A Young Westerner Talks About Her Lessons Learned during Eleven Days of Truth Clarification in New York

(Clearwisdom.net) I would like to share my experiences about going to New York for 11 days. To begin with, I will say that the experience was nothing like what I expected. I had listened to the experiences of other practitioners before I left for New York. Some of them talked about the intense evil, and others about how they felt their xinxing (1) level shooting up as they were there. I developed several expectations about what my experience would be, and I had many great ideas about what I would do to clarify the truth once I got there. I felt that I was about to embark on a mission that would be perhaps the most significant event on my path of validating the Fa.

When I arrived in New York, I expected the interference to be very intense. During the day, it did not seem so strong. By the nighttime, however, it was a different story altogether. I had to travel to a practitioner's house for the night at about 11pm. As I waited for the subway, my hands were shaking uncontrollably, I was extremely hot, my body was covered in sweat and the pollution of the city, and my legs were weak and felt like they would collapse. I could almost envision fire engulfing the subway station. This was all because of my understanding of how to negate the old forces not being up to par. I realized that I was passively accepting the evil interference, thinking that this was just the way it was. I was not strong enough to negate the interference, so I let it be and just felt pity for myself. Later that night after I arrived and had a place to sleep, I sent forth righteous thoughts. Suddenly, a fellow practitioner's words came to mind. Earlier that day, a practitioner told me "all the evil in New York is nothing compared to a cultivator. You are like 100,000,000 mountains. Nothing can move you". I firmly resisted the evil and stopped submitting to or accepting any persecution. At that moment, waves of energy blasted forth. The tremendous power surprised even me. I felt like I really was like 100 million mountains, with righteous thoughts that destroyed all evil in my path.

This experience was very valuable for me. However, there were times when I developed the same problem again. One day, just before I left home to go participate in a large-scale event, my head became dizzy and hot, and I started to feel sick. I thought, "This is the evil trying to prevent me from going to this event". I sat down to send righteous thoughts. During the first five minutes, I noticed that I was talking with the evil in my head, as though I were trying to negotiate with it. I kept trying to think of what attachments I had that were being taken advantage of and I wanted to get rid of those attachments so that the sick feeling would go away. This was like cultivating for the sake of the evil, for the sake of avoiding persecution. I was forming all my thoughts on the wrong basis and was acknowledging and fearing the interference. When I realized this, I became more firm, stopped being afraid of the discomfort, and simply negated the evil. I understood then that Dafa disciples definitely don't exist for the purpose of eliminating the evil. We don't cultivate to avoid interference. Instead, we exist for the sake of saving sentient beings. In my experience, if I always remember that saving sentient beings is the most important thing, I am far less likely to get bogged down in personal tribulations or interference.

While I was in New York, there were several large attachments that surfaced very strongly. For the first couple days, when I was trying to hand out flyers, most people weren't talking to me or asking questions. I thought it was strange. When I saw people talking to other practitioners, I actually became jealous and started having very evil thoughts. I wondered why this was, and saw something very shocking to me. I realized that I enjoyed clarifying the truth out of a selfish attachment to validating myself. I wanted to feel like I've done a good job, and feel like a good Dafa disciple. Even my trip to New York was not pure in motive. I wanted to go to New York to feel like I was a good cultivator and was part of something special or important. I had great aspirations in going to New York and great plans, all of them with a hidden motive of validating myself and being a "hero". Because of this attachment, it was very difficult to accomplish anything!

The attachment to my own cultivation has been a serious problem for me. Because I obtained the Fa in 2002, I have always worried about meeting the standard for personal consummation. In New York, this attachment was precisely taken advantage of by the evil. I would be led to see things that made me feel like I was not doing well enough in my cultivation. All sorts of situations would be created to make me worry about this and distract me. For example, a practitioner told me that one would be able to feel their xinxing increase very fast being in New York. When I didn't feel my xinxing going up very fast, I became worried. I was always looking externally for signs to show me if I was doing well or not in my cultivation, and this took me off the path Master arranged for me. We can never compare ourselves to others or judge our cultivation by looking at others.

Slowly, I began to let go of my long-standing attachment to my own cultivation, and stop looking for signs to make me feel like I was doing well. I believe that comparing myself to others was part of the root cause of my jealousy.

Sometimes, I would have thoughts like "I traveled over 6000 km and spent over a thousand dollars to come to New York. I should be doing great things, talking to businesses, talking to media." However, I now realize that the most important thing is not to do all these things I had planned for myself. The most important thing was simply to harmonize with Master's arrangements for me and walk the path he arranged, even if it did not look too extraordinary on the surface. At one point, I thought, "Even if the whole purpose of my trip to New York was to realize and abandon my attachments to self, to jealousy, to my own gains in personal cultivation and to passivity in the face of evil, it would be well worth it." Even though I didn't do many things that seemed particularly amazing or important on the surface, I do believe the effect of being there, sending righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth was huge. The experience will indeed be one of the most significant events in my path, but for entirely different reasons than what I expected.

To summarize, the most important thing I learned in New York is about never looking outside oneself, not holding expectations, not being deceived or led by illusions, and basing all our actions on the Fa.

By the last few days of my trip to New York, the slimy pollution and dirt that covered my body every day went away. I felt lighter when walking. I could see the people changing. Millions of New Yorkers have seen practitioners in recent weeks. As I saw them changing, it was like watching history unfold before my eyes. I envisioned what the next few months in New York would hold, and I would like to share my understanding on this.

New York is in many ways the center of the world for media, big business, academia, politics, etc. Many major media outlets and corporations are based there, which affect the whole world. Because of the intricate arrangements of the old forces, everything in New York has been strongly influenced by the old forces in the cosmos. If New York is controlled by evil, it radiates out and influences the whole world. It is similar to Beijing. Beijing is the political capital of China, where all the orders to persecute Falun Gong originate, which then permeate into every town and village in China. With so many practitioners rectifying the Fa in New York, the people there will quickly change. They will form an elementary understanding of Dafa through seeing practitioners everywhere on the streets. Soon, their understanding of Dafa will deepen and mature, and it will affect every sector of society. The whole city will become a center for Dafa in the human world, and the power of the Fa will then permeate everywhere else in the world, starting from New York. In Beijing, my understanding is the same. When the Fa is rectified in Beijing, it will quickly affect the whole of mainland China, and the Fa rectification will soon flood over into the human world.

(1) heart or mind nature, moral character