Perils of Living From Your Mask©
by Pam Chubbuck, Ph.D.
Living from your mask wastes your life. Simple as that. Think of looking back over your life when you are say – 80 – and thinking, I hardly ever lived a genuine moment. I was too afraid to be who I truly am. And who I am? What a disappointment. What a bummer!
What is this Mask that can fritter your life away - that saps your Life Force anyhow?
Merriam Webster Dictionary describes Mask as:
Noun; A cover or partial cover for the face used for disguise.
Something that serves to conceal or disguise. Pretense, cloak.
Adjective; failing to present or produce the usual symptoms <masked symptoms>
To keep something from being known or noticed. 1, She masked her anger with a smile. 2, They tried to mask their real purpose. 3, She tried using perfume to mask the bad odor.
Meaning of Mask in Core Energetic terms:
Mask: Idealized Self Image. A counterfeit of inner reality. Distortions that occur in how we experience and view the world. Masks the real self. Pretends to be something you are not. It pretends to keep you safe while creating a sort of deadness.
"Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you."
~ Eckhart Tolle |
 Many people enter therapy with me with the presenting complaint, “I don’t know who I am.”
or they say, “Who am I really?”.
Why is it that so many people in our society do not know who they are? Why is it that people have lost communication with the real, the juicier part of themselves? Their essence.
The Pathwork and Core Energetics have some good insight about these questions.
The Pathwork Guide tells us that children have unpleasant experiences and therefore are fearful of the emotions connected to these experiences. They try to avoid these fearful experiences by closing down their real feelings by creating a false self. An Idealized Self. A Mask.
But this is a pseudo-solution. A pseudo-protection. Not only does it not work in the long run - this very countermeasure brings on the very thing one dreads the most. Ah ha! Bad idea then!
Read: Pathwork Lecture # 83; The Idealized Self Image
John Pierrakos MD, founder of Core Energetics and co-founder of Bioenergetic Analysis writes :
“A crucial aspect of penetrating the mask is the sufferer’s recognition that the outer will conspires in maintaining the mask and the substratum of character armoring. Once this insight is gained, the person can begin to take conscious responsibility for his or her problems. The recognition is the first reliable evidence that the core has been touched and the ego turned to positive action.” 
John explains to us that work on the defensive perimeter turns the person completely around to gaze inward rather than outward. “The crisis that has brought the sufferer into treatment in the first place is located within the self, not in the outside world.”
John continues to tell us that in Core Energetics it is required that the person look at his or her life situation, not in terms of accusations or blame of others. It is imperative that a person sees that they are responsible for their own crisis and realize the power to transform their negative energies to positive ones.
In order to alleviate their suffering the person must replace denial of life with affirmation of life.
Penetrating The Mask
All my clients struggle with penetrating the mask to get to their wounds and then to their higher selves. I have struggled and worked on my own maskiness and woundedness for years. We all must pay attention to our tendency to live from our Idealized Image.
When John Pierrakos requested that his wife, Eva ask the Pathwork Guide how much of the time we are in our masks, the response was that, We live in our masks more than 80% of the time. The guide also described the mask as having a sickeningly sweet smell to those in the spirit world. We all have experienced that, gag-me-with-a-spoon feeling when someone is blatantly in their mask.
Susan longs for living unmasked but tends to easily fall back into her idealized self image rather than living her real or perceived discomfort of telling her exact truth. Susan left a 33 year mask-driven marriage over a year ago. It was a partnership with no emotional intimacy, with no sex for 10 years, that looked great on the outside but felt impoverished from within. She fell back into the old- shoe fake ness during the Christmas holidays so that she could look/feel nice with her grown kids and estranged husband. Pretending to still be a family unit they went to visit relatives together and of course no one talked about the impending divorce or talked about any feelings at all. Susan later felt depressed and then became ill. Since to pull off the mask defense we must block our vital energy, living the Mask Image, often causes illness to emerge. Illness is caused by blocked vital force.
Dreams Often Point to the Mask
Dreams can be a wonderful way to find the undercurrents pointing to more real emotions. Below are two dreams that clearly show the mask.
Ray’s Dream: "Parking my new - current Car. I have to walk through area that could be dangerous when dark and it would be dark as I returned .I Looked for another spot. That one was also dangerous to walk through. Work men nearby say it’s OK. It’s safe. I do not believe them".
Ray had given up an intimate sexual relationship with a woman he said he loved but he was also confused. He had never known someone so lovable, he said. Sex was tender, passionate and spiritually connected. There were many levels of emotional, intellectual connection. They shared a lot. The last sexual connection had been so powerful he had gotten frightened and backed out of the relationship saying he was not ready for a relationship of lovers. He just wanted to be friends.
To find the deeper meaning, Ray worked this dream in therapy with me. The new car represented a new potential in his life – living from a more real place, outside of the mask. But living outside his mask he felt as dangerous. Walking through the dark is his unknown. He saw that his belief was that his known non-fully-living, felt safer than his unknown. Even when friendly work men (who were there over time and knew the area) in the dream reassured him that it was safe, he did not believe them. He now has a choice and is practicing choosing to go for the unknown life force even when he is frightened.
