Tests Made Me a More Determined Cultivator

(Minghui.org) 2018 was not an easy year for me. Sometimes in my cultivation I felt like I was climbing a steep hill, with the requirements getting higher every day. But I was able to make it with Master Li’s help, and also save people in the process.

This is how it began.

At the time I worked for an IT company I’d been with for 20 years, ever since I finished at the university. The IT business was doing well and I saw no reason to change. I was working part-time, and apart from providing for me financially, it allowed me enough time to work on Dafa projects and to participate in Dafa events.

Part of my responsibility at work was to tally the hours worked on our projects for our mother company abroad. At the beginning of that year, this work was particularly demanding, as all the hours had to be summarized and finalized to close out the year.

To my surprise, in the middle of the rush work, my boss asked me if it would be possible to invoice more hours, which were not on the worksheets. I did not quite understand, so I just answered, “Technically it is possible, but we need details for hours to be invoiced.” He did not say anything more and I did not think about it any further.

A few days later, however, my boss asked me to create false data to invoice two projects. Although he did not say outright it would be false, it was quite clear, because the data did not reflect our services, and when I asked the accountant and project leader, they responded with silence and even pressured me not to ask, and “just do it.”

I refused, because it would have been untruthful, which as a practitioner I cannot be. It would also have been against the law, punishable by state authorities. Although nowadays such “small” accounting frauds are probably happening everywhere, I refused to participate.

I explained my reasons to my boss and I tried to behave like a practitioner and have compassion for him, so that he wouldn’t do something bad and damage his future.

A few days later my boss called me into his office and told me I was fired.

It was a heavy blow. A lot of fears appeared in my mind: I was afraid I would not have enough live on, I was afraid that my up-until-now stable cultivation environment would be impacted, I was afraid I would lose my social status, I was afraid that I would be looked down on as “unemployed,” and so on.

At the same time, I rationally looked at the situation from a practitioner’s perspective: It was definitely a form of persecution by the old forces, which saw some of my attachments and wanted to “remove them” in their own way. As I was reading Master’s Fa, I stopped at this passage:

“If qi is indeed blocked, it still will not cause any trouble. It is usually our own psychological factors at play. Besides, one will be scared upon learning from a phony qigong master that when qi moves to the top of the head, one will go awry. With this fear, it may indeed bring this person some trouble.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

The old forces were acting like the “phony qigong masters,” instilling thoughts of fear in me. I decided not to accept this test from the old forces and to negate this kind of financial persecution. I set my mind on, “OK, you want to persecute me financially? I am now going to search for a job and use the opportunities to save people, to clarify the truth to them. I will definitely remove my attachments in the process, cultivate according to Master’s Fa, and accept only Master’s arrangements.” Suddenly, the future felt bright.

There was also a positive aspect to the situation. Given my current salary I was not sure I would be able to travel to the U.S. for a Fa conference and activities, but because I was fired, I was given severance pay, which would pay for the trip quite easily. On top of that, I would not be restricted by allowable vacation time.

But the decision to go to the U.S. was not an easy one. Would I choose the conference or would I choose to save the money, which would ensure that I could survive in the future. After sharing with other practitioners, I realized that my notion of saving money came from fear and that my wife, who is also a practitioner, and I might have been given this money in order to be able to go to the U.S. and progress more quickly in our cultivation. It should also be said that we did not spend all of the money, and what was left was enough for us to be confident about the future.

I also began searching for a new job. I had not been job-hunting for some 20 years, so I had to refresh some of my knowledge. I began sending out my resume. Although I sent out many resumes and letters, I soon found out that there were few positions that matched my qualifications, basically none. I did not receive a single reply.

However, an idea flashed in my mind. Although the main focus of my previous job was quality management, I had some limited knowledge of web development. Most of what I knew about web development came from Dafa projects in which I participated and for which I created websites. But whether it would be enough to get a job was yet to be seen.

I was positively encouraged after I started sending my resume for jobs related to web development and was invited for interviews.

To be honest, however, I soon found out that my knowledge was terribly lacking.

After a few interviews it was clear that I could get a job with my current knowledge, but it would be a low-level job.

