(Minghui.org) I'm a Falun Gong practitioner from China. Since beginning cultivation, I have experienced many tribulations and also many miracles. Without faith in the Fa in my heart, I could not have persisted in cultivation to this day.
Passing Sentimentality Tests While Persisting in Cultivation
Both my husband and I started cultivating Falun Dafa in 1996. When we first obtained the Fa, he would leave with a young, pretty, fellow practitioner at four o'clock in the morning to go to another town to spread the Fa and teach the exercises every day. The round trip took them three hours walking together. He returned home in time for work at eight in the evening.
I felt jealous and became very angry when I found out that my husband and the fellow practitioner were working alone. My husband cultivated well, so he went to work without responding to my suspicions. He said that I was helping him to upgrade his xinxing.
After I yelled at him, a bump, the size of half of a ping pong ball, suddenly appeared on my right cheek. It wasn't painful or itchy, just ugly.
I covered my cheek with my hand the entire day and apologized to Master in my heart. I knew that this situation occurred as a test of sentimentality. The bump was completely gone that night.
After a year, I forgot about this experience and thought it was a coincidence.
Once, when we went to a far-off town to work, my husband suggested that we use the break time at noon to bring our son to the town to put up banners and spread the Fa. I felt that being public in another town was a little embarrassing, so my response was not very positive.
He commented that I was not as active at spreading the Fa as that pretty fellow practitioner. I felt jealous again when I heard her name, so I lost my temper and took the child back to the hotel.
Strangely, a bump the size of half a ping pong ball quickly grew on my right cheek again. I knew it was real this time, so I hid in the room and dared not go out. I apologized to Master the entire afternoon and assured him that I would not easily become jealous or angry again.
On the night the persecution began, July 20, 1999, the sky was covered with dark clouds and a storm was raging. The television kept playing the announcement of outlawing Falun Gong. I felt a pressure that I had never felt before. I was wondering whether this Falun Gong was actually real or not.
I wrote the aforementioned two cultivation experiences in my diary, and reminded myself that I should remember them whenever I had doubts about the practice. My husband told me that what I was doing was right. He said that we should be steadfast when we are lost.
The next morning, my husband and a few practitioners went to do the exercises at a big market, as usual. This time, however, they were arrested and subjected to 15 days of detention.
My husband's manager at work asked me to convince him to stop practicing Falun Gong, so that he could return home.
A fellow practitioner and I brought food and clothing, and visited my husband at the detention center. We had no idea why Falun Gong had suddenly been “outlawed” at the time. We asked him to persist.
During Chinese New Year of 2000, my husband was sentenced to one year of forced labor, after going to Beijing to appeal. Since he persisted in his beliefs, his term was extended by eight months. He actually came home two years later.
When he was not released after the first year, I wanted to go see him. But my workplace did not let me go, and appointed many fellow workers and police officers to watch me around the clock at my home to prevent me from going out.
They later decided to just take turns living in my house because it was too cold outside. I was very angry, so I went on a hunger strike. Three days later, they forcibly took me to a brainwashing center. I had to leave my five-year-old son with his grandparents, who were in their seventies.
In the brainwashing center, I saw fellow practitioners who I hadn’t seen since the start of the persecution–a long time. We were very glad to be able to talk again. We encouraged each other.
During brainwash sessions in the morning, we clarified the truth to the teachers and leaders who were appointed to work there. We told them that Falun Gong was good for the mind and body. We told them that because of the Falun Gong teachings, we were not picky about the work we were assigned at our jobs, and our job performance was top notch.
We also debated and explained that persecuting Falun Gong was a wrong decision from the perspectives of the universe, astronomy, geography, and history. At the end, some of them were almost “converted” by us. Different groups of leaders at different levels, and college deans kept coming.
During the break, we memorized the Fa as a group while walking. In the morning, when the two "monitors" did not wake up, I did the exercises. But in my heart, I couldn't put down the situation with my husband.
One day during the afternoon when I was laying in bed, I suddenly thought of Master's Fa:
“Those who are attached to affection for family will definitely be burned, entangled, and tormented by it. Pulled by the threads of affection and plagued by them throughout their lives, they will find it too late to regret at the end of their lives.” (“Cultivators’ Avoidances” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
I decided to let go of my attachment to my husband. The moment I had this thought, I saw many circular purple Faluns slowly falling onto my head from the ceiling. It was beautiful, so I stared at them for a long time.
Suddenly I heard the voice of the monitors, playing cards and talking. I wanted to let them see it, but it disappeared. We were illegally detained for six months. We finally got to go home after a group hunger strike.