Paula was holding back saying many things to the man she had fallen in love with. She was ready to and had opened herself completely to him and to the relationship but he was not ready. Paula was true to her real self most of the time; but there came a time she began feeling she was not speaking her truth; it was then she had the following dream.
Paula’s Dream: "Sitting on the toilet. Someone is with me (woman) may be a partner. At least we are very familiar. I am shitting. Smells very bad. I flush before I am through to get rid of the smell. Shit more. Then diarrhea. Horrendously bad smell. I apologize for foul smell and flush again to get rid of bad odor and water and shit spray up and it gets on my right shoulder and back and butt. I am disgusted and embarrassed. I get up and start cleaning myself off. Someone comes in with cloth (woman) and starts mopping up the floor. I tell her not to – I should (need to) clean it up myself."
Defecation dreams are classic in that they bring the stuff (the shit), that the person has to deal with to become more conscious. The need to clean up her own shit shows a very aware person. Paula began taking steps to clean up the shit in her relationship. Speaking her anger, sadness, disappointment and even unconditional love - without blame was her task.
 Laura: was fired from her job. Her boss refused to talk to her about why but confided to another employee that he felt too much around her. Laura’s Mother had refused to talk to her in a similar way, and was always uncomfortable with her “too much” energy, which was a source of pain and anger for Laura. The mask shows up in the character armoring (physical body) and Laura’s right foot was pulled up, slightly rolled to the outside so the ball of her foot was not on the ground. Laura had twisted herself up and away from her real self - especially her power. Her Mask was that she’d rather pretend and not be grounded in her expansive possibility so she would not frighten her mother. If her mother was frightened she, as child, felt she would be doomed.
Great Tailor Joke
I told Laura the joke about the renowned tailor who could fit even the most deformed person.
Man goes into the tailor shop and gets fit for a suit. He comes back the following week and tries on the suit which is strangely askew. The right arm is too short says the man. Just pull your arm up says the tailor, and he does. The shoulders are not even says the man. Just hunch your left shoulder up, and he does. Pull your knee over to the side says the tailor, to make the pants fit correctly. There now, says the tailor, perfect fit! The man walks out of the store and passes two  people on the street who notice and remark to each other that a tailor who can fit a man who is so deformed must be a great tailor indeed.
As children we pull ourselves this way and that to look good and satisfy our parents so we won’t be killed. When we do this of course we kill some of our energy ourselves thus creating our worst fear.
It is quite frightening to let go and admit your mask. We create the mask in order to stay safe from our deepest pain. Many times we feel to live outside the mask would surely kill us.
Fool On the Hill
Claudia, married; age 44, and a client of a year and 1/2, brought in a Beatles CD and played it for me. Then she started reciting the words to the Beatles, Fool on the Hill and soon became teary. We talked about why that song so moved her. Claudia was able to tell me that she felt like the fool in the song. Claudia was very intelligent, had a master’s degree, work that she liked and did well. With her husband however, she was in her mask much of the time. She said she often pretended to be a fool with her husband because he got “enjoyment” out of feeling that he knew things that she did not. When I said, That must create a difficulty and untruth in your relationship, at first she could not see the harm in “bolstering his ego”. As we worked more, Claudia was able to see that she had started the “fool” pattern in school as a child, and at home with her brother. She said, I often see and know things that I don't express because I think people won't like it/me. Her teachers did not want to know what she knew, only what she did not know; her brother, being older - and a "typical" guy - wanted to be one up. She realized that underlying wanting her husband to feel "good" she was afraid that if she was smart or smarter than he, he would not like it and ultimately she would be abandoned. I suggested that Claudia try being her true self – including her intelligent self – with her husband and see what would occur. I suggested reading Pathwork lecture New Age Marriage.
The mask is always created and kept in place because we are afraid that someone will disapprove. When asked, What will happen if someone disapproves; the answer inevitably comes down to being unloved and being unloved is a drastic and dangerous thing for a child.
Mark was very confused about what his mask was and had a hard time connecting to his Higher Self. His mask and lower self saboteur were in collusion to destroy his life. Mark’s worst fear and negative belief was that no matter how hard he tried to be good he would fail and be abandoned. Left alone he would die. As is often the case when these things remain unconscious, his saboteur was left the diabolical work of creating a life of suffering alone.This created a feeling of profound hazard - precisely the thing he most feared; Mark's rendition of hell.
The truth however, is that admitting our mask behavior, allowing our higher self to shed light - therefore becoming able to see how and why we create the mask - brings us great satisfaction and safety. We never feel safe when we are in the mask because we are always in defense; always alert to the perceived danger of being real. Now as adults we can drop the false self and find that we are alright the way we are. We can stand on our own two feet and eventually soar into the pleasure of being.
***
Suggested Reading:
Remove the Mask! Living An Authentic Life! Edited by Linda Ellis Eastman
Living Juicy by SARK
The Pathwork of Self Transformation, by Eva Pierrakos
www.pathwork.org
Core Energetics by John Pierrakos
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