Experiencing Master's Boundless Mercy and Compassion

(Clearwisdom.net) I am a relatively new Dafa practitioner, having started to cultivate in earnest only about two years ago. Yet, long before that, long before I even accepted Dafa - and even when I was against Dafa - Master already held me in the midst of His compassion and mercy, and was patiently awaiting and guiding my awakening and return to Dafa.

Recently, I have been prompted and inspired to take an inner look-back at my journey thus far, and I would like to share it here too, to perhaps inspire others to treasure our predestined opportunity and this immeasurably precious moment in history, and to be truly grateful for Master's saving grace.

I was born and raised in a Catholic family. In my late teens and twenties, as I faced numerous obstacles in my life, I went to church everyday to pray and to celebrate Mass; seeking answers, seeking comfort and release from the troubles. Yet, increasingly, all I found was a deafening silence and emptiness. Oftentimes, I would sit in church and pray and yet felt as if "there was no one there"; no one was listening to or hearing me. I remember distinctly on my first trip to New York City towards the end of 1999, I visited St Patrick's Cathedral and had wanted to spend some quiet time there in prayer and reflection. Yet, all I felt was an overwhelming sense of hollowness; it didn't feel like a divine and sacred place. Again, there was that deep sense that "there was no one there", and that this was really just a "tourist spot" where people came to make offerings of candles and money and to admire the architecture. I left the cathedral feeling rather perturbed and lost. Why could I no longer "feel" God? Where had He gone to?

"The Great Buddha Wishes to Speak to You"

During this period of my life when I was very unhappy, I would also often seek out so-called psychics and readers to give me guidance and insights about my future. Of course, while lost and mired in the troubles and tribulations of an ordinary person, I could not see that these were all futile pursuits. Then, in mid-1999, just before my extended trip to North America, during a reading with a psychic, she suddenly said she had received a message for me, and she wrote it on a piece of paper : "the Great Buddha wishes to speak to you". I was surprised by the message. I think so was she. At the time, I sort of brushed off the message and didn't give it much thought. After all, I thought of myself as Catholic and didn't think that Buddhism had anything much to do with my life.

Yet one day, several months later, during my stay in Vancouver, Canada, I happened to pass a Buddhist temple situated inside a shopping mall. As I walked by the temple entrance, I caught sight of the huge golden Buddha statue in the middle of the cavernous hall. Something prompted me to step inside the temple. I stood there looking up at the Buddha statue, and again I felt that same hollowness and emptiness. Yet, suddenly the words of the message came back to me. And from somewhere within me I said: "Buddha, you wanted to speak to me. I am listening. Please speak." I sat in quiet contemplation for several long moments in front of the statue.

At the time I heard and felt nothing. So I left the temple thinking to myself that this wasn't a "real" temple, that there wasn't really any Buddha in residence there. At the same time, I also wondered: who was the Great Buddha? I was somehow very clear about the message: it wasn't just any Buddha who wished to speak to me. But the Great Buddha. Who was He? How would I find him? Looking back now, I think perhaps at that moment, Master was smiling at me, hearing my acknowledgment. And I think from that moment onwards, I had slowly (painstakingly slowly) begun on my path back to Dafa and to Master, although I didn't know it yet. And it was to take several more years, and many tribulations later, for me to finally obtain the Fa and to fully embark on my path of cultivation.

What is the True Purpose of My Life?

From a young age I had always wondered about and questioned the true meaning of life. Even at age eleven, when I had just entered boarding school and was rather unhappy - lonely and homesick - I constantly questioned the purpose of life. As I looked at everyone around me, all I saw was the seeming pointlessness of life. As kids, we went to school, worked hard to pass all our exams, just so we could go on to the next level, and finally to university. And that was just so we could get a piece of paper that "certified" us as "intelligent" and "educated", so that we could thus get a good job. Then, we spent a large part of our lives working very hard to earn lots of money, we got married and had kids. Then we grew old and died. That was it. And even at that tender age, I thought : how meaningless all this seemed. Why on earth would God put us here on this planet just to go through all that? It somehow just didn't make sense to me. There must be something more. Otherwise it all seemed rather pointless to even be born and to live out our human lives.

