Abandoning My Fear Amidst Fa-Rectification

(Shared at 2001 Chicago Conference)

Greetings Master. Hello everyone.

My name is Sara and I attained the Fa one year ago when my father asked a contact person from a nearby town to give a seminar in our community.

Although it has been only a year, it seems like many lifetimes have passed since I began practicing. Yet, at the same time it feels like only yesterday that this wonderful Dafa made its way into my life. I can remember it very clearly. I was upstairs in my room studying Chinese when, through a vent in the floor, I overheard a conversation my dad was having with a neighbor on the phone. He sounded very excited about some event that was happening in a nearby town. Although I had no idea what they were talking about, I suddenly felt fearful and had a sense of dread. I now know that this was simply my thought karma resisting it's own obliteration. But a deeper part of me, my true self, was quietly overjoyed upon coming into contact with the Great Law and I somehow knew that my life would never be the same again.

Not long after that my parents hosted a 9-day seminar in our small town, and about a week after finishing the seminar, I was invited to attend an experience sharing conference in New York. Curious to find out more about this new and mysterious practice that seemed to be beckoning me, I decided to go. Deep within I felt that what Master Li taught was the truth and that whatever I didn't understand must be beyond my level. I thought that seeing what the group was like as a whole would help me know if this was a truly righteous practice.

Sitting in the lecture hall of the conference, I felt strongly connected to the other practitioners, as I knew we shared the same heart. While listening to practitioners' cultivation stories, I remember silently thanking Master Li for allowing me to be there. I felt like the girl in a fairytale who discovered the secret garden. I had finally found a "land of purity."

Just a few months after I began practicing, the term "Fa-rectification" kept popping up among other practitioners and in various articles. I really didn't know what this meant, but I was afraid to ask anyone, even my own dad. Again, the uncultivated part of me, not wishing to lose its influence, resisted the truth. Though I had avoided the issue, I knew that the "Fa-rectification" carried with it serious implications for my cultivation. "It's not fair," I thought grudgingly, "the other practitioners were able to focus on self-cultivation for a year or more before they had to step forward." I was also totally baffled by Master's lecture at the San Francisco Conference that had recently come out. After reading it a few more times, I felt that some part of me understood, but I was still very confused. It was as if I had learned the rules of a game, and then all of the sudden the rules changed and I was the last one to find out. I didn't know if I would be able to catch up and it felt like the ship was leaving without me.

Getting the opportunity to see Master at the Great Lakes Conference was a great encouragement to me and removed many doubts I had been having about my own predestined relationship and whether or not I could be a genuine cultivator. However, not long after the conference I began to feel very uncomfortable mentally and full of anxiety about my cultivation during this special time. I remembered Master's words: "You no longer think as you used to. No matter what you do for Dafa and no matter what it is you're doing, you are placing yourselves in Dafa and not thinking about 'I want to do this and that for Dafa' or 'I want to improve myself in this way or that way' like you did before. No matter what you do, you aren't thinking about what you're doing for Dafa, or 'how can I do things well for this Fa.' Instead you are placing yourself within Dafa like a particle of Dafa: 'No matter what it is, I should just do those things.'" I felt a little sad. I knew that this was not a description of me. Still caught up in my own selfishness, I had yet to become a particle of the Fa.

For about a month after the Great Lakes conference I struggled with myself. I felt a sudden pressing need to be more involved in the Fa-rectification process, but I didn't know what to do or where to begin. I had already received many e-mails asking for help with various projects. I didn't delete any of these messages, but neither did I respond. I was literally frozen by fear: "What if I can't do it? What if I don't do well? I'm not sophisticated enough to talk to government officials; I may end up doing more harm than good."

With the help of a little encouragement from my dad, I finally managed to volunteer for a few projects. When I began doing Dafa work, many fears surfaced. But it was only through doing these things that I began to overcome these attachments. In the beginning, though unsure if I was doing well, I had many positive experiences. One of my first projects was to call several cities and counties to ask them to issue a proclamation for Falun Dafa. As this was serving to eliminate my attachment of fear, from a broader perspective, it was offering salvation to state officials and in turn to the entire state. Even for those that did not issue a proclamation, at least they were able to hear about Dafa. It was such an honor to be able to receive 3 proclamations for Dafa and help bring a good future to the people in my state. However, I feel that every success I had was not due to my ability, but simply Master's encouraging me to keep moving forward.

