Experience Sharing of a 10-Year-Old Western Practitioner

(Minghui.org) Revered Master, fellow practitioners,

My name is Daniel, and I am 10 years old.

Both of my parents are Falun Dafa practitioners. I’ve been listening to the Fa and doing the exercises since I was a baby. At home I read the Fa with my parents or online with other young practitioners. However, I am not so diligent when it comes to doing the exercises, and I tend to grumble and complain when my parents ask me to do the exercises.

This year a Minghui summer camp was held in France. When I arrived there, I saw my friends running around, all excited. I asked them what they were playing, and they told me they had caught a lizard. I, too, started running around frantically because, up until then, I had never seen many lizards. I ran along with them without knowing exactly what we were about to do.

We spotted three lizards, and my friends caught them and put them in a jar. When they grabbed them, their tails came off. It shocked me, but my friends said that the tails would eventually grow back. I didn’t settle for that answer and went to ask the adults if it was really so. The adults were busy setting up our tent. They told me that a lizard’s tail does grow back, but the lizard suffers a loss when it has to lose it, as it makes it more vulnerable afterwards, thus it does so only when it is threatened. I went back to my friends and pointed out that they would surely not be glad to lose a part of their bodies, especially if it hurts, even if it grows back afterwards.

But I couldn’t convince them. Later on the adults came by and asked them to stop catching lizards. I started to cry hard, but I didn’t exactly know why.

At first I thought I was crying over the lizards who suffered, but after speaking with my dad, I realized that I was also angry with myself, because I went along with the others without even thinking, and I helped them catch those lizards without trying to find out what they were going to do with them.

In my understanding, Master says that when we are excited and irrational, we become easy prey for demons that drive us to do all sorts of things that we later may regret.

In “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York,” Master says:

“So I urge those students who are still being irrational: come to your senses and be responsible to your own lives. Your own attachments have led wicked beings from outside to command, interfere with, and control you, making you so irrational.”

Looking inward, I realized that this happened to me quite a lot – I tended to get excited and tag along with others without thinking. Usually, the outcome was not good.

In “Teaching the Fa to Australian Falun Dafa Practitioners” 2007 (Video), Master explains that each cultivator must walk his own path in cultivation, and when he completes his cultivation and reaches True Fruition, he will become a king who presides over his own kingdom. It will not work if he tried to emulate another king and do exactly the same things, because he should be able to know how to run his own kingdom by himself.

Starting today, I will think twice before doing things that others do.

Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.

Shared at the 13th Israeli Experience Sharing Conference