When I thought about it, I saw it as an analogy of my cultivation. For quite a few years I had been lingering on the same level, not moving up. It was as Master says:

“Whenever we can’t get through a pass in our practice, or whenever our qi isn’t able to come down, we should check our character for the cause—‘Have I lingered at that level for too long, and now it’s time to improve my character?’ When you truly improve your character you’ll see that it comes right down.” {Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

I decided to approach the matter as a cultivator and use this opportunity to improve my skills. I researched which technologies were in high demand and checked to see which skills I could hone in the next few months. I also tried to select skills that would be useful for my future work on Dafa projects.

Apart from learning new technologies, I kept studying the Fa teachings and memorizing the Fa every day. I also did the exercises. Studying the teachings enabled me to see things in a positive light. I did not pin my hopes on everyday people, and I saw it more like a process where I could save people and at the same time remove my attachments.

In the meantime, I continued to send out my resume. In many interviews, I felt like I completely lost face. I remember one in particular, where I was asked to create a program for a simple task, but I couldn’t. The interviewer looked at me a bit puzzled and said, “So you say you can do programming?” At the time, I just wanted to disappear.

When I thought about this situation later, I realized that what disturbed me most was that I was worried about what the interviewer and his associates in the interview would think of me. I was not very concerned that I couldn’t do the programming.

I found out that this was a huge attachment to name and reputation.

Actually, later in that interview I got a chance to talk about Shen Yun Performing Arts, and I told the three of them how wonderful the show was. It was because, after I’d completely lost face with regard to my job qualifications, I felt I could just do my best as a practitioner. I was able to behave normally and as a practitioner.

Although I did not get that job, as you might guess, I felt I did what I should do as a practitioner and I was also more confident about subsequent interviews, probably because I discovered my attachment to fame and started to remove it.

In “Fa Teaching Given at the 2010 New York Fa Conference” Master said:

“But what I hope is that after taking a fall, you will all learn something good from it. Don’t always take away bad things from your experiences. When you learn bad things, you are in fact using human thinking to consider things, and becoming more cunning, and sly, which means you are becoming worse.”

and

“You need to think about things in a constructive manner, and when you stumble look for the reason as a cultivator would, asking, “Where did I go wrong?” Only by evaluating things with the Fa will you be able to learn good things from your experiences. If you can really manage to do this, things will definitely go well”

I made it a point not to take negative lessons from interviews. After each failed interview, I summarized the points and questions at which I failed and studied them. Although there were a lot of feelings sometimes—like, “You are incompetent, your knowledge is too limited to get a good job”—I tried to overcome them and take it as cultivation. I tried not to take them to heart and just tried to learn positive lessons. As Master told us, we should learn something new or let go of a newly-found attachment.

The interviewers were sometimes arrogant when they thought my knowledge was lacking. When I later looked inside, I found that I also tended to look down on people, as if I knew more or was more than what they recognized. I started to remove this attachment with righteous thoughts.

There was one company that wanted to hire me. However, when I visited their website, I saw that many young female students worked there. I started to worry, “If there are so many young girls around me, won’t it stir up the attachment of lust in me?” This fear was quite strong and I almost felt like refusing any potential offer. However, after sharing with another practitioner, I understood that I should not make a decision based on my fear. I should first eliminate the fear, and only then decide what to do.

As I was reading the Fa, I came to the following section:

“The first thought that came to his mind was: ‘I’m not an ordinary person. I’m a practitioner. You shouldn’t treat me this way, for I’m a Falun Dafa practitioner.’ Once this thought emerged, everything suddenly disappeared since they were all transformed anyway.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

I started to view the situation differently. I had previously seen myself as a victim, “What can I do if there are so many young ladies around?” I now started to perceive the situation like, “I am a practitioner. I have the primary word in the situation. If they behave indecently, I can tell them to leave me alone. There will be ways to handle it.”

I was very relieved by this new understanding. I also felt that my level improved. I really did get a job offer from this company, but as I was thinking about it—because in some regards it did not quite fulfill my expectations—I got a phone call from another company, where I had sent my resume sometime before.

The caller said he was sorry for the delay. He said they’d misplaced my resume and just found it. I said I didn’t have much time and already had some offers, but he said it would be quick and invited me for an interview the next morning.

During the interview I made use of many things I had learned from my other interviews. The atmosphere was very open. After the interview, that very same day, I got an offer. The conditions were much better than the job I was considering, so I accepted it.

