Imbolc Anniversary Moon
Masks. The sample session about kabbalah has had me focused on masks I wear. Here are a few: grieving son, angry son, abandoned son, skeptic, philosophical analyst, anxious son, anxious man, friend (I think each friendship might prompt a different mask), loving husband, anxious husband, devoted and loyal husband, protective husband, father, proud father, step-father, grandfather, cousin, brother (again, a different mask for Mary and Mark), dog lover, grieving dog lover, gardener, beekeeper, greenman, mountain man, 60’s radical, weary 60’s radical, writer, anxious writer, fearful writer, reader, blogger, Celt, German, Minnesotan, Hoosier, Coloradan, member of Beth Evergreen, anxious member of Beth Evergreen, hiker, traveler, traveler for fun, traveler for self-knowledge, meditator, translator, Latin student, mussar student, fellow traveler of Judaism, driver, angry driver, meditative driver, commuter man, docent, art lover, art critic, poet, exerciser, reluctant exerciser, healthy man, dying man, sick man, indulgent man, poor eater man, healthy eater man, home maintenance scanning man, home maintenance securer, worker supervisor (home maintenance), father-in-law, theater and movie goer, chamber music lover, jazz lover, politically dutiful man. Well, it’s a start.
The idea here is to know your own masks without judgment, then order them from core masks to peripheral. What masks can you not take off without removing some skin? Those are core (actually near core) and the most resistant to change. The core itself, the I am, is pure awareness and has no mask. I have an issue here with the kabbalah, not sure how a soul, a self, the core of me, can put on a mask. The donning of a mask seems contradictory to pure awareness, how would the motivation to mask up occur? How could it be actuated? This is important to my philosophical analyst mask though, as Jamie pointed out, the practical application of these ideas doesn’t require an answer.
The ultimate goal is to be able to take off and don masks appropriate to each moment. To do this, of course, we have to be self-aware, we have to know what mask we have on. This will take practice.
