The Mask

The Mask

The surface mind or sense-self or ego is the villain of the play that is being

enacted on the human stage at present. Man as a form of life is sufficiently

evolved so as to understand his separateness and uniqueness. He looks in the

mirror and understands that the reflected animal is he. He is concerned with the

appearance and welfare of this animal and ponders its relationships with the

world and others. He does not truly understand what he is, only that he is

conscious and confined within a particular body, and the experience and

knowledge he acquires, together with his disposition as to their use, he labels “I,”

and thus he is deluded into calling a ghost by his own name.

Hidden behind this ghost, obscured by its struggles and fancies, is the Secret Self,

which even though hidden, ignored, or misunderstood, nevertheless moves all

things on the chessboard of life according to their natures and aspirations. We are

never ego or senseself. These are masks we don as we play at the parts we find

in life. What we truly are is not a changing thing, but is whole and entire, powerful and serene, limitless and eternal. It springs from the inexhaustible

source of life itself, and when we learn to identify ourselves with it, then we have

hitched a ride on a power so far beyond our tiny temporal selves that our lives

are changed in the most amazing manner. 

The Magic in your Mind

U.S. Andersen