“A funny thing happened on my way
to being awake. I outgrew all my masks.”
Mark Nepo
It is funny that masks have become such a controversy. Humans have relied on them for so long. Long enough that much of the wearing of masks is unconscious. People don’t even know which mask they are wearing, nor for how long they’ve worn it. Masks are such a part of social reality that it is likely that even the protestors are wearing more than one, even while their protesting. But, all of this tension around masks, makes it timely for us to recollect, and reflect upon, how masks have served we humans. This turns out to be a fairly important exercise, when one realizes that going without a mask, is actually a spiritual achievement — an achievement, it often takes a lifetime to get to.
Masking comes with the social territory we inhabit. Humans, as social animals, are always jockeying for position in the herd. The identities we assume along the way are legion. Each of them has a persona — a being we must portray to have any chance of belonging. We use a variety of different forms of make-up to maintain the necessary, required look that will provide passport to acceptability. Even those of us who never achieve acceptance, wear masks to acquire passport to the kingdom of worthy outcast. Masks protect us. They give us identity. They lie for us. They confine and imprison us. They sometimes free us to be ourselves. And they have to be overcome in the long run. Clearly, they are a complex phenomenon.
Masks have become our faces, the way we present ourselves to each other. They feign intimacy for us, and disguise interest. They sometimes pseudo-suffer. They smile when evil is present. And they fall away when inner light arises. They are instruments of consciousness — proof that even when we don’t know what we are doing — we know exactly what we are doing. They are capable of great chameleon-like changes, transporting lies and revealing hidden truths. It is no wonder that masks incite a lot of controversy, humans are so prone to fool each other with them. They are even more distrusted, because we humans, are so prone to fool ourselves with them. They are friend and foe alike.
A mask is a necessity. There are kinds of social illnesses that are transmitted today, that rely on no organism, and have no predictable vector. Sometimes it is a favor to others, sometimes it is only to oneself. Always it is a form of self-denial (more about that later). Masking is one of the primary characteristics of we humans, and unmasking is the surest way to human fulfillment. No wonder confusion about masking runs rampant amongst us.
There comes a time, usually it is in old age, when masks get heavy. They get in the way, and become like a jail cell. They can restrict, threaten to define, and trap one. At this phase of life — life itself is on the line. A mask then, separates one from authenticity, from one’s true calling, and death with dignity. Later life is concerned with letting go of all the charades, social and personal, that bind one to this world. Oddly, it’s a growing thing, nature prompting development. Enlightenment is guaranteed to the dying who are as naked as when they were born.
Masks are tools. They serve, and they can trap us. Ambivalent about our own existence, they give us reason to exist, and at the same time limit us. Masks are humanity’s effort to be useful, without knowing how to be useful. The Cosmos awaits us anyway, a mystery that exists beyond any use we can imagine, a place where our attempts, don’t mask what we are.
