Trickster-Hero: The Art of Having Nothing to Lose

[Waking Times]: Governing the precept that the self is masks all the way down, perceiving delusions all the way up, it stands to reason that one of those “masks” would embolden the self to question all delusions and break all masks. Indeed, one of those masks should embolden the self to the extent that it thinks it has nothing to lose.

That mask is the mask of the trickster.

When a person dons the mask of the trickster they become the personification of a trickster God in training. Playful yet ruthless. Foolish yet fierce. Contrarian yet cunning. Seductive yet demure. Enigmatic yet chaotic. Flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants yet free. The personified trickster is an anti-hero par excellence, a hero bound by neither code nor conduct, a hero with nothing to lose. Nonchalant, unruly, passionate, a dauntless maverick testing all boundaries and stretching all comfort zones, despite resistance from the petty, the prudish, the pacifists, from cowards and fence-sitters. Indeed, despite even his/her own resistance.

For the trickster must first trick himself into thinking he has nothing to lose.

The task of a trickster hero is both Dionysian (passionate, artistic, ecstatic) and Sisyphean (unavailing and endless).

It takes a unique type of courage to be a catalyzing agent. Trickster as catalyst is a planter of unwanted seeds, of difficult truths, and brutal motivation. These are seeds that promise to outgrow the stagnant culture with its antiquated laws and outdated beliefs. These are the difficult truths that bypass convention and face a mirror in front of the fallibility of the human condition.

The kind of brutal motivation that kicks us in the ass for being lazy, shoves us into the abyss for being pretend-forgiving, and drags us kicking and screaming into either the self-improvement or self-destruction of our own unique adventure...Read The Full Article Here>>>...