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Western Practitioner: Being Proactive to Validate the Fa and Coordinate Well

September 05, 2011 |  

(Clearwisdom.net) Hi fellow practitioners. I would like to share my wonderful experiences during my cultivation in Dafa.

Since the beginning, I had to take the initiative and be proactive in my cultivation, and that helped me build a strong foundation in my cultivation in Dafa. I began to practice about five years ago, in Rio de Janeiro, a huge city in Brazil. There were only two other practitioners in the entire city. We didn’t have any of the Dafa projects like NTDTV, The Epoch Times, or Shen Yun. This being the case, we needed to be the coordinators of everything, and there was no room for not cooperating with each other.

I constantly asked myself, “How can we save millions of people and fulfill our vows with only these few practitioners?”

It seemed impossible. There were no practitioners in neighboring cities or in many other cities in the country. In fact, there were only 20 some practitioners in the entire country of Brazil. I felt responsible for other regions as well. Therefore, no matter what I did, I always thought of ways to save more people.

I first established a practice site in my neighborhood. Then I realized that taking the initiative to begin the practice site was not enough. I also had to keep the project running. Regardless of what happened, I had to go to the practice site, even when I was eliminating karma, feeling miserable, or during family get togethers and other social functions. Many times when I had other things to take care of and could not go to the practice site, there was someone who wanted to learn the exercises.

Later I realized that being an assistant at a practice site was not enough, since only a few people would come to learn the exercises each day. So I started to join big events like community events and gatherings, cultural forums, university activities, etc, so that I could teach the exercise to more people at once. There were always predestined people in these events, and we could teach the practice to dozens of people, distribute flyers, and clarify the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong in China to hundreds or thousands of people.

We later decided to clarify the truth in front of the Chinese consulate every week and made materials in Chinese. We understood that saving Chinese people was a priority. Whenever we saw a Chinese person walking on the street we would run after him and hand him a flyer or a newspaper.

But no matter what we did, it was still very limited and far away from reaching millions of people. Once while studying the Fa, I realized that our Dafa media was destined to be established in every country, including Brazil. I became very happy and felt relief in my heart because that would mean that the people in my region would have a chance to be saved. Then I thought, “Wait a minute, If we don't have the Epoch Times and NTDTV here, then who is responsible to bring them here? Isn’t it me?”

I went from being happy to very concerned again, because now I had to find a way to establish Dafa media in my region and I was already very busy. That just seemed impossible to me.

I organized a meeting to discuss the truth clarification projects in São Paulo, the city that has the largest number of practitioners in the country, and invited practitioners from other states to come. I had to call each one of them and convince them to come. Some of them were hard to convince and I had to rearrange details of the meeting so that they would agree to join. Others simply accepted my suggestion and made it very easy to coordinate. I presented my plan to bring NTDTV and ET to Brazil, and they agreed that we should do so, but no one had any idea how to do it. With so few people it would require a lot of effort and very effective coordination.

I was writing for the New York edition of the Epoch Times as a correspondent at that time and started to motivate more practitioners to write as the first step. I thought that after joining the projects in other countries and gaining experience it would be easier to bring those projects to our country. One Brazilian practitioner then moved to New York to work at the Epoch Times, and I started to feel more and more that we could make it. I realized that writing for a newspaper is not that hard and if we could coordinate with other countries we could translate many of their news stories and print a local edition of the newspaper. We began to communicate with the ET teams in South America and I felt the newspaper was in process of being established in Brazil.

The newspaper was on the way, but the idea of establishing a TV station still scared me. How was I supposed to do that? With all those cameras, lights, professional studios... I told myself that having the newspaper would be good enough. One day I received a message saying that they needed people at NTDTV’s New York headquarters. I thought that it was a good opportunity, and that I should go. But after reading the job requirements, I knew I wasn’t qualified for any of them. I decided to apply for the simplest job, junior video editor. Fortunately, they offered remote training for the position. I shared the news with other practitioners and urged them to apply too. Some of them gave up, and others were not accepted. I was the only one accepted. I packed up everything and prepared to go to New York. I asked another practitioner to take care of the coordination of the practice site and the Epoch Times. I also told him that even though I didn’t know what to do I will one day bring NTDTV to Brazil. I communicated with the multi-language coordinator in New York and they approved. I became the coordinator of NTDTV's Portuguese-language operations with another Brazilian practitioner who worked for NTDTV in Argentina.

The two of us became coordinators with no one underneath us to coordinate. Since we were the only practitioners working on the project, we had to build everything from ground zero.

I was very excited to go to New York. I imagined how great NTDTV was and how I would join the reporting team and meet very experienced practitioners who would teach me the camera and how to be a great journalist. But when I arrived I saw a different situation. The multi-language news department had only a few people who were working very hard to keep the project running. In my team there were only three other people. Two of them had been on NTDTV for no more than one year and the other guy had arrived two weeks before. Because people were coming and going, there wasn’t an experienced team, and I realized that I had come to help solve that problem.

