(Clearwisdom.net)
Starting the Practice of Falun Gong
I began to practice Falun Gong in 1997. Before that, I ran into another practitioner, and he asked me if I had obtained the Fa. I asked him what that meant, and he said that as long as you obtained the Fa, then Teacher would take care of you. The same evening, I had a dream. There was a field filled with growing green beans--there were so many of them. I took off my shirt and picked a bag full of green beans. I was trying to use my shirt to cover it up, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't cover it very well. When I left the field, I was fined $25. After I woke up, I kept thinking back and forth why this dream was so vivid. At that time, I was a store owner, and if I happened to receive more goods from others, I kept quiet; when I was overpaid, I kept quiet and put it in my pocket. Through Fa-study, I came to understand the Fa principles, and I let go of my attachments.
Opening up My Celestial Eye
Before I started practicing Falun Gong, I had many illnesses. Because of my allergies, I couldn't take many medications, so I chose to practice a particular type of qigong. Because my celestial eye was not blocked, in order to promote qigong, people from our local Qigong Society had me attend all their activities. They also showed me how to see through a human body and see who had an illness and where it was, and I could see it clearly. They were all very convinced by my abilities, and I was very happy about it. A snake saw this, and it got onto my body. Later, no matter how hard I practiced my qigong, it didn't have any effect. I had a relapse of all the illnesses that I had before. The most painful was colon hypersensitivity. If I didn't eat properly, I would have diarrhea and pain in my belly. I was in so much pain that all I saw was darkness in front of me, I was sweating very hard, and I couldn't sleep at night. What was I to do? Since the exercises I was doing did not help, I went all over the park to find a different cure for my illness. One day I saw people practicing Falun Gong, so I followed them. In the afternoon, I began to feel very good, so I began to practice Falun Gong. I also purchased a copy of Zhuan Falun. A lot of people who read Zhuan Falun felt it was a heavenly book. They said that this was exactly what they were looking for, but because I was affected by animal possession, at first I thought the book was very bad. One day when I was sleeping, I saw a red light all over my field. I was lying on one side, and Teacher cleaned out a big snake as long as an arm from my body, and my whole body was cleaned up. A few days later, my forehead was like a movie screen, with one white light after another flashing in it. The next morning when I woke up, I saw a big eye, and its pupil was very clear. At that time, I only knew that my celestial eye was opened. Later I came to realize that that transparent pupil was a channel, because Teacher talked about it in Zhuan Falun.
Due to being poisoned by the CCP, I didn't believe in the existence of divine beings. After I began to practice Falun Gong, I kept seeing beautiful spirits. I also saw an old man in the air and a beautiful fairy who had a basket in her hand flying in the air. I saw heavenly pavilions and many other sights. I was overwhelmed and kept telling other practitioners at the exercise site what I had seen. When the assistant saw that, he told me that it was a qigong state, and he told me to study the Fa. After I had studied the Fa for a while, I managed to get over this, yet my supernormal abilities kept coming forth, one after another. One time when I was cooking, I thought about getting a bigger bowel. Before I went to get it, the bowel appeared right in front of me. I wondered whether I had taken it out myself earlier.
Validating the Fa
Teacher said in "Teaching the Fa at the Conference in New Zealand:"
"Shouldn't we go to express our opinions when people are arbitrarily damaging such an immense Fa?"
After I finished reading Teacher's lecture, I felt that I was a particle of Dafa and that I should be responsible for validating the Fa and expressing myself to the government. Other practitioners told me that practitioners who went to the appeals office were arrested before they said anything, but I decided to go to Tiananmen Square to unfurl a banner and tell people that Falun Dafa is a righteous Fa! As soon as I arrived at Tiananmen Square, I was arrested by plainclothes police officers. Later I realized that I had the attachment of fear, so I was arrested. Because Teacher said in "Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s):"
"Everything that the evil has done has actually targeted the attachments and fears that you have not let go of." (Essentials for Further Advancement II)
Before I did anything, I was arrested--that wasn't right! I couldn't stand the fact that the purpose of this trip had not been served. The officers took us to a police station near Tiananmen Square, where they held many other practitioners. None of them gave their names or addresses. I thought I should validate the Fa in an upright manner, and I told them to write down my name and where I came from. I said, "I want to talk to the government about Falun Gong. It improves people's physical health and teaches them to follow Truth-Compassion-Forbearance to be a good person. I hope that the government will provide us with an open environment and let us study the Fa and do the exercises in an upright manner." Later I was taken to my hometown and detained for 30 days. Every time I thought about this experience, I was very regretful that my attachment of fear prevented me from unfurling the banner and accomplishing this sacred act.
Persecution and Interference from the Old Forces
In April 2001, when I was hanging up a banner with another practitioner, I was arrested and held in the detention center. I thought that since I was doing the most righteous thing, I should not be arrested, so I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. In September, I was taken to a forced labor camp. After I had been on a hunger strike for six months, my health worsened. When I was going through the physical examination at the labor camp, I had high blood pressure of 160 and low blood pressure of 140. I also suffered from calcium deficiency-type convulsions, so I was rejected by the labor camp. However, people from the local 610 Office bribed them with 1,500 yuan, so the labor camp eventually admitted me. I began to say in my mind to Teacher, "Teacher, please help me, I shouldn't stay here. I should be somewhere saving sentient beings." While I was struggling in my mind, I saw a scene that made me feel as if Teacher didn't want me to be his disciple anymore and that my cultivation path had ended. The evil saw this, and a few collaborators came and forced me to copy a guarantee statement to give up Falun Gong. When I was held at the camp, I was always in tears for no reason. Later they showed me a document which, as per what they said, was only shown to those who were "transformed." There was a sentence that touched me: "It's you who wanted to come to the labor camp. What are you feeling resentful about?" It was actually a contract I made with them that got me into this situation. The evil had achieved its purpose. In their words: "Our doing this to you is for completing your cultivation path."
