(Clearwisdom.net) I'd like to share my understanding on the basis of the Fa and the three major tests I've passed in the last two years.
My name is Arnaud. I started practicing Falun Dafa in June 2001, when I followed my mother to a group practice. I practiced diligently for a year, but then idled for the two next years. I truly decided to become a diligent practitioner after the 2004 Canadian Conference held in my hometown, Montreal.
The first test was the sentimentality for a girl with whom I started dating soon after the conference. Our relationship quickly broke up but my heart was aching for months. Master says in Lecture Four, Upgrading Xinxing:
"If this sentimentality is not relinquished, you will be unable to practice cultivation. If you are free from this sentimentality, nobody can affect you. An everyday person's mind will be unable to sway you. What takes over in its place is benevolence, which is something more noble."
I thought I was only going through a tough time, and I would be all right soon. That was not a good understanding, as I was still stumbling at that level again and again, until I understood I shouldn't pursue anything, and just follow calmly the path Master has arranged for me.
The second test was about sports. Back in 2001, I had started to play American football a month after I became a Dafa disciple. I never really enjoyed the game itself, and I was not a star player, but oddly, everyone was telling me that I was good, and my head was filled with dreams of getting a football scholarship in the States. I was only enjoying football in my dreams for my future, but in reality, I couldn't sleep at night since I was so nervous, and during the games I was hoping I would stay on the bench rather than in the field. It was really hard for me to quit the team since I was the quarterback. So year after year, I stayed on the team. It has greatly affected my cultivation and the three things I have to do, because of the time I had to put in all year long in training.
Just after the Montreal Conference in 2004, when the season began, I broke my right shoulder. Last summer, when I shared with a practitioner in Los Angeles, I understood why in my four years of cultivating at that time, I had never been able to restore tranquility in meditation, because of anxiety and competitive thoughts disturbing me all year long. I came to the conclusion that if I want to be a diligent Dafa disciple, I should not, in the season to come, be affected by the game, win or lose. In the first game of the season, I realized it was impossible for me to stay calm in a game in which I was driven by demon nature and aggressiveness. I felt really uncomfortable. I wanted to leave the team. My request was turned down twice by my coach, and I stayed after thinking it through.
On the basis of the Fa, I can understand why I had to be there and to save my teammates and coaches. Master, with boundless compassion, mentions in his article, "Dafa Is All-Encompassing":
"In every one of society's professions a person can cultivate, and in each there are also people with predestined relationships waiting to obtain the Fa."
Therefore, before the games, I often meditated by my locker. I also had the chance to present Falun Gong to my teammates many times, and even in depth. Some of them did not understand me, but they knew I was a good person, and thus knew that Dafa is great. Some of them even helped me in some Dafa projects.
As society is declining, today's youth has very low moral standards, and I know my teammates are committing many bad deeds, thinking it's alright. Master mentions that he does not acknowledge any of the bad things sentient beings have done over the long course of history, only their view on the Fa-rectification counts. My teammates are thus saved; Master is so benevolent. When I see some of them now, one the first things they mentioned is: "When are you going to China? Is everything is OK with your Falun Gong?"
Even though I didn't play much this season, everyone regarded me as a captain, and the moral leader of the team; everyone respected me. I was surprised, and didn't understand how a player who doesn't want to be there could be respected like that. But, "the Buddha-light illuminates everywhere and rectifies all abnormalities." They felt comfortable with me, and knew I was righteous man, a Dafa disciple.
The third test I encountered began shortly after the Montreal Conference and kept affecting me for an entire year. It was my mother's announcement that she was quitting Dafa, and her death, a year after. My mother had been cultivating diligently since 2000, but in 2004, for various reasons, she distanced herself from the body of Dafa practitioners. She had mixed Dafa cultivation with the Catholic faith for a year, until she chose to quit Dafa. Even though she kept on cultivating her heart, but she had problems with demons interfering from her own mind. Master clearly mentions in Lecture Six, Demonic Interference from One's Own Mind:
"Everything reflected from the universe will transform with one's thoughts, because everything within a person's dimensional field is at his or her command."
Master further says: "It is very difficult to truly save a person, yet so very easy to ruin a person. Once your mind is not right, you will be ruined at once." My mother's thoughts about fellow practitioners, about Master, about Falun Dafa, kept on getting worse. Her health kept on deteriorating until she was hospitalized in October. We are so fortunate to be Dafa disciples; we must look inside for the answers, and not blame others and second-guess what others are thinking, since it can all transform according to our thoughts, which can make us enlighten on an evil path and finally destroy us.
