Kansas City, Missouri
I have been a genuine Falun Gong practitioner since late June, 1999. At that time I had already been doing the exercises for about three months but was also practicing Tibetan Buddhism. After listening to the nine-day-lecture series, though, I struggled for a short time and decided to switch practices and finally committed myself to Dafa. I knew that I had been making no progress in cultivation to that point. In looking back, although Im still only working towards becoming a better person and have a very long way to go, I have made certain progress in that direction.
Im a second generation American, of mixed Polish and Russian German ancestry. Although my family were non-practicing Catholics and Protestants, they instilled Christian concepts in me by clearly distinguishing what was right and wrong. Each of them had been raised by very religious mothers. Despite or because of my parents humble backgrounds, growing up here during the Depression, they wanted their children to succeed in the material world, and so they considered doing well in school extremely important. As a child, I learned to compete for grades by the time I was in high school. At the same time, I had sense enough to be embarrassed by my own need to be the best. To compensate, I became not only good in school, but also good at analyzing my own faults (and others) and good at seeming like a wonderful person. I was very cheerful and helpful. I had and shared a very altruistic point of view. By the time I was in graduate school, I had convinced many people of my goodness and certainly had convinced myself.
For this reason, practicing cultivation was hard for me. I was complacent with my life. I had always been treated well by others. Although my graduate studies added tremendous stress to my life, I was learning and stimulated. Although my husband and I worried about money, still he had a job and my stipend added a little to that so that we always managed to pay the rent, eat and take care of our bills. I had many friends whom I could advise with my generous wisdom and with whom I could indulge in gossip and good times. My life was good.
After finishing my comprehensive exams, my husband and I moved to Kansas City where he found a better paying and more challenging job. I settled down to part-time work and to writing my dissertation. My contact with friends diminished, and the stimulating challenge of new projects and ideas did too. I still had a very optimistic attitude about life and progress because I considered the time in Kansas City as a stop-over on the way to something either more exciting or more familiar. At the same time, I began to reassess my progress as a cultivator.
In looking back, my practice of Tibetan Buddhism was just a part of the many projects and friends from my life at that time. Although I had thought I was a sincere practitioner, most of the time I felt overwhelmed by the foreignness of its esotericism, and the rest of the time I was probably giving advice to practitioners younger than myself. Since most were undergraduates, they looked up to me because of the age difference. Upon arriving in KC, I took some empowerments and tried to get involved with practitioners here, but I noticed that whenever I opened my mouth, Id say something that I regretted. I felt embarrassed by what I had become.
When I decided to practice Falun Dafa, I knew I had found a legitimate system of cultivation. Master Li gave me a few signs. The night before I planned to watch the video-tapes, we had rented a movie. But we discovered that the tape didnt work. The next day, it occurred to me that perhaps it was the VCR that didnt work. Sure enough, no movie that I put in worked. However, when I put in Masters Lis tape, although the picture was gone, I could still hear the lectures. So I listened to them. By the fifth tape or so, the picture was returning, and by the seventh, the VCR had recovered its full functioning. We have had no trouble with it since. I believe that Master Li was pointing out my deep attachment to pleasure in the form of entertainment, which might interfere with starting cultivation.
During those days of listening, I felt a funny feeling in my abdomen and knew that Master Li had implanted the wheel. A week later or so, this was confirmed. In getting up from a nap in the bedroom, I saw from my peripheral vision a black and white fan slowly moving. I blinked, wondering how I had gotten down to the kitchen (where our only ceiling fan is located), before I realized, in seeing it briefly again, that it was a Falun, seen from a very low level. Then, perhaps a month later I laid down for a nap and, after covering my face with my arm, I saw a beautifully colored and intricately designed matrix. I saw it only for a tenth of a second or so and it did not spin. It disappeared and was replaced by a circular area of unfocussed spots of colorblue, green, a little orangesurrounded by complete blackness. The circular area was bumpy, hardly a circle, as though looking through a dirty and partially blocked tube, which I suppose I was. That image, too, disappeared immediately and has never returned. I suppose that Master Li was showing me that my Tianmu (the third eye) does exist, even if it is in very bad shape. Even by the end of the lecture series, I knew that, given my complacent history, this practice would be my only chance of reaching enlightenment.