Inspired by my mother's efforts to convince even some of her more narrow-minded friends to sign a petition for the human rights of Falun Gong practitioners in China, I thought that I too should give this opportunity to the people around me. I wanted to offer the petition to the employees at the store where I work, but I was afraid that if I didn't do it right, I would not get another opportunity. I fretted over how to go about it in the most effective way. When I told my dad what I was thinking, he said, "If you wait for the perfect opportunity, you may never do it. Though you don't really know what you're doing, just try something and see if it works. Eventually you will know how to do things better, but if you don't start somewhere, how can you improve?" So I wrote a letter introducing Falun Dafa and explaining the situation in China. Before a store meeting, I asked my boss if I could just tell everyone about the petition and leave it for them to sign. To my surprise she said, "Of course you can, but I'm sure everyone will be interested in learning about Falun Gong. Why don't you explain more about it during the meeting?" At the end of the meeting my boss didn't forget to announce that I had something to share. After I talked a little and answered questions, a few signed the petition right away, including my boss. They seemed to be grateful to me for explaining it to them, and one of my co-workers told me she was very interested in learning more. After leaving the petition and the letter at work for a few days, nearly all of my co-workers signed it, and the girl who was interested in learning more, ended up buying a copy of Zhuan Falun.

The following Monday I suddenly felt compelled to take the petition to the barbershop chorus that I belonged to in the past. I checked my e-mail to see if they were meeting in the area that week. A part of me hoped that they would not be, so I wouldn't have to go. When I saw that they were indeed going to be in the area, I knew that this was my chance and I had to take it. While driving there I felt my attachment of fear come to the surface. I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? No one asked me to. If I want to avoid this anxiety, I can just turn around and go home and no one would even know about it." Then another thought came in saying, "Yes, if you go home now you will feel momentarily more comfortable, but this attachment of yours will remain deeply imbedded in your soul. And what's more, don't you want to give the kind-hearted people in the chorus a chance to support Dafa?

I arrived at the singing practice towards the end, and asked the director if I could have a few minutes to talk to the chorus when they were through. She happily agreed, and when the time came, I read the letter to them and answered their questions. Afterwards, many expressed their support and eagerly signed the petition. One lady told me that her son was coming to pick her up that night so I should stick around to say hello to him. Incidentally, her son and I had been in the same Bible study a few years back. I thought it was strange that he should be coming that night, because in all the times I had been to chorus before, he had never come to a practice for any reason. When he came, he didn't hesitate to sign the petition. After talking with him a little more about Falun Gong, it was time for them to go, so I offered to lend him an extra copy of Zhuan Falun that I had in my car. He accepted and said he'd be interested in learning more about it.

For about a month it seemed I had been in a whirlwind of activity with no time to even think. One time, while visiting my parents, I jokingly said that I never had any fun. Then my dad said to me, "If you want to know what you love doing, look at what it is you spend your time on. You obviously love the work you do, otherwise you wouldn't continue doing it." When he said this I suddenly realized: "Oh yeah. I do love what I'm doing!" Acquired notions had made me believe that if I worked hard and never indulged myself, I should be depressed. At the very least, I should complain about being stressed out and get some sympathy. But when my dad pointed out my true feelings, I felt so happy. I remember reading in a practitioner's report, that it is our true nature to assist Master as particles of the Fa and that going against our true nature would only make us miserable. "No wonder I was so unhappy before," I thought, "When I hesitated to join the Fa-rectification, I was stifling my true nature and failing to fulfill my heart's deepest desire." Now that I had begun fulfilling that wish, I felt a new sense of joy and freedom.

At this time I felt I had overcome many obstacles, but as all cultivators have experienced, as soon as one passes a difficult test, an even greater challenge presents itself. When one of my co-workers began to openly oppose Dafa and tried to thwart my efforts to promote it, I didn't know how to respond.

A long time back, this co-worker of mine, who had initially supported Falun Gong, found out that Falun Gong teaches it's followers to abstain from homosexuality and he immediately jumped to the conclusion that practitioners promote discrimination. It seemed that no matter how much I tried to explain that practitioners only cultivate themselves without judging others and that no one is prohibited from joining the practice, he refused to accept it and gradually became more and more hostile towards Falun Gong.

One day I noticed a note next to a Falun Dafa flier that I had hung up on the bulletin board. In the handwriting of my co-worker, the note defamed Falun Dafa and called practitioners derogatory names. At first I didn't know what to do. With my human mentality, I thought that taking the note down would violate his right to free speech. So I decided to go to him and, with a righteous and calm mind, ask him to take the note down. Perhaps this might have worked, but when I talked to him, my attachments took over and I became filled with emotion. He only argued his point of view and walked away before I could say much more. I still didn't know what to do about the note. This seemed to be targeting my fundamental attachment of fear once again. Failing to enlighten to it, I asked another one of my co-workers to take the note down for me.

