Presence is your power

Well, we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out
And show ourselves when everyone has gone
Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of a stranger
But we'd love to try them on.

-Billy Joel

I love this song and its imagery. Here he speaks about trying on different faces when we are alone. But don’t we all try on different faces over the course of a day?

We can call these faces our personas or our roles in life. We have one face who is "mother," another who is "wife," and even more who are "teacher," “business owner," "friend," "daughter," "sister." Even “girl” and “boy” become masks.

I wore masks for a good portion of my adulthood. I didn’t know they were masks. At least, I didn’t think about it like that. On a subconscious level, I put forth a persona of what I thought was appropriate for a particular situation.

When I did that in my professional life, my jobs always felt a wrong fit for me and so they were not satisfying.

When I did that in my romantic life, my relationships lacked the authenticity needed to cultivate true intimacy.

When I did that with my friendships, I ended up feeling lonely.

Putting forth a “persona” is part of our cultural conditioning. A good part of waking up is shaking off our conditioning and seeing what is underneath.

Who are we when we put down the faces and masks that we project out into the world?

Sometimes we don’t know and that not knowing is scary.

Sometimes we don’t like what we see under our masks (which is why we have the masks in the first place). Coming face to face with what we dislike about ourselves is uncomfortable work.

Can we be the same no matter what face we are projecting? Can we remove the masks and be our authentic, vulnerable selves ALL THE TIME?

This uncomfortable work involves the peeling away of mask after mask after mask to get to our Essence: the lightness of being underneath all the layers of conditioning,

What happens to us then?

When we get over the discomfort of being so exposed we discover what it feels like to become truly present and powerful in our lives.

This process of laying down our masks is slow. But there are times where the cosmos supports this effort. Now is one of those times.

This February Supermoon exposed the masks that are ready to go. The waning of this moon is a phenomenal time to begin the process of letting them go.