18. Ghosts and Masks

Invisible beings such as ghosts, devil and witches are always curious and fearful subjects to the human being. Curiosity and fear turned into recreation cultures such as masked dance (e.g., the Taal dance in Korea) and maskarade. Those mask plays became cultural symbols in every region of the world.
* Taal : the Korean traditional mask

The culture based on mask is the sublime compromise which satisfies curiosity and fear at the same time. To face ghosts, devils and witches which are veiled, terrifying and fearful existences, it needs to hide , conceal and decorate oneself gorgeously. The instinct of hiding our weakness and fear has created various weird, dreadful and waggish masks.

It has been believed that the play of hiding and decorating myself could be a weapon and a tool to deal with ghosts and witches. Covering my face, through a festival and play which 'hidden I' enjoy, in a festival full of dance and music, 'I' who is always on the strain, in agony, under heavy mind, with a sigh could forget the fears caused by ghosts, devils and witches for a while.

The fears toward ghosts, devils and witches is revealed as the mixture of both personal and collective characteristics. There is few people who is pleased to see incomprehensible off-again things. When people are feeling weird energy, their curiosity and fear can be brought up. Those are very general psychological reactions of people who face ghosts.

When I think I am weak, when I feel intuitively someone is stronger than me, when I feel different energy with what I have, when unexpected situation occurred, human get instinctually daunted and astonished. If it gets worse, it becomes a fear and horror.

There are so many people who are:
1. good at wrapping their own mind,
2. thinking that showing off their mind is a sort of loss to themselves,
3. striving to close the door of their minds and defend their minds,
4. feeling their own sufferings without capability to feel others’ pain,
5. appealing to others’ understanding without insight into others’ mind,
6. thinking that they are always better than others and emitting ‘I am at the top’ energy to people around them,
7. behaving as they are doing routinely and repeatedly without noticing their faults, because no one restrains or controls them, even though they behave so poorly for all to see,
8. having a difficulty in facing straight their own situations,
9. trying to avoid a problem or a situation with excuses and makeshifts.

There already exist ghosts, devils, witches and angels in the darkness in the mind of such people. The Brothers in the Darkness visit them and kindly drag them down deeper and deeper into the bottom of worry, agony and ego. As an ego must be broken, a mind must be open, a love must be full in the open mind, they are whispering you to recognize that ‘certain existences are manipulating you inside your mind’. If you sense that you can not express your mind as it is, frequently saying totally the opposite things instead, then there must be the Brothers in the Darkness already with you.

Hiding face can not hide mind. Hiding mind can not deal with the truth. The thicker and the more colorful the mask is, the longer the visit of the existence is. And the falling of a life will be endless by adding pain, sigh and moan until it hits the bottom. When you begin to remember and spark a fire of love, your heart will get warm. Until you get tender and smooth to others and you take off your mask, they will not stop guiding you to the sea of bigger despair and pain by dragging you down to the bottom, putting themselves in love and pain. Today, Udeka would like to show my sincere gratitude to them who serve as energy form.

Translated by Metrica

Udeka writes.