The Mask

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One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eknath Easwaran, said it best in his book Gandhi the Man: “Very few of us see life as it really is. Most of us see things as we are, looking at others through our own likes and dislikes, prejudices and predispositions, desires, interests, and fears. It is this seperatist outlook that fragments life for us … In order to see life as it is, one undivided whole, we have to shed all attachment to personal profit, power, pleasure, or prestige. Otherwise we cannot help but looking at life through our individual conditioning, and we will see the world not as it is, but as conditioned by our desires. 

Through many years of such conditioning, trying again and again to satisfy the desire for personal satisfaction, we have come to believe that this is our real personality. In reality it is a mask which we have merely forgotten how to take off. Beneath the mask is all the glory of our real self: complete fearlessness, unconditional love, and abiding joy. When Gandhi succeeded in taking off his mask through many years of living for others rather than for himself, he found that what he eliminated from his personality was only his separateness, his selfishness, his fear. What remained was the love and fearlessness that had been hidden there all the time.”

We must begin to shed this mask of separateness! What conditions our view of the world is not permanent. We have the power to change our thoughts and beliefs into healthier, more whole ones. As Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

I see you,

Kylie

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