The Guides’ idea of our present personality as a “costume” evokes wonderful images of closets full of every variety of garments. In the Study Group Reading for October they say:

“In each cycle of human experience on earth, think of a new costume. Each of you is beginning to understand that you are not your costume. You are not your body. You are not your personal experience. You are having that experience, creating it, living it. And, after your death, that experience is taken off as a costume, and put into a collection of costumes that you-as-a-soul have been creating, outside of time, by dipping into time to create a new costume. So, as a soul, you have a vast wardrobe.
For each new lifetime, you-as-a-soul pick and choose among the various styles of the costumes to create a new one. Thus, your present human self is entirely unique. It has never manifested in any realm, human or divine, in this particular way that is presently you. But, it is related to the other costumes, to the other you’s that have been, in terms of time, before your present life.

What this means is that this present you is not a small, superficial costume. It is extremely important. It is the latest style, you might say, from the divine designer—your soul.”

Educator and philosopher, Cornel West, was asked how he felt about being a black man. He said, “I am a human being inhabiting a black body.” If every human could think this way, there would be no prejudice. We would recognize one another as fellow human beings, temporarily adorned in a new costume, and perhaps even enjoying the fashion show!

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