Why Love is Painful

Why Love is Painful

Love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new; with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old; with the new, the mind is utterly useless.

Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing.

The fear of the unknown, and the security of the known, the insecurity of the unknown, the unpredictability of the unknown, makes one very much frightened.

And because the transformation is going to be from the self towards a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you Cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire.

Love is fire.

It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle.

The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows only himself. And how much can he know himself if he has not known the other, because only the other can function as a mirror? You will never know yourself without knowing the other. Love is very fundamental for self-knowledge too. The person who has not known the other in deep love, in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.

Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love.

The reflection that you will find in the other of your own self may be ugly; that is the anxiety. Avoid the mirror. But by avoiding the mirror you are not going to become beautiful. By avoiding the situation you are not going to grow either. The challenge has to be taken.

One has to go into love. That is the first step towards God, and it cannot be bypassed. Those who try to bypass the step of love will never reach God. That is absolutely necessary because you become aware of your totality only when you are provoked by the presence of the other, when your presence is enhanced by the presence of the other, when you are brought out of your narcissistic, closed world under the open sky.

Love is an open sky. To be in love is to be on the wing. But certainly, the unbounded sky creates fear.

And to drop the ego is very painful because we have been taught to cultivate the ego. We think the ego is our only treasure. We have been protecting it, we have been decorating it, we have been continuously polishing it, and when love knocks on the door, all that is needed to fall in love is to put aside the ego; certainly it is painful. It is your whole life’s work, it is all that you have created — this ugly ego, this idea that “I am separate from existence. ”

This idea is ugly because it is untrue. This idea is illusory, but our society exists, is based on this idea that each person is a person, not a presence.

The truth is that there is no person at all in the world; there is only presence. You are not — not as an ego, separate from the whole. You are part of the whole. The whole penetrates you, the whole breathes in you, pulsates in you, the whole is your life.

Love gives you the first experience of being in tune with something that is not your ego. Love gives you the first lesson that you can fall into harmony with someone who has never been part of your ego. If you can be in harmony with a woman, if you can be in harmony with a friend, with a man, if you can be in harmony with your child or with your mother, why can’t you be in harmony with all human beings? And if to be in harmony with a single person gives such joy, what will be the outcome if you are in harmony with all human beings? And if you can be in harmony with all human beings, why can’t you be in harmony with animals and birds and trees? Then one step leads to another.

Love is a ladder. It starts with one person, it ends with the totality. Love is the beginning, God is the end. To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell.

Modern man is living in a dark cell; it is narcissistic. Narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind.

And then there are problems, problems which are meaningless. There are problems which are creative because they lead you to higher awareness. There are problems which lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess.

Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love. But those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through. Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsoever the pain, go into love.

If you don’t go into love, as many people have decided, then you are stuck with yourself. Then your life is not a pilgrimage, then your life is not a river going to the ocean; your life is a stagnant pool, dirty, and soon there will be nothing but dirt and mud. To keep clean, one needs to keep flowing. A river remains clean because it goes on flowing. Flow is the process of remaining continuously virgin.

A lover remains a virgin. All lovers are virgin. The people who don’t love cannot remain virgin; they become dormant, stagnant; they start stinking sooner or later — and sooner than later — because they have nowhere to go. Their life is dead.

That’s where modern man finds himself, and because of this, all kinds of neuroses, all kinds of madnesses, have become rampant. Psychological illness has taken epidemic proportions. It is no more that a few individuals are psychologically ill; the reality is the whole earth has become a madhouse. The whole of humanity is suffering from a kind of neurosis.

And that neurosis is coming from your narcissistic stagnancy. Everyone is stuck with one’s own illusion of having a separate self; then people go mad. And this madness is meaningless, unproductive, uncreative. Or people start committing suicide. Those suicides are also unproductive, uncreative.

You may not commit suicide by taking poison or jumping from a cliff or by shooting yourself, but you can commit a suicide which is a very slow process, and that’s what happens. Very few people commit suicide suddenly. Others have decided for a slow suicide; gradually, slowly, slowly they die. But almost, the tendency to be suicidal has become universal.

This is no way to live, and the reason, the fundamental reason, is we have forgotten the language of love. We are no more courageous enough to go into that adventure called love.

Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don’t get involved. Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other’s original faces.

Love is the greatest Zen koan.

