(Clearwisdom.net) I am a cultivator who lives in Sweden and have practiced almost nine months. I have a Greek background and therefore I have a natural connection to the country. I would like to share some of my experiences and reflections from a recent Hongfa trip to Greece in September 2001.
In Greece there are still very few people who have heard of the Fa. So far there are only two practitioners in all of Greece, and they have recently moved there from Sweden in order to spread the Fa. After spending several days with my family in a small community on the east coast, I traveled to northern Greece to help practitioners there with Hongfa activities in that area. My family became suspicious when I said that I had begun practicing a cultivation method called Falun Gong. They question everything outside of the Greek Orthodox Christian Church. I was surprised by the intensity of their criticism against me. I searched inside trying to find my own attachments in my relationship with them and asked myself what the reason was for their strong reaction.
I discovered that I very much wanted my family to think that Falun Gong is good and I was afraid they would be negative. I understood that it was very important to send out righteous thoughts and eliminate my own bad thoughts and attachments which could hinder the family from being open and positive to Dafa.
I asked the practitioners in Greece to send me a compendium of the preliminary Greek Falun Gong translations. Two days later, I received it and a stack of flyers in Greek at the post office. Later that afternoon, my father read the flyer and told me that he thought this was something good. His attitude changed and now the atmosphere between us is not as tense as before.
I told him that I was thinking about taking the bus to the city and handing out flyers. Much to my surprise, he wanted to come along and help me. An hour later I was in the city of Volos among the people at cafés and restaurants in the harbor district doing Hongfa with my father. It was a very strong experience.
Dad advised me to first and foremost hand out flyers to the younger people because he believed they are more open and not so conservative as the older ones. I smiled silently to myself. Dad is a 74-year-old man and through my eyes a pretty typical conventional older Greek gentleman. A couple of days later Dad went with me to Lefkadia and Naoussa in northern Greece, where I planned to spread the Fa together with the cultivators there. The first practice group had just started in Thessaloniki, an hour's journey from Naoussa, with several newly-interested people and an additional cultivator from Sweden who came to help.
After the practice session, we sat and exchanged experiences with each other and we cultivators from Sweden answered questions that the new cultivators had. A young man saw an aura of light around Vasilios' body when he came over to correct his movements; his Celestial Eye opened at once. Vasilios explained that what the young man saw is cultivation energy and that all cultivators omit such an energy. A young woman said that she tangibly felt the energy field during the exercises.
Wherever we went, we handed out flyers and just about everyone took them and read one. The people here have been waiting a long time to obtain the Fa.
I did a film interview with Vasilios in Greek for a planned documentary film about Falun Gong in Europe. Vasilios is the contact person for Greece.
It is really a pioneer job to work with the translations of the books, start up the practice groups, inform the media and spread the Fa to people here in Greece. No one here has heard about the Fa before.
A couple of days later we demonstrated the exercises at the square in Naoussa and handed out flyers to people in the city. Before doing this, we went up to the Mayor of Naoussa to ask if we needed a permit. He reacted negatively and lost his temper. The atmosphere became very tense and we were met with a fierce resistance from the Mayor. He curtly directed us to his colleague in the same building, but explained that she was not going to approve of us doing something like this in his city. However, the colleague was positive and took time to listen when we explained our situation, and she did not think that it would be any problem.
Later on we found out that the mayor is communist and does not want to hear any criticism about the current regime in China. At home later on, we had a discussion about how we should proceed with the Hongfa. What was it but the fear inside us that was trying to hinder us? We decided that no attachments inside of us should hinder the people of Naoussa from obtaining the Fa and finding out the truth about what is happening in China.
Later, during the afternoon while we were practicing, we all felt the energy field was very strong. We gave out flyers in large quantities and we found the people to be open and curious. Many people stood and watched us and listened to the practice music. Two newspaper journalists from the city's local press came there with a photographer who took pictures as we practiced. Even a local radio station showed interest, and interviewed Vasilios the next day. The radio people were very open and treated us quite positively.
After the radio interview, we went to Naoussa Park. I handed out flyers to several nice old men who were sitting on a park bench. One of them said that he had already received one and pulled out a neatly folded flyer from his breast pocket. While I was giving the others a flyer he began to explain to his friends what it was about and he said that he had seen us practicing the night before in the square. Many people carefully saved the flyer so they could read it later. They intuitively understood this was something important.
In another park outside of the city I handed out flyers to several pensioners who were standing close together in a group while one of them was video filming. They wanted me to stand with them so I would also be part of their film. An older gentleman said while looking into the camera, "Right now we are getting a flyer about China and Falun Gong." Everyone was looking into the camera and smiling. What looked like an ordinary event was actually a historic moment for us, all of which was documented.
Now, let's get back to the family. My father is the one who is most open towards Falun Gong, and the evening before I was to leave, I decided to give him the Greek Falun Gong compendium. I first showed him the photo of Master and the Falun symbol. Then I asked him if we could read a passage together and handed him the book. Hearing my father read "Lunyu" in Greek hit me like a beam of light. Yet another puzzle piece fell into place, widening my understanding and opening my heart.
Coming here to Greece to spread the Fa felt like a natural part of my task during the Fa-rectification period. It suddenly appeared even more clearly. I thought about Master's words from the Washington conference, "I have said that no country exists in the world by accident--they all exist with a meaning and purpose."
The next day I traveled to Athens and handed out my last flyer in the evening in the heart of the city at Syntagma Square. An old lady dressed in black came toward me and asked me to buy a flower. I asked her if she could read and handed her a flyer. "I am illiterate, my girl, but I will give it to the lady next door to me, she said, while laying the folded flyer in her basket with the half-withered white roses. I looked at her while she walked slowly on her way, disappearing into the sea of people. An old lady dressed in black had now become a messenger for the Fa.
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