I remembered trying to discuss such issues with my friends at school. But as young pre-teens and teenagers, no one else was interested in such "deep and profound" issues. And as I grew older I too slowly became lost in the mindless pursuit of goals and achievements. Yet, there continued to be this gnawing void in my existence, and I remained unhappy and unfulfilled.

My deep sense of unhappiness entered a new phase when I went to university. I truly could not see the meaning and point of the whole exercise. I felt inadequate and lost as I did not share the same driving ambition as my college-mates to get a good degree and to have an extraordinary career. While I did very well in my studies, there was no sense of accomplishment or satisfaction in achievement. In fact, I was desperately unhappy. Yet, I felt compelled by Asian tradition and expectations to stay on in university. It would have been such a huge disappointment for my parents if I did not complete my university education - after all, so many dream about yet do not get the privilege to read law at Oxford University. However, after a couple of years of intense inner struggle, I finally made the decision to quit university. It was a hard decision for me and my parents. But they stood by me and supported my choice. This was my first major and important lesson in letting go of the attachments to reputation and status, and to ordinary human society's notions of success and achievement. As it turned out, this probably also proved to be a major turning point in my search for my true path.

The Inner Struggle

Thus began a decade-plus journey of struggle between my inner search for the real meaning and purpose of my life, and the outward demands of a human society that put great emphasis on status and achievement. I vacillated between being lost in the maze of human pursuit of material possessions and gains, of name and reputation, of social status and achievement, and deeply searching for spiritual fulfillment and enlightenment. Each time I thought I had let go of the attachments to society's views and opinions of me and to my social standing, people and situations would come into my life to test me again and again.

Looking back now, it all seems to make perfect sense; it all seems to fall into place. Certainly, it would have been that much harder to put down those attachments during my current cultivation if I had not gone through all that. As it turned out, it was almost a relief to learn the Truth and to be "allowed" to release those attachments; to not feel the need to fit in and conform to human society's pursuits and ambitions. It was liberating to realize that I was not "weird" after all to not be all that interested in pursuing gain and success; that it was in fact the "truer" state of being. When I started cultivation and as the burden of those attachments and human notions lifted, so came a deep and profound sense of inner calm, strength and wholeness.

In parallel to this was yet another journey of intense trials and tribulations - that of human emotions and sentimentality. Ever since I was a child, I was a highly emotional person. I reacted and responded to every situation and person in an emotional way ; I cried easily, got upset easily, was easily hurt - life was pretty much a constant emotional roller coaster. Everything was about feelings.

This was perhaps my greatest challenge of this human lifetime: learning to let go of sentimentality. As a young adult, I could see the attachment (albeit from a layman's and not a cultivator's viewpoint). I could see it yet I remained completely absorbed in it and helplessly controlled by it. As I entered my twenties, and into my early thirties, relationships of all kinds became the arenas in which I was tested to my very core; my fundamental being was challenged and pushed to its limits. Repeatedly, I was taught many lessons of needing to detach from living and perceiving life through the haze of emotional feelings. I learned, or I thought I had, yet I remained deeply immersed in the huge dye vat of human feelings and emotions - my life revolved around love, feelings and emotions. It became a downward spiral into a deep depression and despair from which I felt I could never emerge again.

I desperately sought answers to the meaning of life but found none. What was the purpose of my life?

Pieces of the Puzzle; Not Yet the Full Picture

I remember during one particular trip to Hong Kong when I was in my mid-twenties. One night I stood at my hotel room window and gazed out at the panoramic view of the city skyline. From my vantage point over thirty stories up, I stared almost hypnotically at the cars whizzing around on the roads below me. I could just about make out the tiny silhouettes of people walking on the streets. A multitude of thoughts started whirling through my mind.