It is painful, but don’t avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a Buddha. And love will give you the first tongue-tip-taste of Tao, of Sufism, of Zen. Love will give you the first proof that God is, that life is not meaningless.

The people who say life is meaningless are the people who have not known love. All that they are saying is that their life has missed love.

Let there be pain, let there be suffering. Go through the dark night, and you will reach to a beautiful sunrise. It is only in the womb of the dark night that the sun evolves. It is only through the dark night that the morning comes.

My whole approach here is that of love. I teach only love and only love and nothing else. You can forget about God; that is just an empty word. You can forget about prayers because they are only rituals imposed by others on you. Love is the natural prayer, not imposed by anybody. You are born with it. Love is the true God — not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis. Love is a tariqa, a method, to kill you as a separate individual and to help you become the infinite. Disappear as a dewdrop and become the ocean, but you will have to pass through the door of love.

And certainly when one starts disappearing like a dewdrop, and one has lived long as a dewdrop, it hurts, because one has been thinking, “I am this, and now this is going. I am dying. ” You are not dying, but only an illusion is dying. You have become identified with the illusion, true, but the illusion is still an illusion. And only when the illusion is gone will you be able to see who you are. And that revelation brings you to the ultimate peak of joy, bliss, celebration.

Source: The Secret, by Osho

The Darkness of Loneliness

The darkness of loneliness cannot be fought directly.

It is something essential for everyone to understand, that there are a few fundamental things which cannot be changed. This is one of the fundamentals: you cannot fight with darkness directly, with loneliness directly, with the fear of isolation directly. The reason is that all these things do not exist; they are simply absences of something, just as darkness is the absence of light.

Now what do you do when you want the room not to be dark? You don’t do anything directly with darkness — or do you? You cannot push it out. There is no possible way to make any arrangement so that the darkness disappears. You have to do something with the light. Now that changes the whole situation; and that’s what I call one of the essentials, fundamentals. You don’t even touch the darkness; you don’t think about it. There is no point; it does not exist, it is simply an absence.

So just bring in light and you will not find darkness at all, because it was the absence of light, simply the absence of light — not something material, with its own being, not something that exists. But simply because light was not there, you got a false feeling of the existence of darkness.

You can go on fighting with this darkness your whole life and you will not succeed, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. You have to work for the light because it is positive, existential; it exists on it own. And once light comes, anything that was its absence automatically disappears.

Loneliness is similar to darkness.

You don’t know your aloneness. You have not experienced your aloneness and its beauty, its tremendous power, its strength. Loneliness and aloneness in the dictionaries are synonymous, but existence does not follow your dictionaries. And nobody has yet tried to make an existential dictionary which will not be contradictory to existence.

Loneliness is absence.

Because you don’t know your aloneness, there is fear. You feel lonely so you want to cling to something, to somebody, to some relationship, just to keep the illusion that you are not lonely. But you know you are — hence the pain. On the one hand you are clinging to something which is not for real, which is just a temporary arrangement — a relationship, a friendship.

And while you are in the relationship you can create a little illusion to forget your loneliness. But this is the problem: although you can forget for a moment your loneliness, just the next moment you suddenly become aware that the relationship or the friendship is nothing permanent. Yesterday you did not know this man or this woman, you were strangers. Today you are friends — who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow you may be strangers again — hence the pain.

The illusion gives a certain solace, but it cannot create the reality so that all fear disappears. It represses the fear, so on the surface you feel good — at least you try to feel good. You pretend to feel good to yourself: how wonderful is the relationship, how wonderful is the man or the woman. But behind the illusion — and the illusion is so thin that you can see behind it — there is pain in the heart, because the heart knows perfectly well that tomorrow things may not be the same…and they are not the same.

Your whole life’s experience supports that things go on changing. Nothing remains stable; you cannot cling to anything in a changing world. You wanted to make your friendship something permanent but your wanting is against the law of change, and that law is not going to make exceptions. It simply goes on doing its own thing. It will change — everything.

Perhaps in the long run you will understand one day that it was good that it did not listen to you, that existence did not bother about you and just went on doing whatever it wanted to do…not according to your desire.

It may take a little time for you to understand. You want this friend to be your friend forever, but tomorrow he turns into an enemy. Or simply — ”You get lost!” and he is no longer with you. Somebody else fills the gap who is a far superior being. Then suddenly you realize it was good that the other one got lost; otherwise you would have been stuck with him. But still the lesson never goes so deep that you stop asking for permanence.

