(Minghui.org) I am a young Falun Dafa practitioner. I was married in 2016, however, my husband is not a practitioner.
I was shown in a dream that my husband and I were married in a previous life and that he and his family were deeply indebted to me. So I think he was probably here to repay their debt. In the meantime, he must have known that I would learn Falun Dafa in this lifetime and he hoped that I would treat him the same as I had in the previous life and wake him up no matter how badly he was lost in this world.
My husband had treated me well ever since we met and was very affectionate to me. We liked to eat the same things, had the same interests, and had similar views.
But everything changed after we were married. We began to constantly fight about things like meals or going to the restroom. The arguments were all about trivial matters. Sometimes we fought over a word not being used properly.
My husband is several years older than me. I always thought that a man would change after being married, especially one who was over 30. He should be more responsible and ready to shoulder burdens. But my husband didn't change at all. He played ball, went to bars, and played games on the cell phone after work just as he had done before.
A man should support his family. He should be more devoted than before he was married. He should visit his parents often and help them maintain their house. He visited them but never helped. It didn't help that his mother spoiled him and wouldn't let him do any work. She cooked the best dishes for him every day.
He lived with his parents when I was out of town on business. My mother-in-law didn't want to wake him up in the morning so he could sleep longer. Thus, he didn't eat breakfast and rushed to the office every day. I hated his behavior and felt annoyed just thinking about it. Whenever he was lazy at home or appeared to not want to make progress, I became angry and would scold him.
His family's income was average, but his parents always competed with my more wealthy family. They often tried to show that they were well off. But in reality, they were afraid I would look down on them.
My mother-in-law bought a mink coat for 6,000 yuan. She showed it off when my husband and I went to their home for dinner. She wanted me to compliment her. I wasn't impressed by her coat and perhaps she sensed my feeling because she never wore the coat in front of me again. She told my mother that the coat costs 12,000 yuan.
I despised her from the bottom of my heart when I heard that she had exaggerated the value of her fur coat. I felt that she was being hypocritical. Her attachments to showing off, jealousy, self-interest and fame were dirty things to me. I had become a practitioner before I was a teenager and had cultivated for so many years. I felt disgusted because such things were not being truthful.
Through several months of conflicts with my husband's mother, I found that I had been heavily influenced by the culture of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I always wanted others to follow my ideas in the same way the Communist Party wanted to “control the heaven, earth, people, and people's minds.”
The fact that my mother-in-law exhibited many behaviors that I couldn't tolerate reflected that I still had many attachments including a competitive mentality, showing off, fame, being aloof, and looking down on others. I knew it was my own behavior that caused my mother-in-law to focus on saving face.
The more they acted that way, the more intolerable it felt. In this way, a vicious cycle was formed. I didn't cultivate myself and had deviated a long way from the Falun Dafa requirements. I knew that as a cultivator one must look inward. But my heart remained agitated and it was difficult for me to improve myself.
It wasn't easy having conflicts with my husband. I was unable to get up early to do the morning exercises. I decided to go to my visit my parents and stay with my mother (also a practitioner) for a few days. I hoped that by staying around other Dafa practitioners I could become more diligent. I hoped to study the Fa more, share more, look inward more, and truly elevate myself according to the Fa.
I then had another dream that inspired me.
In the dream, I was climbing a mountain and as I approached the summit the trail became more difficult. A thin layer of ice covered the rocks. There was no level place to stand or hold onto. Furthermore, the rock faces were practically vertical up and down. It looked impossible to climb further.
There were markings on the side of the mountain wall. I knew it was to measure a cultivator's moral character. Raising my head and looking at the rocky wall, I felt helpless.
I then saw that my husband was also there. He knelt on the ground with his back bent so much so that he looked like a bow, which I could use to step on. I stood on his back, then on his shoulder. With great difficulty he stood up. He then clenched his teeth and used all his strength to raise me up with his hands so that I could get to the summit. But my conscience seemed to hold me back. My hands didn't try to grab on and my legs didn't push me up. I didn't have the will to climb up at all. Yet my husband raised me up again and again, almost exhausting all his energy.
I sensed that he was immensely determined as though: I will bring her to the summit even if I have to exhaust the last trace of my strength. Even if the cost is to lose my life or sacrifice all I have, I will help her climb up and reach her goal.
I was shocked by his unselfishness that was totally for others. I suddenly became clear-minded. I stepped on him, dashed forward, and quickly reached the summit. The alarm then went off waking me up to do the morning exercises.
I cannot describe my feeling at the time in human words. The scene in the dream is still vivid in my mind. My husband had been willing to sacrifice himself in order to help me succeed in cultivation. I, on the other hand, had blamed him and hated him for the conflicts between us in our daily life. I wanted to inflict revenge on him by not being nice to him.
I even thought that after I completed my cultivation path and left, that I would forever ignore him. I wouldn't care about any kindness I gave him in my previous life. All I wanted was for him to no longer upset me or reach me.
My thoughts were really not in line with a cultivator's standard. I thought that if my husband had come to repay my kindness from a previous life, then he would treat me well, and as my husband, would care for me and protect me. These were entirely misconceptions. When he began to help me expose all sorts of deeply hidden attachments, I judged everything with human sentimentality. I totally forgot about a cultivator's righteous thoughts. Only after I was given a hint in my dream did I enlighten to my wrong thinking and behavior.
Being nice to me in the human world is not truly being good to me. Helping me to cultivate and letting me get rid of human sentimentality and attachments so that I can elevate myself is truly being good to me. This is truly repaying my previous kindness to him.
