(Clearwisdom.net) In 1996, my boyfriend at the time (now my husband) left his book Zhuan Falun at my home and told me it was a good book. At that time, he didn't practice Dafa yet and I had just graduated from college. I start to read the book just like I would any other book. I felt what was said in it really made sense. It is a pity, though, that I didn't finish the book at the time.
It must have been arranged by Master. After we married in 1998 and settled down, we found that our next door neighbor was a practitioner. He told my husband that it would really be a pity if he missed such an opportunity. My husband started to read Zhuan Falun again.
I didn't know anything about cultivation at that time. I started to study and practice Dafa because I was resentful of my husband. My thinking was, "You do the group study and exercises every day and leave me at home with a few months old child! You know it is good, but you don't ask me to do it with you and share the good things together. Okay, I'm going to do it too!" I began to study the Fa and do the exercises at home without informing him.
1. Trouble Passing the Test of Emotion
In the Spring of 2004, just before we were going to join the local practitioners to validate Dafa as a group, my husband was arrested as he was distributing truth-clarifying materials. Police came to our home and told me that my husband had been arrested for distributing Falun Gong materials. They came to search the house. I was very nervous at the time but kept a righteous thought that they would not find anything. They found two copies of Minghui Weekly and took them away as an evidence. Later I looked inward and realized that, in my mind, I didn't regard Minghui Weekly as being important and thought it was not a Dafa book. I kept asking Master to strengthen me and kept sending righteous thoughts during the search. I moved the Dafa book twice to hide it. The second time, I put it under the cook stove where they had already searched. A policeman felt something and came back to check the stove again. His eyes were almost at the same level as the book. My heart was pumping faster and I kept asking Master not to let him see it. They should never take the book away. He just checked something in the cabinet under the stove and then left.
In the following few days, it seemed as if time had stopped flowing. I was a very dependable person with no strong ambitions in ordinary life, and now suddenly I had to face this dramatic change. I felt lost. I only knew one practitioner, but I was afraid to bring him trouble if I asked him for help. However, one thought was in my mind all the time, "I must study the Fa calmly and study the Fa more." I asked Master to strengthen me and my husband. I studied the Fa at home with my child, recited the poems in Hong Yin II, and denied the old forces' arrangements. With a hint from Master, I thought about the poem
"Great enlightened beings fear no hardship
Their will is cast of diamond
Life or death, they have no attachment
Forthright and broad-minded on the road of Fa-rectification"
("Righteous Thought, Righteous Action" in Hong Yin II)
I calmed down gradually. However, later, since I didn't study the Fa well and didn't have clear thoughts on Fa-rectification, I acknowledged the old forces' arrangement.
One week later, my husband was released. According to police, he was released so soon because he behaved well. In fact, they had asked him to be a spy but he refused. They asked me to sign a guarantee statement to give up Falun Gong. I didn't realize it was a test of emotion and signed the statement.
Then the next test came, and it was much harder. I felt the pain penetrating my heart.
My husband came back home and he had changed a lot. He said that he didn't do well, and he was unable to continue and hoped that we could do better. At that time, he didn't have a job. His classmates often asked him to go out to eat or sing karaoke. He stopped studying the Fa. I was so sad to see this change. He refused to listen to me. Every time he went out, I would cry at home and felt my heart was going to explode. Later, many bad thoughts occurred. I even started to have doubts about Dafa and Master's words. I tried hard to hold down these thoughts. I was in a quandary for several days. Suddenly, one day I put down all such thoughts and said to myself, "Let me put away the thoughts where I was wrong in Dafa. If you let me choose, I will choose Master and Dafa!" Suddenly, I felt so light and all the invisible pressures were gone. Later, my husband gradually resumed the practice.
2. Setting up a Family Truth-clarifying Materials Site
At the end of 2006, we were contacted by a local practitioner. With his help, we learned how to get on the Internet to print Minghui Weekly and other fliers. At that time, we just wanted to make some materials to help out. However, our out-of-date computer and the old printer from the fellow practitioner had helped in printing Minghui Weekly for almost all the practitioners in our city for a period of time.
Because the fellow practitioner was quite busy, during the installation and trial period, we had suffered a few difficulties. But I put down my doubts, believing in Master and Dafa and let Master arrange everything. Eventually things went very smoothly.
In July 2007, news came that the fellow practitioner in charge had been arrested, and the bigger material site was exposed. Suddenly many fellow practitioners were unable to get Minghui Weekly and other materials. Because there were no other practitioner who knew how to get the materials on-line and some were afraid to do so, the task fell on us. We didn't think too much about it and didn't feel too afraid. We just wanted to help fellow practitioners get the Dafa materials. No matter what, we just could not let it stop. Because our thoughts were on the Fa, with the help of Master, this small site has overcome the difficulties and is now still operating smoothly.
Here I have to mention a miraculous thing. Our printer was an old used printer from a fellow practitioner. Since we would print a lot, it needed to be refilled more often and ran for a long time. We often used it until late and its noise might affect the neighbors on the other side of the wall. However, whenever we worked late after 10 or 11 p.m., the printer would run very quietly. We didn't set it in the quiet mode since it would work too slowly. The noise level from it would be in between normal mode and quiet mode.
Later, a fellow practitioner from another city came to help. We got a new printer and learned new techniques. Several other fellow practitioners also set up material production sites. The Fa-rectification in our area thus advanced a big step.
3. Improving Xinxing Through Reciting the Fa
Recalling my own cultivation, I feel it is a process to keep gaining new understandings on the Fa. Just like I mentioned previously, resentment drove me to start cultivation at the beginning. Later, I knew I should try to be a good person and not fight back if scolded or hit. When something is unbearable, I would keep telling myself, "I'm a practitioner. I'm different from others." With deep Fa study, I realized that such tolerance was just on the surface. It was the ordinary people's tolerance concerning one's reputation. True tolerance should not touch the mind at all. Realizing it, I felt I was just a good person in the ordinary society before. It was not cultivation.
Later I saw that my fellow practitioners were all reciting the Fa. I began to recite too. Sometimes, I spent a long time trying to memorize a paragraph but was still unable to do so. However, I didn't give up. I realized reciting the Fa really helped me a lot. One must concentrate hard when trying to recite anything. When reading the Fa before, my husband often said that I acted like a tape recorder and I didn't know what I was reading. I felt I didn't learn much either and just finished a task. After reciting the Fa, I had a much clearer understanding of the Fa. I also learned to find my own shortcomings based on the Fa, and I gradually improved my understanding of the Fa. Cultivation is about cultivating one's will. Upon encountering conflicts, tests, or suffering, whether one can realize one is a practitioner, whether one can still choose the cultivation path, whether one can firmly follow the path and do what Master taught at the critical moments is crucially important.
Later, with reciting the Fa more, I realized that when encountering any conflicts or tribulations, I should not wonder about what's wrong on the surface. I should think about whether some thoughts are not in line with the Fa and Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. When something bad happened, how did I think about it? Did it come from an ordinary person's thinking? By going through this thought process, I found that I was not complaining about others anymore. On the contrary, I felt as if I really appreciated the other party and thought about what they were going through. This is my current understanding at my current level through looking inward. I can really feel the beauty of cultivating in Dafa.
Being tempered along the way, I am still cultivating in Dafa. As a matter of fact, I am not very diligent. It is Master who doesn't want any disciples to be left behind and keeps giving them opportunities. I must continue to study the Fa more diligently and cultivate Dafa genuinely, not let down Master in saving us and not let down the sentient beings with the expectation of being saved.
