In the face of love, you don’t have to pretend. Whether you’re faking an orgasm or a laugh, putting on a mask keeps you farther from love and your true Self. In this post, you’ll learn how to be your true self around others and feel loved just the way you are 💗
As you take on this week’s challenge and grow your spiritual family, this is a reminder to be authentic to who you are. Remember all the work we’ve done these past few weeks. Find peace in the truth that a place has been made here for you. You belong in this world and your spiritual family awaits.
How to Be Your True Self Around Others
Well, this answer is pretty simple. Remove your “masks” aka everything you pretend to be around others.
I know, easier said than done. Most of us wear masks because it feels safer, so here’s 3 reasons why it’s actually safer without the mask.
3 reasons why it’s safer without the mask
1. No mask means no more living in fear.
The paradox of masks is that, though we put them on to feel safer, they end up separating us from any true sense of safety. Fear delights in masks.
When you choose to live behind a mask, hiding the truth of who you are, you will always live in fear of life without the mask. You’ll be plagued with all the worst case scenarios that your mind can think of. Subsequently, your mind will become overrun with those negativity runaway trains we discussed last week. Though it may feel safer on the surface, masks keep us from the depth of love that is truly available to us.
2. When you pretend to be someone else, people never get to know (or love) the real you.
I love looking for inspiration everywhere, even in pop culture. I’ve shared some reflections on recent Netflix releases To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Dumplin’. Last year, I watched Sierra Burgess is a Loser, as well, and remember feeling so irritated by the main character, Sierra, who literally takes wearing a mask to a whole new level. Trading tutoring lessons for a living, breathing alter ego, she tricks her love interest into falling in love with “her” by having what she believes to be a more beautiful girl pretend to be her.
I believe the audience was meant to feel sympathy for Sierra, but I felt the most sympathy for her crush, Jamey. The poor guy was taken for a trip! I know that my own frustration with Sierra was really a frustration with myself and the ways I’ve acted like Sierra. Just like Sierra, I’ve hid behind identities and personas, never showing the real me, yet expecting people to love the me behind the mask and not the mask.
People fall in love with the mask, not because it’s better or more beautiful, but because that’s what you’ve offered them to love.
If you truly believed that you were divinely created and perfect for this world, destined for love and belonging, how would you be? Would you waste another moment pretending to be anyone else but your delicious self?
3. When you live with authentic presence, you attract people and opportunities that are meant for you.
Like attracts like and when you show up in full authenticity, you attract to you those people and opportunities that are meant for you.
Imagine that the you behind the mask is a bright sparkling light. When you aren’t wearing a mask, you’re like a walking bat signal to the world. People can feel your energy and brilliance. The more you show up unmasked, the more opportunities people have to follow that energetic bat signal until it leads them to you.
However, the moment you put the mask back on, the light dims and scatters. It’s almost like you cease to be. You’re lost and hidden from those people and opportunities that are seeking the real you and not the masked you.
You start to attract all those things that aren’t meant for you because you’ve got the wrong signal burning in the sky.
If you’re ready for to receive your tribe, those amazing people who are meant to fall deeply and madly in love with you – if you’re ready to stop living in fear of rejection – if you’re ready for true authentic love, it’s time to lose the mask.
what are your masks trying to tell you?
I don’t know what masks you’re wearing today. If you’re following along in the homecoming growth guide ((homecoming is no longer available, but there’s lots more to explore on the podcast), you probably discovered, in Week 2, some ways you’ve been limiting yourself spiritually. Or, maybe you’re already aware that you’re afraid of being seen as spiritual, sexual, loud, goofy, not-so-put-together, elegant, educated… basically anything that makes you different from the people around you.
The masks that you’re wearing, whether it’s the good girl mask or the “identities” you’ve allowed to rule your life and life experiences like shyness and introversion – they reveal more than they hide. Your masks are showing you places where you may be feeling shame.
By putting the mask on, we attempt to hide what we don’t want others to see out of shame and/or fear. Next month, I’ll be sharing more on what our lower emotions are trying to tell us, but for now, use this knowledge to gain awareness of any underlying shame you may have around being and expressing your true Self.
Exceptions: When It’s Best to Nurture Yourself in a Cocoon
Note: Now, as I mention in the homecoming growth guide (homecoming is no longer available, but there’s lots more to explore on the podcast), there are moments in our growth process where we’re experimenting and investigating how we want to transform. You’re in your little cocoon figuring out what butterfly you want to be.
This is a sensitive period and I don’t recommend that you invite everyone into that season of releasing and processing. However, there does come a time in the growth process where you become strong enough in your new foundations to come out of that cocoon. A cocoon is no place for a butterfly and it certainly can’t contain a Dragon.
When your cocoon feels heavy and tight, rather than light and expansive, when the time of dreaming has passed and the time for being and authentic presence arises, go freely and confidently into the world. Stand proud in the woman you’ve become. When you do this, you won’t be fazed by any return to old circumstances or people. You’re not tempted to shrink yourself to fit the old mold.
You stand in the truth that you are exactly where you need to be and you are exactly who you need to be. You’re at home with yourself and nothing disrupts your peace or form.
how to be your true self around others
how to remove your mask
But, how do you actually remove the mask and shed that cocoon?
There’s no right or wrong way to come out. Follow your intuition. Maybe you just want to start with a close friend or maybe you feel so bold as to let the entire world know in one grand gesture. What’s important about removing your mask is remembering that the removal isn’t about anyone else. The removal is for you. It’s a message to yourself that you deeply and completely love and accept yourself and there is no reason to hide.
Now, that you’re not hiding anymore, what else is possible? So much freedom comes when you remove your masks. You can finally sink into your true Self and move through this world confident and assured that this is your home. This is your playground. The entire Universe is here for you to play, create, and Be.
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