Perfect Soul / Imperfect Mask

        Those who have given themselves to a higher goal in no matter what strength or percentage often think of the path as this strenuous effort to change who they are into this vision that they get of who they should be. My wife pointed out to me that early on in our growth we often have a tendency to see ourselves as spiritual peons and that one of the most important lessons on the path is that we aren’t and never have been the peon that we perceive ourselves to be.

        In fact, we already are who we need to be. Right now, within us there is the Buddha. I remember being told that in different ways at multiple points in my journey but I still thought there was something I had to do or change or whatever in order to make it a reality. I thought that if I wasn’t experiencing the ‘latent Buddha’ then it somehow wasn’t true for me – that I was missing something. I didn’t realize that my failure to perceive my Buddhahood didn’t negate the truth of that statement but the reason I was told, (aside from it being true, of course), was so that, when I was ready, I would remember it and act accordingly. I didn’t realize that I was being told was that I wasn’t the outer personality that I so closely identified with but rather the inner being which hid behind all that and that one day I would meet. In other words, the information was meant to change the way I look at my journey. What the spiritual path is about is not the raising up of our lower selves, the perfecting of our ego. It is first the change of paradigm that allows us to see that perfection that already exists within and choosing that perfection over our ego. We are this sphere of light, this being of God perfection and we just need to fill that matrix that is already there by our change in consciousness, the matrix that God has already created. As we come to see this reality more and more we naturally come to strive to fulfill it. That is the process of the soul as it strives to take on the reality of God’s personality, when we work to out picture, to become, the virtues that are within.

        It is hard to come to grips with the realization that the personality that we identify with, that matrix of habits, likes and dislikes, opinions, intellect, etc. is not who we really are but is, rather, a mask over the interior being. Mostly we let this outer personality run our lives. Typically, it makes all of our decisions on a day to day and minute to minute basis and we don’t see behind it because we are unaware that there is a place behind it that is available to be observed. We can get glimpses of the real self at special times in our lives when we can step back from our ego’s control over our lives.

        To do this we must realize that the outer personality that we have identified with all of our lives is not, in fact, who we are. More importantly, the outer personality is not perfectible. This outer personality is often referred to as the ego, the mask, the Dweller on the Threshold, the false self. Whatever we call it we may spend years striving to rein in this wayward false self and find that we are still being fooled by its' subtle machinations. The key is not to try to change the ego but to stop choosing to act from the ego at all - to replace the ego with the mind of God. We must stop taking counsel of our ego. If we allow the mind of God, His attitudes, His thoughts, His desires to become who we are then that is the part of our real selves that we will come to identify with. We will find that the ego, that mask that we wear, loses its power over us – because that is not who we are.