Wearing Masks

In a recent circle, we saw the power of putting on masks. Sitting there, with attention placed on you, the circle offers an opportunity to consciously put on and take off the various characters we carry around with us.

The Jester. The Cool Guy. The Seductress. The Professional. The Best Friend. The Wounded Victim. The Dominator. On and on.

When we wear these masks, we aren’t being fake, per se. Being fake is when we present something that’s less than true. Instead, when we wear a certain kind of mask, we are embodying something that’s more than true.

What’s more, when we start to engage with these masks with purpose, we can begin to see what amazing resources these masks are.

Our whole lives, we’ve been practicing, honing our skills at taking on various personas. With circling glasses on, we see these as so many masks at our disposal. Each one allowing us to transform and take on certain powers.

This is one of the many fruits of the practice. And, in many ways, it is the technology at the heart of Halloween. But here, we can take a lesson from this celebration. Set aside the clinical frame of shadow work. Let go of the drab theoretical trappings of Jungian psychology or contextual personality. Instead, remember the smell of an Autumn breeze stirring up dead leaves. Hear the laughter of children as they stalk the streets dressed up like goblins. Remember how it felt to be curled up in front of the TV playing a scary movie and how you kept wanting to turn on the light.

Halloween reminds us that this art of conscious mask wearing isn’t all about personal growth. It’s about something much more profound than that: the jolt of a real good scare.

Getting Scary Good at Wearing Masks

We can look at the Circle as a sandbox where we play around with being a certain way. In a setting filled with others, where situations emerge with the same dynamics we find in our everyday lives, we can try on different masks. Do we normally show up as the Good Mother in this situation? What if we put on the Witch, instead?

Trying these on, we get a feel for what we can do. Things that once felt impossible are now right at our fingertips. The same broom we labored with all day cleaning up after others suddenly sweeps us off our feet as we ride out into the night to cackle with all our horrible and wondrous power.

In other words, masks help us discover new depths in our register and can open up entirely new ranges of being.

The trick is to do this in earnest, with integrity. Don’t hold back because “it’s just pretend.” Use the freedom of pretend to be more real than you’ve been in a long, long time.

We aren’t hiding behind the mask. We are calling in a power from within and beyond us. As we do this, our ability to be at choice with what energy and perspective we bring to any situation develops. If we do this enough, then even outside the circle, we can show up more deeply—thanks to our arsenal of masks.

The key here is to acknowledge, even if only to yourself, that you are preparing to put on a mask. Take a moment to do this consciously, shaking off what has come before and opening yourself up to what will come now.

The Tricks and Treats of Wearing a Costume

This lets us engage our life with a sense of play. Playing, as we all well know, can be quite serious. So, we aren’t talking about being frivolous with our lives. We are talking about exploring what’s possible with a sense of curiosity. In the end, we can have a lot of fun.

But there are dangers.

When we start to shift between different masks, what some might call disguises, we can begin to feel the hard certainty of objective reality shifting underneath us.

All of a sudden, we find ourselves wandering in the woods under moonlight. What is really there and what is simply a shadow? And oh, there are so many shadows all around us, aren’t there?

We become lost. If I can simply put on a mask and my reality changes, what is my reality anyway?

And when the doting Good Mother releases her inner Witch, what if she finds she can’t ever quite take the mask off? What if, once she gets the taste of freedom, she never rides the broomstick back down to earth, where there are kids to be fed and bills to be paid?

Once again, Circling brings us into the spooky realms of magic. We get turned upside down and don’t know where to go.

But Circling also gives us the secret key.

Welcome the fear along with the power. Welcome the loss of certainty along with the new freedom of choosing reality. Trust that even if for only one night a year, the witch must ride. And my, my, what a glorious feeling to look up at the moon and howl. Trust that this is as much yours as all the other stuff.

This, too, is as much a part of it as everything else.

Now, you’re playing again. But be warned, there’s plenty more scares awaiting you. (After all, the witch can see beings in the shadows we never noticed before. Have they been here this whole time?)

But that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

The Halloween of It All

At harvest time, we venerate the dead and don the masks of ghouls to revel in our thrilling traipse through the cemetery. Wandering among the tombstones, we are reminded that we are in between worlds, and that we are not alone.

Circling gives us a chance, year-round, to notice the masks we wear, to take them off, and to put on a new one at will. Doing this practice in the spirit of Halloween lets us lose ourselves in the joy here.

As we do this, we work serious witchcraft. It’s enough to give you shivers.

Happy Halloween!

Come try on masks with us at our next circling event! Check out the MeetUp here or use the details below. ***Note that we have moved to a new location!***

Learn More About the Archetypes

The archetypes came up on our most recent episode of The Container podcast. We sat down with none other than Sean Wilkinson to discuss how archetypes can help us raise children and ourselves.