By Irene Conlan -

The reality show, True Beauty, brought a lesson home the other night – a lesson of being true to yourself.

Vying to become “The Face of Vegas” the contestants compete to see who is the most beautiful. The real agenda of the show, however, is to discover who has true beauty – inner beauty – and they set up situations to determine the honesty, compassion, intelligence, poise, and other attributes of “true beauty. ” They have challenges to show their outer beauty and a “set up” to see if they demonstrate inner beauty.

The “set up” for one segment was that a woman assisting them for a photo shoot was looking for her lost diamond engagement ring. She was frantically searching through the garbage for it.

Would they help her or not?

Most helped but some did not.  David, a professional deejay and astrologer was one who not only did not help, but acted bored while the assistant searched, and he finally yawned and left the room to join the other members of the group saying, “I didn’t fly out here to help a girl find her ring and lose the show,”

He was one of the two bottom contestants for the week and, when he met with the panel of judges, was told he would be the one to go home. When they had him view the videos showing him the real reasons he had failed, he replied, “I’m getting kicked out of this competition for sinning in the city of sin.”

As if to defend himself he announced, “I’m a spiritual teacher and I help people all day long.”

Say what?

His behavior when he thought he was off camera didn’t reflect that. His attitude toward others didn’t reflect it either.
Most of us would understand a 24 year old who had a blast in Vegas.  But who is he? A young man in Vegas or a spiritual teacher  compromising his principles to win a prize?
In essence he said, “I want to win. Don’t expect me to help you find  your ring. Don’t bother me with expecting kindness if I don’t like you. Don’t bother me -  I’m here to win and that doesn’t include helping people.”
There are a number of traits that spiritual people and people with true beauty share and strive to deepen, such as

• compassion
• love
• forgiveness
• peacefulness
• appreciation
• kindness
• not perfection but sincere effort and an attitude that includes helping others

These are consistent traits that don’t depend on where you are or what you are doing. Yes, beautiful people and spiritual teachers make mistakes just like we all do but the pattern is consistent because that’s who they are.

David is young and still learning. He’s a beautiful young man who was taught a huge lesson in front of the whole country –  or world most likely.

The  lesson?  Know who you are and live it. If you proclaim yourself to be a spiritual teacher, then walk that talk privately and publicly.

The person you have to be true to – even if there is a big prize waiting at the end – is you.