The same day she was brought to the hospital, my father told us that she would die. I was not affected at first, as I knew that Dafa was all encompassing, and could save her if she could sincerely accept it back in her heart. I went to the hospital that night and read Zhuan Falun to her. I continued doing so the next afternoon. All the time, I was asking her if she was listening to me. I told her how it was important, and I asked her to say inside herself, "Falun Dafa Hao" [Falun Dafa is good]. I also told her when I was sending forth righteous thoughts. Once, after I asked if she understood what I was reading, she said, "Yes, it'll save me." And once, when a nurse was insisting on talking to me and my dad about how to announce my mother's near death, my mother surprisingly open her eyes and moved forward in her bed, saying: "I want him to stay here and read to me." The nurse agreed and left with my father; I knew my mother was listening to me.
At one point, emotion caught up with me, and I cried. I felt ashamed of doing so in front of her. The sight of one's mother in such a poor health condition, with sallow skin and eyes, being so skinny, not being able to talk, can greatly hurt a young man's heart. Coming back home that night, I read many emails from fellow practitioners encouraging me with righteous thoughts or sending Master's poems, which really made me enlightened and helped me pass this test.
I am very thankful to my fellow practitioners and Master.
My mother passed away four days after she entered the hospital. At that very moment, when she stopped breathing, I was calm inside. The reason is not because my heart was cold and selfish, rather my heart had compassion, and I knew Master was looking after me; I have no control of her fate, I don't know what went on inside of her while I was doing all these things next to her. Thus, at the very moment of her death, my heart was calm, and my understanding was that she might die now, but reincarnate in a practitioner's family soon to practice Dafa, if that's the vow she made before her death. No matter what her future is, it is not under my control, thus I can't be attached to it.
I was therefore very calm and smiling at the funeral home and church the following week.
Going to Washington, D.C.
Now, I would like to share about my going to Washington D.C. during Hu Jintao's visit to North America. I learned much and improved my xinxing that week.
I really felt this trip was very important. I then asked my father if I could miss school and go. He hesitated, and told me he would decide the next morning.
Then I got on the computer and read an email in which someone mentioned that some of us might be doing all the truth-clarification activities because we wouldn't get those opportunities elsewhere. I first declined that message, thinking, "No that's not me, how could it be me." Later, when I sent forth righteous thoughts, I saw that practitioner who sent me the email, I asked, "Is that me?" He kindly replied, "Yes." I knew Master was sending a message through him.
After removing that attachment, I sincerely asked Master to arrange things for me to go to Washington D.C. I asked Master seriously, "Master, I want to go to D.C. to save sentient beings, fulfill my vow, and do well in the "three things" I have to do."
The next morning my dad said I could go. But our thoughts are reflected in the people around us, and in ordinary society. When I asked my dad if I could go, I was really attached to the fact that on Friday, I had a biology exam, a class in which I am almost failing. As a result, he was reluctant because of the fact I was missing school, and it could affect my studies.
I told him I would study on my way there, and on my way back, and during all the transportation in D.C. A practitioner with me in the car driving to Washington D.C. was pushing me to study, to show my dad how responsible I was.
In D.C., I had the opportunity to hold the banner just in front of the Divine Land Marching Band. I felt so proud of being a Dafa disciple. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, where the heart of United States is, where all those majestic buildings are, with sculptures and columns. Faraway in front of us, we could see the Capitol, and marching on the beat of the Divine Land Marching Band, I felt we were in a royal parade.
I also discovered other attachments I had; for example, I am always congratulating others for everything they do. From the Fa, I questioned myself: why would I be attached to congratulating other people all the time? Is it really to be kind and compassionate? Isn't it because I am attached to the idea of being thanked and congratulated for everything I do? Yes, the reason is not that I want to be compassionate, or that my family has instilled in me that notion of thankfulness; the answer is inside of me, my attachments are reflected in my words.
Coming back to Montreal, I knew I had changed a lot, again. I came back a day early, to study well for my exam. I cannot be proud since I did fail the exam. It would be too easy to blame it on the fact that my biology class is all based on Darwin's theory of evolution, and that the present scientific method is wrong. I have to show I am a Dafa disciple; I cannot fail exams, nor have bad grades. My school year is done now, and at this very moment without having received all my grades, it could affect my future application at university. But that is all because of my extreme behavior of not paying enough attention to validating Dafa and being a top student.
In closing, I just want to say how I truly have to overcome my fears in certain regards, like clarifying the truth more in-depth to my family. Sometimes I just freeze, and pass up the opportunities to save people. Master said in "Pass the Deadly Test": "Fear is a death trap on a human being's journey toward divinity." I have to let go of my fears.
But after sharing this with you today, I have to go back to Montreal, and truly break through this attachment, because, as our Master taught us in "The Knowing Heart": "Grand talk counts for naught when it comes to life and death, Actions reveal what is true."
I just want to say also how writing a sharing is great. I made so many revisions to this paper, and every time I read it, I find shortcomings and areas I can improve on. So I encourage everyone to write experience sharing papers, since the process is beneficial for us, and also, please kindly point out any attachments you discover in me.
Thank you Master, thank you everyone.
