(Minghui.org) When I was young, I wasn't as “sharp” or “smart” as most children. I didn't know to grab back things when they were being taken from me. When I was bullied, I didn't dare to hit back out of fear of hurting others. When adults teased me or lied to me, I often naively believed them. Gradually, I came to feel that nothing and no one could be trusted. One had to abide by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) rule of “being cunning and trusting no one” in order to live well.
I have always been good at writing, and in school I had to write essays in line with the Party's warped culture and philosophy of “falsified glory”. My essays were often put up on display by my teachers as model essays. This further deepened my mistrust of the CCP's doctrine and media reports, and I resolved to be as discerning and independent a thinker as possible.
In July 1999, when I was in high school, I first heard of Falun Dafa through the CCP's media propaganda campaign. I decided to hear from Falun Dafa's side to see who was right. One day, a classmate brought some Falun Dafa truth-clarification flyers to school, saying that they were being distributed outside the school. I was impressed by the distributor's courage. But when I read the flyer, the truth was too cruel for me to accept.
I couldn't believe that any human could be capable of doing such brutal torture and persecution. In a weak attempt to hide from the truth, I thought, “These Falun Dafa practitioners are just exaggerating to get public sympathy, it can't be true! The police are humans too, how could they possibly do such cruel things?” My initial sympathy for Falun Dafa began to waver as well, as I thought they were also using the CCP's tactics of lying and falsifying information.
When I was attending the university, I heard that a social commenter was hosting a seminar titled “Exposing Falun Dafa”. My interest in Falun Dafa was reignited and I eagerly attended the seminar, thinking that I would finally find out what it was all about.
But I was sorely disappointed – the entire seminar consisted entirely of the commenter making big talk that the practice hoodwinked people, yet he avoided any questions about Master Li's talks and writings, or what Master Li had actually done to defraud people. I left the talk feeling even more mystified. Could there really be such a person who, despite already being labeled a fraud, does not have a single blemish to his name for others to pick on?
In 2001, I watched the coverage of the Tiananmen Self-immolation on television. When I saw that severely burned man sitting completely motionless without an inch of flame on him, and the police casually waiting for him to shout his slogans before tossing the fire blanket on him, I couldn't shake the feeling that something strange was going on.
I never imagined that the self-immolation was staged by the CCP. I even tried to look for Falun Dafa practitioners when I visited Tiananmen Square during my summer break, but I didn't see any. I didn't realize it at the time, but my journey to becoming a Dafa practitioner had already started.
I liked to write, and in my days at the university I shared some of my articles online. One person posted replies to all of my articles, and his responses were always sincere, moderated, and logical. I began chatting with him. Over time, I came to realize that he was very knowledgeable, logical in his thought process, had a good heart, and strongly valued traditional moral values.
He didn't have any of the undesirable habits that most people have today. Yet, on further questioning, I found that he had a pretty standard educational background, was a young man, and lived in the city. This piqued my curiosity. How was it possible for such a good person to exist in China's morally degraded society?
When we got married three years later, I found the answer to my question – my husband was a Falun Dafa practitioner! That was the Dafa I had been wanting to learn more about for so long. Little did I imagine that I would have such an affinity with Dafa.
However, one of my regrets was my initial reaction to the revelation that my husband was a Dafa practitioner. At the time, I was looking forward to the start of “marital bliss”, and the shock of my discovery made me reject it instantly. I first discovered a few carefully kept Falun emblems in our home, and later a practitioner gave us a copy of Zhuan Falunas a wedding present.
When I questioned my husband, he confirmed that he was a Falun Dafa practitioner, and said that he would never give up his cultivation. I felt like my whole world had suddenly collapsed, and was terrified that the evil CCP would come knocking on our door, or even that my husband would go to Tiananmen Square to “self-immolate”. I didn't even want to open Zhuan Falun, which I had been curious to read for so long.
My husband told me that Falun Dafa practitioners are forbidden from killing or attempting suicide, and the people who self-immolated were not practitioners. Because I refused to believe him, my husband obtained a CD of the documentary “False Fire” for me to watch. From the documentary's analysis, I learned about the many suspicious points in the immolation incident: the plastic Sprite bottle between the man's legs that did not melt, the girl who could still sing although her “throat had been slit”, the reporters who interviewed the burn victims without wearing any personal protection equipment.
The most frightening revelation was the slow-capture video of Liu Chunling, which plainly showed her being killed by a heavy object that was thrown at her head, when she was supposed to have died in the fire!
I also learned that the documentary “False Fire” had been recognized by the United Nations, and the UN International Education Development Committee and condemned the CCP for staging the self-immolation. Finally, I realized that I had been duped by the CCP. Any remaining respect I had for the CCP was completely destroyed.
Although I knew that Falun Dafa had been framed by the CCP, I was still frightened as my husband was a practitioner. So thinking that I was very clever, I decided to read the books to find a “loophole” that would demonstrate he was a “fanatic”.
With that impure thought, I flipped through the book and came across the chapter “Male-Female Dual Cultivation”. I started reading it as I thought this would be the best place to determine if the content was pure or impure, but after reading through once quickly my hopes were immediately quashed, and I felt very ashamed of myself.
The book's writing was very righteous and pure, and it explained clearly that such actions were wrong. “Particularly in our school of Falun Dafa, there is no double cultivation of a man and a woman, and neither do we need it. That is how we look at this issue.” (Lecture Five in Zhuan Falun)
Humbled by this first encounter, I read through the book once. Not only did I fail to find what I had initially been looking for, I instead found that this book taught people to be good. It was a far cry from the picture the CCP had painted of Falun Gong. I realized that if everyone followed the principles in this book, our society would be a much better place.
From then on, I no longer tried to prevent my husband from cultivating. I understood that by practicing Dafa, my husband would not be led astray, and it would keep our family together. Moreover, it would be impossible for one to find such a good and morally kind husband.
Even now, I have a good husband who is the envy of my colleagues and friends. I am glad that, in that time of fear, I ended up making the right choice.
After watching my husband practicing every day, listening to him interact with other practitioners, and reading Dafa books, I came to understand that Falun Dafa is the true cultivation method. How could I miss out on this once-in-thousands-of-years opportunity? I started cultivating as well.
When I first started meditating in the lotus position, my legs would become numb and painful within minutes. Even worse, the discomfort would gnaw at my heart like a thousand needles. I would break the position after a few minutes, and instantly regret not persevering. A day later, I started having flu-like symptoms and a severely blocked nose.
My husband suggested I meditate to eliminate the illness karma. The moment I placed my hands in the jieyin (conjoined hands) position, my nose immediately cleared. But once I broke the jieyin position, my nose would immediately become blocked again. Fascinated, I tried doing this several times, and each time my nose cleared and blocked itself immediately. It was unbelievable!
That was the first time I had experienced the wonders of Dafa, and from that point on I truly began to believe the extraordinary content in the Dafa books.
Because I was afraid of pain and fatigue, I was rather slipshod in doing the exercises. In spite of that, Master compassionately helped me eliminate a lot of my illness karma. My gastritis, mouth ulcers, and other ailments I had had since I was young disappeared without my noticing, and for the first time I felt wonderfully free of illness. By getting rid of attachments to fame, profit, and emotions, I came to experience the wonderful feeling of true inner peace.
I hope my personal journey - from a person who didn't know the truth about Dafa to a Dafa disciple – will speak to other mainland Chinese who are still as lost as I once was. By stepping away from the CCP's lies and learning the truth about Dafa, perhaps this is what they have been waiting for all these thousands of years!