I was suddenly struck by the deep loneliness and isolation of every human being. The people in the cars, the groups of people walking together on the streets - they could be friends, relatives, family members, lovers and so on - in this lifetime they were connected to each other, shared parts of their lives with each other; they were tied together by bonds of fate, yet each person was, in reality, completely alone. Ultimately the journey of life had to be walked alone; it was simply between you and God. No matter what or who you had in your life, ultimately it must be a solitary journey.

Mesmerized by the cars whizzing around below me, I thought again of the futility of human life. Everyone seemed to be rushing somewhere, yet from this higher vantage point, they didn't seem to be going anywhere; just going around and around in circles. Suddenly my thoughts turned to what it must be like to be God and to look down at us human beings from Heaven. We would appear even tinier to Him than those cars and people appeared to me. And because we were so tiny, perhaps we were also rather insignificant to Him. As I looked down at those people in the streets below, they were almost like ants. They were nameless and faceless beings to me. They may each have their own problems and joys, each may be consumed with various things that were important to them in their lives, but viewed from higher up, all of that couldn't be seen... they were too far, too small and too insignificant ; just a multitude of nameless and faceless creatures rushing around aimlessly. Was that how God saw us too?

I realized that we humans probably didn't mean much to gods. How could we? Looking down from heaven we must look like tiny ants to God... millions and millions of tiny ants... Yet each person in the apartments and hotels around me, on the streets, in each passing car had a life that was filled with many things. But from a higher perspective, all those things couldn't be seen... and was thus, well, insignificant. Just as I, as a human being, didn't have a clue and couldn't care less about the life of an individual ant, so perhaps God also didn't really care about the finer details of any person's life. This thought flew in the face of my Christian belief that God was all loving and merciful, and was always looking after me. Yet at the same time, the insight I just had rang very true.

This image and my thoughts at the time were so vivid that they remained with me throughout the years. I questioned even more the meaning of life and the universe. I still believed in God and the Divine, but was I (and indeed all other human beings) important to Him? Yet, even as I continued to question, my fundamental belief in the existence of God and the Divine remained unshakeable. No matter what, I did believe that there was a God and that there was a great Divine purpose to all things.

This was one of the many glimpses I had of the "truth" of the Universe, yet I still couldn't put the puzzle together. I remained unhappy and seeking still...

Dafa - So Close Yet So Far

In the subsequent years after that, I gradually started to move away from the Church. I began to realize that the answers I was seeking did not lie within the Catholic religion. While I still totally believed in God and the Divine, I felt increasingly detached from the rituals of the faith; they started to ring hollow, unable to provide any true spiritual enlightenment.

In my search for answers and clarity, my attention turned increasingly to the so-called esoteric or New Age movement, which seemed to offer a more expansive perspective. I learned about re-ascension, past lives, reincarnation and karma; about different dimensions and levels of existence. My mind broadened, some ancient memories were triggered, and yet I still felt trapped within some sort of shroud from under which I couldn't break out of. There were slivers of light, yet the full truth seemed to remain stubbornly out of my reach.

Towards the end of 1998, my mother obtained the Fa and started on her cultivation path. So it would seem that Dafa had knocked on my door. However, my tryst with destiny was yet to be. The barriers and partitions proved to be so intense that it took many more years before I too could obtain the Fa. In fact, the early years of my mother's cultivation turned out to be the ultimate test and challenge as to whether I could be saved or would be forever lost.

I am now ashamed to admit that for quite a long time I was adamantly against Falun Dafa. Unfortunately at the time, I didn't and couldn't have understood that my mother was simply going through a certain cultivation state. From my unenlightened human perspective, it seemed as though people who practiced Falun Gong behaved abnormally and acted as though they were no longer quite in the human realm. I and the rest of the family couldn't understand and were upset when my mother chose to sit listening to Master's lectures on her MP3 while we were having a family dinner in a restaurant, because our family conversations about "ordinary people things were a waste of time"; she constantly spoke of how we "ordinary beings" (as opposed to cultivators) couldn't understand this or that. It was as if we were second class creatures: "we cultivators, you ordinary people". I developed almost a hatred of Dafa. And indeed almost believed some of the poisonous lies about it.