You will start asking for permanence with this man, with this woman: now this should not change. You have not really learned the lesson that change is simply the very fabric of life. You have to understand it and go with it. Don’t create illusions; they are not going to help. And everybody is creating illusions of different kinds.

I used to know one man who said, “I trust only money. I trust nobody else.”

I said, “You are making a very significant statement.”

He said, “Everybody changes. You cannot rely on anybody. And as you get older, only your money is yours. Nobody cares — not even your son, not even your wife. If you have money they all care, they all respect you, because you have money. If you don’t have money you become a beggar.”

His saying that the only thing in the world to trust is money comes out of a long experience of life, of getting cheated again and again by the people he trusted — and he thought they loved him but they were all around him for the money.

“But,” I told him, “at the moment of death money is not going to be with you. You can have an illusion that at least money is with you, but as your breathing stops, money is no longer with you. You have earned something but it will be left on this side; you cannot carry it beyond death. You will fall into a deep loneliness which you have been hiding behind the facade of money.”

There are people who are after power, but the reason is the same: when they are in power so many people are with them, millions of people are under their domination. They are not alone. They are great political and religious leaders. But power changes. One day you have it, another day it is gone, and suddenly the whole illusion disappears. You are lonely as nobody else is, because others are accustomed to being lonely. You are not accustomed…your loneliness hurts you more.

Society has tried to make arrangements so you can forget loneliness. Arranged marriages are just an effort so that you know your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong companion.

But even though a wife will be with you or a husband will be with you for your whole life, that does not mean that love remains the same. In fact, rather than giving you a companion, they give you a burden to carry. You were lonely, already in trouble, and now you have to carry another person who is lonely. And in this life there is no hope, because once love disappears you both are lonely, and both have to tolerate each other. Now it is not a question of being enchanted by each other; at the most you can patiently tolerate each other. Your loneliness has not been changed by the social strategy of marriage.

Religions have tried to make you a member of an organized body of religion so you are always in a crowd. You know that there are six hundred million Catholics; you are not alone, six hundred million Catholics are with you. Jesus Christ is your savior. God is with you. Alone you may have been wrong — doubt may have arisen — but six hundred million people cannot be wrong. A little support…but even that is gone because there are millions who are not Catholics. There are the people who crucified Jesus. There are people who don’t believe in God — and their number is not less than Catholics, it is more than Catholics. And there are other religions with different concepts.

It is difficult for an intelligent person not to doubt. You may have millions of people following a certain belief system, but still you cannot be certain that they are with you, that you are not lonely.

God was a device, but all devices have failed. It was a device…when nothing is there, at least God is with you. He is always everywhere with you. In the dark night of the soul, he is with you — don’t be worried.

It was good for a childish humanity to be deceived by this concept, but you cannot be deceived by this concept. This God who is always everywhere — you don’t see him, you can’t talk to him, you can’t touch him. You don’t have any evidence for his existence — except your desire that he should be there. But your desire is not a proof of anything.

God is only a desire of the childish mind.

Man has come of age, and God has become meaningless. The hypothesis has lost its grip.

What I am trying to say is that every effort that has been directed towards avoiding loneliness has failed, and will fail, because it is against the fundamentals of life. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.

Just the word “lonely” immediately reminds you that it is like a wound: something is needed to fill it. There is a gap and it hurts: something needs to be filled in. The very word “aloneness” does not have the same sense of a wound, of a gap which has to be filled. Aloneness simply means completeness. You are whole; there is no need of anybody else to complete you.

So try to find your innermost center, where you are always alone, have always been alone. In life, in death — wherever you are you will be alone. But it is so full — it is not empty, it is so full and so complete and so overflowing with all the juices of life, with all the beauties and benedictions of existence, that once you have tasted aloneness the pain in the heart will disappear. Instead, a new rhythm of tremendous sweetness, peace, joy, bliss, will be there.

It does not mean that a man who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself, cannot make friends — in fact only he can make friends, because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing. He has so much; he can share.

Friendship can be of two types. One is a friendship in which you are a beggar — you need something from the other to help your loneliness — and the other is also a beggar; he wants the same from you. And naturally two beggars cannot help each other. Soon they will see that their begging from a beggar has doubled or multiplied the need. Instead of one beggar, now there are two. And if, unfortunately, they have children, then there are a whole company of beggars who are asking — and nobody has anything to give.

