happens without warning, and without any conscious effort on my part. I will first notice a strange flash of light in my peripheral vision, followed by the immediate darkening of my surroundings which is accompanied by the "brightening" of whichever individual whose masks I am about to see. It feels very much as if my visual focus is being forced through a narrowing tunnel, with this great display of masks at the center.

If anyone else has experienced similar occurrences, I would be very interested in hearing from you.

At the very least, such experiences hopefully help to convince people that there is more than meets the eye to this world and to people in general.

I think it would be a mistake for us all to try to rid ourselves of these masks, to lay ourselves bare to the world and to each other. Society as we know it would not be possible without these psychological and spiritual devices which have evolved with us over time. Each surface persona is a carefully crafted "user-friendly" interface which either conforms to or challenges the norms and standards which have been accepted by the population, adding yet another language to the many layers of communication which we employ in our lives.

Still, such exploration is great fun and aids in understanding. Plunging to such depths has always been a favorite hobby of mine, so no doubt the adventure will continue.