The Masked Self

In 2019 I was working on my book about how we all wear social masks and the dynamics that lead us to act like and then become the false self. Talk about manifesting in the material life: Covid 19 comes along and everyone literally wears masks! Irony?

It is not lost to me that we are conditioned from birth to act certain ways, acting being the operative word. Parent’s say: ‘Don’t act that way’. ‘Sit up straight’. ‘Say thank you and please’, etc. etc.

The real you and the real raw me got pushed down, squeezed tight into the shadow while our false self, created by parents and social conditioning become the masks we wear. Time goes on and we believe the false self is our real self, and in the process we lose our authentic expression in a million ways. How did I know I was to become a radio host when I was told to shut up as a child?

We practice and adopt roles in this play called life. These roles come in the form of archetypes in relationships: wife, husband, mother, or father. They also come in the form of our professions: nurse, doctor, accountant, chef.

And here we are in 2022, wearing the mask, a false persona we wear to comply and please others; and now the surgical mask hides even more: our facial expressions which is our sacred nonverbal language, hiding another layer of our authentic expressions. In the meantime, it is not a stretch…