(Clearwisdom.net) I have decided to ignore all obstacles and interference and write down my experience of learning Falun Dafa. I hope my own experience can contribute to proving that Falun Dafa is righteous and that Teacher came to the world to save mankind. My experience of becoming a new person through practicing Falun Gong is undeniable.
I started to practice Falun Dafa around June or July in 1999, when I was fifty years old and had been an epileptic patient for many years. Whenever I had an epileptic seizure, I couldn't recognize anyone, including my family. I also had a slipped disc, ossein proliferation, high cholesterol, arm injury, frozen shoulders, and other diseases. There was no complete cure for these diseases. I felt like a disabled person.
Whenever I had a seizure, I lost consciousness completely. Once, my sister (also a practitioner) took care of me and read Zhuan Falun to me. Later she told me that I vomited for a whole day. In the beginning, the vomit was white colored. Later it became black and red with blood in it. She kept reading Zhuan Falun to me. I finally woke up around 7 o'clock in the evening. But it felt different. Usually I felt muddleheaded right after waking up, but on that day I was very clear-minded and didn't feel any discomfort.
With my sister's encouragement, I started to practice Falun Gong. I felt the difference immediately. Before, when I watched television or read books, I'd get a headache. But when I read Zhuan Falun, I had no headache nor was I dry-eyed, and there was a soft light green glow on Zhuan Falun. The more I read, the more I wanted to continue. I only had an elementary school education. As I suffered from epilepsy for many years, I forgot almost all of the characters I learned in school. When I opened Zhuan Falun, although there were a lot of characters I didn't know, I was able to read and understand what Teacher meant.
After I finished the first section in Chapter one, "Genuinely Guiding People Toward High Levels," I realized that I could finally go back home because the Lord of Buddhas had come to save us. After I finished reading Zhuan Falun, I didn't feel tired or hungry at all, although I hadn't eaten or slept for hours. I understood that the Lord of Buddhas had come to teach us the Fa. I wanted to cultivate and no Buddhas, Taos, Gods or demons could change my heart.
I then read Essentials for Further Advancement, Hong Yin, and Zhuan Falun Vol II. Before I learned the exercises, Jiang Zemin's regime started the persecution. The police and personnel from the 610 Office feverishly arrested practitioners. Until today, I still regret that I did not start to practice Falun Dafa earlier and never had a chance to join group practices. My sister helped me to study the Fa and do the exercises at home. Because there were a lot of characters that I didn't know, I used a dictionary to help me. My memory was not good either, so I often had to ask my family for help. I copied Zhuan Falun, Essentials for Further Advancement, and Hong Yin in notebooks, and wrote pinyin (Translator's note: a system for transliterating Chinese ideograms into the Roman alphabet) on top of the characters I didn't know.
After a period of studying the Fa and doing the exercises, my health improved tremendously. Thus, I felt even more certain of studying the Fa. I then copied Zhuan Falun, Essentials for Further Advancement, and Hong Yin twice. Through copying the Fa, my calligraphy looked much better than before and I could recognize more characters. Then, I made some cards with characters I didn't know and their pinyin. I inserted the cards in pages where the characters were used in Zhuan Falun. Thus, I could read the whole book without stopping.
Doing the exercises was also a challenge. I had injured my arms in an accident at work. I couldn't raise my hands over my head. My back and legs hurt so much that I couldn't sit still for too long. I often fell backward while trying to sit in meditation, and had to ask my husband to help me to sit up. I decided to work harder. While doing the exercises, I often felt that Teacher was right beside me. After a year of studying the Fa and practicing the exercises, my diseases were almost gone. Squatting down to put on shoes used to be very hard for me. But soon I could sit in a half lotus position. I seldom had epileptic seizures anymore. Teacher saved me and gave me a new life in Falun Dafa.
One evening in 2001, the police and people from the 610 Office came to search my home again. They took several of Teacher's new articles and some of the notebooks I used to copy the Fa. I sat on the floor and sent forth righteous thoughts. They took me to an office at my workplace. The county mayor was also there. They asked me when I started to practice Falun Gong. I told them it was after July 20, 1999. The county mayor said, "Why did you practice Falun Gong when the government had banned it?" I said, "Falun Gong teaches people 'Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance'. What is wrong with that?" I then told them how I started to learn Falun Gong and the fact that practicing purified my body and cured my diseases. I let them see my injured arms, which I couldn't raise above my head before I started to practice, but after practicing my hands could reach each other behind my back. I said, "The executives of this workplace are all here. They know I used to have all kinds of diseases. And now I am free of illness. How could you say practicing Falun Gong is not good?" They couldn't say anything. The county mayor asked them to lock me in a detention center. They planned to detain me there until I would tell them what they wanted to know.
On the way to the detention center, I kept sending forth righteous thoughts. The righteous thoughts were indeed powerful. We were less than a mile between my workplace and the detention center, when the car died three times. The police section chief drove the car. They didn't know that Teacher was right beside me, and that my righteous thoughts worked.
At the detention center, they interrogated me every two or three days in order to find out where I got Teacher's new articles. Teacher's words came to my mind, "At the crucial moment, won't they even betray a Buddha?" ("For Whom do You Practice Cultivation" from Essentials for Further Advancement ). I then thought, I am a practitioner and I cannot sell out my fellow practitioners no matter how difficult they make it for me. So I didn't give them any answers. In the detention center, several practitioners, including me, kept memorizing the Fa and sending forth righteous thoughts no matter how the police tried to stop us. I was only able to sit in half lotus position before, but after several months in the detention center, I finally was able to sit in the full lotus position for many minutes.
