(Minghui.org) I was still a student when I started to learn Falun Dafa. At the time, I had an innocent nature. I listened to Master’s lectures and understood them. I did everything as I understood from the Fa. Whenever Master published a new article, everyone at the practice site would get together and read it once per person. After that, everyone could recite it from memory. This helped me to develop a good habit of reciting new articles as soon as they were published. Since I was young and had good memory, I could remember many chapters of Zhuan Falun. Now I understand that it was because my mind was so pure and free of any complicated thoughts that I could remember whatever I read.
Understanding Fa Principles Can Break the Illusion
Before the persecution of Falun Dafa began on July 20, 1999, I would recite from “True Nature Revealed,” “Position,” “Digging Out the Roots,” “Huge Exposure,” and Hong Yin every day. I also studied the Fa and practiced the exercises together with fellow practitioners.
After the persecution began, I felt the sky was falling. I lost the group study environment, but reading and memorizing Master's new articles encouraged me. I was very angry because I did not know the real reason behind this persecution due to my young age. At the time, I was unhappy and wondered day after day when the persecution would end. I could not find information about Master and lost contact with other practitioners. It was a difficult time. I constantly recited text from the Fa. Master also inspired my righteous thoughts. In this way, I finally stepped out from among everyday people and went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa, to validate the Fa rationally and with a clear mind.
I remember that I studied the Fa for an entire week before going to Beijing. I cried every time I studied, because I would not let go of all the things in my life, yet I knew what the Fa told me was correct. I studied “Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland” and strengthened my righteous thoughts. Afterward, Master showed me in “Expounding on the Fa” that everything in life came for Dafa. The positions and functions of the police and those obstructing Dafa practitioners were all presented in front of me. They looked even more real than things in real life. I came to realize that I can find a new job if I lose my current one. I could give up everything in life except Dafa, because it is the grand wish that brought me to this world.
Because going to Beijing to validate the Fa was rationally understood from Fa principles, I became clearer and clearer on the Fa principles throughout the whole process. I came to know the reason why we protested the persecution through a hunger strike and why not to give my name and address when being interrogated. I could see through all the traps set by the old forces. This built upon my firm foundation from the personal cultivation stage. During this time, I was with other practitioners every day. With Master’s orderly arrangements, we cultivated away our attachments, so we were clearheaded at key points. I still miss those days of personal cultivation, when I studied, practiced, and cultivated with other practitioners in a group environment.
Every time I encountered a barrier, I had already known it and seen those attachments when studying the Fa. For example, when I was jealous, I encountered something related to jealousy. But because I knew in advance, I could learn more Fa about jealousy and recite it so that whenever my jealousy came out in real life, I could recognize it. I would find the origin and development of my jealousy. During this process, Master had already cleared it out for me. I saw how an attachment came and went clearly before my eyes.
Defeating the Demon of Qing by Being Clear on Fa Principles
I once went to another city for correspondence courses, where I met a classmate and a friend from college. We were so happy to see each other again after graduation. My friend invited me to fly a kite on the opposite side of the school. Sitting in the dorm, I suddenly felt that something was wrong. A power was pushing me to find that guy. There were two of me: one was the true me; the other was not. I was clear that I should be calm and certain. The one who wanted me to go crazy or even out of control was not me. So I sat still and waited to see what the “fake” me wanted to do. Part of my mind wanted to go out with that man, while the other part stayed calm. I watched the restless, crazy part for a while. After ten minutes, the crazy thing inside me gradually weakened and disappeared. I knew it was trying to make me do something wrong. The man who treated me well in college is now married, so I knew that I should not have any inappropriate thoughts about him. After watching its “performance,” I realized that the old forces were very silly and evil.
Before, I have seen the attachment to qing (sentimentality) being removed from my body. I felt hurt when that happened, as if my heart was being cut by a knife, piece by piece. But after that, I escaped the confines of qing and felt much easier and lighter. At the time, I knew that my attachment to qing was being removed. Qing makes people get lost in this society. Without qing, mercy and benevolence can emerge.
I had another months-long experience of removing qing. Those few years, articles about qing were posted by practitioners on Minghui.org every day. I benefited a lot from the articles, and each was a treasure to me. When I read them, I would stop now and then to see if I had the same thoughts as the author. Sometimes, I would try to search for my own mistakes. When I understood the article and felt what the author felt, I was brought into his world by what the practitioner comprehended. I am very thankful for one of the articles that described qing as a tangible pink liquid. When I realized what the author saw qing as, I suddenly understood what qing was from the Fa principles. Actually, qing is nothing but a dense liquid that keeps people lost in the three realms. Suddenly, I jumped out of the pink water and never wanted to go back to that feeling of qing.
