(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master and fellow practitioners!
I decided to join a social media as a script writer and graphic designer. The project helped explain some unsolved mysteries and encouraged people to think about things that couldn’t be explained by science. Although I understood from the Fa, that the theory of evolution is false and that traditional Chinese culture is passed down by gods, my understanding remained superficial.
I needed to read a lot of information before I wrote an article, so I read about many phenomena. I felt that I better understood what Master said in Zhuan Falun about prehistoric culture and religious matters.
After I joined the project I felt that Master arranged many tests and opportunities for me to improve, and I treasured my cultivation environment. In terms of skills, I thought that my Chinese proficiency was good, but my pride caused me to stumble.
Social media has completely different requirements on scripts compared to news writing. I thought I did a good job and cooperated well with fellow practitioners. However, the result was not up to standard, and it hurt my self-esteem. I could not accept criticism. I was so upset that I had conflicts with other practitioners.
I later realized these blows were targeting my attachments and karma. In fact, underneath that pride was an inferiority complex. I always lacked self-confidence so I always tried to be efficient and complete my assignments quickly. On the surface, I was cooperating with the other practitioners but in my heart, I was extra careful, worried that I might take a wrong step.
It seemed like I was trying hard to do well, but in my heart I wanted recognition from others. I wanted to protect my self-esteem. I wasn’t truly cooperating with others, I was afraid of being hurt. My surface cooperation was for selfish reasons.
The only pain came from the attachments that I needed to relinquish, and the ones that did not want to be removed were not my true self. The process of getting rid of these attachments was extremely painful. I struggled many times and refused to face them. I fell into a whirlpool of negative emotions.
This kind of struggle happened many times, and most were extreme. When I’m in a good cultivation state, I can get through it. But when I’ m not that diligent, I have no righteous thoughts. When negative emotions arise, I can’t bear it and want to give up.
I later realized that these negative emotions were not caused by work pressure, but were with me since I was a child. After I experienced it many times I knew it was time to get rid of it. When I understood this through the Fa, my emotions quickly calmed down. I understood that this was an opportunity arranged by Master so that I could get rid of these negative substances. I realized that Master was still taking care of me, and I felt blessed.
After I calmed down and realized that I needed to cultivate myself, I thanked fellow practitioners for correcting my script. I was grateful to them for being responsible for the work. The revised script is much better.
I was able to focus on writing scripts. Even if there were parts that didn’t meet the standards, it became easier for me to accept criticism and admit my shortcomings—and I could do a better job next time.
I am very grateful for Master’s arrangements and fellow practitioners’ integrity and compassion. They are very tolerant of my shortcomings and troubles, and truly practice Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
With the ups and downs of the views on our channel, the psychological pressure we faced was high. Sometimes I think my own shortcomings caused this outcome, and my mood also goes up and down. It’s hard for me to calm down at work.
I later understood that social media can save sentient beings. Everyday people are also producing programs, but the nature of our channel and the starting point are different. I shouldn’t give up so easily.
Last year I wished that my husband and I could go to Taiwan to see Shen Yun this year. When Shen Yun was about to start performing, my financial situation did not allow me to go abroad. I thought that my wish would never come true. What I didn’t expect was that my aunt, who is also a practitioner, called me and asked if I wanted to go see Shen Yun. She said that I should go and fulfill this dream.
With her help, I invited my husband, who was not a practitioner at the time, to go see Shen Yun. More than ten years ago, because I did not properly handle family relationships and only focused on work and truth clarifying projects, my husband had bad thoughts about me, our projects, and even about Dafa. If something I mentioned was related to Dafa, he and I were not able to communicate.
After realizing this problem and understanding that balancing family relationships is also about saving sentient beings, my husband and I experienced great changes in our relationship. He began watching NTD TV news and TV programs, and understood the truth about the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Dafa. However, whenever Dafa was mentioned, he still had some obstacles that prevented him from agreeing.
He attended a Fa conference in 2018 and tried to study Fa, but he gave up.
I started to talk to my husband about going to see Shen Yun, but he said it is hard to make money, so why would we spend money to go abroad just to watch performances. I mentioned it to him again this year, and told him how good Shen Yun is. Many people recovered from their illnesses and even overcome some difficulties in life after watching Shen Yun. I said that Shen Yun has given people hope.
At that time, he was not feeling well, and the burden of life made him feel miserable and desperate. I told him, I know we are in a difficult situation, but if life is so hopeless, why not go and have a look? Maybe it can give you new hope. This time he listened, and I could feel from the bottom of his heart that he wanted to be saved.
While he watched Shen Yun, he was very focused on the show. Before entering the theater, my husband suffered from neck pain for a month and could not turn his neck from side to side. While watching the show, he found that he could move his neck. After he walked out of the theater, the pain in his neck was almost gone.
He later said that he saw an image where he was being persecuted and was thrown into a cell like one of the dancers in the show. When I shared this with fellow practitioners, they thought that this might be the true state of sentient beings before they were saved. I realized that people who did not know the truth were the victims.
Not long after my husband watched Shen Yun in Taiwan, he seemed to have a voice in his heart telling him that it was time to study the Fa. I happened to come to Kuala Lumpur, so I was able to buy the English version of Zhuan Falun for him. Later, after he studied the Fa, he said that he understood what was blocking him before, it was thought karma. I think Master saw his wish to practice cultivation and helped him get rid of his thought karma.