In the beginning I was working about eight hours per day in the English news program, and after that I worked on the Portuguese news. The first time I had to break through a lot of interference, spent all night to produce the news, and uploaded it unto the Portuguese website. After that it became easier. I knew that I should not wait for others and should move the project forward myself. I showed the practitioners in Brazil that now we had NTDTV website in Portuguese and I needed help. One by one they started to join the project. It took me many nights, sleeping only a few hours, to finish all my work in New York, then work on Portuguese news project, and train the practitioners from Brazil. I had to be extremely patient with everyone because they had no experience. Sometimes, one day's work was wasted because some of them made a few mistakes. But I realized, “If I’m a coordinator I have to be very patient and persistent, until they learn everything. I’m not a coordinator for myself, but to validate Dafa and to create the right conditions for them to validate the Fa in this project.”

I felt that the cultivation in New York was very tough, and I was tested all the time to see if I deserved to be here and if I could do what I was supposed to. There were many conflicts within the New York team, and I had conflicts with another coordinator in Brazil. I felt I needed to be more diligent, and the only way I could keep up was letting go of more attachments. There were two options - to move forward in cultivation or to go back home. I decided to move forward.

Once the other coordinator of NTDTV in Brazil decided to leave the project, I realized it was my fault, but part of me was happy because it would mean the end of a lot of fights and disagreements. But on the other hand I realized that this was not a righteous thought and I decided to bring him back. It took me a few months to see my mistakes and let go of my complaints about him. Finally, I called him and apologized and told him my mistakes. I asked him to come back to the project because he was very important. He said he was moved by that and agreed to come back. Now he is playing a very important role in the project.

I had another experience like that in the New York team. I was a reporting coordinator of the New York team and I asked a practitioner to conduct an interview which was part of the training. She refused, but I insisted, because that was the job I had assigned her. Then we started to argue with each other. I thought, “How can I have someone like that on my team. She can't even do a basic task I asked her to do.” But then this practitioner called me and wanted to talk. I agreed. I thought she hadn't been rational at all, and there was no reason to behave as she did. I was upset with her and she was upset with me. But suddenly I remembered Master's teachings and said to myself, “It’s not about who is right or wrong, it’s about who can let go and step back.” Then I said to my human side, “What if she was right and I was wrong? Then what?”

In no time, the conflict was over, and both of us were at peace. I saw a beautiful aura covering the whole room and understood that the practitioner in front of me was a future great enlightened being. How could I have those bad thoughts about a righteous god, even if she was a cultivator in this dimension with a human body and mind? I listened to her complaints about my bad behavior and she was indeed right, and she also accepted my explanation of what she did wrong. She said she was willing to help me to make the project succeed.

Another interesting thing happened. I reside at the NTDTV dorm in Brooklyn where there is a Chinese community. I had never seen so many Chinese people in my life. In Brazil when I saw a Chinese on the street I would run after him and hand him truth clarification materials. But here, there were so many that I didn’t know what to do. Even if I gave out all my flyers that would be nothing. I shared my thoughts with a practitioner who was also living in the same dorm and he suggested we set up a Tuidang (quit the Chinese Communist Party - CCP) booth on the neighborhood’s main street. I thought that was a great idea. Two other Western practitioners joined, and the Tuidang Center in Flushing gave us the materials. So the four of us tried to convince Chinese people to quit the CCP. The Chinese would pick up the flyers but would not listen to us, because many of them did not even speak English. Unfortunately, the other three westerners didn’t persist and left. I decided to stay, and asked practitioners to help me on the weekend. A Chinese practitioner from NTDTV came to help me. Another westerner from my dorm joined the project, and some other practitioners came and helped too. We’ve been there for a few months and usually have more than 20 Chinese people quit the CCP when we are there. There are also hundreds of Chinese and western people who accept our fliers.

There are many things I would like to share but that would take a lot of time. Dafa media are now established in Brazil. We have 12 people working really hard for the NTDTV Portuguese project. The Epoch Times is registered in Brazil and the website is launched. I’m also helping to establish a strong reporting team for the English department in New York. Of course this is not much. We have a long way to go and and I still need to find new ways for our media to reach more people. I will have to endure more hardships, let go of a lot of attachments, and coordinate better.

During the process of cultivation and reaching the level that I am today, I’ve realized the following:

If our ideas for projects come from a sincere heart for saving sentient beings, even if it seems impossible in the beginning, Master will help us succeed. We should persist, and not abandon the projects. When we face hardships or have arguments with others we should let go of our attachments and notions and not leave the project nor criticize others.

Being a coordinator is hard. The practitioners who help the most are the ones who take responsibility for the project and help the coordinator, and don’t put pressure on the coordinator when their ideas are not implemented. On the other hand the coordinators should do their best to implement other people’s suggestions and give them the opportunity to validate the Fa in the project.

If we have arguments with other practitioners let’s remember that they are great Dafa disciples and we should not look at them with a human mind, even if they look human on the surface.

These understandings came from my cultivation in Falun Dafa, but they are limited to my current level. Please kindly point out my attachments, notions, and where I need to improve.

Thank you Master, thank You fellow cultivators.