The Masks Will Fall Off

"Those that that are trying to control you will become very apparent."

If you had a significant other that told you when you could or couldn’t leave the house, what you could wear or not wear, who or how many people you could hang out with, what information you can read or not read, how or what you’re supposed to believe, or if you could go to work to support yourself or not, I would tell you that is an unhealthy relationship or dynamic within the relationship. Controlling or attempting to control others is not a healthy behavior to engage in nor is it healthy to endure controlling behavior from others, regardless of the reason or alleged reason behind the controlling behavior.

If you really pay attention, those trying to control you will make themselves known. Whether they are attempting to control you to satisfy their own agenda or whether they genuinely care for you but have wounds, traumas, and fears of their own that lead them to want (or subconsciously be inclined) to control others is for you to use your discernment and intuition to decide. There can sometimes be a problem making this distinction as those with more malicious intentions and agendas for you will often use deception and deceptive practices to present themselves as something they are not and to make you believe they have your best interests at heart when they do not. One way to help discern this is observing people’s actions. People can say anything but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Look at their actions. Do their actions align with their words and what they state their intentions to be? A person can claim to care about you, love you, or want the best for you but if they are intentionally trying to control or manipulate you, there is a decent chance they have a selfish agenda. Control is a behavior that stems from ego, not from love. Healthy love is unconditional and not controlling. That is a topic I will touch more on in an upcoming post, however. For the rest of this post I will be focusing more on those who are intentionally and maliciously controlling people, whether blatantly or veiled in the deception that they have good intentions.

There are quite a few different ways that controlling behavior can present itself: emotional manipulation (“if you don’t do this, then I will do this” or “if you don’t believe this way then that means you believe this” etc.), shaming, guilt tripping, belittling, silencing others who believe differently, trying to forcibly change others, threats (physical or otherwise), giving the silent treatment, playing the victim, using someone’s fears against them, bullying, provoking, mind games, trying to force you to maintain a certain image, or developing/manufacturing a level of neediness to make someone feel entrapped. These are some examples, it may not be an exhaustive list.

Unfortunately, the best manipulators know how to employ these and other tactics to take advantage of people and control them for their own selfish purposes and often do so with little regard to any damage or pain they cause others. If you’re dealing with a true narcissist, they’ll likely also be very good at somehow making everything your fault, accusing you of engaging in the behavior they are actually guilty of, not taking accountability for any of their actions, and putting on a mask or facade for others to conceal their true nature, sometimes even to the extent of turning your friends and family (or society) against you by playing the victim or making you look like you’re the crazy one if you dare to expose them and stand up to them. They can also be very good at turning on the charm to get what they want but once you catch on to them, they have no problem employing any of the aforementioned tactics to try to keep control of the situation and you. But as the saying goes, “three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Eventually the masks will fall off and the truth will come out. Becoming aware of the controlling behavior (and any potential nefarious agendas behind it) and recognizing it is not healthy is the first step to freeing yourself and taking your power back.

"Sometimes it's not the people that change, it's the mask that falls off."

Given the current world happenings, this issue of control has really been brought to the forefront of consciousness so this seems to be a good time to really examine our relationships with others but also with institutions in our lives such as government, religion, social media , technology, societal traditions, and so on. It is not just those in your own personal sphere and immediate environment that may try to control you and if you agree that a controlling significant other like I described above is unhealthy and you wouldn’t allow that behavior in a personal relationship, why would you allow it from an institution like government, religion, or society as a collective?

There are beings in all of these institutions (often at the top most levels) that have their own negative agendas for the world. This is much bigger than just political party versus political party relegated to a single country in the world; this is a global network of entities with malicious intentions that have infiltrated all influential institutions in our lives and used them to manipulate the masses for thousands of years. They often employ many of the tactics I listed above but on a much grander scale that affect people globally as they have larger tools and structures such as governments, social media, mainstream media, arts and entertainment to name a few, that they use to implement them. It is psychological and spiritual warfare. Much like a narcissist who will try to turn your family and friends against you for exposing them, the fastest way these beings shutdown those who dare expose them is to write them off as crazy or a “conspiracy theorist.” If there are manipulative individuals that we encounter in our personal lives why is it so difficult or crazy to believe that there are manipulative people in and in charge of many of these larger institutions and that they would use these institutions to serve their own agendas? Thinking for yourself is not a conspiracy theory. Pointing out deception and manipulation in larger institutions and systems is not a conspiracy theory.