So everybody is frustrated and angry, and everybody feels he is being cheated, deceived. And in fact nobody is cheating and nobody is deceiving, because what have you got?

The other kind of friendship, the other kind of love, has a totally different quality. It is not of need, it is out of having so much that you want to share. A new kind of joy has come into your being — that of sharing, which you were not ever aware of before. You have always been begging.

When you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life’s change, because it doesn’t matter with whom you share. It can be the same person tomorrow — the same person for your whole life — or it can be different persons. It is not a contract, it is not a marriage; it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give. So whosoever happens to be near you, you give it. And giving is such a joy.

Begging is such a misery. Even if you get something through begging, you will remain miserable. It hurts. It hurts your pride, it hurts your integrity. But sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud, but not more egoistic — more proud that existence has been compassionate to you. It is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon…a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying, but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door.

You are proud of your blissfulness and all that existence has given to you. Fear disappears, darkness disappears, the pain disappears, the desire for the other disappears.

You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging. You were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair….

When you are sharing your joy, you don’t create a prison for anybody. You simply give. You don’t even expect gratitude or thankfulness because you are not giving to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full you have to give.

So if anybody is thankful, you are thankful to the person who has accepted your love, who has accepted your gift. He has unburdened you, he allowed you to shower on him. And the more you share, the more you give, the more you have. So it does not make you a miser, it does not create a new fear that “I may lose it.” In fact the more you lose it, the more fresh waters are flowing in from springs you have not been aware of before.

So I will not tell you to do anything about your loneliness.

Look for your aloneness.

Forget loneliness, forget darkness, forget pain. These are just the absence of aloneness. The experience of aloneness will dispel them instantly. And the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.

You will be surprised that different religions have given different names to the ultimate state of realization. The three religions born outside of India don’t have any name for it because they never went far in the search for oneself. They remained childish, immature, clinging to a God, clinging to prayer, clinging to a savior. You can see what I mean: they are always dependent — somebody else is to save them. They are not mature. Judaism, Christianity, Islam — they are not mature at all and perhaps that is the reason they have influenced the greatest majority in the world, because most of the people in the world are immature. They have a certain affinity.

But the three religions in India have three names for this ultimate state. And I remembered this because of the word aloneness. Jainism has chosen kaivalya, aloneness, as the ultimate state of being. Just as Buddhism chose nirvana, no-selfness, and Hinduism chose moksha, freedom, Jainism chose absolute aloneness. All three words are beautiful. They are three different aspects of the same reality. You can call it liberation, freedom; you can call it aloneness; you can call it selflessness, nothingness — just different indicators towards that ultimate experience for which no name is sufficient.

But always look to see if anything that you are facing as a problem is a negative thing or a positive thing. If it is a negative thing then don’t fight with it; don’t bother about it at all. Just look for the positive of it, and you will be at the right door.

Most of the people in the world miss because they start fighting directly with the negative door.

There is no door; there is only darkness, there is only absence. And the more they fight, the more they find failure, the more they become dejected, pessimistic…and ultimately they start finding that life has no meaning, that it is simply torture. But their mistake is they entered from the wrong door.

So before you face a problem, just look at the problem: is it an absence of something? And all your problems are the absence of something. And once you have found what they are the absence of, then go after the positive. And the moment you find the positive, the light — the darkness is finished.

Source: The Path of the Mystic, by Osho

The way of Life can be free and beautiful.

I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish. Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” – not one man, nor a group of men but in all men – in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting – the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings – and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the light of hope – into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Source: “Look up, Hannah Speech,” from The Great Dictator (film), by Charlie Chaplin

What is this magic word?

You will be surprised to know that there is one particular word which can be used to easily persuade others in complying with your request. What is this magic word? Because.

Indeed, research on the psychology of influence has revealed the strong persuasive power of the word ‘because’. Perhaps the most famous experiment that demonstrated this is the one conducted by social psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleagues (Langer, Blank & Chanowitz, 1987).

We all know that if we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. Langer and her colleagues set out to demonstrate this in her experiment. They asked people waiting in line to use a library copying machine if they can get ahead in line.

The first request given was “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”. The effectiveness of this request coupled with a reason was almost completely successful: 94% of those asked complied to the request.

