(Minghui.org) I received the book Zhuan Falun as a gift in September 2005, but I didn’t start practicing until May 10, 2006.
I previously studied at a spiritual school for several years. I could walk barefoot on hot coals and had other fairly strong supernormal powers. However, the illnesses I had still did not leave me. For 22 years I had asthma.
When my girlfriend from another country went to her husband's homeland, she took the book, and together they began to study it, having read about the practice on the Internet. The following year, my friends returned the book to me, having practiced Falun Dafa for 8 months. They said that they had never read anything more valuable. So I decided to try this practice as well.
I was engaged in treating people for 10 years by using the knowledge and experience I got from my previous practice. I became famous and well known in my region and as a result acquired a lot of karma. I didn’t realize it at the time. When money began to come in and fame entered the picture, much of what I'd learned receded into the background, and only glory and profit remained.
Master said in Zhuan Falun:
“And from that point on you’d be attached, and once you got attached you’d get anxious when you couldn’t heal people. You know what some people are even thinking when they treat people, trying to protect their reputation? "Let me get his illness so that he can be healed." That’s not out of compassion. He hasn’t gotten rid of his attachments to reputation and personal gain one bit, and no compassion is about to come out.”
I thought that this was the meaning of life: to help people. But when the people I treated came back five years to be treated again, then I had to think it over: “What am I doing? Really helping people or degrading myself and them?” Moreover, my legs began to ache badly.
“Over time your body will get all black inside, and that’s karma.” (Zhuan Falun)
I stopped treating people and spent a whole year in some sort of despair, considering myself a lost soul. I realized that this was not my world, but I did not know how to get out of it.
Master said in Zhuan Falun:
“When you really start cultivating it’s going to be tough. How will you handle it? How much hardship will you have to go through to transform that into white matter? It’ll be really hard.”
When I started cultivating, it was really tough for me. I had to endure all sorts of adversity and suffering. When I first opened the book, I saw these exact words: “When you really start cultivating it’s going to be tough.” (Zhuan Falun)
I would like to share something that happened that strengthened my faith in Teacher and Dafa
In October 2017, I went to visit relatives and stopped at my younger sister’s. A distant relative called and told me that my childhood friend had come to see them, but she was leaving the next day and really wanted to see me. It was the first snowfall of the season, and by dinnertime, it had begun to melt. It would be a bit slippery, but I decided to go and see my friend.
I had to walk on narrow wooden planks that ran through a marshy area overgrown with bushes. I walked, stepping cautiously, but when I had already passed a dangerous area, I suddenly slipped and fell into the marsh. I heard a crack that sounded like a bone breaking and for a moment lost consciousness.
In my mind appeared the thought: “Fracture.” I immediately rejected this thought and began to repeat: “I am a disciple of Master Li Hongzhi, and I do not recognize and completely reject all the old forces' arrangements.” Repeating the phrases “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” I tried to get myself out of the marsh, but the pain was great that I felt I could not do it.
There was nobody around. I asked Teacher for help, and, pulling myself up with my left hand, reached for the wooden-plank walkway and climbed up. My right hand just hung there, and I couldn't move it. When I fell, my hand had turned backward and the weight of my whole body had landed on it. Seeing that my clothes were dirty, I tried to clean them with snow and decided to continue. But after walking for a while, I realized that I had to go home.
Somehow I got back to my sister's and decided not to tell anyone anything. My sister was not home yet, so I turned on Master's audio lectures, but I could not concentrate because of the severe pain. Bad thoughts crept into my mind, and I thought about how, whenever I encountered serious tribulations and really bad things happened, I was always on my own and there was no one next to me. I could not even cry because of the terrible pain I felt at the moment, even though I really wanted to.
I had only one righteous thought: “I am a disciple of the Master and He will not leave me.”
I could not lie down, so I sat on the bed listening to Teacher's voice, and tears rolled down my cheeks. I thought back over my difficult, miserable life. Indeed, as Teacher said, since I was a child, I did not have three happy days in a row. I grew up in a big family with six children. As I remember it, we were always half-starved and I had to work a lot. I was the second oldest, so I had to nurse the younger ones and feed them from the time I was seven.
At that time, I lived in Russia, in an area where the nearest city was about 200 miles away. We lived in the taiga, and there were no modern conveniences. I had to carry water from the river a kilometer away from the house. I had to go the river to wash and rinse the clothes. In the summer, when our parents left for the haymaking, I was left with the children. Eventually, I realized that this was the way I learned to have mercy and a desire to take care of others.
These memories further evoked a feeling of self-pity, but my sister soon arrived and said that we would go to see our relatives. We could go by car but had to return by taxi, because my brother-in-law had to go to work and could not bring us back. My sister noticed that I didn't look very well. I told her that I had tried to go visit my friend, but I'd fallen down, gotten my coat dirty, and came back.
So we got our things and drove off. We stayed with our relatives for 2 hours. During that time the pain was almost unbearable, but I did my best not to show it. When they called a taxi, I thought that I would sit on the front seat near the driver, so nobody would touch my right side and it would be easier for me to get out and the hand that hurt would be out of the way. But the driver put his son in the front seat, and I had to somehow get myself in the back.
The thought of how I would get out of the taxi haunted me until we came to the house. Although it was freezing outside, I had left wearing only a sweater as I could not put on my coat. When my sister asked me why I didn't put my coat on, I had to reply that I was warm. When I was in the car, I was very cold. My sister noticed that I was cold and that my voice was also trembling. Somehow I got out of the car and into the house. My sister asked me what was wrong with my hand when she saw it hanging down. I noticed that when people started to feel sorry for me, I wanted to cry, and as soon as my sister felt sorry for me, I began to cry.