The main reason I took up this cultivation path was that I could understand what Master Li was trying to teach. And I think that this is the miracle of his offering to us. He helps each of us begin at the level were at, and from our own backgrounds. I had a twenty-year, on and off again, acquaintance with various Eastern and esoteric philosophies and religions. I had read a lot about Zen in college. Had read all kinds of popular stuff, from shamanism and Carlos Castaneda, to works on wicca, to Tarot and astrology, to a Course in Miracles, before I met a group practicing Tibetan Buddhism. I was very much a wandering fool.
But my roots were in Catholicism. I remember my Grandmother praying before a tiny porcelain statue of Mary when I was young. In my twenties I had dismissed the Catholic faith as too black and white, as not being able to deal with the kind of subtleties in life which an understanding of Taoism, for example, offered. The world could not simply be divided into good and evil, but was a complex fabric of complementary parts, the yin necessary to the yang. When I first came in contact with Dafa in March, before I heard the lecture series, at first I found Dafa suspect. Here was a system that, again, separated things into two camps, good and evil. How could this system be considered sophisticated? As it turns out, Dafa has finally helped me to reconcile eastern and western thinking. The universe contains two distinct forces which manifest as complementary opposites at one level and at a lower level manifest as good and evil. This may not be a very high level understanding itself, but it has served to help me enter the Fa and begin to learn. It also made me feel very much at home touching on my Catholic roots, I could immediately distinguish right from wrong. The Fa of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance allows all cultivators this opportunity.
And what have been the consequences of this opportunity? Master Li gives us so much help that, after listening to the lectures for the first time, I felt a different person. I could refrain from sarcasm when my husband got angry with me. I could monitor my own behavior more easily. And I literally could see the world in brighter colors. This sensation felt similar to the aftermath of fastinga clear-headedness, which, however, did not disappear after a few days.
As my cultivation began in earnest, I started on a tearful tour of realizing what I had become. For months, usually during the sitting meditation, I would have realizations that led me to cry. More accurately I would bawl. I would cry so hard that Id get tired from it. I did not cry out of compassion for others. I cried out for all the evil I had done. I cried when I realized that Id been living a liethat I had created an image of a wonderful and wise and loving person to show the world. I cried when I realized how kindly other people had treated me throughout my life. My parents tried to give me everything I wanted. My husband sacrificed years of his life in a job he hated in order to put me through school. I had often returned their kindness with smug indifference. I cried over and over again at my deeply embedded show-off mentality. It seemed that anything I said was meant to show off in some way. I would be introduced to a new person, for example, and I would mention that I was working on my Ph.D. (As if they needed that piece of information!) When teaching my acting class (my studies are in theatre) and I asked my students to sing a prepared piece of musical theatre, I managed to slip in a few bars of my own, (as if I need to impress junior high schoolers with my talents!) All of these little events made me thoroughly disgusted with myself. This may not sound like a good way to be, but these feelings of remorse helped me considerably. I saw myself more truthfully and would vow never to show off again--until the next opportunity arose, and I would hear another inappropriate comment escape my lips. I battled and cried for three months in this way, and Im no longer the cheerful and optimistic person I was. However, I spend less time justifying my inconsiderate or self-interested behavior. I am beginning to recover some of the depth I had lost to glibness over the years. I have recovered some of the integrity instilled by my father and the compassion I had felt as a young child.
Some practitioners seem to have come from a past of despair or tortuous illness. I did not. I came from the other side and had to get past the easy world I had made for myself.
I had talked exclusively about my spirits development. I have omitted mentioning changes in my health because, with one outstanding exception, I have always been very healthy. My life has had fewer tribulations than most, and so my experiences may not sound as miraculous as those of others. However, I have begun to thrive on much less sleep and sleep better than I ever did. My chronic but mild pain from fallen arches has disappeared. My only physical problem, really, was awful periods once a month when I needed to take medication. I had expected this problem to improve over the years, after all, Im already 41 years old! But they didnt. In addition, my husband and I seemed unable to conceive. After many tests, a fertility specialist could find nothing wrong with me and suggested the next step would be to turn to fertility drugs or other intrusive measures. We had given up hope and were considering adoption. But, after practicing Dafa for three months or so, my reproductive system got cleaned up. In fact, our first child will be due in August.
As this piece makes clear, Im far away from enlightenment. Im still struggling to become a better person. Nonetheless, what could be more precious than that struggle? I am all too conscious that very few people in this world, in our history, have had this opportunity, so that its beyond my comprehension to understand why Im so lucky. And why has Master Li helped us so much in this process? This is truly the mystery which I hope someday to discover. In the meantime, I thank Master Li and those other benevolent beings who care enough to help us find our way home. This is the true miracle.
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Category: Beginning Cultivation
