At Halloween some years ago, I took snapshots of several children in their costumes. Later I took the pictures to their mothers, who were not for a moment mystified by the masks, because they already knew the identities behind them.

Sometimes our real identities may be hidden behind a "mask" of material thinking. In the children's case, there were not two beings in one; unquestionably the costumes portrayed a false identity. Similarly, anything that would make us appear mortal is no part of true being, for whatever is real is forever good, perfect, and immortal. Yet often when we see someone wearing a "mask" of disease, hate, fear, lack, deformity, we may be tempted to believe this is the real man.

Such false identities stem from the belief that life and intelligence are in matter, opposed to God, Spirit, Mind. But this belief isn't a real state of existence; it's a misconception. Only what reflects God is actual. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness." ^{Science and Health, p. 304.}

How do we remove this mask of ignorance? By gaining an intelligent knowledge—a clear, spiritual perception—of the true creation, of the permanent and perfect identity of the man God created. And by keeping our thoughts and acts in accord with that perception. The truth is that God is All-in-all, all-powerful, everywhere present, and eternal. He is the source of all action and government. God, Principle, whose unwavering law holds man and the universe in absolute harmony, knows no evil, no error, no mask.

God's man shows forth the divine nature—the good, eternal, sacred, and heavenly. But we do not express this nature by resorting to human will—a characteristic of the mask. We must first give up the mistaken concepts that come from ignorance, or error, and open our thought to truth, which destroys whatever is unlike God.

We remove the mask, or false concepts, not by mortal contest but by exercising our inherent dominion—by knowing its reality as our actual identity. Nor is a purely intellectual understanding of truth, or Christian Science, sufficient. We need to relinquish the mortal desires the mask represents, such as the need for personal gratification through drugs, liquor, or other stimulants. We should strive to eliminate whatever would enslave us to false concepts of ourselves and others.

No longer embracing these concepts, which have seemed to mask our true identity, we are less likely to be victims of self-love, self-pity, self-will, and self-justification. As we advance out of the belief that we have been born into matter and must mature and later die therein, we are transformed by our growing understanding of Life, God. Rejecting the belief that we can gain good from any form of materiality, we find our true identity ultimately coming into focus, shining with the same light that illumined Christ Jesus at his transfiguration, when "his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." ^{Matt. 17:2.} This was a vision of the real man, God's man, with no material beliefs.

Christ Jesus saw the genuine identity in everyone with whom he came in contact, the perfect idea right where ignorance would hide the beauty of perfection. He did not see two men, but one. We, too, are only one kind of man, God's—not masked but totally free and identifiable in Love's reality.