Most of us will have either seen the movie or the stage show called the “Phantom of the Opera”.

This production and the central character in it are appropriately symbolic of the masks that we all wear during our daily lives which cover up our authentically true selves. Much like the Phantom we wear these masks to hide those parts of ourselves that make us recoil in disgust.

Allied to the masking process we develop addictions to many external things such as food, drugs, sex, gambling, alcohol, shopping and the like which given us short-term relief from the deep seated painful emotions we feel as a consequence of the insecurities generated by our lack of self-acceptance. However, this relief is only short-lived and our addictions can have signifcant negative impacts on our lives either through causing physical disease to our bodies, psychological dysfunction or the destruction families and other important relationships.

Our various masks are fear based responses to experiences in our lives which we have interpreted as threatening either to our physical or emotional safety. For example someone who fears rejection (maybe as a result of having been rejected by parents, or siblings) will seek the acceptance of others and will inevitably seek to please other people through wearing the masks of passivity and victimhood. These masks create an illusory sense of protection through encouraging acceptance by others as they allow what others say, do and want to be of primary importance regardless of the personal impacts this has on the pleaser. The pleaser thinks that they can avoid conflict and the isolation that brings through lying on the sacrificial alter of martyrdom. This seldom works for long as others become more and more demanding sensing that they can take advantage of the pleaser. Eventually the pleaser ends up pleasing no one including more importantly themselves.

Fear and insecurity find safe harbours behind our attempts to mask who we truly are. When we allow these masks to become more than just masks or tools we use from time to time and we start identifying with the character traits that underpin them that is when we start to loose our authentic selves. The resulting sense of  dislocation that this generates can be numbing and as we go about our lives we can experience an emptiness with our lives appearing to be devoid of any real meaning or purpose apart from mere survival.

The wearing of masks as portrayed in movies is symbolic and to the point. The mask hides true identity and allows us to do things that we would not normally do for fear of recognition. However, there comes a point when the mask wearer can no longer disentangle him or herself from the character represented by the mask. A psychic shift occurs that finds the mask wearer literally consumed by an alter ego.

In short we become lost to ourselves and others when we hide behind any form of false construct regardless of whether such construct was originally well intended and served a purpose or not. Our lives become contracted and smaller as we hide our true light. This does not serve us or the world. We were born to shine our light as brightly as possible and in so doing enlighten the world and give others the permission to do the same.

We can overcome our masking tendencies by acknowledging the fears that hold our masks in place. When we do we can experience again that sense of  “joy de vivre” that we had as young children when the world seemed such an exciting and liberating place.