I remember how each time I saw pictures of the Falun I would think of Hitler's emblem, and would wonder if Falun Gong was really some kind of Fascist movement! Nowadays, each time I read the part in Zhuan Falun where Master talks about this, I can't help but smile a small, ashamed smile to myself - yes, I was one of those people.

Yet, even during this time, Master's compassion and mercy remained unchanging and resolute. Despite my rather strong negative feelings about Falun Gong, each time I looked at Master's picture hanging in my mother's room, each time I looked into His eyes, I saw compassion, benevolence, calmness and peace. Yet, in my heart I would say to Him: I don't believe anything about this Falun Gong.

Then slowly with time, and as my life continued its cycles of trials and tribulations, and as I continued to seek desperately for answers about Life and the Universe, my perspective started to soften. I became more open to listening to my mother speak to me about Dafa and some of the Fa principles. A lot of the things she said resonated with my soul on a very deep, fundamental level. There were of course also many things which the level of my awareness at the time did not allow me to understand nor accept, and we would have active discussions about our individual understandings of the Universe and Life.

However, the path to Dafa was far from smooth and easy. Now, as I look back, it chills me to see the violent and intense struggles that go on in other dimensions as each sentient being is saved. The old forces are not about to concede a single soul to Master and Dafa without a fight.

Each time when it seemed as though I had become more receptive of Dafa, there would be intense interference to turn me against Dafa. Unfortunately, at that time, the main instrument for this turned out to be my mother. As I sit here and write this, one particular incident comes to mind vividly, simply because it currently highlights one of my own attachments which I am now working on releasing the last remnants of.

On my birthday several years ago, I decided that I would make my own birthday cake, and it was going to be an elaborate creation involving all kinds of French feuilletine pralines, mousses and what not. It took me several days of loving labor to make the various components, and then to put it all together. It wasn't a perfect cake, far from it. But I was proud and satisfied with my first attempt at such a complicated creation, and I looked forward to a joyful birthday celebration. And I remember how my heart was shattered piece by piece as my mother spoke criticism after criticism with each bite she took of the cake; nothing was right about the cake. My joy turned to hurt, then to pain, and finally to utter despair. Even as my tears rolled, the criticisms continued unabated. Even when my dad advised her to just say something nice or at least keep quiet and not say anything, she insisted that she was right to speak the truth. As the whole family argued, she held resolutely to her stance till the very end.

Incidents like these usually came during periods when I had become more open to accepting Falun Gong, and they would reignite hatred in my heart. I thought : so this was what Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance (Zhen, Shan, Ren) was all about. It didn't matter whether you hurt someone else's feelings deeply or break their heart, it was all right as long as you were speaking "the truth". I for one was definitely not interested in this kind of cultivation practice!

It pains me now to recall the struggle, the battle for my salvation (even though I wasn't aware at the time of the battle that raged over my soul). It pains me that the rest of the family remains deeply poisoned against Dafa because of such experiences, and thus the struggle for the salvation of their souls continue. It pains me that my mother also had to go through such intense trials and tribulations in her cultivation. Her cultivation path has indeed been a long and arduous one.

And so today, as I continuously try to walk my cultivation path with an ever steadier pace, I remain very aware that how I live my daily life and conduct myself in and amongst everyday people is a reflection of Dafa; I am a particle of Dafa, and how I am viewed by others is also how Dafa is viewed. And I can thus be, at every moment, instrumental in saving or losing a sentient being. Sometimes it seems that many of us find it easier to be on the Fa when we're out clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings, but when we are amongst those closest to us, like our families, and even amongst fellow practitioners, we tend to let our guard down and slip a little. Often our words, tone of voice and stance are just that little bit less compassionate, patient and tolerant. Sometimes we speak before we consider the effects the words will have on others. I am painfully aware that this is one area that I, on many occasions, still fall woefully short on, and yet this aspect is so critical to the success of our mission: to save sentient beings!

