When the Mask Falls Off: Understanding a Very Human and Very Spiritual Reality

February 21st, 2012
By Judith Barr, MS, LPC, Power: Healing to the Root Topic Expert Contributor

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The contenders in the GOP election process are presenting themselves as devoutly religious people. But what lies within these candidates beneath their religious presentation? Often in life we don’t get to see what lies beneath a person’s “good self” presentation, also called a mask. We don’t get to find out if that person really is religious, kind, caring or not. The discrepancy is often hidden.

How does this occur? When we’re children, often, but not always, in response to trauma or abuse, we experience our own mean-spiritedness and our own destructiveness. It may even start out as simple anger, but anger that gets buried or distorted and twisted into something destructive. Many of us know not to act it out, for fear that we will be punished, made bad, abandoned. So instead, we create a mask self to hide our destructive self. And we hold onto our mask for dear life, defending ourselves against discovery. In the meantime, our buried mean-spiritedness does have an effect on us and those around us . . . but mostly unconsciously.

Eventually, though, what we’ve hidden beneath our mask does manage to find its way out into the open somehow. It may slip through the mask in words we mean, but didn’t mean to say; in actions we’d like to take, but didn’t mean to act out; in actions we don’t take but the feeling of them may ooze out in spite of our intention to keep it underground.

Lately in our world the masks have been falling off—and the abuses of power and other dangers beneath the masks have been revealed, one by one, sometimes two by two and more. Numerous government leaders, corporate executives, and other leaders as well have been exposed or have exposed themselves for the abuses of power beneath their masks: some sexual (Anthony Weiner); some financial (Bernie Madoff); some legal (Idaho Senate Republican Caucus Chairman John McGee, arrested June 2011 for DUI and vehicle theft); some ethical (Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray); and some spiritual (among evangelical leaders, Richard Roberts, son of Oral Roberts, arrested January 2012 for DUI; among yogic leaders, Gurudev of Kripalu, who required celibacy of unmarried students while at the same time having sexual relations with some of his students; and among New Age leaders, James A. Ray, who misused the Native American sweat lodge, causing people to be hurt and to die).

But it is a rare thing in a presidential election for candidates to tout their religious connection and the next day, or even the next sentence, to expose their mean-spirited or destructive side.

One candidate presents himself as a religious man, but creates ads that are lies, isn’t concerned about the poor, makes $10,000 bets in the middle of a debate, runs a very ugly, negative campaign in Florida, and repeatedly says things he says he misspoke—things that he actually meant and came through his mask.

Another contender, claiming to be a reformed religious person, forgiven for his sins, reveals how painfully arrogant, grandiose, and dishonest he is . . . not to mention unfaithful to two wives.

A third candidate, governor of one of our states, actively used his religious beliefs both as a basis for his policy and in his campaign ads and debates; but in his eyes his religious beliefs provide justification for imposing his will and his religion’s will upon the state and the nation: his state executes more prisoners than any other state in our nation, while he claims to be pro-life; makes it legally mandatory for girls to receive a vaccine even if their parents object; and makes it compulsory for any woman seeking an abortion to be given a vaginal ultrasound – even if it’s against her will and her doctor’s will.

Yet another challenger would like to use whether or not an individual follows “God’s law,” as the candidate defines it, to determine who can claim equality under the law; he doesn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money”; he claims the right to privacy doesn’t exist in the constitution; and he maintains it’s dangerous to use contraception in this country.

And still another contender quotes the golden rule, but only for foreign policy, not regarding race relations at home . . . and it turns out he’s revealed himself as racist.

What used to be hidden beneath the mask, especially the mask of “religiousness,” is coming out into awareness in the election process these days more and more, and more and more undeniably. But, most religious and spiritual traditions don’t teach about this truth . . . at least as far as common knowledge reveals: Identifying with our spiritual self cannot safely occur all by itself without our also identifying and resolving the aspects of ourselves that are destructive (even if we don’t act them out). But since this is not taught, most of us don’t know what we’re seeing and experiencing. Most of us don’t realize that we’re witnessing the religious/spiritual mask falling off and the destructive, mean-spirited aspects of people coming out into the open from right under the mask.

It may be coming out blatantly, obviously, and undeniably. And it may be coming out vicariously, or second-hand. Like the people who cheered, “Yeah!” when a candidate was asked if he was saying society should just let an uninsured man die.

Whatever form . . . What lives within us beneath our mask is coming out . . . allowing us to see it, know it, and utilize what we see to help heal it. First in our individual candidates and leaders, by our insisting that they do their own work with their destructiveness before they can run for office and lead us. Second, in our society and our world, by seeing it, naming it, talking about it, and not settling for it. And third, but probably the most important . . . in ourselves. We need to see beneath our own masks, what is destructive and mean-spirited in ourselves, however hidden it may be. We need to commit to and actively work to heal those parts of ourselves, for the sake of the life within us, for the sake of the life immediately around us, and for the sake of the life all over our world.

Related articles:
Wounded Leaders – There’s so much we can Learn and Heal through the Elections
A Gift From Your Soul
Why Do We Have to Do This Over and Over? Exploring the Roots of Prejudice

©Copyright 2012 by Judith Barr, MS, LMHC, therapist in Brookfield, CT. All Rights Reserved.

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