Recognizing the Attachment to Self By Correcting My State
The video Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners was published in October 1997. I felt that this lecture was special, but after watching it a few times I still could not understand it. In the following two holidays (8-10 days), I bought a DVD player in order to study the Fa. I kept the disk in the player and put off everything else until I finished watching it every morning. If I had time, I would watch it again in the afternoon and even once more in the evening. I watched it for almost a hundred times in that short period. While watching the lecture, I realized that I had changed from before.
When I first watched the video, I knew what Master said is correct, and it is the principle of the universe. But I had doubts in my mind and was not convinced – it seemed that in my mind there was a powerful force going against the Fa. Sometimes, I fell asleep while watching the lecture – when the video ended, I woke up. When I studied Zhuan Falun with other practitioners, I missed some sentences because my understanding of those sentences were not clear. The same situation occurred when I watched Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners. It meant that I was falling behind and that there was something wrong with my cultivation state. So I insisted on watching. I continued watching it after I woke up. Again and again, I watched it without keeping count. I thought that my state was not correct and I needed to study more. Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners is the only Fa taught abroad published as video, so I should study it more.
After watching the lecture dozens of times, I no longer fell asleep in the middle. Little by little, I understood the Fa principles being taught. The more I understood, the more I felt bad things being removed from my body. My body was very sensitive, so I knew when and how much something was removed whenever it happened, though I could not see it. The force opposing the Fa weakened as well. Eventually, I was completely convinced that what Master taught is all correct – it was I who was wrong. The opposing force disappeared. Now I know that the force was the nature of the old universe, one of strong selfishness. I could even understand what Master was trying to communicate through His eyes and postures when I was in a good cultivation state.
After the two holidays, I studied Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners hundreds of times. Master helped me clear out many bad things in my body that I could not see, which helped solve many cultivation problems in the next few years. That state of being able to melt into the Fa is very good. The other dimensions I understood through my comprehension of the Fa are more real than this life. Only with a clear understanding of Fa principles can one avoid getting lost in everyday life and assist Master in Fa-rectification.
When sharing experiences with other practitioners, I became more careful, because my attachment to self often surfaced to show off. I had to restrain it whenever it came out: when it wanted to show off, I would not let it. At the same time, when other practitioners' attachment to self surfaced and showed off, I could see it clearly. I did not think too much when I continuously studied Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners so many times and only tried to correct my cultivation state. In the following years of cooperation with other practitioners, I realized the importance of studying the Fa. When the starting point was not based on the Fa, it would be validating and showing off oneself instead of validating the Fa. This mindset matches that of the old forces. It misplaces the relationship between the Fa, Master, and cultivators, which is very dangerous for a practitioner.
Righteous Enlightenment on Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Helped Clear Out the Evil
I paid attention to Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party after its publication in The Epoch Times. At that time, I found that I could not understand the Fa recently taught by Master. After the new year, we had the Nine Commentaries and studied it together in the same way we studied Zhuan Falun. When we read it aloud, we felt something cold escape from our bodies, so we realized that we had to study this book as well. After we got the DVD version, we watched it carefully and understood it little by little. At first, it was very hard to understand. We knew that the book's contents were correct but could not agree. After the evil elements were almost purged from our bodies, we could comprehend more of the book. Then, we studied Master’s recent articles and understood that the progress of Fa-rectification was now related to factors of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) culture within ourselves. Practitioners needed to face the old factors that do not belong to Dafa and clear them out. Only by removing those factors could practitioners catch up with Master.
This is the time for lives in the old universe to transition into the new universe. But the things belonging to the old universe cannot go to the new universe directly. Therefore, I knew that I had to treat seriously the education that I received, the CCP culture, and my way of thinking. After I studied Nine Commentaries more, I found that the evil elements had been pushed into my body layer by layer. After evil elements in one layer were removed, there were more in the next layer, and so on. So I kept studying Nine Commentaries in order to clear out all the evil factors.
After all the evil elements were removed, I could understand the Fa principles in the Shen Yun performance, and I could also find the answers to questions in my cultivation practice.
Above are some experiences from my cultivation. I still have a lot of shortcomings. If there are any errors in the article, please kindly point them out.
Category: Improving Oneself
