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In the last post I told you that all conflict, internal and external begins with a disconnect from the Truth.  Now let’s take a look at how you may experience this disconnection and how you can begin to get yourself reconnected to the Truth.

To start, I want to make something very clear to you.  It is possible to achieve a lot of material success in this life while still being disconnected from the Truth. However, there is a cost to being disconnected from the Truth, regardless of how much material success is gained.

You’ve probably heard the expression: making a deal with the devil.  Think of this devil not as a red figure with a pitchfork for a moment and, instead, consider this expression as a metaphor for something that is happening all the time in the lives of all people. 

The moment we tell a lie to ourselves or others, we are disconnecting from the Truth.  The reason we may tell a lie in the first place is for the instant reward of not having to deal with the consequences associated with telling the Truth.  Instead of telling the Truth, we make a deal with the devil. We tell a lie, and in exchange we don’t have to tell the Truth. 

If you cheat on your spouse and then hide it from them.  You are making a deal with the devil.  Lying to your spouse allows you to keep your spouse from knowing what you did so that you can continue your life as if you did not cheat on them. In this way, you seem to be able to have your cake and eat it too.  You get to cheat on your spouse and, at the same time, keep your spouse thinking you have not cheated on them. It seems like a good deal, right?

However, the devil always takes something in return – your soul.  Because you have lied, you have disconnected from the Truth and you are certain to experience the impact of this choice over time.  Even if your spouse never finds out what you did, you cannot escape the consequences that will invariably play out for you, mentally and emotionally.  You will always have the fear of being found out or losing your spouse in the back of your mind.  One lie becomes another and before you know it, you are living a life of lies.  The guilt and fear builds up subconsciously, regardless of whether you think about what you have done often or infrequently.  These buried feelings will then manifest in your life in a variety of ways, depending on what you have lied about and to whom.  

The so-called devil may give you what you desire in this very moment but there is always a cost.  What is generally not fully grasped about this idea is the great many ways a person may lie to themselves. People are lying to themselves all the time.  It is not just the lies we tell others, it is the lies we tell ourselves, without even knowing that we are lying.  You may have hundreds of lies that you tell yourself about yourself, others and life, that you don’t even consider to be lies at all. Because of this, bringing yourself back into a full connection with the Truth is a process that can take a lifetime of dedication. People don’t want to hear this because they want instant gratification.  If something isn’t easy, most people don’t want to do it.  

I suggest you consider the previous example of cheating on a spouse and see if you can understand its underlying principles. You may think to yourself, “This example doesn’t apply to me because I haven’t cheated on my spouse.”  This is intellectual and emotional laziness.  Instead, see if you can abstract the highest level of understanding from this example.  Really think about it.  Understand the principle that is being illuminated and consciously think through how it may apply to you in your life. 

You definitely have this dynamic playing out in your life in some way.  If you don’t make a connection between the example and your own life, you will not get any benefit from this post.  You must look to see where you may be lying to yourself.  You must be willing to consider that you are believing falsehoods and half-truths, especially since the thoughts you are used to thinking and the stories you are used to telling, usually don’t occur for you as lies at all.  Remember, a good liar must first lie to themselves.  They must make themselves believe that the lie is true, in order to keep telling the lie convincingly.  It is time to investigate yourself and see where you are experiencing the effects of an old lie.  Then, you can trace your conflicts back to their actual root, a disconnect from the Truth.  

Perhaps you believe that you are inherently bad with money or that you will always be unhealthy.  Maybe you are blaming someone else for your relationships not being harmonious.  Maybe you believe that you are bad or undeserving of love or that you are unwanted. Perhaps you believe that life will always be hard or that the world is a terrible place.  I could continue to make a list of all the possible lies you could be telling yourself all day long.  The list would be staggering, but don’t make me do your work for you.  Don’t wait for me to bring up what you are lying to yourself about.

Instead, simply consider that you must be lying to yourself in some way, and begin a mission to determine what these lies and falsehoods are, so you can become a more authentic person.  Your access point to being the best version of yourself is your willingness to align yourself with what is True, so don’t wait until life shows you your lies and inauthenticities.  Your inauthenticities do not want to be uncovered so you must be the one to deliberately initiate the search for them, despite the fact that they want to stay hidden. 