Lifting Me Up, Pushing Me Forward

When I look back on the path I have trodden thus far, my heart is always moved and completely humbled by Master's overwhelming compassion, mercy and grace. Each cultivator's path is unique and special, and each has been meticulously arranged down to the finest detail by Master. He truly does not wish to leave a single sentient being behind.

It was clearly taking me a long time to accept the Fa fully, yet, without my being aware of it, I was already being prepared for my cultivation path. Master was already benevolently guiding me (almost inexorably, it sometimes now seems) back onto my true path and destiny.

In 2001, I experienced an intense bout of (what in hindsight I now understand to be) karma elimination. One day, in the middle of the night, I was suddenly gripped with terrible gastric pains. It was so severe I could barely stand up straight; it was almost unbearable. I was taken to hospital and was warded for the night until they could run some tests on me in the morning. Now, I had always been pretty healthy, never having suffered any major illnesses nor having ever stayed in hospital before. And I didn't like it; I was very disturbed by the heavy sickness energy field that enveloped the hospital wards. Despite my pain, all I could think about was how I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. I adamantly refused to be put on an intravenous drip (my human thinking and motivation at the time was that I was terrified of needles and there was no way anyone was going to stick a needle in my arm, and keep it in there!), and demanded to be discharged. Finally, the doctors and my parents relented, but only after I had received an injection of painkillers.

The next day and several days after that, a whole battery of tests were done on me - blood tests, gastroscopy, colonoscopy, all sorts of different tests; no stone was left unturned so to speak. But every single test came up with nothing. The doctors simply couldn't find anything wrong with me - medically there was no explanation for what I was experiencing, yet I continued to be in severe pain. I could barely eat ; any food consumed was almost immediately brought up again. The myriad of medicines I was prescribed didn't help all that much either. Then, after about ten days or so, it all passed, and I was right as rain.

This was repeated again almost exactly one year later. Even the doctor commented on the seemingly coincidental timing of my second bout of severe stomach pain. Again, a whole hoard of medical tests showed nothing. After about a week, I became well again.

Sadly, at the time, I did not enlighten to the real nature of my experiences. In retrospect, even before I had started cultivating, Master was already cleansing my body and preparing to push me quickly into fa-rectification period cultivation when the time came. He was lifting me up, pushing me forward, so that when I did obtain the Fa, I would be able to catch up with the progress of Fa-rectification and step forward to play my part as a fa-rectification disciple and assume my duties and responsibilities in Fa validation and the saving of sentient beings. How merciful is Master!

The Answers!

Throughout this period of time I continued to waver between being drawn to Dafa and being against it. My mother gave me a copy of the English version of Zhuan Falun and explained to me how I should look after the book carefully and read it from beginning to end without skipping sections. She encouraged me to read the book. And on several occasions I tried, but the partitions and blockages were severe. I could never manage to read past the first few pages of the book. I complained that the translation was awful, or I just simply wasn't interested enough to continue reading.

During this time, my depression also reached a new depth. I cried every single day, and even at times felt that I didn't have anything more to live for. Sometimes I even felt as if many dark elements were pressing down on me and just willing me to give up on life. I would often think: "I just want to go home. I'm tired; I am so ready to go home already."

When all hope seemed lost, my mother started suggesting to me to recite "Falun Dafa is good". For quite a while I resisted - out of stubborn pride mostly. Then, in the face of hopelessness and despair, I finally relented, at first grudgingly, then when it did seem to help elevate my depression and sadness each time I said it, I started saying it with much sincerity and faith.

Yet the path to Dafa remained strewn with obstacles, not the least of which was my own stubbornness and pride. Even as my perspective of Falun Dafa softened, I still thought that the answers that I sought lay in the New Age movement and not with Falun Gong.

