By Murray Hill sorendreier.com
T
he symbolic power of the mask is a motif that has been present throughout human history. It is found in many cultures, and it has fulfilled many different cultural functions such as in dramatic reenactment, and deeply spiritual ceremony and ritual. The common underlying psychocognitive expression that is at work is identity. The mask enables the putting on of another face – and thereby assuming another identity, or at least some aspect of another identity. This is clearly seen in the animism of the shamanic traditions, where the realm of animal spirit is entered into. This is something that the western mind can only consider in abstract terms, but the raw, visceral, physicality of such an act is now almost completely outside of our psychic realm of possible experience. Such liminal states of being are also outside of the current mental health paradigm, and would quickly find the experiencer medicated and possibly institutionalized. Science does not consider plants and animals to be truly sentient beings that have identities or a sense of agency. Being-ness has been largely reduced to codified memories and behaviours, and their subsequent hi-tech manipulation. Discussion of these matters has been relegated to the “new age” and the trans-humanist fringes. This marginalization of many essential aspects of our Human natures is in itself deeply problematic. The other “face” of the mask is typified by its ability to obscure and block one’s true or real nature. This is where we find ourselves placed presently. Our true, natural, organic natures are blocked and hidden from view, even from ourselves. We have never had the opportunity to get much more than a furtive glimpse of our true selves. Reports of these experiences have been
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relegated to spirituality, religion, and “nonordinary” states of consciousness. The masks that we wear are deeply unconscious and not of our own making, we face the world with a mad array of broken and dysfunctional selves, while the true self within lies latent, hidden and unrecognized. Promising areas of psychology, such as transpersonal psychology and Jungian descriptions of the psyche and its archetypes have been displaced by the “hard science” of physical brain studies. On a positive note there has been recent scientific interest in the so-called entheogenic plants, such as Cannabis and Ayahuasca. Sadly, the shadow of “big pharma” looms over these developments. We are now residing within an era
where “identity” defines all. Identity in the form of the behaviourally manipulated personality, the programmed self, the decontextualized individual. The individual is rapidly approaching the state of becoming an unanchored, collectively mediated psychopathy. Identity has become weaponized, and it is now almost impossible to discuss this topic without stepping into a socially misconstrued ideological minefield (mind field). The virtual group hallucination that is “social media” is designed to fracture and divide any sense of wholeness we have, both individually and collectively. It is a virtual mask that must be worn if one is to become an active entity within the social media milieu.
This most recent “masking” of the Human face has reduced us to cyphers within a dollar based accounting system. Our digital identity is almost wholly described, tracked, and traded, in terms of its economic value within an extractive global-corporate ledger. We have been “incorporated” into a global slave trade. Our egos might not like being confronted by this fact, but it is very apparent that we humans are the economic units of this digital trade. The Toltec seers of ancient central Mexico were aware that something was deeply amiss within human beings, and their prognostications remain relevant today. They perceived the presence of a non-human entity that has infected us on a non-physical level, and which directs us to perform the most horrifying and injurious acts upon ourselves, each other, and the planet. The Toltecs describe this entity as the “Parasite” and/or the “Predator”, in that it feeds off of our organic, life giving energies. This entity was also identified by the early Gnostics in the form of the Archon, and by many of the shamanic traditions – Wetiko being one example. The existence and nature of this entity is a big topic, one that is too large for the modest scope of this article. The parasitism of, and predation upon human beings, is according to the Toltecs, achieved through the mind. Their description portrays the human mind as a “download” or a “program” that was gifted to us with mal intent. The physical brain can be considered to be the hardware, and the mind as the software. In this way we experience ourselves as being simultaneously anchored in the physical and the non-physical. The living organic light based mind that we could have, which is galactic, stellar and planetary in nature, was usurped by a limited set of parasitic coding,
Please see MASK, page 17