See if you can start to learn your lessons in a whisper.  You don’t have to wait until your partner leaves you, or you get fired from your job, or until you are dying of a terminal illness.  You don’t have to wait until it gets worse before you start to look at yourself honestly.  You can reconnect with your True Self by your own free will choice.  Remember, the Truth will set you free but only if you are willing to confront and admit the Truth to yourself.

If you are not willing to do this, do not think you can escape the consequences.  Eventually, the Truth will reveal itself.  It is simply a matter of how long you want it to take, and how hard you want it to be.  If you are having a hard time telling the Truth, you may want to consider what you are missing out on.  You may want to consider what you don’t get to experience when you are living the lie. 

You may not be able to even comprehend how much better your life could be if you were no longer living a lie.  This is because we don’t just hide the truth from ourselves.  We also hide the impact the lies have on our lives.  We pretend the lies are not costing us anything.  We pretend that the “devil” has not claimed our soul.  

The cheating partner will never experience the beauty of a true connection in a relationship.  He settles for so much less and doesn’t even realize what he has done to himself.  He numbs his true joy.  He pretends it doesn’t matter. He believes that he is trapped and that there is nothing he can do, and all of this is just another lie.  

In the Bible Jesus said: “If you hold to my teaching, then you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” 

This blog is not meant to be a promotion of any religious views but these words are very interesting nonetheless, and very applicable to the topic at hand.  If you hold to the teachings in this blog, you will know Truer Truths, and in admitting these Truths, you will be free.

To disconnect from the Truth is painful, and so a myriad of coping mechanisms occur to soothe the pain. Perhaps you drink too much, watch pornography, eat too much, watch too much TV, consume too much alcohol or take drugs, or maybe you just hate being alone with yourself so you need to be around people all the time. Whatever your coping mechanisms are, they will never heal the pain of being disconnected from the Truth. They only serve to further hide or disguise the real source of your pain. 

A friend of mine who has struggled with addiction throughout his life shared a principle with me that he learn during his participation in the popular 12-Step program, a program that has made some positive difference for many people despite some significant half-truths in its design that can cause some negative impacts for its participants.  He told me, “Getting off the drug is only 5% of the work that needs to be done.  The other 95% is dealing with what comes up for you now that you can no longer use your drug to escape.”  

What you have to deal with when you stop using your coping mechanisms  are the lies you have told yourself and believed.  Perhaps you would have to deal with a deep unconscious belief that you are unwanted or unlovable.  Perhaps you believe that you are broken or damaged.  Maybe you believe you have been abandoned.  

All of these lies, if you believe them and think they are set in stone, will certainly cause you to want to escape them, but what if, instead of using coping mechanisms, you learned to transmute these feelings and ideas into something Truer and higher?  Why not learn to truly heal instead of continuing to cope?  What would be possible for you if you knew how to do this?  What if you could really unlock your power by discovering the Truth about who you really are?  What if you could actually believe, with everything you are, that you are wanted and loved? Or that you are perfect and whole?  What if you could experience and know that you are never alone and that life is trying to give you everything you need and desire because life is actually wonderful?  What would your life be like then?  What could you achieve?  

If we were to boil it all down, the thing we most don’t want to see or accept is that we are the source of this pain. We are the ones who disconnect ourselves from the Truth. Nothing outside of ourselves can do this to us because to disconnect from the Truth or to remain connected to it is 100% a matter of free will. Even if this disconnect happened when we were 4 years-old, and unaware of what we were doing at the time, we were still the ones who believed the lies and so we have the ability to tell the truth to ourselves now.  This is great news because it means that you have 100% control over whether or not you will reconnect yourself to the greatest power in the universe so that you may use this power to create the best version of yourself and your life. 

If you wish to align yourself with Truth, you may want to consider the power of courage.  It has been said many times that courage is not the absence of fear, rather, it is the presence of fear and the choice to act anyway.  Courage is the moment you choose to act in a way that is inconsistent with your fears.  It is a declaration you make to all of life that says, “I am unwilling to let this fear choose my thoughts and actions.  I am in control of my own choices.” 

