Page 518 - Demo

Fools%u2019 Journey512child in this lifetime, her parents and her sister constantly criticized and belittled her. As any child would, she wondered, %u201cWhy would they lie? They%u2019re my family. There must be some truth to their insults and verbal attacks.%u201d After all, none of them ever admitted to being wrong about anything. Lynn%u2019s 1,400-year-old lesson was, %u201cBelieve in yourself. Believe in your experiences. Trust in what is truly right, and what is, in fact, truly wrong %u2014 don%u2019t believe in the lies, deceptions, and fictions of family or of society.%u201d With perseverance and insight, she has been diligently working at it. Yet, it%u2019s still difficult. In addition, to atone for not keeping herself safe, which led to falling off the cliff 1,400 years ago, Lynn had to save herself in this lifetime %u2014 when she slipped, cracked her head on the dock, and fell into the pond. When she was underwater, with the air in her lungs seeping away, she experienced a great calm and realized she was in the process of dying. To her surprise, it was not frightening at all. But rather than die, she pulled one boot loose from the muck at the bottom of the pond, then the other, was able to rise to the surface, and took a deep breath. She saved herself. It was a difficult lesson, particularly because she lost some long-term memory %u2014 but she passed the test. She persevered, and saved her own life.Personally, I%u2019ve never been able to recall any of my own past lives, but Lynn was able to learn a bit about one of them. In it, I was a newspaper publisher in London. At the time, I was torn between printing what I knew to be the truth, and what my subscribers wanted to read. My dilemma was similar to Lynn%u2019s. I had to trust in myself completely, believe in the truth, and move beyond the wrong thinking that was so readily accepted by others. In writing about healthy houses, Lynn and I shared the truth that we had learned. Yet there were many people who did not believe houses could be a cause of illness. Our photography books made people aware of the value of places that were so often devalued, ignored, and abandoned. So, in some ways, we%u2019d been following our own truth %u2014 but we were still haunted by the negative thoughts that originated with our families.Lynn and I have often been humbled at how long it takes to learn the lessons we were presented with in childhood (or previous