My sister has worked in the field of medicine for 33 years and saw that I had a fracture of the collarbone. She wanted to call an ambulance, but I told her through my tears that she should not worry about me, that I have Teacher. My sister called our relatives, and they all insisted that I got to the hospital for a cast. Only with Teacher’s help was I able to withstand such pressure.
At night, almost in a state of unconsciousness, I was awakened to hear myself whispering that I was a disciple of Li Hongzhi and didn’t recognize the arrangements of the old forces. I put on my headphones and listened to Master's voice all night, even feeling a light breeze, as if someone was holding my hand, and even the sharp pain subsided. Many thoughts appeared in my mind. I realized that a large piece of karma had been eliminated. And I thought, “Of course, it was all a good thing.” But the thought of going back to Ukraine and enduring such a long journey did not leave me.
On the way home I had to change planes and carry things. When morning came, I calmed down as much as I could and even tried to do the exercises. But after crossing my legs to do the fifth exercise, I could only sit in meditation for half an hour. Late in the evening, I tried to make at least small movements with my left hand, but the pain was intense that I realized that I could not do the exercises.
I focused on sending forth righteous thoughts and searching for the reason this had happened. I found many attachments and human notions: resentment, a desire to show off, sexual desires, feeling superior in some regards, judging others, stubbornness, holding on to my opinion, and many others.
Into my mind also came unrighteous thoughts from human notions, feelings, and self-pity. I remembered the words in Zhuan Falun about practitioners considering everything unjust and scolding Buddhas for not protecting them. Such feelings obscured even a celestial eye vision that I had opened for me since my childhood. The thought came to me that it was impossible for one person to endure all the trials that befallen me in my life. But I tried to do my best to deny all such thoughts.
I asked myself, “And what do fellow practitioners endure in China?” Of course, what happened to me was a test of my faith in Teacher. I always thought as I read articles on the Minghui website that miracles happened only to Chinese practitioners, because they have a very harsh environment and their origins are special.
The next day I tried to do at least some of the exercise movements. Although it hurt, I managed to do some of the movements with the help of my left hand. This encouraged me a little, and I again listened to the lectures and did some movements. That evening, a practitioner from the US called me and said that I should do the exercises, that this fracture was only on the physical plane, and that the mechanism Teacher set in place works. After our conversation, I again tried to do the exercises. It was very difficult to bend down in the fourth exercise, and after several attempts, I realized I had to stop because of the pain.
While listening to the lectures that night, I was encouraging myself to do the exercises in the morning. The next day, early in the morning after sending forth righteous thoughts, I decided to start with the fifth exercise, but my hand did not want to stay in that position, so I put it on the pillow. I sat for half an hour, just crossing my legs. Then my sister came into the room and again began to insist on getting x-rays and a cast. I refused and she left.
After about two hours I decided to do some exercise movements. For some reason I was sure that, as soon as I get into position to do the Standing Stance, something might happen. Usually when I did the second exercise, I always felt very comfortable. Especially when I raised my hands up, I often felt a wave of heat passing through the body.
I tried to raise my right hand with my left hand. I was sweating from the pain, but I stood there, still, and all thoughts disappeared. There was only one thought: “Teacher is with me, I am His disciple.” After standing like that for two or three minutes, I suddenly saw a picture from another dimension and heard a crack. Some kind of device in another space made a strange sound, like a buzzing, and did something with my shoulder. I even saw sparks on my right side, and suddenly my hand at once assumed a normal position! My hand had recovered!
Because it came as a surprise, I dropped my arms and burst into tears, realizing that Teacher had restored my arm. My joy was boundless. At that moment I realized what real faith in Teacher is. That’s how sometimes you suddenly find True Faith. I am infinitely grateful to Teacher!
My recovery also had a beneficial effect on my relatives. My older sister, with whom I had a conflict because of the practice, and who did not think well of Falun Dafa, after seeing how I did the exercises with a fracture, asked me to teach her the exercises. I was struck by this request, because Zhuan Falun had sat on her shelf for 8 years, and when I asked her to give the book back to me, she never agreed to it and said that it was not yet time for her to read it.
When I was leaving for home, many relatives came to see me off at the station, even those who had not gotten along since my mother's funeral. They thanked me and said that they no longer held a grudge against each other.
My two younger sisters also began to read Teacher's books. My youngest sister told me about an interesting incident. When she was in the hospital where she works 24-hour shifts in the children's ward, a sick child was brought in late at night. He was blue and panting, the doctors had already given him all the drugs that were available, and they were preparing to send him to the regional hospital by helicopter in the morning, hoping that the child would live until then.
Suddenly my sister thought of the phrases I told her: “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” But she could only remember the words “Falun Dafa” and began whispering them in the child's ear. At first nothing happened, but then the boy's face began to turn pink, and soon he started to breathe normally. He fell asleep, and my sister went home since it was the end of her shift. Two days later she came back to work and found out that the boy had already been discharged from the hospital.
Dafa has manifested itself in many wonderful ways, and I have encountered many tests on my cultivation path. I always draw inspiration from practitioners' stories on the Minghui website. It has taken me over a month to write this experience sharing, and if I had not read the article “A Solemn Fahui–What I Saw in Other Dimensions,” I would probably still be writing and re-writing.
This understanding is at my limited level. Fellow practitioners, please point out something that does not comply with the Fa.
Thank you, Teacher!
Thank you, fellow practitioners!