Then sometime in 2003, one night while surfing the Internet, I was suddenly prompted out of the blue to visit the Clearwisdom website. I clicked on Master's most recent lectures at the time, and casually glanced through them. Yet, this time, something pulled me in, and I started to read the lectures in detail. My heart swelled with emotions and tears welled in my eyes. The answers! These were the answers I had been seeking for all my life!

I was completely absorbed as I read Master's explanation of the reason and purpose for the creation of the three realms and mankind, the reason for the fa-rectification of the cosmos, the way that He was going about it and its progress, and mankind's role in this monumental and historical task. Everything made sense and became clear. Yes! Yes! Yes! This was it. This was what I had been looking for all these long years. I felt a burden lift; I felt the shroud tear away. I understood, I was beginning to see the light. I was choked with emotions. I read the lectures into the wee hours of the morning, until the first light of dawn started to spread across the skies - I read with joy and elation, and often with tears rolling down my cheeks. I felt humbled and yet lifted up and set free.

Cultivation - Finally!

After I had read the lectures I wondered how I could have missed and misunderstood the essence of Dafa for so long. How could I have failed to recognize it all this time? I felt regret, yet at the same time much joy and thankfulness that I have finally found my way back to Dafa, that Master did not even for a moment give up on me.

I learned the five exercises from the video download from the website, and started doing them every day. For over a year, I quietly "cultivated" on my own; I did not even tell my mother that I had started to cultivate. In retrospect, even though I had begun to understand Dafa and the Fa-rectification, I was still pretty hazy about what it really meant to be a cultivator, and a Fa-rectification period cultivator at that; and thus my cultivation at the time could only be described as patchy at best - in terms of enlightenment, the maintaining and elevation of my xinxing, the releasing of human attachments and the raising of my level. But again, Master's unceasing benevolence quietly guided me every step of the way. I experienced various physical manifestations of different cultivation states in my body without really understanding or realizing what I was experiencing. Then, as I picked up Zhuan Falun again, and finally read it through from beginning to end, I slowly came to understand all that I was going through.

It then reached a point where I realized that my resistance to letting my mother (or anyone else for that matter) know that I had obtained the Fa was seriously blocking my cultivation progress, and certainly preventing me from stepping forward as a Fa-rectification disciple. Once that barrier was broken through, not only could I very quickly step up to the plate and take on my role in saving sentient beings, validating the Fa and trying to catch up with the progress of Fa-rectification, but our family environment also improved drastically and the energy field of Dafa around our home strengthened immeasurably.

From the moment I obtained the Fa, my depressive episodes gradually reduced in frequency, until one day it suddenly struck me that : hey, wow, it's been ages since I've felt depressed or sad! I couldn't even remember what it was like to be depressed and in utter despair! It was like some vague, distant dream, which had quickly dissipated like a wisp of morning mist after I had awakened.

Walking the Final Journey

On this cultivation journey, I have stumbled many times. There are occasions when I fail miserably to maintain my xinxing, then there are times when I've lingered far too long at a certain level, allowing myself to get a little too comfortable in that particular state. It is sometimes so easy to momentarily lapse back into being preoccupied with ordinary human concerns and preoccupations - ordinary everyday activities sometimes seem to hold too much sway over our time. Sometimes I slip into concentrating more on my personal cultivation and neglect many aspects of Fa-rectification work and lose the sense of urgency in saving sentient beings. In this final phase of the journey, I am ashamed that I am still holding on to my deep-rooted fundamental attachment to this human state and condition; and from which all other attachments flow - attachments to self, selfishness, ego, pride, competition, self-validation and so on. Why do I sometimes still behave like a traveler who's forgotten his real home? Why, after searching all my life for the answers, have I now gotten so comfortable?

After all, it is only our surface-most bodies that are now manifesting in this human dimension; a conscious state of manifestation that allows us to fulfill our duties and responsibilities in validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. But it is no longer our true state of being.