"If you want to control someone, all you have to do is make them feel afraid. Fear leads to panic and panic leads to hell." --Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Arguably the most influential tool in their arsenal to control people today is the mainstream “news” media. For the most part, true journalism on a mainstream level is dead. What we have today is propaganda. They do not sell objective news anymore. They sell fear, hatred, division, and identity politics with a healthy dose of mindless low-vibe distractions (the circuses portion of the proverbial “bread and circuses.”). They often write biased and emotion inducing headlines knowing that many people will just read the headline and not the entire article or that people will then be emotional reading the article and more likely to react in anger or fear. Half of them don't even attempt to write or from an objective unbiased standpoint. The next mainstream news article or segment you see on TV or social media, take a step back and ask yourself if they are trying to illicit fear, anger, sadness, or division. If it’s triggering any of these emotions in you, there’s a good chance they are trying to control you (and the masses). They use misleading photos or edited out of context video clips (sometimes they’ve even been caught reusing old footage claiming it is current) to sell their preferred narrative and influence people’s opinions and beliefs. I’d say fear, anger, and guilt are the primary emotions that the mainstream media appeal to most. They are well aware that when people are afraid or highly emotional they are less likely to respond from love and more likely to respond from ego, keeping old ego driven cycles alive. When you allow them to control your emotions and reactions like that, you are giving them your power.

Information and knowledge are power. If you control the information that people have access to and what they see or read, you can control what they think. Thirty years ago there were about 50 different companies and corporations that owned the majority of mainstream information sources in the United States. Today, all major newspapers, television networks, and news media are owned by just six corporations. Six. The internet is dominated by just a few huge companies as well. Consider this and maybe start to pay attention to all the posts the social media sites or certain video streaming sites have been censoring or removing. Many of them claim they’re starting to censor, remove, or “fact check,” certain posts to “protect the masses from false news being spread.” Who made these corporations the arbiter of truth? Who is going to “fact check” these corporations? Six entities with their own agendas and beliefs control all information that is reported on, how it’s reported, and if it’s reported at all. Isn’t it a tad worrisome that only six corporations control the majority of the information Americans are exposed to?

"Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person." --Madeline L'Engle

They say they want to protect people or care about them, but they believe the way to do that is to control them? Control is not true, healthy love. It just isn’t. If they truly cared about people, perhaps they would recognize us as the free and sovereign beings we are and allow us the freedom to make our own choices, not spoon feed us the information that only serves their narrative and manipulates and deceives. If you’re giving your power away and letting others control you or your choices, are you really living YOUR life? I don’t think you are. You're living the life that others have decided you should live. That’s not a life, that’s slavery.

If you had a significant other who restricted the newspapers you could read, TV channels you could watch, or internet sites you could visit because they felt they knew better than you or that you couldn’t be trusted to make your own decisions, would you accept that? If not, why do you accept it from the social media and mainstream media moguls? If you would accept it, ask yourself why you feel the need to give your power away to someone else. Is there a wound or trauma from childhood or your life that is influencing this behavior? Why do you feel that somebody else knows better than yourself what is best for you? Just because they claim to? Because they claim they love you? Because they claim they want to protect you? If someone claimed to love you so much and wanted to protect you so they locked you away and wouldn’t let you leave the house, is that healthy? No, that’s toxic as fuck. So, do I really need to address some of the restrictions that have been implemented by state and local governments during this pandemic? Many of the restrictions implemented were the same as those listed in the first paragraph of this post but using the analogy of it being a significant other. So, I will reiterate: if you agreed that my first example of a controlling significant other was unhealthy and you wouldn’t put up with it, why would you put up with it from your government?

Am I saying that we need to be suspicious of everyone and never trust anyone ever again? No. But we need to be mindful that there are people who have negative or selfish agendas and not always blindly believe someone when they say they are doing something “for our own good.” All that glitters is not always gold. We need to exercise discernment. We need to love ourselves enough to recognize that being controlled is not healthy and be aware of those that may be attempting to control us including institutions like government, media, religion, and so on. Be mindful of the information we are being presented and ask whether it is aimed to influence us to react from ego (fear, anger, guilt, grief, pride etc.) instead of from our soul, from love. Becoming conscious of those trying to control us and their motivations for doing so, allows us to take our power back. If you haven’t yet, feel free to check out one of my prior posts titled “Own Your Power” for more on this.

You are lovable, unique, and special all on your own and each of us has our own gifts, talents, and story to share with the world. How can you share your amazing and authentic self if you're allowing yourself to be controlled by others or by their traumas and wounds which they project on you (or by your own, but that's another post for another day)? You are a free and sovereign being. Don't be afraid to think for yourself, to live your own life. You deserve it.