Masks

Even the best actors slip out of character.....no one can act forever, eventually the truth either slips out, or it explodes out!

It's both fascinating and sad to watch those close to you put themselves into a role, assuming a character that they hope will gain them the happiness they think they desire. The tragedy of the whole affair is that, if one assumes character and acts in a certain way that is contrary to who they are - they lose touch of who they are, and those whome they wish to love have to guess or read between the lines to find out who they are, what they want, and more importantly, what they need. To act with such fundamental insincerity is to harm oneself and to deprive others of the richness of the actors true self. It causes those who seek to have relationship with the actor to miss the mark; to never be able to intentionally or naturally engage the real person behind the mask. And so the actor misses out on the genuine relationships they crave. It also serves to perpetuate the condition of suffering that the actor is seeking to escape.

It takes great courage to be oneself, to be willing to meet and learn about oneself. And it takes time. To take off the mask you risk exposing yourself, and in the same way that one feels vulnerable when a cast is removed, the actor feels vulnerable when the mask is removed - but the true self is there, waiting to be revealed and to be expressed. Until we lay down our masks (yes, often there is a mask under the mask) we will struggle with broken relationships and unrealized dreams. And we will be like a negative weight dragging on those close to us. How can we hope to enter into harmony with our environment, with life, and with others when we keep erecting self-maintained barriers?

Although we seek to hide behind our mask as if it is a shield, the truth is that they become nothing less than a cage to our soul.