(Clearwisdom.net) Seven years have passed since I started practicing cultivation in 2001. When I read Fa-rectification experience sharing articles, I also wanted to write about my experiences but I never did so. Yesterday, at my mother's suggestion, I decided to write, to share my experiences with fellow practitioners. I hope that we can support each other and learn from each other's lessons.
My younger sister lives in another area and got to know Dafa earlier. My mother and I live in the same city, hundreds of miles from my younger sister. When I married in 1997, my younger sister came and introduced my mother to Dafa, and they have been diligent in cultivation ever since. I knew little about Dafa then. My mother often told me things about cultivation. She asked me to read Zhuan Falun and listen to Master's audio lectures. When she came to a particularly paragraph that was helpful to me, she asked me to read it. But I didn't care at all. I was young and in good health. I thought, why should I practice qigong, something that interests old people?
In 1999, the Chinese Communist regime began persecuting Falun Gong. Insulting propaganda proliferated everywhere in broadcasts, newspapers, and TV. I heard of many censures but didn't pay much attention to it. However, when the persecutors made up stories about "Self-immolation" and "killing people," it was more than I could bear.
My mother at that time took care of my less than two-year-old child. I had been brainwashed by the propaganda, and was afraid that mother would do something bad to my child. I went back home, utterly discomfited. I confronted my mother and said something very bad to her. The police later arrested her and detained her at a police station. She remained very firm in her belief and was released two weeks later.
My younger sister went to Beijing several times to validate the Fa. Though she was illegally arrested several times, she always returned safely.
My mother was under very intense pressure at the time. Master and Dafa were wickedly slandered, my younger sister's mother-in-law and husband frequently called my mother and said bad things to her, I always spoke to her in an irritated tone, and my child was little and not easy to take care of, causing her to be unable to eat and sleep well. Friends and relatives frequently came to persuade my mother to no longer practice Falun Gong.
Difficulties and interruptions emerged. One time when my mother and child were watching the TV series, "Journey to the West," they saw that Tangseng had rescued Sun Wukong from under a stone, and Sun Wuking kowtowed to his master to thank him. Sun Wukong kept on calling, "Master." My child said, "Grandmother, you also have a Master." Mother wept upon hearing these words.
Mother believed that Master had performed guanding for her many times, as she felt sudden, warm currents go through her whole body, from the top of her head to her feet. Master also hinted to her in a dream, to help her be firm with righteous thoughts. Mother used to have so many illnesses, and all of them disappeared after she began cultivating. Though my mother was living with adversity, she never relaxed with guiding me and my child. My child grew up healthy under grandma's care and protection. He memorized and recited Hong Yin and Zhuan Falun, and became a little Dafa disciple.
I only knew how to enjoy life then and didn't realize at all that Falun Gong was the Great Law of the Universe. But Master knew everything about my ordinary life and always gave me an opportunity to enter into Dafa. However, things kept going badly. I was unsuccessful in every respect. I often drank alcohol for my depression and sighed that there was so much pretense, things to fear and no honest people in the world. I wondered what on earth people were busy for. I woke up in the middle of the night, and things that had happened in the daytime played in my brain like a film, making me toss and turn.
One day in October 2001, my mother asked me to read from a Dafa book. I casually read in Hong Yin,
"He who acts for emotion
many are the troubles he brings himself
Bitter,
fighting away,
he makes karma all his life."
("An Upright Person")
All at once the sentence entered my brain and touched every cell in my body. This one sentence brought me to Dafa. Me, who was confused and muddleheaded, and who had reincarnated and slogged through for so many lifetimes.
At the beginning of my cultivation I abstained from alcohol. I used to be unwilling to eat without alcohol. During the first several days of abstinence I felt extremely uncomfortable but gradually felt better a few days later. I no longer got in touch with women I used to have relations with. When we occasionally met each other, except for clarifying the truth to them, I didn't have much to talk about with them. I thought to myself, "Now that you want to cultivate Dafa, then you should cultivate well. If you don't cultivate well, you will just return to being an everyday person again. It is meaningless to be a half practitioner, and the other half being an everyday person. I first read Zhuan Falun, Hong Yin, and Essentials for Further Advancement. I woke up and had realizations. A small ordinary person could cultivate into a divine being, a Buddha. What else shouldn't I let go?
