He who knows that he is Spirit, becomes Spirit, becomes everything; neither gods nor men can prevent him…. The gods dislike people who get this knowledge…. the gods love the obscure and hate the obvious
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
I think that one little paragraph it is telling us everything , of what we are capable of as we understand ourselves as spiritual beings living a human experience . In this chapter he takes into what I consider a very deep discussion of the reality of our begins as humans.
He starts by referencing to the snake of time that he spoke about in the previous chapter, as these two emerge we have two conflicting stories that emerge as the concept of the “I’ or the self emerges. In one story we see ourselves as part of one mind distinct and separate from others . In the other story we play more a secondary role in what he describes as that we get caught up in the web of our feelings and create what he calls the ” dream mask” . These dream masks show up in our ” out there “reality. The beauty of all that he is presenting here is that once we realize this process we are given the opportunity to change or, I love that he used the word purify the face you put as “out there ” by changing the face you wear ” in here”. So once again he is reminding us here how creating our destiny is totally within our control.
All of us as we are in this journey I think are striving to become the best version of ourselves and to better humanity as a whole. But as he reminds us we must be willing to give up our personas or the old personality , take off our masks of the ego. Taking off the mask means facing your soul. The face we had before we were born. Think about this for a moment that would mean the face before we were born is the one that is in touch with pure energy , where there is no disconnectedness or separation where no illusions exist.
So the challenge then becomes maintaining our perspective where it needs to be as we realize that our observations bring the world into existence through the observer effect, there is no reality until that reality is perceived, and it give us the opportunity to change both it and ourselves. This is so exciting because to me in the field of self improvement and change there is nothing more powerful than the material he presents here and the science to back it up that definitely shows how we are co creators in our realities and what we want this world to be. What is “out there ” depends on what we choose to look for.
Join me, take that leap … Take the mask off.
Maria Jacques