However, when in a second variation she made the request only: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” In response to this question, only 60% of those asked complied. At first thought, it looked as if the addition of the words because I’m in a rush – that is a reason presented – was what made the difference between the two requests.

However, a third variation of the request was made by the experimenters that showed that this was not so. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word because and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance. 

It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, because, that made the difference.

The results of this experiment show that People simply like to have reasons for what they do (Bastardi & Shaffi, 2000). Moreover, they show that we are desperate to understand why things happen and to make sense of whatever reason we are given, even when there is no reason worth making sense of.

Do you realise that everybody’s got some motivation for being who they let you think they are?

Do you realise that everybody’s got some motivation for being who they let you think they are? In fact, most of the people you’ve met aren’t really who they say they are. Sure, their names are correct 90% of the time, but the character they show you is just a facade. The very identity that we’ve come to know for most people is a manufactured avatar of the real person. Human beings haven’t really evolved as people. They’ve just developed more inventive masks to hide the true animals inside. As a result, almost everything that most people do is geared towards some level of misdirection.

It is designed to hide that which sits beneath – the real animal they are often too ashamed for others to see. If that true person were to come out for everyone to see, the mask will bring that large majority of us to shame. Unfortunately for these people, I like many others, have learned how to see right through these masks. In this post, I’m going to show you what each mask is designed to hide.

Everyone you know is a hypocrite to some degree. The masks that most people wear were are usually the polar opposite of the personality they’re trying to hide. It is a form of misdirection, intended to allow that individual to blend seamlessly into their environment. Masks are really a psychological defence mechanism designed for the sole purpose of easing the task of survival. People wear masks to be accepted, loved or ignored. Masks give them the cover necessary to facilitate acceptance by society. Being rejected by society can have very serious implications, ranging the full gamut from scorn to exile and even in some cases, death.

But we’ve become so dependent on masks, that we often use them to hide our true colours even when we don’t really need to. With that said, I’ve compiled a pretty extensive list of the true motivations of the many types of people you’ve probably met. Check this list and I bet you can place almost every one of them to somebody that you know:

❇ 1. The Obnoxious

Easily identified by their boorish propensity to talk first, think later. These people rarely have anything to hide aside from their gross insecurity. They [erroneously] think that the louder they speak (or the more obnoxious they behave) the less likely you will be able to see how lonely, defeated and insecure they really are. The loudest people are usually the weakest. It is similar to how some creatures in the animal kingdom (like certain species of lizards and birds) slightly alter their physiology to scare off potential predators. Obnoxious people are cowards. Call their bluff and use it against them.

❇ 2. The Pretty Dunce

People who are very physically comely use that facet of their being for everything that they do. Since they notice from an early age that their looks gets positive results 80% of the time, they tend to not develop any other characteristics of their personality and thus come off as either air headed (in the case of girls) or hopelessly arrogant (boys). The first time they’re turned down will come as a crushing blow to these people, because they’re not used to hearing the word “no”. When you meet these people, use it as an opportunity to practice saying “no”. You’ll make a man/woman out of them yet.

❇ 3. The Pious

These people are hiding two things: 1. The fact that they often have the most sins to hide and 2. The fact that they aren’t really very bright (even though they will articulate in a way which would insinuate this). These people think that everything is either black or white. They believe that right and wrong are very simple terms to define and live by. However, these people are usually the least intelligent of most crowds, because they use the mysticism of religion to hide the fact that they are actually quite clueless. This is easy for them to do because religion doesn’t follow any strict rules of logic, and as such can be twisted, spun and reinterpreted anyway they choose. They become fine studies in religious text and wear it like badge because they’re trying to over compensate for that really naughty thing they did a few years back. Throw as many tough questions at them as you can when you meet them. Seeing them squirm when they realise that the ‘rules’ don’t cover everything is priceless.

❇ 4. The Legalistic

People who always use rules to seed a discussion or to defend themselves are completely incapable of independent thought. These people are afraid of people who are smarter than them and are usually threatened by genius. This is because genius challenges them to think “outside of the box” – which goes outside of their comfort zone. You’ll find a lot of pious people who fit this bill. Being as dumb as a doorbell means that they’ll have to rely on other smarter people to make up rules for them to follow. Without rules, they are hopeless. These are people who feel more comfortable following than leading. They like to be told what to do and what to think. Therefore, lead the way.