The next time I looked at the bulletin board the note was gone but now there was a copy of an article that, made several false accusations attacking Falun Gong. For a long time I still did nothing about it. My reasoning was that whoever saw the bulletin board could clearly see who was good and who wasn't. When I told some other practitioners about it they said that I should take down anything that tells lies about Falun Gong because those lies have a negative effect on those who read it. I knew they were right, but I still felt fearful and helpless. Not long after that, my boss showed up at work one day and asked me what was going on between my co-worker and I. I briefly explained what had happened and then he told me that the reason he came was because my co-worker had put up another note on his own locker that was even more derogatory than the first one. I hadn't even seen the note myself. While my boss took my co-worker outside to have a talk with him, I went to read the note on the locker. Though the note was extremely offensive to Dafa, I tried to remain calm. In fact, I really wasn't sure how to react. As a practitioner I should not get upset, but at the same time I should not act casually about an attack on Dafa.

After my boss talked with my co-worker he suggested that if we weren't able to resolve anything face to face, perhaps we should write each other a letter. I took his advice and wrote a letter to my co-worker that very rationally clarified the truth about Falun Dafa. I had given the letter to my bosses and asked if I could put it in the store log for the rest of the employees to read, but they asked me not to involve the others. The letter seemed to have no effect on my co-worker, except to make him even more angry at me. But after that my boss made sure that he took down everything he had put up on his locker and on the bulletin board. There was another copy of the article still posted in the break room, so I finally took that one down myself.

Although, my bosses had supported me, I still felt they blamed me a little for causing the conflict with my co-worker and wished that I would not promote Falun Dafa at work. Because of this, I noticed that I was fearful of putting up new fliers. I tried to make a business card that would not take up so much space. However, when I printed it only the characters for "compassion" and "forbearance" printed, with a blank spot where "truth" should have been. Although there is probably a logical explanation for this, I wondered if there was something I was failing to enlighten to. I couldn't figure out what it could be, so I took it to mean that I should put up a regular flier instead of a small business card and not allow the conflict with my co-worker to make me afraid of promoting Dafa. I now think that it was pointing out why I had continued to fail this test. Because I was considering it to be simply a matter of my own self-cultivation, I tried to forbear and have compassion, but I had forgotten my commitment to truth. Part of that commitment means clarifying the truth about Dafa when it is slandered by lies. Though initially I had not fully realized why I had failed, during that time my mind became more clear about what I should do as a particle of the Fa. I resolved to continue to promote Dafa and clarify the truth should my co-worker spread any more lies.

Just before Falun Dafa Day I wrote a note in the employee log, inviting everyone who was interested to come to the park and learn the exercises. When I came to work the day after Falun Dafa day, one of my co-workers directed my attention to the log. Following my announcement was another derogatory message slandering Falun Dafa written by the same co-worker who wrote the other notes. The angry words he wrote shocked me a little, but then I noticed another note that followed it. It read "People should be able to practice their beliefs without being constantly persecuted. Why don't you let it go and leave her alone? Thanks Sara, for letting us know about the activity." When I read this I nearly cried. The girl who wrote it and her husband were one of the few who had not signed the petition that I had offered before. Oddly enough, both she and her husband have a parent who is homosexual. When they hadn't signed the petition, I wondered if it was because they were influenced by that co-worker's accusations. I was so happy that she took this opportunity to support Dafa and position herself well. Then I wondered if her husband would do the same. The next day when I was working with her husband he said to me, "My wife and I didn't approve of that awful message in the log, so we put our note in to support you." As I was thanking him I was thinking, "Hooray! He positioned himself well too!" Without my seeking it, almost every one of my co-workers came to me during this time to show their disapproval of my co-worker's actions and to support Dafa.

It is difficult to process all that happened because so many things were intertwined with this tribulation. The paradox, I found, was that as soon as I gave up trying to focus on self-cultivation in this matter and realized my responsibility to protect the Fa, I could really see the things that were at the heart of my attachments. For example, I mentioned my attachment to fear many times. Before, I thought that the fear was the root of most of my problems. But what was at the root of that fear? Selfishness. Afraid of what others thought of me, instead of protecting the Fa, I wanted to protect my own reputation. Also, when I first was faced with the Fa-rectification, I was upset that I didn't have more time to focus on self-cultivation, yet nothing could have helped me to improve so quickly as joining in this process has.

I feel so grateful to be able to take part in Master's Fa-rectification, especially now, as we send out our righteous thoughts as one body to eliminate the Evil. Being able to share my experiences has also been great honor. Thank you to all my fellow practitioners. Thank you Master.

Heshi.

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