One day, I had an epileptic seizure. Practitioners sent forth righteous thoughts for me and thus I woke up soon. The guards at the detention center advised me to write a guarantee statement so that I could get out of there. I didn't want to write that kind of statement. I wanted to study the Fa and practice. I realized what I had was not an illness. It was Teacher cleaning up my body for me. With such a thought, my epilepsy was completely cured and I never had a seizure again.
On October 25, 2001, the police searched every local practitioner's home. Every day, more than ten practitioners were taken to the detention center. Several days later, several dozens of practitioners were jailed in the detention center, and every cell was full. The police announced that anyone who didn't write a guarantee statement would not be given any regular meals. Thus, we didn't have much food to eat, except for half a bowl of soup. This continued for over twenty days. In the detention center, any practitioner possessing Teacher's articles or refusing to write a guarantee statement would be tortured with different means, such as being beaten, cuffed behind their backs, forced to kneel down, forced to stand for a long time day and night, locked in a cell with no open windows in summer time, or locked in a cell with windows open at winter time, and more.
Because we didn't understand the Fa at higher levels, many of us just endured all the torture quietly and thought we were following the principle of "When its difficult to endure, you can endure it" (Zhuan Falun, Lecture 9). I thought, we should take it one step further, as "When its impossible to do, you can do it." (Zhuan Falun, Lecture 9) So I started to clarify the truth to them and resisting the persecution.
One day, some city officials came to examine the detention center's work. The guards asked me to speak about my understanding of Falun Gong. I started from the huge physical changes I went through to cultivation following Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. They stopped me and asked me to leave. I asked Teacher to protect and enlighten me, and at the same time sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil demons and rotten ghosts that were controlling the guards. When I walked into the hall, it was full of policemen and plainclothes policemen. One policeman walked up to me and asked me to kneel down. I refused and he beat and cursed at me. Another policeman kicked me in the chest so hard that I was thrown to the floor. I stood up and continued to tell them how the police violated the law by searching my home and taking away my books, money and other things. The city officials came and asked what was going on. A policeman shamelessly lied and said, "She is a lunatic. She practices Falun Gong. Ignore her." I improvised a song and sang it in front of everyone, "When the society's moral standard declines, people are busy dining, wining, whoring and gambling; (the government) slanders and persecutes Falun Gong, while (practitioners) are locked in jail for studying the Fa and doing exercises; (practitioners) are being tortured for clarifying the truth; For everyone to wake up, Falun Dafa is the only hope." Later, the director of the police department told me, "The order came from above. I have to arrest Falun Gong practitioners whether I want to or not. We are doing this just to earn a living." The policemen also discussed among themselves and one of them mentioned, "Usually one slap on the face can leave it black and blue. But when we hit Falun Gong practitioners violently, why didn't they bruise like other people? Maybe they do have some supernormal abilities. I don't have the nerve to hit them again."
In April 2004, I was arrested again while clarifying the truth. I was sentenced to one year in a forced labor camp. On the second day in the labor camp, a group of collaborators surrounded me and tried to persuade me to write a guarantee statement. Some of them even bad-mouthed Teacher. Seeing these former practitioners who went awry, I felt very sad for them. Then I thought that they had been locked up in there for such a long time and didn't have a chance to read Teacher's new articles. They gave up practicing Falun Gong because they couldn't study the Fa. I could not stand by and watch them go astray and do nothing. I needed to wake them up using the Fa principles. So I recited all eighty four poems of Hong Yin Vol II for them. I then said, "Now let us think about it according to the Fa principles." But the head of the collaborators stopped me and took me to the disciplinary unit.
In the disciplinary unit, I was monitored by drug addict criminals at night, and surrounded by collaborators during the day. I asked Teacher to strengthen my righteous thoughts. When the collaborators realized they couldn't change my mind, they ordered me to go to work in the workshops.
While in the disciplinary unit, the commander assigned two or three drug addicts to torture and threaten me. They didn't allow me to sleep until 2 o'clock in the morning and forced me to stand for a long time. I tried to touch their hearts through kindness. I helped them with doing laundry, sewing quilts and winter clothes, and cleaning. No matter what I did, I kept sending forth righteous thought to eliminate the evil factors behind them. In the beginning, I told them some traditional stories. Later, I started to tell them the facts about Falun Gong and some Fa principles. Gradually, they started to believe that Falun Gong is good and stopped trying to force me to write guarantee statements. They secretly protected me and said good things about me in front of the guards. I noticed they even got rid of many of their bad habits. Even the guards noticed their changes and felt that it was unbelievable.
While doing labor in the workshops, we worked more than ten hours a day during busy times. When we weren't very busy, the guards asked us to write diaries and reports about our thoughts as homework. No matter how they disguised their brainwashing intentions, I just wrote down the benefits I gained since practicing Falun Gong, and how I improved my physical health and moral standard through the practice. They didn't say anything after they read my report. Later, they said that I didn't have to write anything anymore.
Working in the workshops was very intensive, but I always sent forth righteous thoughts or memorized the Fa while working. So I usually felt as though time was passing by very fast. One day, I hurt my back while loading some very heavy substances onto a truck. I couldn't walk without help. At night, it was too painful to go to sleep. I memorized the verse of Falun Gong's first exercise, "Shenshen Heyi, Dongjing Suiji, Dingtian Duzun, Qianshou Foli." (Falun Gong ) While repeating the verse in my heart, I grabbed the headboard of my bed and tried to stretch hard for about two hours. Then I could walk again without help. The commander asked me how I had recovered so fast. I told her it was because of practicing Falun Gong exercises and she smiled.
During the one year in the forced labor camp, I memorized the Fa, sent forth righteous thoughts and clarified the truth while doing hard labor every day. With the wisdom Teacher gave me, I passed one test after another. Now, I am doing the three things every day. I will continue to validate Dafa, save sentient beings, and fulfill a Dafa disciple's responsibility.