In January 2002, I was released. On my way to a practitioner's home, where I was going to watch Teacher's Fa-lecture video tapes in Changchun City, a voice said to me, "Stop cultivating, you can't make it." It was another example of the evil trying to ruin a cultivator.
The local practitioners all knew that I had come home, and they brought all of Teacher's new articles for me. After finished reading them, I felt that I had let Teacher down, I had let the Fa down. Later I came to read Teacher's article "Coercion Cannot Change People's Hearts:"
"[The bad people] produce fake scriptures, don't allow students to sleep, fabricate charges, frame up students, spread lies, and so on. Being threatened severely, deceived, and pressured greatly by all those indecent means, some students have written things like the so-called 'guarantees to stop practicing' or 'statements of repentance' when they were not in their right minds and forced. None of those were genuine expressions from the students' hearts--they were done against their will. Although they had attachments, were momentarily taken advantage of by the evil, and did what a cultivator should not, a cultivator ought to be looked at in his entirety. I do not recognize any of those things. When they return to their senses, they will immediately start doing again what a Dafa student should do during this time, and, in the meantime, will declare as null and void everything that they said and wrote when they were not in their right minds due to intense persecution, and will declare that they are determined in cultivation." (Essentials for Further Advancement II)
From this article I saw hope, and I saw my future. I wrote a solemn statement, and I declared that everything I wrote not in compliance with the Fa was null and void. I wanted to come back to Dafa cultivation, and it was Teacher who gave me a new life.
Now I would like to tell about how I was interfered with again by the old forces. In early 2003, I saw a shining spot on the wall beside my bed. Initially I thought it was a stain on the wall, and this spot interfered with my sleep every night. I remember it most clearly: A monster came to my home in another dimension. I saw the me in another dimension, dressed the same way as I was dressed in this dimension. The layout of the room and placement of the furniture was the same in the other dimension as well, except the place where I keep the washing machine was vacant. I said in the other dimension, "It's coming for the egg in a golden room." I asked the me in the other dimension if she had cleaned it up, and she said no. Then Teacher's "Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference" was published. Teacher said, "Sometimes a Dafa disciple often sees a bright, golden speck flash before his eyes, and that's them." The next time I saw it, the shining spot on the wall changed into a golden man, and he slid down very quickly. After I said "mie" (eliminate), it disappeared.
Another time, I had diarrhea as a result of karma elimination. A voice said to me, "You'd better lie down. If you do, then you'll reach consummation." I said to those beings who were trying to interfere with me that nothing is worthy of interfering with Dafa practitioners and I would only listen to my Teacher. After that, I didn't hear anything again. After a while, I realized that I had the attachment of reaching Consummation.
Fa-Study Group
Teacher said in "Greetings" to the Canada Fa conference: "The evil is finished and the environment has changed." For practitioners who hadn't stepped forward, now they were gradually stepping forward and wanted to join the Fa-study group. We soon set up a Fa-study group at my home. At our group, if something happens, instead of pointing fingers at each other, we look within. Inside the room, some practitioners saw that there was all kinds of energy on the walls. They said that whoever entered this room would feel very comfortable. One practitioner, when she first came, had psoriasis and a hard, thick crust on her scalp. From the way she talked, we could see that she had ideas from other practices on her mind. We helped her to break through her obstacles, and eventually this practitioner improved. As a result, her psoriasis disappeared, the hard crust on her scalp diminished, and her asthma was healed as well.
At our Fa-study group, there was a practitioner who couldn't see very well, and other practitioners gave her a lot of help. They picked her up to come to Fa-study and assisted her in handing out truth-clarification materials. In our group, this kind of thing happens a lot, and the practitioners feel that they have improved greatly.
Saving Sentient Beings
Every time before I started handing out informational materials, I always had this thought in my mind: "Save sentient beings; the evil can't see me; let people who see the truth be saved. The Fa rectifies the cosmos, the evil is completely eliminated." After I finished handing out the materials, I could see people who got the materials reading them very carefully. There were a few of them who did not read them, but they placed them in clean places, and I took them back and passed them on to others.
One time when I was handing out materials with another practitioner, I wanted to go to two apartment buildings, but someone was sitting in front of the entrance. Upon seeing this, my fellow practitioner told me that he wanted this person to go inside. I also said the same thing. In a short while, I saw the person get up, take his chair, and walk upstairs. We handed out the materials after he left.
One day it was raining outside, but none of us wanted to stay home, so we decided to go out anyway. We took a cab. Sitting in the car, I began to ask the driver if he had heard of Falun Gong. Because he had negative thoughts about Falun Gong, I began to say, "Take a look at how bad people are these days. They dare to commit all kinds of bad deeds, and the root cause is that the CCP has destroyed people's belief in the divine and the belief that good and evil provoke their due returns. Can heaven and earth allow the CCP to continue like that? Say a person murders someone, he has to pay it back with his own life. Given that the CCP killed many students during the June 4th massacre, shouldn't it pay for those deaths as well? When the Party is eliminated, the people who surrendered their lives to it will have to go down with it. When you made your oath to the Party, you said, 'I'm prepared to devote my life to communism.' Didn't you surrender your life to it? Now, in order to save your life, the gods are giving you this opportunity, and you can quit those organizations." After listening to what I said, he asked me to help him withdraw from the Young Pioneers.
I have experienced so much in my cultivation, and I always feel that Teacher is beside me. Under Teacher's care, I have managed to walk my cultivation path to this day. I'm extremely grateful for Teacher's salvation.