Pangaea

Individuals have a mask of another self (called their anti-self) which they can utilise to hide their inner feelings and to protect and promote their real personality.

There is a relationship between discipline and the theatrical sense. If we cannot imagine ourselves as different from what we are and try to assume that second self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves, though we may accept one from others. Active virtue as distinguished from the passive acceptance of a current code is therefore theatical, conciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask. It is the condition of ardous full life. One constantly notices in very active natures a tendency to pose, or a preoccupation with the effect they are producing if the pose has become a second self.

All happiness depends on having the energy to assume the mask of some other self, that all joyous or creative life is a rebirth as something not oneself, something created in a moment and perpetually renewed in playing a game like that of a child where one loses the infinite pain of self-realization, a grotesque or solemn painted face put on that one may hide from the terrors of judgement, an imaginative Saturnalia of the world are but the world's flight from an infinite blinding beam.

At its simplest the mask is the social self, behind which we face both the world and the beloved.

The mask includes all the differences between one's own and other people' conception of one's personality. To be conscious of the discrepancy which makes a mask of this sort is to look at oneself as if one were somebody else. In addition, the mask is defensive armour: we wear it, like the light lover, to keep from being hurt. So protected, we are only slightly involved no matter what happens. This theory seems to assume that we can be detached from experience like actors from a play. Finally, the mask is a weapon of attack; we put it on to keep up an noble conception of ourselves; it is a heroic ideal which we try to live up to.

Delphinus lv55 I/L Wiz ign: Aleznia