After two years at the forced labor camp, my husband came home. We bought a new computer and a used copy machine. He volunteered his off-work time to write truth-clarification materials to distribute locally. We also went to other places at night to distribute them.
There weren't many truth-clarification materials production sites at that time, and the persecutors tracked down my family right away.
The 610 Office and public security department staff came to my home six months after we started our materials production site. They abducted my husband and detained him in the basement of a hotel. He went on hunger strike for five days. Then he asked Master to loosen the handcuffs and escaped. He had to leave home to avoid further persecution.
Because my home had been raided four times, anything with value, for example, the computer, DVD player, motorcycle, cell phone, recorder, and so on, had all been taken. So, I no longer kept the equipment at home.
I rented a room away from our home to keep the equipment. After my husband left home, we used the room exclusively as the materials production site. Meanwhile, I transfered money from my savings to him for materials production and living expenses. He always ate sauerkraut and dry carrots in order to save the money for materials. He led a very frugal life.
I was being followed and our telephone was monitored. The local authorities once said that my husband was the kite and I was the thread. So they only needed to keep an eye on me. They had registered my voice and could track it down from any public telephone booth. So whenever I made a phone call, they identify me from my voice. The last time I contacted him using a public telephone, my husband was arrested the next day. More than ten other practitioners were also arrested.
The head of the political security department told me that identifying my voice from public telephone conversations was how they caught him. After that, I was always scared of telephone landlines. My body would shake whenever I heard the ringing of the telephone or a knock on the door. We no longer have a telephone landline installed.
My husband was sentenced to nine years this time. In prison, he suffered from pleural tuberculosis, stomach illness, liver cirrhosis, renal failure, and systemic failure, as a result of the torture. He eventually passed away at the age of 43.
While my husband was imprisoned, I brought up our young son alone with my meager income. For the past few years, I have been to the detention center, monitoring center, forced labor camp, and prison to visit him, and was pressured by parents, heads of the workplace, and fellow workers.
His colleagues told me that they did not get their 3,000 yuan annual bonuses because we practice Falun Gong. I had to endure their hateful looks. Everyone close to me walked away whenever they saw me because they were afraid of being negatively affected for talking with me.
Young Practitioner Sets a Good Example
Before my husband and I began practicing Falun Dafa, my health condition was not good. I couldn't conceive a child even after six years of marriage. Whenever my husband saw the children of other people, he went to hold them because he really wanted a child.
After beginning cultivation, one night at around midnight, when I was sleeping, I suddenly saw a cylinder of light of about two inches in diameter. It looked like it was from a flashlight pointed at the ceiling in the dark room.
Inside the light, there was a little girl jumping rope in ancient clothes, with a braid shaped like a ram's horn. I said in my mind that it would be great if this little girl could come to my home. But the elders wanted a boy, so it would be even better if it was a boy.
A little while later, that little girl slowly disappeared, and a boy in ancient clothes appeared. He was also playing with them. It was like watching a movie. I became pregnant the next month.
I had a dream three months afterward that I was going home on a train. The sky was full of purple flowers which were falling onto my body one by one.
We felt that this child was definitely given to us by Master. We taught him to read characters when he was young. He could read two hundred characters when he was two years old. We taught him to memorize Hong Yin and Zhuan Falun.
When he was six years old, the school hosted a meeting to “criticize the evil cult.” Every student had to sign his name to break from the “evil cult.” When he was passing through the signature desk, he put his hands in the pockets of his pants. The teacher couldn't even pull his hands out so they let him go.
At that time, his father was in forced labor camp and I was jailed in the brainwashing center. He later came to the brainwashing center to visit me, and told me that he just thought, “I won't sign,” so his hands could not be taken out of his pockets.
A classmate ran after him, hitting and yelling at him, because he saw that he didn't sign it. His grandparents were ordinary people. In order to protect their grandson, they scolded that classmate, then went to the classroom and warned other classmates that they would hit anyone who bullied him for being the son of a Falun Gong practitioner. After that, he was no longer hit by any of the classmates.
Our son studied the Fa with us since he was young, but he did not have much time to do the exercises. His grades were always the best in the class in elementary school. In fourth grade, the students had to write an essay entitled “The Person I Admire the Most.”
He wrote, “I admire my father the most. In order to save sentient beings, he gave up his family and work, and was enduring persecution in a forced labor camp.” The head teacher of the class told him to come to the office. She asked him about his situation. She also asked him to sit on the desk to demonstrate the meditation. I was a bit worried when he told me about this at home.
