--Walt Whitman
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"Do you know that the word 'person' means 'mask'? The 'persona' is the mask worn by actors in Greco-Roman drama....
So How to be a real person equals How to be a genuine fake."
--Alan Watts
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"We cannot discover, uncover or recover our true self because it’s not covered, it’s nonexistent."
--Jed McKenna
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This week someone told me about a spiritual teacher who is claiming that the current “them” on recent video display is the “real” them. As in, that prancing goof playing on newer videos is this person’s finally discovered, finally unleashed, “true self.”
I guess the previously non-prancing, serious person with the same name was a fake self. Happily, this teacher corrected this error and now feels free to connect with and show off to the world, their real-them inner clown.
I admit this left me with questions.
Such as... where did this teacher’s previous self go, once it was dethroned- Bermuda? Where do once-real-but-now-aren’t selves go to die?
And, is their old self gone forever?
And, is this new, gamboling character the entirety of what this person is? I mean, now that the rightful them has emerged, if a family member dies or some other misfortune occurs, will this person still blithely romp around?
After all, True is true at all times. True is not variable.
And, how do they know this latest character is the legitimate one, and that this latest true self won’t be replaced by yet another, different, true self at a future time?
And, maybe most curiously, when did a bunch of behaviors- for example, temporarily sashaying around in front of a camera- become a self?
As I said, questions.
Now before you flood me with emails, let me say that of course I know what this teacher means.
It’s just that it’s… silly.
Because really, notice how anyone, including you, “knows” that one behavior is authentic and another one is fake.
That knowing is based on thought. Simply a thought. Just another thought.
A thought which brings along with it a feeling, whether liked or disliked. That feeling is said to confirm, to prove, the thought.
Thought says, “This right here is the real you! And this feeling proves it!” And everyone says, “Yes!”
This is the entire basis for notions of “authenticity” and “who you are as a person.”
On such untrustworthy sources, you "know" who and what you are.
Until tomorrow, when, in a new context, an entirely different Real You shows up.
Because of course, these self-things fluctuate, varying wildly based on context, situation, preference, conditioning.
Yet here is everyone trying to figure out which of those variances is the rightful one.
Meanwhile, one might wonder what even cares so dang much about this. What so wants to determine which of the many presentations of Self pulled out of the bag, is the genuine one?
As if it matters in the slightest.
Since nothing real has any need to define itself.
Only something pretending, or with something to hide, needs to constantly, continuously, make a presentation, a show, of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
And then calling it the One True Rabbit.
Ta-daaaa!
So perhaps this confusion comes from the idea that there is a true self at all.
Because really look, and all you can find are temporary, changeable roles.
Play-acts, images, presentations.
“Acting like” oneself. Not being one’s actual self. Acting like it.
Which is pretend. The opposite of true.
No point in being authentic about a fake self.
And since all the facets of the Me are pretend, neither being yourself or not being yourself is ever actually an option.
Since no role is a real person, and no role is the real you.
All portrayals, in any variation, can only be pretend.
So you’re already as genuinely, legitimately, authentic as any rabbit in any hat can ever hope to be.
Leaving you with all the fun of being
all the rabbits
in all the hats.
For real.
