Illusion to Reality

Personality: persona = mask (Latin)

Am I a fake? Living behind a mask of pretense? And if “I” is defined by a personality, does it mean to say that I am living a life of an actor, unreal and untrue? Am I playing many roles at different moments to mask me from what I truly am? What is it that I am hiding, behind the façade of the mask? Why the need to hide and who am I hiding from? What is it like to come out from the mask? Vulnerable? Naked? Fearful?

I am not sure. But if that is true, I am surely living a life of misery. Have you seen a life of beavers in the National Geographic program? Always on the lookout whenever it comes out from its dwelling hole, lifting up its body upright with its front legs in the air, on the lookout for foes? Then it is back to searching for food but only for a brief moment – raising itself on the lookout again. I used to sense the misery of such living, when I put myself in the shoes of a beaver.

Can you imagine what it is like to wake up in the morning from bed and start almost immediately the mode of defense? As if life is a threat and we need to be in a constant mode on guard? I am sure this experience is more predominant in marriage life where codependency is on the grip. Our actions are cautious and not natural, always on the lookout of our spouse’s reaction to what we are doing, hoping that we are not triggering any emotions that may ignite a resistance, an argument or a fight. And when they are away, we’d feel a sense of relief that we can be as natural again.

But isn’t that what life is about, not just for married couples? The word “to survive each day” is already pointing towards the direction of making life work and that involves an internal fight of staying afloat – the dynamics of defend and attack to make sure that we are able to survive decently in life.

Our life may not be as obvious as a beaver in fear, but if we were to genuinely stay with the chattering of our thoughts, as much as we can, we can see that pattern domineering our lives. Our mask of pretense hides us from showing that fear, but each movement or action is already calculating to minimize attack from the external. Our movements are on defense mode – and that’s what survival is. It can be as simple as an act of leaving our house – we have to make sure that the house is properly locked. The same goes with the car which we have just parked.

Observe the mind authentically when we move around wherever we are. There is a need to look good, carrying ourselves to make an impression on others. There is the fight and flight syndrome, hovering in the mind. So automated to the extent that we do not know how to live a life naturally, except to defend or protect our vulnerability of being hurt.

Life is just an act, a lie, a fake, an imitation; a clone of ourselves all the time even though with different façade, to fit into the world. If this is occurring so consistently in the mind, we can be sure everyone is also in such a mode, albeit an unconscious one. We are fitting into each misfit, living a life for the world rather than for ourselves. We are all like walking zombies, doing time. Strangely we never query where it is going to lead us to, yet there is some kind of hope lingering at the background of our mind, that soon, very soon all this exhaustion will be over. But will it?

Has the little, little bit of happiness we gathered here and there make us satisfied? That it is a respite from the insurmountable fear pattern which lingers throughout our lives? Is there truly happiness except a relatively more subtle fear at the background, giving us a space of breather that we had defined as happiness?

Isn’t that what which makes freedom our greatest desire, and also our foe – when we are unable to reach it?

Another interesting insight at JournalingTruth: Authenticity

The heart is like a garden.
It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love.
What seed would you plant in it?

I observed with interest that when varieties of emotions are asked to be spelled out in a workshop, the list of negative emotions named by the participants usually outnumber the positive; it is as if there are limited positive emotions compare to its opposites. It is a common occurrence and I am not surprised. And if I were to seek cooperation from the participants to share with me on what scale of emotions do they think they experience throughout each day, having a scale of 0 as negative to 10 as positive, majority of the answers that come back would be above 5. It is a wide contrast to the first feedback during the initial period of a workshop.

I wish to make two valid conclusions from an observation based on my own personal experience of the mind. First, if I was not a practitioner of self-inquiry, I may not have truly recognized what is within my scope of emotions throughout the day. I may not have realized that a major part of the actions I take are motivated by negative thoughts or emotions. That there was some form of stress underlying my daily activities. That restlessness was the cause of my continuous seeking and doing. In other words, my actions were not motivated by inspiration, by love or joy but rather a dread commitment of chores I “had” to do. And usually these statements were returned with replies of “what choice do I have” mentality. I can’t say this is not a valid retort as there is much commitment as an individual, and also as a society, to address and undertake in day to day issues at hand, to live a life of decency. But the question again is not about the work or activities we undertake but rather the attitude that is accompanying it. It is these attitudes that determine our emotions and also thoughts.

Secondly, I observed that it is the mentality of not “right” to admit that we have more negative emotions than positive. There is an ingrained societal mentality that we have to hide or suppress our emotions; mostly negative; for us to be efficient in our deals. We were told that expressing our feelings is inappropriate and that we are only expressing our weaknesses if we were to do so. Burying our feelings underneath our actions is one of the main causes of misery. In truth, feelings can’t be buried except to mask over, hence the word, personality or persona to mean a mask. Ironically, it is feelings that we are all seeking in life and yet we are told not to feel. How could it be possible to experience happiness if what be at the bottom are all unresolved negative emotions? It is not unusual that when happiness finally arrive at the doorstep, there is a feeling of incompleteness in it, that there is a better happiness somewhere else than what is here in front of me to savor – it is the result of the hidden unresolved feelings.

Could it be this that there is no true “happiness”? That there is so much “look good” factors running in our society, or more true, running in the mind that we are not true to ourselves any longer? That we have ingrained mentality of blame and accusation hidden in our hearts but not spoken? Not that we have to express or burst it out to hurt others but rather the suppression which is what causes us to put the responsibility of our pain onto others; which we did not take the responsibility to investigate what is going through the mind and to take appropriate steps to address it, either through right understanding or right perception. That true happiness is found whenever we recognize, understand and accept what is within us, and not through the contrary or ignoring it.

My meditation teacher once reminded me that it is because of our firsthand experience of what our mind is, that inclines us to purify it. When we are ignorant to our own mind, cultivation is impossible. Thus we have to admit that the mind is predominantly filled with negative emotions before the actual journey of love and wisdom begins.