When his father was displaced and wandering in other places, Public Security Bureau agents went to the school wanting to make our son confess. The head teacher secretly protected him. She told the agents not to go see him in person because it might scare him. She pretended to ask the child, and told the agents that the little kid didn't know about the things of adults. The head teacher told me about this later.
During elementary school, she always protected my son. My son also asked his classmates at the school to quit the Young Pioneers, and he refused to wear the “red scarf,” which denotes Young Pioneer membership. The school checked every Monday during flag raising, and deducted points from the class if anyone was not wearing the scarf. She took me and my son to the dean to clarify the situation regarding quitting the Young Pioneers, and allowed my son not to wear the scarf.
When my son was in middle school in 2006, I said to him, “You need to be outstanding in all aspects and have the manners of a Falun Gong practitioner, so our truth-clarification to your teachers can be effective.”
One day, the head teacher of the class called me and said, “How did you educate your son? He is such a great boy. He doesn't spend money casually, and he handed a one-hundred-dollar bill to the head teacher right away when he found it on the ground. His grades are the best in the class. But he just refuses to join the communist Youth League.”
Other parents said that since my son refused to join the Youth League, the classmates spread rumors that my family practices Falun Gong. Whenever assigned seats were changed, none of the group leaders wanted my son to join them. He was isolated, so he sat in a corner by himself.
Next, I took a picture of my husband along with a few notes I wrote down, to clarify the truth to the head teacher. I was very nervous at first. After she listened for an hour, she said that her older sister in a certain city also practiced Falun Gong, so she knew that Falun Gong was good. I felt immediately relieved. She asked me to teach her to do double lotus right in the office, and said that she wanted to practice because her health wasn't good. Other teachers in the office did not say anything.
I told her that the Chinese Communist Party had persecuted my child’s father and many other Falun Gong practitioners to death, so the heavens were sure to eliminate it. We did not join the Youth League nor will we die for it. I also asked her to quit the Party. She said that she hadn't joined it, and she also knew that the Communist Party was bad. I also gave her some truth clarifying materials, DVDs, and software to circumvent the Internet firewall.
When our meeting concluded, she went to the classroom and told all of the students that she appreciates my son, whose morality and grades are both good, and that the other students should learn from him.
All of the group leaders immediately rushed to ask my son to sit in their groups. I felt so happy and thanked Master for everything he arranged for me. She has since then always been caring for him.
The head teacher wrote a poem for my son as a keepsake when he graduated from middle school, “On the rock in the clear stream the pine, noble and pure and lauded by everyone, Maintaining stern yet green and lively day by day.”
I used to worry most that because my husband was gone, the money I had would not be enough for the child to go to college. But in fact, Master has arranged everything very well for me. The child has passed the entrance exam for a famous college.
During the past few years, I have run a small counseling center. There were only a few students at the beginning. Because I used encouragement to guide the students and did not use beating or yelling, the parents gossiped that I practiced Falun Gong and was too nice. They complained that I did not supervise strictly, nor beat or yell at the students. The students transferred out.
There were also some parents who reported to the neighborhood committee that I promoted the quitting of the CCP and its affiliated organizations in class. The police asked me to go to the local police station. I used to be obedient and cooperate with them. But this time, I kept Master's Fa in mind:
“No matter what the situation, do not cooperate with the evil’s demands, orders, or what it instigates.” (“Dafa Disciples’ Righteous Thoughts are Powerful” from Essentials for Further Advancement II)
I said righteously, “You have already killed my husband. What do you want to do with me? I will no longer listen to you. I am not going, and will not cooperate with you to persecute me.” Later, 610 Office agents came to my workplace to take me to the brainwashing center. I scolded them publicly, “No one should want to move me. I am not going anywhere! Do not think about taking advantage of my being alone.” They never came back.
I have also been disappointed with my work, and wanted to go out to find something else to do. My son said, “Mom, I will study very hard so I won't use too much money. You don't need to work too hard to make money.”
I decided to stay with my current environment to cultivate and improve. Therefore I was still teaching as usual. I took fame and gain lightly.
For example, students could join and leave my program as they wished. My students started entering the final competition at province and national levels, and even winning. I tried my best to control myself and not develop an attachment to zealotry. I treated these achievements with a normal attitude.
Over these years, my local reputation has improved. I now have many students, so I don't need worry about the cost for my son's education.
I know that all of these things were arranged by Master, and the people I encountered were all sentient beings that had predestined relationships with me.
I also truly feel that the things Master gives us cannot be compared to our efforts. I feel the happiness of being Master's disciple, and also experience the miracle of “all wishes come true” through cultivating Falun Gong. This is actually only what is being shown on the surface in the human world. We can't see what we gain in other dimensions.