I really felt I’d traveled quite a ways on my cultivation path in my search for a new job. In the end it seemed as if the job came to me. I felt like I’d lost a load of attachments along the way and I felt much lighter.

My job search took about six months. Thanks to Master’s compassionate arrangements, my participation in Dafa projects and other Dafa activities was not interrupted.

My new job allows me to continue working on projects even as I improve my web development skills, which are getting more professional and will be useful for Dafa projects. I thank Master for this arrangement.

I will add two recent cultivation experiences.

My Work Is Not Mine

At work recently, I created part of a program. During a meeting with my colleagues, it turned out that my part of the program would not be used and I was even asked to re-make it, which for me seemed I would have to start from scratch. My colleague commented, “It is intelligent development. We do it step by step and change when necessary.”

It was hard for me to accept that the work I did would not be used. When I looked inside, I found that I had become attached to the work, as it would then be “mine” or done “by me.”

I realized I had an attachment to whatever work I did. As a practitioner, I should do the best work I can but not be attached to it. I remembered the story of Milarepa that I read on Minghui—he had to repeatedly demolish the temple he had just built. I saw some similarities between that story and me. Demolishing part of our work or doing it anew is not an easy task, not because of the work, at least for me, but because of the formed attachments. Although we live in a different age and are not building a temple, we are also “made to” get rid of our attachments in our minds.

After I identified the attachment and used righteous thoughts to affirm that these thoughts were not my true self, my colleague said he could handle the re-do. Actually, for him it was not much of a burden and he did it very quickly.

Strawberries

I would like to share one more incident. It is about strawberries. I went to the grocery with my wife, and she picked up a package of fresh strawberries. I was unhappy about it. In my head, I had an idea that the strawberries were from abroad, they were artificial, etc. I tried to dissuade her from buying them, but she really wanted them and so we bought them. Somehow I started to be angry at my wife. As she ate the strawberries that evening, I was very discontent. I remarked that they were probably not as good as they seemed. My wife said nothing and continued eating them.

I felt that my anger towards my wife was not right. Where did it come from? Later that evening a word came to me, “jealousy.” But I couldn’t figure out why, because I really did not feel like eating strawberries that evening.

As I thought about it more deeply, I realized that the jealousy intensified the notions of “the strawberries are from abroad,” etc., in order to disguise itself. However, if I was honest, I envied my wife for the pleasure she derived from eating the strawberries. I felt that she had it “easier” and “more comfortable” than me. My jealousy intensified the notions of “not ripe yet” and “from abroad” so that it would seem rational to try to force my view onto my wife and try to persuade her not to buy them.

On a deeper level, however, I found a more profound problem. When I am influenced by jealousy, there is a part of me that seems to see the situation from a higher perspective and seems to know “better” than others how to handle it.

Master said:

“Shen Gongbao felt in his heart that it was unfair: ‘Why is he asked to confer titles on immortals? You see how capable I am. After my head is cut off, I can put it back on my shoulders. Why wasn’t I asked to confer titles on immortals?’ He was so jealous that he always caused troubles for Jiang Ziya.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)

Was I not behaving like Shen Gongbao? Stressing out over something so petty and making trouble for my wife?

At that time I forgot that I was a practitioner and that Master had arranged the situation for me.

In some sense, that jealousy made me think I was better than Master, that the way I saw things was correct. There is again a similarity to the story of Shen Gongbao, who considered his view to be right and above others.

The reality was actually somewhat different. When I later talked about it with my wife, she said she just wanted to taste fresh strawberries. If I truly practiced Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and wanted to validate the Fa, I should have let my wife have them and just had positive thoughts about it.

Jealousy can hide behind “innocent” notions about how others “should” behave and what they “should” do. We, as practitioners, have no right to judge what others “should” do. Perhaps what they are doing was arranged by Master, in his omnipotent wisdom, for us to see our attachments. We should not complain about others having some sort of attachment, but rather hurry up and remove ours! Perhaps, after our attachment is gone, the situation will be resolved in the most harmonious manner.

What I have shared is limited by my understanding. If anything is inappropriate, please kindly point it out.

Thank you, Master. thank you, fellow practitioners.

(Shared at Czech and Slovak Falun Dafa Experience sharing conference 2019)