(Clearwisdom.net) Note: This western practitioner started her cultivation in Dafa in the second half of 2006. She has severe myopia, and can only read the books and study the Fa with the help of a magnifier, but this doesn't prevent her from reading Zhuan Falun and Master's other lectures every day.
When I was 18 years old, I started to learn some self-defense techniques. Although I don't think this fighting practice is what I really wanted and it didn't suit me, I nonetheless still practiced. Five years ago, I started to learn qigong and Taichi. I wondered whether they would work for me or not. I studied Kungfu, judo and Taichi at the same time. Deep in my heart, I felt something was missing, yet I was not able to figure out exactly what it was.
People always said that what I learned was fine, and some of these practices seemed at first to work for me. So I persevered, but my various illness conditions didn't improve, and instead became even worse. Every year I became depressed during the winter months, and I hoped to cure myself of this condition. I felt that curing my illness conditions was only a dream.
Several years a \go, people started to talk about Falun Gong. I didn't know anything about Falun Gong, but I felt something special when they talked about Falun Gong. It was a strange but wonderful feeling. Later, I read an article about Falun Gong in a magazine, and the wonderful feeling came back again.
In 2006, I heard people talking about Falun Gong again. I decided to look into what exactly Falun Gong was. I went to the bookstore and found the book Falun Gong, which introduces the practice. It told of some people looking younger after practicing it, and the book showed how to do the movements as well. I bought it immediately. I started reading right after going home and I studied the five exercises by myself. At that time, I felt energy that I had never felt before. I had never experienced that feeling, even though I had followed other practices for five years. I began to realize that Falun Gong has a deeper meaning than simply making people look younger.
I wanted to learn more about Falun Gong, so I went to another bookstore. People there gave me their last available copy of Zhuan Falun. I opened it, and the first section I saw was about "Futi" (spirit or animal possession). I was surprised. What is it? This is Falun Gong? I closed the book and left the bookstore without buying it. But there was a sort of energy force that dragged me back. I went back to the bookstore and bought the book despite my ambivalence. I started reading it when I was at home, and could not stop reading. I felt so good! At the end of the book, I saw a list of other books written by Master Li, so I went to a third bookstore to buy the other Dafa books. Every time I wanted to buy a Dafa book, I seemed to know immediately which bookstore I should go to, and I always found the book I was looking for. Dafa is so miraculous, and Master guided me into cultivation step by step.
Through Fa study, I learned that I should not practice Falun Gong along with other practices at the same time ("no second discipline.") What's more, Falun Gong is a high level practice, with very high and deep meaning, and other practices cannot even compare to it. Even though it was difficult at first to give up the other practices, I eventually gave them up to cultivate only Falun Gong. At the same time I started looking for a place and other practitioners with whom I could practice Falun Gong. On the Internet I learned of a practice site in my city. At the practice site, I re-learned the five exercises, and formally stepped onto my cultivation path. This is the first time that I truly started cultivating after seeking for more than ten years.
I also had some dreams about cultivation. One time I dreamed that I was on a bus sitting beside a woman. She had a book in her hand whose cover was the same as Zhuan Falun. She opened the book to show it to me, and said it was the book of Falun Gong. But when I read it, I found it was full of other qigong stuff and was not at all the Fa. I immediately said, "This is not Falun Gong, it's fake."
I do things according to Dafa in my daily life, and thus pay attention to my words and behavior, and I try my best to eliminate my attachments whenever I find them. In the past, I had a bad temper, but now I can calmly deal with everything in my life. Sometimes when I do something wrong or an attachment surfaces, I get a headache, but it immediately disappears when I recognize my problem. I seldom read the Clearwisdom website, because of my bad eyesight, so fellow practitioners gave me a Dutch translation of Master's lectures after 1999. Though I don't yet fully understand the meaning of Fa rectification and some of the other content, I can accept it all. I know this is because I just started cultivation and my level is limited, but I do believe everything that Master says. I started learning to send forth righteous thoughts, but it is not easy to be still. In doing the sitting meditation, I have progressed from not being able to sit in lotus, to now sitting in full lotus position for half an hour. I still don't do it very well, but I believe I will become better with practice. In the beginning, those things I had studied before came back to disturb my practice, but I tried my best to repel them, and then they never came back again.
Now when I have a sickness tribulation, I know that it's not an ordinary disease, but Master purifying my body. For example my hands sometimes fester, but now they heal themselves without any medicine.
I did a lot of wrong deeds in the past, yet I wished to be a good person, but it was only a dream. My life became beautiful after I found Falun Gong. The winter depression that was with me for many years didn't come to me this winter for the first time. My heart is full of joy from obtaining the Fa. Though I am still living an ordinary life, I am no longer an ordinary person, I am now a Falun Dafa cultivator.
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