(Minghui.org) I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2010 in California and moved to New York five months ago to work for the English Epoch Times (EET). I had been living in a small town for a year to keep my cost of living low while building my online art business, but I didn’t know any practitioners there. I was starting to feel stagnant in my cultivation and I knew that I needed to move to a place where I could grow. A practitioner in Los Angeles who first introduced me to the Fa suggested that I apply to work for the Epoch Times in New York as a photographer. Since it was only through attaining the Fa that I gained the courage in 2010 to quit my job and embark on a path of being an artist and photographer in the first place, I thought that working for the Epoch Times in New York would be the next leap of faith in my career and in Dafa.

During the phone interview for the job, the managing editor for EET asked me, “Why do you want to move to New York?” I expressed, “I’m starting to feel stagnant in my cultivation. I don’t know any practitioners here and would like to be near a community of cultivators. I also have this strong feeling that I need to be in New York right now.” I asked questions about what things would be like there. She said, “If you feel strongly that you need to be in New York at this time for Fa Rectification, even though things may not seem clear right now, Master has a way of arranging things for you.” I immediately got teary eyed during the interview because in that moment she helped me let go of my tendency to worry about feelings of uncertainty and to trust in Master. It also showed me peering from the outside a glimmer of opportunity - the possibility of having spirituality in the workplace – a unique environment where cultivation and communication of Fa principles would be the norm. This would never happen during a job interview at any other ordinary company. I recognized how special it was.

I then spoke with the hiring manager and asked many questions about my potential move there. She said, ”Things are always changing here. The important thing is that you just get here so we have a place to start.” I realized she was essentially telling me the same thing that the managing editor had told me - to move forward and trust it will work out. Peering in from afar and having heard that practitioners in New York were very diligent in their cultivation, it really seemed like they were acting as one body – because two completely different people were telling me the same thing – to let go, and trust.

I booked my one-way ticket and told everyone I was moving to New York. I thought it would be a great opportunity to expand my new online art business to a larger market while working part-time as a photographer for EET.

Never Say Never: The Truth behind Notions

So here I was in New York during the coldest season in a city I said I would never live in. I thought I would never live in New York because it was expensive, dangerous and cold. I grew up in Guam, an island in the Pacific, where it’s summer all year round. I hated the cold and the idea of snow. One day in the office while the editorial staff were busy writing away, I saw snow falling from our large panel windows. I felt like I was the only one that noticed it. I rushed outside to take pictures. It was my first time seeing snow falling and it seemed like bits of heaven coming down from the sky. I realized that I was so busy taking pictures that I completely forgot about how cold it was. I couldn’t believe it. My biggest concern of whether I could make it in New York was that I wasn’t sure if I could handle the cold and here I was freezing but forgetting that and joyfully capturing snow with my camera. I was moved to tears. I learned that whenever we have strong notions or aversions to something, there is a great opportunity for some truth to be uncovered. The notions stand as obstacles between you and your higher truth, so they can be used as a compass to guide where to move forward.

The next thing I thought I would never read or have anything to do with were newspapers. Even from my childhood, due to family reasons, I have a great aversion in me for newspapers, as the knowledge inside only seemed to harm, not help. I also hated the smell of newspapers. It made me feel nauseated. But here I found myself working for the Epoch Times Newspaper because I had become a practitioner and photographer.

I never thought how positive and profound the act of creating a newspaper for the public could be. Recently a reader wrote a letter to the editorial staff telling us that he had passed up a $60 million dollar contract with the Chinese government because he had read about the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. It really moved our hearts to know that our media was playing such an influential role in society.

The third thing I thought I would never do was sales. Why would anyone do sales? It’s stressful, income isn’t steady, and you really have to put yourself out there. Despite being on the photography team, a number of people came up to me telling me I’d be good in sales. I had been asked several times from different managers and said no each time. But I had to ask myself, “Why am I being asked so many times despite my refusal?”

