www.patriciapearce.com/podcast
What was the costume, or false identity, you were given, and what it would mean for you to shed it as the trees shed their leaves in the autumn to reveal their essence? This is what we explore in this week’s episode.
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Transcript
Hello Evolutionaries, and welcome to this week’s podcast episode. This is the season of Halloween, of The Day of the Dead, of All Soul’s Day and All Saints Day. It is a time of year where nature itself seems to place us in this “thin space” where the barrier, the membrane between the worlds of form and the world of non-form, or non-visible, seems to be very thin and very permeable.
We observe this season in nature as we see the leaves here in the Northern Hemisphere turning and the trees beginning to drop their leaves. It is a season of letting go, of letting go of what has been and opening up to the winter time to come—a season of hibernation and turning inward. And, of course, at this time of year there are also the trick or treater’s who will be arriving on our doorstep in a couple of days. The young children showing up on our doorstep will be dressed up in all kinds of costumes. I always enjoy seeing them. I always enjoy the experience of seeing all the excited children showing up and ringing our doorbell and asking for their treat.
What I would like to focus on in this podcast is bringing these two things together, things that happen in the same season—the trees dropping their leaves, and the children running around in their Halloween costumes.
If we really tune in to this time of year, we can deeply sense how nature is showing us what it means to let go, to let go of what has been. And as we talk about in this podcast, as evolutionary activists, we are letting go of some things that we have held to be true. We are letting go of egoic beliefs. We’re letting go of ways of being in the world and seeing the world that are based in these egoic ideas of judgment and contrast and separation and all of that.
So we are in the process of letting go of a way of being that has run its course. And we are opening up to what is really a mystery, to the mystery of the true Self that is obscured from our awareness when we are inhabiting and acting out of that egoic mind.
So this is a time and a process where we do this letting go, in order to discover what is beneath. It is like we see in the trees when they let go of their leaves. When they let go, we discover what is beneath, we see the essence of the tree that becomes visible when the leaves have been let go. And now, let’s look at the Halloween costumes.
We come into this world essentially having an inherited costume, one that we’re given, an identity that we are given, which can be the product of family of origin, or it can be the product of a culture, or it can be the product of religious beliefs, but we are given a costume when we come into the world. And we don that costume and we wear that costume and we play that role in the world.
Often times, usually, in fact for most of our lives, we most likely mistake our true identity for the costume that we’re wearing, or the role that we are playing in the world. As I have experienced this spiritual life and the process of really opening up to the true Self, it is a process of becoming aware of how we are holding on to an identity of a false self. We are wearing a costume that is not truly who we are, and we relate to one another based on the costumes that we are wearing.
Furthermore, we make assumptions about one another based on the costumes that we’re wearing, which are based on the roles that we’re playing, which are based on the identities that we have assumed to be who we are.
But as evolutionary activists, we take it upon ourselves to become aware of the ways in which we are holding on to an identity that is not truly who we are. We become mindful of the way we wear a costume that is not the essence of who we are. Up until now, and for quite a long time, the costume that has predominantly been played out in the world of form is the egoic costume—a costume that most of us wear. We play the role given to us by that ego script, and we can live our entire lives that way—completely oblivious to the fact that we are wearing a costume, completely oblivious that we are wearing an identity that is not who we are.
So in this season of Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, in this season where nature herself is showing us what it means to let go, I sincerely invite you to consider, “What is the costume that you’ve been wearing?” “What is the identity that was handed you, what is your hand-me-down costume, if you will?” What was that costume that you were given and that you’ve been wearing, even perhaps mistaking it for who you truly are.
And what would it mean for you—just as the trees do this time of year—to let that go, to shed that costume, to shed that identity, and to allow the true and essential Self to be known to you and to be embodied in you, in this world?
So I leave you with that question. I encourage you to really consider it and to open yourself up to the mystery and the beauty that is yours when you release that which is not truly who you are.
And until next week I bid you peace.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
costume, halloween costumes, leaves, wearing, identity, season, evolutionary, letting, doorstep, trees, world, activists, true, mystery, process, membrane, year, lives, egoic, podcast
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