Saul a few days ago talked about the need to remove our masks. He said:
“As you well know, your true nature is Love because you are One with God, from Whom you have never been separated. But, as humans, you have felt an intense need to hide that nature because it seems that you are enveloped in an environment that does not and cannot recognize it, an environment that constantly offers threats and fear. …
“You are all Love incarnate, but have lost sight of this eternal truth because of the veil or cloak that you collectively chose to place between yourselves and Reality. That veil or cloak is also illusory, and to disperse it all you have to do is choose and then intend to discard the egoic masks you present to yourselves and to the world in order to disguise your sense of inadequacy or even worthlessness.
“Your worth is infinite, utterly beyond any value you could place upon it because God has already valued You as beyond price. There is no other possibility because You are Real, One eternally with your Creator. Come out from your hiding places behind the flimsy masks you have made and be seen as the divine and wondrous loving beings that you truly are.
“That is how you will best help humanity to awaken, because those with whom you interact will recognize themselves in you as you mirror back to them their divine perfection.” (1)
I’ve never heard the matter put better.
Together, we’ve discussed notions like masks, constructed selves, vasanas, core issues and the like. (2) But I think Saul is telling us: No more wiggle room. It’s now time to act.
In my view, the choice that faces us is: Are we going to continue to wear masks, act out roles and rackets, and miss out on everything that’s happening right now or are we going to drop them and open up the space in which the miraculous can show up.
Transformative love was miraculous to me. Bliss was. All the other experiences and adventures – vision of a soul’s journey, completion of the kundalini, Oversoul experience, dropping of the past – were also miraculous as they were happening.
The set of behaviors that arise almost naturally when one resolves to remove his or her mask is often called “transparency” or “authenticity.” It can also be described as simple honesty, a willingness to reveal oneself, even when it might otherwise not be considered in one’s best interests, etc.
It has no truck or trade with the self-serving bias. It has no truck or trade with any bias. Transparent, I’d think, one eventually would become the Witness.
A person who behaves transparently moves from being a split personality (the role and the being) to being a unified personality (only the being).
There’s then only one person speaking and listening. There’s only one person making the decisions. The monarch is in command of his or her own realm at that time.
Jesus’ words usually have many levels of meaning. To say “if thine eye be single” may have one meaning of “if you are transparent” or “if you drop the pretence” – then great is the light thereof. Seeing singly may mean seeing without the ego’s mask.
Once one makes the resolve to live transparently, predictable problems arise. People consider you maudlin or dull or too serious. You lose friends, at first.
People ridicule you. Some try to manipulate you. Life from that vantage point doesn’t necessarily get simpler.
But from what Erving Goffman called “the presentation of self in everyday life,” life gets simpler. (3) One doesn’t have to strategize. One doesn’t have to remember what to say to that person and what not. One doesn’t have to remember what one said or near the number of things that most people do, because there’s no need to remember.
One meets life simply present, open, self-revealed.
Most people abandon the push or drive to be fully (as fully as possible) transparent. It’s just too hard. It’s too embarrassing. It’s too painful, unrewarding, lonely.
They can sink back into an everyday dullness concerned mainly with the necessities of life and a good vacation. They can’t see a good reason for transparency.
What they don’t know is that transparency is itself a path. One can go deeper and deeper and deeper into it – well, heavens, we both know that that’s what we’ve been doing on his site for the last several years – and life opens up and opens up and opens up.
Soon enough we’ll all be transparent. Fifth-dimensional personalities are. But transparency now would be a contribution to building Nova Earth. We’ll need to be transparent when we do that work, I strongly believe. To achieve the levels of integrity expected of us as stewards of the Earth, and to get along on such a monumental task, hitting the road running, we’ll need to be transparent, open, honest.
Footnotes
(1) “Saul: Be Love by Living Lovingly Regardless of What Arises,” Channeled by John Smallman, May 15, 2016, at httpss://johnsmallman.wordpress.com.
(2) See for instance “On Processing Root Vasanas or Core Issues,” “On Our Conditioning: Roles, Scripts, Acts, Numbers, Rackets, etc.,” and “On Emerging from the Constructed Self” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/
(3) New York: Doubleday, 1956.