I work with many people who feel very deceived in their relationships with a partner who lies to them and misleads them on a regular basis. It is easy to feel disempowered by the lack of honesty in the relationship. The best course of action to reclaim your personal power is to be honest with yourself, regardless of what the other is doing. The truth always comes out in the end.

The person telling the truth is real. While those who avoid the truth are living a lie. Lies are based on fear and insecurity. They are based on a desire to manipulate and out of a fear of accountability. I realized that I have gained the most in my life from finding my authenticity. The more real I become the better my life gets.

I worked with a client many years back who gave me permission to tell her story.  She was married and found herself deeply attracted to another man when away on a business trip. He was from another Country and had an alluring accent, a sparkle in his eyes, a beautiful smile and seemed to radiate love. She was captivated by him and was taken by surprise when she realized he felt the same way about her. For a moment it was a very powerful experience being held in such high esteem. It is as if she was lifted up, above everything that had pulled her down. She finally understood what people meant when they talked about walking on clouds. It sure beat walking on eggshells.

On the night before she went home she met Mr. Wonderful and his friend for dinner. They sat next to each other and enjoyed each others company and when she dropped them off he leaned into her car window and moved right in for the kiss. It was one of those long slow ones that left her feeling embarrassed because it was in front of his friend.

At two in the morning she received a text message. She was completely disoriented at the time because she had set her phone alarm for four in the morning in order to catch her plane. She thought the text alert was her alarm going off and she couldn’t believe it was four in the morning already. When she went to shut off the alarm she realized that she had received a text. When she went to read it the message said. “Great Kiss!”

She was torn between feeling angry at being awakened at two a.m. when he knew she had a plane to catch early in the morning, and feeling flattered at the attention.

When she arrived home her husband met her at the airport with flowers contributing to her guilt. My client was so glad that she was relatively innocent on her trip. If she had stayed any longer it could have been a dangerous situation with the intensity of the chemistry she had felt when she was with the alluring world traveler.

The handsome stranger emailed her after he himself returned home and through a few email conversations he encouraged her to meet on the Internet so they could chat live. She resisted at first but finally decided to do it.

My client was avoiding facing the truth because she didn’t reveal to the traveler that she was married. While on her travels she wanted to forget it for a while. She wanted to just be in her own energy and get to know herself again. She didn’t want to be any man’s possession, but rather remember that everything is a choice. She can choose her reality in any moment. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be married anymore to her husband and this was an opportunity to see how it felt with someone else.

They met online now and then and the topic of their personal life seemed to be skirted by both of them. Finally she confronted him in an email and told him she was married. She told him she felt like she was living a lie and needed to share it with him. He replied by revealing that he was in the exact same situation as her. He too was married.

Initially there was a feeling of relief as if now that they knew the truth about each other they could relax and be friends.

Now and then they would meet online and as she tried to get to know him better he threw flattery at her such as “we are soulmates, I knew it from the moment I met you. It was your eyes, you have the most beautiful eyes, I long to see you again.

My client was greatly flattered by the attention but something didn’t feel right. It was far too much too soon. They didn’t really know each other. There was that metaphysical belief that when you meet your soulmate you know it instantly. And although there was a draw to this man it felt like she was pretending. It didn’t feel real. And she felt she was betraying her husband. She was more interested in learning who this man was. Developing a friendship. Getting to know him.

She was torn between her attraction for this man and her desire to be true to herself and to her husband. She knew that to have an emotional or physical affair would be unfair to not only her husband but his wife. If she wanted to leave her marriage she could. Nothing was stopping her. Other than the complicated reality that they still had children at home.

Eventually the handsome stranger invited her to meet him in a City a couple States away for an event. All expenses paid. He was already going and already paying for the hotel. If she could get there she could participate in this great seminar with him and get to know him better. My client was so tempted that she researched airfare on the Internet and put a ticket on hold which like the Cinderella story, expired at midnight. Since she reserved the ticket after midnight she had nearly twenty four hours to change her mind.