When people stopped asking me to consider joining the sales team, for some reason my decision of saying no didn’t sit right. I had a bit of a guilty conscious because we needed a stronger sales team to carry us into our goals. I joined EET right at a time of great structural changes, where New York would serve as a model for offices around the world. As important as photographs are in a newspaper, there was an even greater need for sales.

After the years long task of establishing myself as a professional photographer, with a small business, a social presence, and fans, I was faced with a new challenge – to let go of it all and trust in the Fa to guide me. I felt everything was moving very fast all around me - like a rapid bullet train that I either had to get on or off. I started thinking in extremes; maybe I shouldn’t even be at EET at all. Nowhere does it say that as a practitioner I have to work for EET. I can be anywhere in the world and cultivate. Why be in a position mismatched to my profession? And would I really be successful if I wasn’t happy in my role?

To make the decision even more complicated, on my very first day of moving to New York, I had attended a business networking event. I met with a business consultant who wanted to help me turn my online art shop into a six figure business and do it pro bono as a case study. She had shown me examples of other artists with successful online businesses. This was the next big break I needed to market my shop into a serious business and every artist’s dream to earn a full time living doing what they love. But time was running out and I had to make a decision soon. There was no way I could do both, as EET also required staff to be full time.

I had talked to a number of other practitioners about it. Some people were pro photography, some were pro sales. On top of that, there were so many different understandings of the Fa from different people at various levels in their cultivation. What was the right thing to do?

I thought I would talk to the new sales manager about what my day to day tasks would be like, and learn more about being in sales. Maybe talking to him would help me make a decision. The conversation quickly became a notion demolishing session - letting go of my career as a photographer, of working on assignment for National Geographic one day, of taking my online art shop to the next level so that if I ever had kids I could be a stay at home mom with a flexible income. Every notion, objection or thought I could think of was knocked out of the park. His faith in the success of EET and my abilities were so strong and unwavering it made any of my attachments at the time seem so insignificant. He even so boldly stated that helping me decide to go into sales was the best thing he could have ever done for me, and for my life.

I agreed to join the sales team and learned that you move forward even when you’re not completely ready because when you are too ready, it’s too late. When you are too ready, you are too comfortable and the opportunity is usually gone by then. Moving forward even when you’re not completely ready, having trust – therein lies the cultivation – the difficulty of taking action, getting out of your comfort zone and letting go even when it’s difficult. I realized that even after the fact, after the decision was already made, I was still letting go of things. But I also continued to get validation that I had taken the right path.

Cultivation is Accelerated After Joining Sales: Letting go of human thinking

Joining the sales team immediately accelerated my cultivation and helped me let go of human thinking. One day I got a major migraine headache right before our sales manager told us we needed to make an almost impossible goal in the next few days. The pounding pain and teary eyes made me feel horrible. I mentioned to my teammates that maybe I got sick because I hadn’t slept enough and worked too much the days before. I started to feel bad about not being able to balance things, and not having enough endurance like the rest of the team. A couple of my teammates immediately noticed my mind was reverting back to notions and stayed back to help me break though this, saying that it wasn’t because I didn’t sleep enough. One of my teammates said, “It’s a good thing. Master is just clearing out karma for you. Your learning curve being here has been really steep, the highest I’ve seen anyone new coming into EET.” He went on to say I was receiving interference.

In Zhuan Falun, Master says:

"As true practitioners, we should look at issues from a very high level instead of from the perspective of everyday people. Should you believe that you are ill, this may really cause you to become ill. This is because once you assume that you are ill, your xinxing level will be as high as that of everyday people."

"In cultivation practice one needs to eliminate karma, and that is painful." (Lecture Six)

I think it was really fundamental that I learn to let go of this human thinking because our team was trying to make the impossible happen. I don’t think I would have fully eliminated that notion if it weren’t for my supportive team. Sure enough, shortly thereafter I made a sale and brought in many more sales that month and the whole team also broke record sales that same month and we made history.