Now he is a new practitioner. Whenever he has bad thoughts he silently recites “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” and he’s able to push away those thoughts. I hope that from now on we can encourage each other to follow the path of cultivation, so that we can shoulder the responsibility of assisting Master in Fa-rectification.
Video game addiction is a stubborn attachment that has troubled me for many years but I never talked about it. However, this attachment is causing me to walk backward in my cultivation path, it almost caused me to stop practicing. I would like to take this opportunity to expose this attachment.
I loved playing video games since I was a child. These games gave me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I cannot get in the real world. When I was in elementary school, my grades were pretty good. My family gave me some rewards because I got good grades, and I used the money to buy my first game console.
Since then, in addition to studying hard, I’ve also played hard. I felt I could handle games and studies at the same time, and I was quite proud of this. I was a quiet person, however when the topic of games came up, I talked about the storyline in the game, how to beat the levels, etc., without any regard for the feelings of my classmates.
When I was 17 years old, in order to focus on studying for exams, I stopped playing games. I also began practicing Fa that year. Now that I think about it, maybe Master had arranged for me to let go of video games, but I did not realize it.
When I was in college, I became addicted to online games. I still thought that I was quite smart, and I even thought that after practicing Dafa, we gain wisdom. I never thought online games had a negative impact on my studies.
Now that when I look back, my addiction to games made my thoughts confused—I had no wisdom. My college grades weren’t outstanding, and I didn’t behave like a cultivator.
Master mentioned the dangers and harms of video games many times in his lectures. After I read this, I stopped playing games for several years, but games never stopped tempting me.
I started to play games again after a few years. I knew I shouldn’t play, but I still did. I played for a few days, realized it was wrong and uninstalled the game. Now that it’s convenient to download games on mobile phones, it’s gradually becoming more difficult for me to disconnect myself from games.
I play games when I’m tired from work, or when I feel depressed. I wasted a lot of time on games, and I know this is wrong. The time we have is so precious. How can I waste time playing when Master has extended the three realms so we can save sentient beings?
Uninstalling the game again and again and redownloading the game again and again. The more I became addicted to games, the more I became irritable, depressed, and unable to do anything well. My mental and emotional state was unstable. Whenever I encounter a problem in life or work, I want to escape.
The game temporarily paralyzed my emotions, but after it ended, I became depressed. My addiction to games was no different from drug addiction. My righteous thoughts were gradually worn away. I felt that I was not worthy of being a Dafa disciple, and my whole state became very depressed. But this situation made it even more difficult for me to study the Fa or practice the exercises. I couldn’t even handle my daily life well, and I felt very bad. I wanted to give up everything, but I did not want to discredit Dafa.
This situation went up and down. Fortunately, fellow practitioners talked to me based on the Fa. We studied Master’s recent lectures and discussed our understandings. We practiced the exercises together. While studying Fa and doing the exercises, I felt myself being cleansed, and I regained the joy I felt when I first obtained the Fa.
I had righteous thoughts to face this addiction, which I felt was too big but I was very small. But now I feel I’m very tall, and I can get over it in one step.
I uninstalled all the games and started writing a diary. I wrote about the first day I stopped playing games and how my thoughts moved. If there was interference, I wrote it down. I also wrote about how my life would change if I stopped playing games.
On the first day the thought of playing came to mind, but I rejected this thought, and I didn’t even look at the game ads that appeared on my phone. My head hurt very much that day. I realized that this substance was being wiped out, and that’s why it hurt so much. After I realized this, my head immediately stopped hurting.
The next day, I began to show signs of depression and wanted a distraction, like going shopping.
On the third day, my irritability became more obvious. I found the root cause. In the game, I basically control everything. However, the real world is not something that humans can control. Because of the gap between reality and expectations, I felt anxious and particularly restless that day. Normally, I would have re-downloaded the game at this point to escape reality.
On the fourth and fifth days, my husband suggested that I re-install the game because my whole body was emitting negative energy, but I wasn’t tempted. That night I had a dream, in which I dreamed that he was pulling me to escape, but the road before us was dark and chaotic. After I woke up, I started to practice the exercises online with fellow practitioners.
That day I suddenly lost the desire to play games. Instead, I had the urge to run away from the game. After that I had no desire to play games for several days.
On the tenth day, I had the desire to play. It was a game about building a better life and building a better house. I was addicted to this game many times and I always uninstalled it because I realized that I had an attachment for a better human life.
This time I once again saw the same attachment, it was a desire for a better life, and the attachment was big. Often this attachment is hidden behind thoughts on how to manage my life well. The old universe is no longer good and is undergoing Fa-rectification, but I still hold onto these illusions about my life, dreaming for a better ordinary human life. Through this incident, I clearly saw this.
In the days that followed, I found that I focused on my work, and it became smoother. Only then did I realize that the difficulties and lack of wisdom were sometimes caused by things that I couldn’t let go of.
It’s embarrassing for me to struggle with such attachment. After all, when practitioners are making brave efforts to save sentient beings, I insist on falling into a puddle of mud and rolling around in it. I refused to stand up for a long time. I felt I was not a true Dafa disciple and I wanted to give up on all the truth-clarification projects I was involved in.
But now I hope that I’ve woken up, because there isn’t much time or many opportunities left.
These are my cultivation experiences. If there are any shortcomings, please correct me. Heshi.
(Presented at the 2024 Malaysia Fa Conference)