By the time she woke up the next morning she was certain she wouldn’t be going. She emailed him and told him the truth. The truth for her was that they were both betraying someone. Four people would be affected by this. People would be hurt, if not knowingly than by the emotional abandonment. She knew she had to work on her own life, examine her own marriage and put her attention where it belonged and she suggested he do the same.

He emailed back and agreed completely with her and said he would focus on his own life. And that was that! The friendship died, fell away. He was gone.

She had hoped if there was anything real there, he would just be a friend. But the basis for the relationship was never really based on a friendship that had developed but rather a fast found chemical attraction that was sexual, mystical, romantic and poetic. This was the part of my clients life that wasn’t being fulfilled in her marriage. But with her husband she had a friend. He was someone she talked to about everything, whether or not he could understand her.

After the romantic stranger fell away there was a sadness and my client recognized the psychic ties between she and the man she was letting go. Although she knew it was for the best that he fall away a part of her wanted to hold on. What was she holding onto? Was it the promise of true love? Was it the exotic nature of the foreign traveler? Was it the intensity of the energy?

Whatever it was, she knew it was still for the best that she let it go. It was a knowing from deep within. She knew the man who called her name from afar was not truly the spiritual man he pretended to be. Because he was not honest to the one who was closest to him. And for my client he was a perfect mirror to show her where she wasn’t being honest. She was standing at the crossroads with two choices. The choice she made was a choice to be true to herself. To believe in herself and know that some handsome stranger wasn’t going to come along and magically transform her life. If transformation could be that easy!

Transformation is hard work. It takes brutal honesty with oneself. It takes the ability to look into not only the mirror in your bathroom but also the mirror of those around you. What do the people around you reflect to you? If you have a wall up, you won’t see the reflection. This is what projection is all about. It is focusing on the stick in your brothers eye when you have a plank in your own. It is our own blindness and unwillingness to face the truth within ourselves.

Sometimes a negative mate could merely be reflecting to you how you draw mates to you who bring you down. Because you are comfortable being at a certain level. Your soul wants to grow and expand but you won’t let go of the old reality. You are too blind to see how much you have already grown and in order to launch into that new life all you have to do is let go of the old.

My client had the great opportunity to watch herself unfolding spiritually as the result of the mirror she found herself looking into. She resisted temptation and brought her focus back to her center, that place within her that knows the truth.

When we follow the voice of truth within, we will find our power. It is stronger and bigger than any lie one could live. It strips away illusions that trap us into the conforming, material reality. The reality that says there is always something more to achieve. So we struggle for more….more money, more love, more possessions, more beauty, when what we really want is more God. We don’t often realize that God is a presence that dwells within us. It is not out there somewhere in the world. It is in here! God is the highest path of our soul. To do everything in God, is to do everything in genuine authenticity. Because we were all born into this world unique so that we could discover our uniqueness! Not so we could blend in and not be seen or heard. That is the dysfunction of our society. You have a unique voice and to use it is the most powerful thing you can do in this world.

Speak the truth! Not only to others but to yourself most importantly. Speak what you know to be truth, even if others argue with you and try to influence your beliefs. Accept that your truth will not always resonate with others. But the more you step into who you are the stronger you become in yourself. The truth in itself is purifying. It reveals the freshness underneath.

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

This is a famous quote in the Bible from Jesus. The truth is the word of God speaking from within! It is given to you from that divine source. It is the voice that tells us right from wrong, or rather the highest path we could take in any situation. If we follow the highest path of our spirit we can do no wrong. It is the path of transformation. It is the path of the caterpillar as he is drawn into the cocoon and set free as a butterfly. Once we embark upon that journey and find our way into the cocoon, there is no going back. We can only look forward, to the light!

The process of becoming real is the process of exposing the lie. It is letting go of the old skins and dawning the new. It is peeling away the layers of the onion to reveal the fresh layer underneath. It is finding God in your own company so you aren’t constantly seeking it in others. Once we begin to connect with that truth within, we are set on a course of great transformation. This is the journey we must all embrace on our quest for self. Although we can find ourselves in others, it is still ourselves we must live with. And this is the quest of the self to know thyself.