Letting go of even more to gain greater focus

After breaking record sales, our manager announced that our new goal for May would be double that in April. Although I had shifted my role into sales, I was still holding onto my online art business on the side, selling prints and iPhone cases. I received a large order and had spent a lot of time packaging it and communicating with the client. I knew that as we moved forward I could no longer continue to do both well. I wrapped up the big box and asked my reporter friend at EET if he wanted to take a break and walk with me to the post office. As soon as I dropped off the package, along with it went my dreams of growing a location independent business, of being a digital nomad and traveling artist. I decided it was the last order I was going to ship.

While walking back to the office, we discussed whether or not I should include the fact that I gave up an opportunity to work with a business consultant to turn my shop into a six figure business to work full time for EET sales, in this Fahui paper. At that exact moment I saw her. I saw the business consultant we were talking about! She walked right by us laughing with her friend, but she didn’t see me. I’m not sure what this meant. Was it a last look at the life I was leaving behind? My reporter friend said it may be a sign to include in the sharing since we were just discussing her. I had to stop. I couldn’t keep walking. I was trying to process why that happened. My cultivation has been so accelerated since joining sales with things happening so quickly and letting go of self rapidly. This was the final and last step, letting go of everything to gain focus and strengthen not only my role in sales but a true Dafa disciple to save sentient beings. I returned back to the office and closed my online photography shop.

Photography in Greek means drawing with light. As a photographer, I was always searching for the best light - waking up early for sunrise or waiting for the golden hour at sunset to capture the perfect moment in time. As I let go of being a photographer, I realized that I didn’t have to go searching for light anymore because I became the light – I became a Dafa disciple – and people came searching for me instead. As I changed internally my environment suddenly changed. The subway train, which once served as a private space for me to study the Fa for personal cultivation transformed into an environment for Fa rectification where people were trying to connect with me; whether it was a little girl who kept looking me up and down, studying me, or a couple I ran into four times in a week, or the young photographer that needed encouragement. Even if I tried to study, I couldn’t because people would start talking to me and then connecting with me through Facebook, LinkedIn, email or text. Things like this didn’t happen when I was a photographer and they all became opportunities to clarify the truth.

This experience made me see Master’s words on a more profound level: In the New York Conference 2010 lecture, Master said,

“The task of saving sentient beings has to be carried out by you. And not only must it be done, but it must be done well. It is not done for Master, however. Though we call it “saving sentient beings,” it is not done entirely for them either. It’s also done for your sake. That is because the sentient beings that you save, which includes the people that you clarify the truth to, shall very likely one day be a portion of the sentient beings in your enormous cosmos. You are perfecting and completing yourself, through your successes you are achieving what you shall become, and without these, you could not serve as King there nor complete your mission and establish the magnificent mighty virtue that’s needed.”

By saving others I was really completing myself. Even as a Stanford graduate, I was able to dim my own light and avoid society’s high expectations yet still creep out once in a while as a photographer to look for beauty, light, and solace by creating art. But as a Dafa disciple, I realize I can’t hide my light. It radiates through. And people notice. I think that the people I am meant to save, see it most. As Master says in Essentials for Further Advancement II,

"Eliminate your last attachment(s)"

"Let the part of you that has been fully cultivated glow with an even purer brilliance." ("Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s)")

If we can continue to let go of everything, the goodness and light will shine through. Sentient beings will feel it and start coming to us more in the future. I wish I could say that I was this super diligent cultivator before coming to New York to work for EET and naturally made all this progress on my own, but I wasn’t. It was only by being a part of this strong body – a collective group of cultivators and now the sales team that I was able to make progress more quickly. I realized just how powerful we are as Dafa disciples and even more so as one body. This is the power of New York. By trusting and having faith I was able to let go of notions, move forward, and let the light of my true self shine more brightly. I am grateful for this path I have been given.

Thank you Master, thank you everyone.