❇ 5. The Drama Queen / King

People who love to overreact are the most deceptive mask wearers of all. These people could become professional actors if they liked. In fact, many professional actors and actresses are drama drones by default – which is why they don’t need to act when in character in a new movie or play. They are particularly dangerous because they can summon emotions on cue. While most of these people are women, there are a few men that also fit the bill. Dramaphiles use their antics as a cry for attention – largely because they love being the centre of it. People overreact when they want others to take them more seriously than is necessary. Ignoring them is the greatest insult. Use it wantonly and indiscriminately.

❇ 6. The ‘Closet Freak’

There are two kinds of shy people: 1. Those that are really, genuinely shy and 2. Those for whom ‘shyness’ is provisional. The second lot wear their shyness as a mask to hide the fact that they are closet freaks. They have the capacity to be the most boorish, obnoxious, wild animals – especially in the bedroom, but they don’t want just anyone to know. Pretentious shyness helps them hide the fact that there is nothing too taboo for them. The ‘shy’ facade helps them to filter out those who would accept the fact that they are hiding an innate desire to be a dirty whore that likes to get it rough, handcuffed, whipped and treated like a filthy skank. Apply alcohol unsparingly. Shyness disappears after one drink. Repeat as necessary.

❇ 7. The Caustic

People who are constantly cynical, vitriolic or consistently use strong, caustic language in their analyses about everything are actually very lonely, unhappy people. To mask this fact, they verbally take away the emotional value of everything so that others around them can feel just as bland about life as they are. By bleeding the colour out of life so that everyone else sees it in monochrome like they do, they achieve a mild sense of comfort in knowing that there are others around like them. Ignore them when they mouth off. Never give let them believe that what they have to say is important.

❇ 8. The Passive-Aggressive

These are people who are so anal, that when they want to communicate your violation of one of their insignificant little pet peeves, they prefer to leave you little notes here and there to express their dissatisfaction. When they’re not leaving you little notes, they’ll send you an e-mail. The bottom line is that these people try to avoid in person confrontation as much as possible. This is because they’re  actually cowards who want to fight, but have neither the will nor the strength to do so. They scare easily. As such, they pursue other evasive methods of warfare (hence, “passive-aggressive”) all while being politically correct and painfully polite. They are relying on the fact that you supposedly respect their bounds enough not to become confrontational. Take that power away from them by doing just that. Confront them. Better yet, if you want to have fun with them will driving them up the wall, return the favour. Trading notes or e-mails can prove to be pretty fun. It actually gives you time to think about what to say before you jot it down. If they call you childish, just remind them who started it. Make them realise that you’re openly stripping them of their power. It will drive them mad.

❇ 9. The Wannabe

These people are the easiest to spot. They are always on auto-detect around those whom they worship. They are the white rappers without street cred, the barbie doll knockoffs purging to become super models when they don’t have the genes for it, the pretentious kid who is always seen walking around with the school bully constantly repeating he/she says, the yes person in the office always brown-nosing the boss and trying too hard to impress, the black girl wearing fake hair to look white,  or even you trying so hard to fit in as the new kid on the block, that you sacrifice some aspect of your individuality. That’s exactly the problem with wannabes: They have no sense of self worth. They define themselves in the eyes of others. They are only loyal to those whom they perceive as a valuable source of upliftment – so their loyalty is conditional. Their behaviour is a very loud declaration of insecurity. Calling a wannabe a ‘wannabe‘ is the easiest way to hit them hard where it hurts. But why stop there? You can break up a bully and his lap dog by turning them against each other. Let the lapdog wannabe know what the bully/boss really thinks about them. Sow seeds of doubt. Lapdogs know very little about loyalty, and will eventually jump ship once the friendship goes sour. It’s also quite fun to watch a lapdog’s boss turn on them when their friendship goes out in a blaze of glory. This tactic works on all wannabes, from the schoolyard to the office. Use it wantonly and indiscriminately.

❇ 10. The Restless Comedian

As strange as it may sound, people who love to make others laugh (especially at the expense of those nearby) are only trying to re-direct attention away from their own insecurities – however insignificant. They hope that by being funny, they’ll keep everyone else’s mind so busy that it reduces the odds that those flaws (perceived or otherwise) will go unnoticed. Sometimes it’s just that they feel nervous or uncomfortable. At the back of their mind, they reason that if they get everyone laughing, it would be a perfect ice breaker. This becomes particularly conspicuous when they go overboard with this tactic when the situation is one that doesn’t call for humor. These people are relatively harmless. Befriend them and give them self confidence. They’ll make you look good in the end. For those who use their humor to hurt others, turn the focus on them. Keeping the attention centred on them will kill their self confidence. They will implode under the weight of their own self doubt shortly afterwards. Since comedy is a right brain “fuzzy logic” operation, it’s easy to kill their mojo when you make fun of them for a change.