In 2001 as I read Master's "Some Thoughts of Mine," and I felt grief-stricken. Master and the Fa are so good. How could people behave like that? Are they committing a crime? I must let people know how good Dafa is and expose the cheating. When I first had learned the Fa, I didn't have truth-clarification materials. I clarified the truth face to face, no matter whether or not I knew the people I encountered. I talked with people using few words. After a few introductory words I just directly started to clarify the truth, about how Dafa is disseminated all over world, how the CCP created the deceitful "self-immolation," and the Party's corruption and tyranny. Many people understood the truth.
My company is a well-managed, medium-sized plant, that is very profitable. Workers are not allowed to chat or do other things while working. I made use of every bit of break-time to clarify the truth to people I met by various means, as well as during the noon break, or on my way to work or back home. I might talk to a general manager, a workshop head, group leader or common staff. So long as I had a chance I would talk with them, and the results were quite good.
In 2002 I bought a computer and the next day I found my friend to help me go onto the Wujie website. I visited the Minghui (Clearwisdom) website and was so excited at that moment. I saw Master's image and read so many of Master's writings. I also found a recording of Master's speeches and many practitioners' articles. I didn't have enough time and had to shorten my sleep. I discussed things with my mother and also got in touch with other practitioners. I had no truth clarifying materials and decided to make them myself. In 2003, I bought a CD writer, and made CDs, then distributed them to people by myself. Sometimes my mother also handed them out. In 2004 I got in touch with more practitioners and made more CDs to give them to hand out.
After the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party was published, we started the difficult task of persuading people to do the "three withdrawals" (withdrawing from the Communist Party, the Communist Youth League, and the Young Pioneers), in addition to simply clarifying the truth. The CCP has controlled people's minds greatly all these years, and people had become numb about the persecution. They didn't believe in gods and retribution for wrongdoing. Practitioners couldn't talk at too high a level and needed to follow people's level of understanding and way of thinking. Sometimes it took talking with a person for two hours to convince him do the three withdrawals. Sometimes we talked half a day, but the person still refused to quit. Chinese are so afraid of the CCP, to the point that even if you just asked them to nod their head to agree, they dared not do so. You might find it funny and feel angry at the same time. The first year, I persuaded only fifty or sixty people to quit the CCP.
During the last two years, our company's benefits became better and better and employees had more income. My attachment to pursuit of comfort and to fear then emerged, and I became reluctant and afraid to clarify the truth. For two years I persuaded few people to quit. My attachments to money, to material things, and even lust proliferated again, even though I had taken these things lightly before.
After I watched Master's "Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners," at the end of the lecture, I found that Master told us again and again, like talking to children, the things we Dafa practitioners should pay attention to. I realized practitioners' heavy and great responsibilities and the time pressure. It is really not good for Master to have to worry about us so much. We shouldn't feel relaxed in doing the three things. There is little time for us to save sentient beings. The weather became more and more abnormal, and people's morals were rapidly sliding. Dinner conversations centered around how to make money, how to speculate, how to have relations with women, or how to buy a bigger house. They didn't know what they would face in the future! Master is compassionate to sentient beings, again and again, and Dafa disciples should hurry to save lives.
My family, like thousands of other Dafa disciples' families during the past few years, became better and better, with a good environment, as we had righteous thoughts, and we thought of sentient beings. My brother-in-law started practicing Dafa again with reminders from Master and my sister's urgings. My father didn't cultivate Dafa but started to read Dafa books. When he was out, he often clarified the truth. My wife did not interrupt my doing the three things. When I don't do well, she always reminds me that I am a practitioner, should do things well and should behave like a practitioner. She really helps me greatly. I feel sorry that she is unwilling to read Dafa books. Maybe her predestination is not yet ready, and she might be destined to be a practitioner in the future.
Since beginning cultivation I realized how much people's morals have declined to the extent they are now. If I didn't cultivate I would have never known it. I am so fortunate to obtain the Fa in this life; it is my great fortune. I express my thanks to Master for taking me out of hell and making me change into a completely new person. Thank you, Master, for letting me know the principles of the universe. Thank you, Master! I will steadily cultivate Dafa and follow you to return home.
