(Clearwisdom.net) [The following article appears in the book Hearts and Minds Uplifted--The Power of Falun Dafa, first published by the Clearwisdom editors in 2006. The many short stories in this book were written by people of all ages, from many countries, and from all walks of life. They are all very personal and unique, and yet they share a common theme: the tremendous spiritual growth that comes from practicing Falun Gong. For more information or to order Hearts and Minds Uplifted, please see: http://www.mhbooks.org/mhbooks/index.php?target=products&product_id=29937&sl=EN]
(Clearwisdom.net) My family and I were fortunate to find Falun Dafa in 2004. During the past several years, whenever I passed by Chinatown and the university, I frequently received flyers and CDs from Dafa practitioners. Although I didn't pay much attention to them, looking at the flyers and CDs, which had obviously been made with great effort, I felt that at least these Dafa practitioners were sincere and kind. I often saw them practicing and teaching the exercises in groups in the plaza and at the university. I saw with my own eyes that people who practiced Falun Gong were all very peaceful and orderly. Everybody did a lot of work quietly. After I read articles in the The Epoch Times newspaper about how many had become better and healthier people after they started practicing, I became curious and had a favorable opinion of Dafa. Three, four years passed. Although I missed many chances to get to know Dafa, the things that practitioners did quietly planted seeds in my mind to help my family come to Dafa later on.
Because I saw with my own eyes the practitioners' peacefulness and their devotion to their belief, I was empathic towards Falun Gong over its being persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for no rational reason. Finally I really wanted to understand what kind of belief made these practitioners so persistent and why the CCP was trying everything to persecute these kind people. I remembered the Dafa website listed on the flyers. I visited http://www.falundafa.org and downloaded the online version of "Zhuan Falun". I was deeply drawn by the wonders of the book after reading just a few pages. I felt I was on a spaceship traveling into space and exploring the profound mysteries of the universe. All of a sudden my questions about life were answered. What is good and what is evil all became clear. Black and white, truth and lies all became crystal clear.
After I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with Dafa, I didn't immediately walk onto the cultivation path. It wasn't easy for the whole family to come to practice Dafa. When I found out Zhuan Falun was such a good book, I urged my father to read it, hoping it could help him, an honest person with a bad temper. But my father knew my intention, and he always tried to avoid it. Winter came in no time. One day he insisted on going skating. I was a little worried, but my mother and I didn't want to stop him so we let him go. Unfortunately, we got a phone call from a hospital emergency room that my father had broken his hip and needed immediate surgery. He was almost 60 years old. It was a big shock for the family. My mother and I took good care of him, hoping he could recover quickly. But the conflicts between my mother and father persisted.
I was reading Zhuan Falun at the time. I understood that only Dafa could resolve the deeply rooted conflicts in my family, so I recommended the book to my father several times. Finally my father started reading. Right away he changed. His 58 years of bad temper improved greatly. He started being tolerant, even during conflicts with my mother. His spirit improved, and all of us benefited. There were fewer conflicts in the family.
Just like that, my father started practicing. We were all so happy for him. But I, as the first person in the family who got to know Dafa, didn't continue to study and practice due to laziness. Right then, a friend that I had not seen for a long time showed up and stayed at our house for several days. Very soon we learned that she was a Dafa practitioner. With her help we learned all five exercises and together listened to Master Li's lectures on tapes.
Our whole family started practicing all five exercises. Very soon my father could stand up with the aid of a crutch. He persisted in practicing the standing exercises for two hours and the sitting exercise for one hour every day. My father's face looked younger every day. Even though he was almost 60 years old, two months after his hip fracture he could walk without assistance. We couldn't afford medical insurance because my father was on a visitor's visa. It was a miracle that he could walk on his own without a crutch. Following that, my father was able to easily pass the physical exam for a visa extension. He had to bend and raise his legs in front of the doctors. Due to this miraculous recovery after practicing Dafa, my father was able to successfully pass the physical exam.
Over the following six months my whole family practiced together. The first several months I often felt a warm stream coming down from the top of my head and spreading all over my body. I felt wonderful. Later my father went back to China, and my mother and I became lazy about practicing. I knew we shouldn't be like that and wanted to get in touch with the local practitioners so we could have a good cultivation environment to help improve ourselves. For various reasons I never got a chance to do that. Just then, a fellow practitioner we had never met called us. She called to greet my father. It turned out that my father, who likes reading The Epoch Times, withdrew from the CCP for our whole family after he read the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party".
Later I realized that this ordinary phone call marked a huge transition in our cultivation paths. The practitioner encouraged us to participate in the group Fa study. The study site was very close to our house. At first we just thought we'd try it out, but we have not stopped going there ever since that first time. Every week we studied the Fa and shared our experiences with fellow practitioners. It became an important part of our cultivation. With encouragement and help from fellow practitioners I became very diligent in cultivation. Since then, Dafa has become part of our lives. Our whole family walked onto the cultivation path.
Over a year and a half since I began Dafa practice, we experienced the greatness of Dafa. I had never been very healthy, even when I was very young. I had chronic tracheitis and perpetual allergic rhinitis. After I came to the West, for the first couple of years my chronic tracheitis didn't bother me much, but the perpetual allergic rhinitis gave me quite a bit of trouble. After several years I was used to having to breathe through my mouth, particularly after I started working as an information technology professional. My resistance to diseases decreased. I frequently had a cold that lingered for weeks and months. My trachea became very susceptible because I breathed through my mouth all the time. Every time I caught a cold I coughed a lot, too. Plus, I was allergic to the air conditioning and used lots of tissues. Several years ago, after riding in a car with a coworker who smoked, my chronic tracheitis came back. If I walked too fast, it was hard for me to catch my breath. I could hear the sound of my breathing through my trachea. Due to my dislike of Western medicine and treatment methods, I never took many medicines. I only took antibiotics a couple of times, but I was afraid of having to depend on them, so I ended up throwing them away. I got used to hearing the sounds from my trachea and I even didn't consider chronic tracheitis and perennial allergic rhinitis to be diseases. After I practiced Dafa for several months, I suddenly realized that all my symptoms had disappeared without even my noticing it. This was a clear case of the Fa principle of gaining naturally without pursuit.
There are so many good things about Dafa that I can't write about all of them. Dafa helped my family dispel conflicts that had existed for decades. We all benefited from it, mentally and physically. We thank Master, Dafa, and all Dafa practitioners who clarify the truth and spread the Fa on every street and in every corner of the world. Some have even sacrificed their lives. Their kindness has helped countless people to benefit from Falun Dafa.