❇ 11. The ‘Gurus’

People who appear to be “know-it-alls” are for the most part just attention seeking con artists. They just happen to know a lot of trivia about many unrelated facts – but rarely any information that is of any useful value. They flaunt their expert trivia around to gain the respect of their peers. This usually works because these peers tend to be people who don’t read much themselves. These people are the one eyed men living in the land of the blind. Gurus use this to take advantage of people in debates. Since they’re good at spewing a lot of trivia, they tend to take this a step further by pulling ideas “out of their ass” – i.e. making stuff up on the spot. They don’t fear being found out because, again, their audience is one that rarely does any research on its own. Gurus are really annoying, because they’re constantly conning people in order to score “respect” points - that is until someone is smart enough to call their bluff. That’s when the real coward comes out.  The only weapon they have is self confidence in their own B.S. So keep calling their bluff. You don’t have to prove that you know otherwise. Their own shame and guilt will crush them once they’re called a liar.

❇ 12. The Boastful

People who like to brag are actually very, VERY insecure. They’re usually so used to bragging that there comes a time in their life when it becomes second nature. Most of the bragging is false – it is a lie meant to cover up those parts of their life which are gaping failures that they’re terribly ashamed of. Boastful people are actually quite pitiful. There’s no end to what tall tales you’ll hear them come up with next. If you want to have fun with them, call their bluff in the open. Make an open declaration that you know they’re lying and you don’t need to prove it. The look on their face that comes next is the proof in the pudding. Watching them squirm as they change their story however, is priceless.

❇ 13. The Intellectual

Intellectuals are actually very shy people hiding behind their smarts. Like the Restless Comedian, an intellectual will often draw on their genuine expertise in a certain area of thought to break ice during conversations or to elicit awe from people around them at parties just so as to make them feel more comfortable. Intellectuals tend to be terribly fearful of failure. As such, they’re not risk takers by nature and often find themselves hoping to be on the receiving end of a romantic rendezvous instead of playing the role of initiator. The same treatment applies here as the restless comic – especially if the intellectual is dishonest. Sometimes these people like to ask open ended rhetorical questions in an effort to confuse their opponent in a heated debate. Just remind them that asking a question they’re not willing to answer themselves makes the whole point of asking the question pointless. It’s nothing more than a shallow shock and awe tactic that’s meant to bring the discussion to a close so that they can get away with intellectual dishonesty. Don’t let it happen.

❇ 14. The Bureaucratic

People who like to overcomplicate issues are actually very unimportant people who are trying to seek a sense of self worth by creating red tape where none needs to be. Bureaucratic people are insecure about their accomplishments in life. This is because deep down they know that its relevance is very minute and may become threatened by change. Bureaucrats often think that value is directly proportional to size or complexity – which is the quintessential fallacy that governs their rather annoying behaviour. Bureaucrats are a lot like the legalistic, with the only difference being that they are more inclined to padding the truth as a result of petty jealousy. Call them on it or call their superior. If they have no superior, walk around them. They, like the passive aggressive, only claim their power in the respect they expect you to give them. Show them none, and they are powerless.

❇ 15. The Judicious

There are those which like to sum you up by determining only a few bits of information about you or your motivations. The only thing humorous about these morons is their duplicitous propensity for befriending you once you’ve categorically proven them wrong from the outset. They are subscribers to the ideology that the best defence is a good offence. They fail to realise however, that you can’t make an offence when you don’t know your target. Sun Tzu writes: “If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles“. The judicious only know themselves. Use that to your advantage. The embarrassment that sets in once you prove them wrong leaves them wide open after a proper rebuttal. So be still young one. Only the cowardly strike blindly in the dark and expose themselves. Let them talk first. That’s all the armament you need to take them down. Hang them by their own words and walk away from the carnage. Most times, their embarrassment is enough to bring them down. If you want to accept their apology + friendship, that’s your call. Sun Tzu also writes: “Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer“. That way you will never be surprised by those who intend to do you harm.

