This week starts with a New Moon in Libra on Sunday, September 25.

Libra is the sign of harmony and peace, of popularity and diplomacy, of pleasantness and charm, of beauty and aesthetics, of creativity and artistic expression. But mostly it is known as the sign of relationships.

When I sat by the lake with my teacher, Debra Silverman, on a beautiful sunny day in Kauai, and told her about my relationship issues, she said, “Do you know why Saturn is exalted in Libra? Because we came to this world to learn to do relationships.”

When a planet is exalted in a sign, it means that the planet’s good qualities are amplified in this sign. Saturn represents life lessons. It is enhanced in the sign of relationships.

I must start with a disclaimer that I am not a relationship expert. Eight years into my marriage, I am still trying to figure this whole thing out.

What I do know, is that when you seek a deep spiritual connection with another person, it is a work of a lifetime.

Having a good relationship with yourself is also a work of a lifetime. Naturally, connecting with another soul is not an easier task.

Relationships are threads of connectedness and joy, weaved with hurt and disappointment. It is an eternal dance of taking one step to get closer, two steps backwards, and then trying to figure out the distance, and finding our way back to one another.

Buddhism says that everything is constantly changing. Relationships are no exception. The relationship dynamic is ever changing, while each individual in the relationship is also constantly changing.

In a utopian world, a deep spiritual relationship starts every morning anew, with a new you, meeting the new other.

In the real world, it does not work that way. We hold so tightly to the idea of concrete stability; we expect things and people to stay the same over time.

It is so hard to accept the changes that you yourself go through, how can you also deal with the changes the other goes through?

Olivia Harrison said the secret of a good, long marriage is “you don’t get divorced.” I still strongly believe that there is more to it.

There are reasons why people are brought together. There are soul connections. You can see it all by reading relationship charts.

You can choose not breaking up to be the only thing that keeps you together, but you can choose to constantly work on your relationship and make it meaningful.

The biggest Libra’s lesson for relationships is authenticity.  

Authenticity is one of the hardest things to bring into a relationship, for everyone I’ve met in my life, including myself. It requires lots of practice.

There are several reasons for that. One is that when we fall in love, we are never authentic. Not even to ourselves. We are under a chemical influence that makes us want the other person so badly, that we are willing to say anything and do anything, to make the relationship work.

When you are in love, you create an image of yourself according to what you think is appealing to the other. You maintain this image for some time. But at a certain point, you get back to yourself. The other person gets back to herself, and a gap is created.

If you have ever been in a long-term relationship, you must have heard sentences like “when we met you promised me that…you told me that…you were like that…” numerous times in your lives.

On top of that, there are the natural changes each individual goes through. You are afraid that the other person won’t like the changes, sometimes you know he won’t like the changes, so you hide your truth.

Very often, we don’t notice the gaps and the lack of authenticity until something big shakes our world.

Being authentic requires constant work. It’s about reviewing who you are at any given moment and seeing if there are parts of yourself that you are not honest about with yourself and in your relationships.

On this new moon, ask yourself:

• Are there aspects of myself that I am not authentic about with myself?
• Are there any thoughts or feelings that I push away rather than acknowledging them and dealing with them?
• Are there aspects of myself that I am not authentic about with my partner or in other relationships?
• Am I trying to please others for the sake of harmony, while not being authentic about what I truly want and who I truly am?

If you haven’t been authentic, it’s time to change that. Some truths are very hard to acknowledge or communicate, but when you do, you realize how valuable and beneficial your honesty was.

If you ask me, there is no one secret for a long, good relationship. Every couple finds their way, or they don’t, and that’s also fine. But while you can separate from another person, you can’t separate from yourself.

This is why being authentic about who you and what you want is, to my opinion, one of the most important lessons in life.

Have a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael