Passing a Test of Life and Death

(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master. Greetings, fellow practitioners. I am a Vietnamese practitioner currently living in the UK. I started practicing Falun Dafa in 2015.

After going through several tests of life and death and witnessing many practitioners abandon Falun Dafa because of physical tribulations, I was encouraged to write down this sharing about how I passed those tests. I believe that the most important thing is how we help and support other practitioners who are going through severe tribulations.

Last October, I faced the biggest tribulation ever. I realized that this tribulation was arranged by the old forces, who wanted to use the crimes I’d committed in past lives to take my life.

Before this tribulation, I’d had another physical tribulation. I had flu symptoms, a headache, and pain all over my body, as if I were being stabbed by thousands of needles. I just rejected it, and it passed in a day. Even though my physical body was still very weak, I tried my best to take my shift in front of the Chinese Embassy as usual. I only follow Master’s [Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa] plan; any other arrangements do not count.

After my embassy shift, I went home and started to study the Fa on my own. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and collapsed. I could not feel or control anything, and my main consciousness was nearly lost. I asked Master to give me strength: “Master, please help me! I will only follow Master’s arrangement.”

I then found myself between two dimensions: one dimension was shown as a TV. I saw myself in a previous life: I was a bad man, but there was a woman who loved me deeply (the woman is now a male practitioner while I’m female). I took advantage of her and looked on as she was tortured and died in front of me. Even though I could have saved her if I’d wanted to, I kept silent and enjoyed watching her die.

I was in a panic when I saw such terrible things happening to this woman, and the pain I felt in this world was exactly what the woman had had to endure in the past. My heart was squeezed so tightly I felt it would break. I realized I was paying off the karma from what I had done before.

Fortunately, Master appeared. Master looked directly at me without saying a word. I knew that he was bearing much karma for me, waking up my main consciousness, and giving me more righteous thoughts.

I thought, “I am a Dafa practitioner helping Master save human beings. I would never agree to give up my life to pay for those crimes. I need to stay alive.”

In this material world, there were practitioners nearby sending forth righteous thoughts. I did not know clearly anything surrounding me. They later told me I kept vomiting, screaming, crying, and convulsing.

One practitioner (with whom I had a close connection) said he was holding my hands and they got cold twice; it was akin to a person’s body temperature falling when they die. In his mind appeared my funeral and several things that needed to be taken care of in case I died. He totally rejected the notion and held a sole righteous thought that I needed to stay. In fact, I almost accepted the old forces’ arrangement twice because of the pain and guilt.

We do not know how many bad things we have done in previous lives, but the old forces are using our past crimes to interfere with our helping Master to save people. They subtly make us feel guilty about our past crimes and accept our current tribulations. This may sound reasonable, but it’s wrong.

Master’s appearance bolstered my belief in Master and the Fa. Our cultivation path includes removing all ordinary attachments. Master has already borne a lot of karma for us to enable us to cultivate. When we have difficulties, Master uses them to have us enlighten to higher truths, while the old forces lead us to a trap and take our lives. So, we have to maintain our righteous thoughts and discern which one is Master’s arrangement and which one is the evil’s trap.

No matter what crimes we committed in the past or even in this life before we took up cultivation, now we are Dafa practitioners and our mission is solely to cultivate well (remove attachments) and help Master rectify the Fa. I believe that if we leave early due to appearances of illness karma, that absolutely would not be Master’s arrangement.

Therefore, our first righteous thought is very important, and it can decide whether we live or die. This is particularly true in our most painful and weakest moments, when our main consciousness is not strong enough, so I suggest we just keep one righteous thought: “I need to stay alive” and ask Master for help. That thought is very simple and pure, but it is the strongest. When we keep that righteous thought, it means we totally reject the evil’s plan and believe in Master.

Some practitioners may say that Master asks us to look inward at all times, that if anything happens, we have to look inward and find out what our mistakes are. I totally agree. But when we are between life and death, our main consciousness and physical health may be too weak for us to find our attachments. In any case, we have to avoid the trap of feeling guilty and accepting the evil’s plan.

When we are past the most critical time, our physical body will have healed a bit, our main consciousness will have become clearer, and we will find and remove the attachments hidden deep down in ourselves.

In my case, a few days after my toughest moment, I still could not eat and a fellow practitioner had to feed me water with a spoon. I could not do anything because I had pain throughout my body and it was hard to breathe. One time when my mind was not clear, I saw the beautiful blue sky through the window and wanted to leave my physical body and go up to the sky.

Suddenly, a power lifted me up and moved me to the other side of the bed, where I could not see the sky anymore. My mind became clearer, and I told myself, “I need to stay. I haven’t completed my mission and fulfilled my vows yet.” I believed that Master pulled me up, because at that time I could not move and went into respiratory failure. How could I lift myself up? Only Master could help!

I realized the old forces wanted to trap me with the prospect of finding relief.

After the pain in my physical body subsided and my main consciousness grew strong, I found my attachment: I had no compassion for that practitioner at all (the woman in a previous life). I always felt life was unfair and wondered why he treated me strangely and set our friendship on fire. I saw him as my partner in crime, but he would often give me a bad attitude for no apparent reason. Therefore, I easily got angry and had no compassion for him.

The root cause was my hurting him in a past life. I could see the reason and remove my attachment. Now that I am a Dafa practitioner, I should not have that qing (attachment of sentimentality) anymore and should treat everyone with great compassion even if they have wronged me or if I am paying off my karmic debts.

How We Support Other Practitioners in Tribulations

I was so lucky because of Master’s compassionate arrangement for me to listen to my mother sharing how she helped a practitioner to overcome a tribulation. That practitioner had stage four lung cancer, and the doctor already said he had no hope.

My mother told that practitioner, “You should not listen to other practitioners sharing how to find attachments. What you need now is to believe in Master and hold on to the righteous thought that you have to stay no matter what. If you go to the hospital or fail a xinxing test, that’s fine. Master will give us other chances to do better, but we have to keep our physical bodies to get another chance.”

She said that, when most practitioners come to help, they will say, “You have to study the Fa more to find your attachments. There must be something you did wrong for you to have this tribulation. You have to send righteous thoughts to remove all of your attachments,” and so on. The advice is right, but we have to look at whether or not the advice would help in case the practitioner is so weak that the guilt could lead them into the old forces’ trap. Their mind would not be strong enough in that case.

After listening to my mother, that practitioner went on a ventilator. He felt better and started to study the Fa and do the exercises a few days later. Then he left the hospital, to everyone’s surprise. He said that, after listening to my mother’s sharing, he felt less guilty and agreed to a ventilator because, “My thought was I needed to be breathing first, and then I could study the Fa,” he said.

My mother said that, since he was the one having the tribulation, other practitioners should just send righteous thoughts for him and stay firm in the thought: “He needs to stay.” She said that, even if we can see his attachments, the first thing we need to do is reject them completely. We can share with him compassionately and positively so that he can remove his attachments through cultivation, and we should encourage him without making him feel guilty or slip into a negative mindset.

My mother shared this experience with me right before I faced my own tribulation. I knew that was Master’s arrangement to help me maintain my righteous thoughts whether my mind was clear or not.

I really appreciated the fellow practitioners who helped me during this time. However, they had no prior experience helping a practitioner in a tribulation. Therefore, they could not calm down and kept telling me what I did wrong that could have caused my tribulation.

Even though I prepared my mind after listening to my mother’s sharing, when my mind was not strong, the guilt squeezed my heart and my tears kept falling, and I nearly accepted the crimes and played into the old forces’ plan. Fortunately, Master arranged for a Vietnamese practitioner to take me to his home and take care of me without any questions.

He was a new practitioner. He did not want to know what my tribulation was and what the reason could be. He just acted on his pure heart and wanted to take care of people.

Later on, I realized that the best way we can help practitioners in a tribulation is to keep righteous thoughts for them, keep that simple thought, help take care of them, study the Fa with them, and so on.

Master said, “...if you do not think about good things, at least you should not think about bad things.” (Lecture Five, Zhuan Falun)

I enlightened that we should not think about the mistakes the practitioner may have made.

Helping other practitioners is part of our cultivation, too. In other dimensions, we are fighting the evil together to keep our lives in order to help Master save people. If we can hold onto one righteous thought that is very effective, that may be the best thing we can do.

Asking for Help When Needed

We realized that some practitioners who left us had avoided asking for help because they were trying to be thoughtful of other people and avoid taking up other practitioners’ time. This sounds very righteous, but from my understanding, it makes it difficult for practitioners’ efforts to achieve a good result.

The thought of taking up other practitioners’ time is a form of qing (sentimentality) for other practitioners, which we have to remove. We should remember that everything is arranged by Master and that who can come to support you is all part of Master’s plan. We have to appreciate it and maintain righteous thoughts together to pass this test. It’s a way to cooperate and fend off the old forces’ plan.

The old forces are very subtle. On the surface, we may think that we don’t want to take up other practitioners’ time, that we are good people and consider others first. But looking at this issue rationally, the old forces could be using our qing to stop practitioners from working together.

Therefore, I want to remind practitioners that if we need help, we should just take it, think less, accept practitioners’ support, and pass the test together. That way we can follow Master’s arrangement and not forsake other practitioners’ support.

In conclusion, we all know that now is the end of the end, and the old forces are in a frenzy and harming this universe and Dafa. Many practitioners have left as a result of physical tribulations like cancer. That is the old forces’ arrangement. Master would never have us leave with an illness tribulation, because we are Dafa practitioners. If we fail the test and go to the hospital, that’s fine. We should not feel guilty, as each of us are at a different level and the way we respond to problems may also be different.

Even if we go to the hospital, we should remember that we are Dafa practitioners. If we fail a test, we should take it as a lesson and do better next time. If we believe in Dafa, Master will give us another chance. We should not become depressed and negative, as we cannot pass the test with that mindset.

Even for practitioners who have betrayed Dafa in the persecution, Master still gives us more chances to do better. So as true Dafa practitioners, we should follow Master and complete our vows.

Please point out anything in my sharing that is not in line with the Fa.