❇16. The Politically Correct

People who invent new nonsense expressions to “neutralise” the effect of the spoken word are actually very dangerous manipulators. In fact, anyone who is overly and unnecessarily diplomatic is only saying “nice doggie” until they can find a rock. Diplomacy (aka Lip service) is designed specifically to woo the attention of the hearer and to pacify the enemy in order to achieve ulteriour motives. For example; The United States calls Black People “African Americans” because they know that without them, ESPN would have nothing to air on tv and the volatile tempered black folk in America would tear the country apart at the slightest hint of a racial infraction. Think about it.

❇ 17. Gentlemen

Ladies, every man wants to score. Whether we are just your friends or more than that, every one of us would like the opportunity to get to third base – with all of you. We pretend to not objectify you because we want to score. We pretend to like you even when we don’t because we want to score. We laugh at your corny jokes because we want to score. In fact, we let you cry on our shoulders, win arguments, buy you expensive gifts, say we love you and even admit to being wrong when we know we aren’t, all for the same reason; we want to score! Plus, we want to score with as MANY of you ladies as is humanly possible – whether or not we’re married. In fact, it is unnatural for any one man to desire only one woman. That is a learned propensity not found in our genetic code. We were taught monogamy by our society for the purposes of sustainable social development on an over populated planet. Therefore, every man wears a mask of self control. Everyone of us. We act like gentlemen because that’s what we’re told.

However, if it were still 2 million B.C., maan…it would be SO on. Where my club at?

❇ 18. Ladies

Women are generally such really nice people. In fact, they’re so nice by default, that when they break down and get mad, most people are inclined to mutter to themselves under their breath: “bitch“. This is so unfair! Because here’s some news for ya: EVERY WOMAN HAS A BITCH STREAK. Yes that’s right. Every woman has the potential to become a full on, cold hearted, obnoxious, take no prisoners, shoot first, never ask questions, mother loving bitch – even the nicest most pleasant women you’ve met. Even if they don’t act that way most of the times, every woman becomes a bitch at least once every 28 days. A woman’s bitch mode is actually necessary for survival in a male dominated world. It is a pretty potent defence mechanism – much like the deadly venom from the otherwise frail Austrailian brown snake. However, those who wear the bitch gene on their sleeves are just desperate for attention and should be categorically ignored. Most women are right brained and as such are more emotionally driven than men. Their hormones can seriously exacerbate that situation. When a woman becomes Ms. Bitch, shut up. You could be endangering your scoring privileges (see above point!). Sometimes a woman needs to vent. It doesn’t matter what she’s saying when she’s venting. That’s just the hormones talking. Just agree with her until she expends all the negative energy. If you play your cards right, you’ll be back in good graces before you know it.

❇ 19. ‘Successful’ Corporate People

Don’t let the suit + SUV + huge house fool you. With the exception of the suit, these people don’t own anything else. The Bank owns everything they have. They’re using their fat pay checks to pay off the loans for everything – which means that their net salary each month after paying the monthly installments for their expensive lifestyles is quite probably a fraction of YOUR take home pay. Most of them are eye-deep in debt. Their expensive ware is just for profiling and to make you feel intimidated or inadequate by theirstandards. Sometimes they do it to belong to a club of high rollers in their organisation – even though their salaries are barely capable of maintaining that appearance.

❇ 20. Your Friends

Every one of your friends befriended you because of something you can do for them. You should know that friendship is transactional – meaning that there is some kind of symbiotic relationship in motion. The instant your intrinsic value diminishes, the friendship ends. Even those friends that stick by you in hard times – they’re either doing it because of how you make them feel or because you have something that they want. Search your feelings padawan. You will know this to be true. Nobody does anything for free. There’s always a trade going on in there somewhere…

Conclusion

Now that you realise that everyone you know is putting up a facade of pretence, it’s time that you determine who you really are. Yes you! Your facade speaks to whatever it is that you’re trying to hide. Which one of these 20 descriptions could be you? If you think you don’t belong in any single category, then you probably belong to more than one.  When you understand the nature of your own representative that you set to meet new people, then you will understand the nature of your fear. When you understand the nature of your fear, then you can understand how to overcome it. Once you do, the minds of the human race are your footstool and you are the king of the world.

Source: “The Masks We Wear,” from xenlogic.wordpress.com