Making a courageous choice causes a significant shift in the polarity of your motivations in that it causes you to shift  from making a choice from fear to making a choice from love.  Instead of honoring the false identity’s need to survive, you begin honoring your True Self’s desire to expand. In this way, courage is powerful.  You may not always make the courageous choice, but it is always your choice to make.

The more you confront your fears and overcome them, the less courage will be required over time.  Your feelings about yourself will change.  You will have more natural confidence and ease in situations that used to scare you.  The moment you act with courage is powerful because you are shifting your sense of who you are, from someone who is smaller than the circumstances to someone who is bigger than the circumstances.  When you take a courageous action, an old identity dies and a new one is born.  

For example, if you are afraid of singing on stage and so you never do it, a part of you identifies with this fear.  You may think of yourself as someone who can’t sing on stage.  Then, in the moment when you finally do sing on stage, this identity called ‘person who can’t sing on stage’ dies.  You can no longer continue to believe that you can’t sing on stage.  Why?  Because you just did it.

Because of this, a new identity is created, even if it is done at an unconscious level. Your new sense of identity may not be ‘person who easily sings on stage.’ because maybe you can’t believe this yet.  You may still have fears, sensations and anxieties about it.  However, your new identity could be something like ‘person who is nervous singing on stage’ which is still an improvement.  Then, as you continue to sing on stage more and more, the nervousness disappears and a new self-image is formed.

If you have followed everything so far, you should plainly see that every time you act with courage, you are creating a new version of yourself.  You are creating a new identity that is more consistent with the Truth of who you are.  If this is not clear to you, I suggest you go back and reread this post until you get it.  You will need to understand the power of courage if you want to truly unlock your power and potential. 

If you want to be the best version of yourself, you will need to confront the death of your current false identities over and over again until there is nothing left but the True Self – who you really are.  

Remember the notion that enlightenment is a destructive process.  What is being destroyed is “you”… but not the real “You.”  The real You can never be destroyed.  The real You is always present even when you are holding onto lies about yourself, others and life. 

The moment you accept a falsehood, you become “dual” in nature.  You will now have a perspective that is false, along with an inner knowing that is True.  Now, the false part of ‘you’ must continue to lie to maintain dominance over the True part of you, but it is a lot of work, and will make you tired and sick over time.  By acknowledging a falsehood as a falsehood, you begin telling the Truth again, which makes you whole again (or non-dual in nature).  Telling the truth where you have been lying brings you back into awareness of the real You. 

To go back to our example, if you cheated on your partner and hid it from them, you stopped telling the truth.  What you were saying and what actually happened became two different things. Now, there is what you are saying is true and what is actually true, and they are not the same.  

The moment you admit to your partner that you cheated on them, you are telling the truth again, and because of this, what you are saying is true and what actually happened in reality, are one and the same again.  Even though there may be some consequences to deal with now that you’ve told the truth, You as a person will be whole again and no longer living in this duality.

Given all that has been said here, do not underestimate the power of incorporating the following statements into your speaking:

I was wrong.

I lied.

I was incorrect.

I wasn’t honest.

I wasn’t taking responsibility.

I didn’t do what I said I would do.

I did what I said I wouldn’t do.

To admit our own falsehoods is the first step in a new commitment to telling the Truth.  While it may take courage and you may find yourself repeating the same mistakes sometimes,  it is always valuable to get yourself back on track with the Truth.  Even though it may be challenging, it will always be worth it in the end.

Again, you may have to deal with some consequences, depending on the degree of the falsehood, but you will also know you are going in the right direction now.  The lies we tell may seem easier in the moment but they make life much harder in the long run.  Telling the Truth may seem harder in the moment but it is much easier in the long run.  

Whenever you are believing that you can’t do it or that you are a victim or that you don’t deserve your deepest desires, you are believing lies.  Understanding that these beliefs and feelings are not the Truth is the first step.  Then, you must do the work to believe thoughts and take actions that are closer to the Truth… that you can do it, that you are at cause and you do deserve all that you desire.  Be willing to live in the Truth of who you really are by confronting who you are not, and you will discover an increasing power and ability to create the life you really desire.