I've realized again and again that even the tiniest lapse in vigilance can see me easily slipping back into human notions and ways of thinking. Tens of thousands of years of human conditioning and human delusion can so easily take hold again if we so much as relax for a moment.

Very recently, it also hit me that this was also another form of severe and devious persecution by the old forces. By allowing myself to stay in my comfort zone, by allowing myself to slip into human notions, by allowing myself to become caught up in human concerns and activities, I was unwittingly accepting this persecution and acknowledging the old forces!! This realization was like a thunder-clap in my consciousness. I was jolted out of the sense of complacency that I had allowed myself to slip into recently.

I do realize that the cultivation path can be walked but one step at a time; each layer of our selves slowly and painstakingly renewed, made whole and assimilated into the Fa. Each layer of attachments has to be cleared out from its roots. It's always much easier (and definitely more comfortable) to look outward when searching for attachments (searching for other people attachments!). And so very much harder to constantly remember to look inward and find our own.

Cultivating with my third eye open has also meant being tested again and again as to whether I can maintain my xinxing. It has also required me to be even more vigilant about attachments to self-validation and showing off. Yet, at the same time, it has allowed me to catch a glimpse of the magnificence of this historical and monumental task that is Fa-rectification. It is truly an honor and privilege, a solemn and heavy duty and responsibility to have assumed this mantle of being a Fa-rectification cultivator.

It has been a very, very long road back to Dafa for me -- and not only in this lifetime. Looking back now, it seemed so natural the way I obtained the Fa, but it has been millennia in the making and planning. As I sometimes recall some of my past lives, I see how, through the numerous lifetimes spread over thousands of years, each predestined connection is painstakingly and accurately made - with Master, with fellow sentient beings. Each step a precursor to this moment in time. Every moment of this lifetime, and indeed every lifetime before this lifetime, was all planned for this final purpose. It was a matter of when, and if, we could break out of the shroud of delusion and forgetfulness. It's been a very long journey, and now as we near its end, all the more must we walk even better, even more diligently, with an ever greater consciousness of why we are here and what we have been tasked to accomplish and complete.

On a practical level, I keep trying to remember, as I go forth to save sentient beings, that a soul doesn't always get saved straight away. I myself am an apt example! Oh how many years did Master have to wait, guiding me patiently, before I obtained the Fa. It's sometimes so easy, when we clarify the truth to a person and he or she does not respond in a favorable manner immediately, to feel disappointed or to give up quickly. Sometimes, like for myself, it takes a sustained effort, over time, to break through the barriers of delusion and false notions. It can occasionally be too easy to quickly jump to the conclusion that a sentient being is "unsaveable". But if Master hasn't given up on any being, so too we must not.

Words cannot adequately describe the deep gratitude I feel for Master's mercy and saving grace. Even when I didn't believe in Him or Dafa, even when I was against Him and Dafa, He stood for me and by me.

"...as I was saving you, a lot of you were cursing at me. There were people who were cursing at me even while at my classes. I don't mind. I just want to save you."

"...it was as if I scooped you out of hell back then. I have truly borne for you the sins you committed over hundreds and thousands of years. And it doesn't stop at just that. Because

of this, I will also save you and turn you into Gods. I have spared no effort for you in this process. Along with this, since you'll become Gods at levels that high, I have to give you the

honors of Gods at levels that high and all the blessings that you need to have at levels that high." (Fa-lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference, February 15, 2003)

And every single day, Master has continued to compassionately and very patiently point out my loopholes and omissions. Each time I slip, I'm immediately nudged back on course again.

Master is ever steadfast in his compassion and mercy, and so we too must complete our journeys with steadfast faith. We must truly cherish all that He has given us.

"Do well what you should do. This predestined opportunity is hard to come by. Cherish all of this, there won't be a next time. Developing any attachment will ruin you halfway along! Don't entertain or get attached to any human thoughts, and just do what a Dafa disciple should do. Everything that's wonderful, that's the most magnificent, and that's the most glorious awaits you!" (Fa-lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference, February 15, 2003)