(Minghui.org) I first heard of Falun Gong in 2000 from media reports about the fabricated self-immolation incident. I was told to go with a colleague, the personnel director of my work unit, to the home of a Falun Gong practitioner. There, I saw a female patient lying in bed. My colleague asked her husband why she practiced Falun Gong. The husband said it was because they were poor and had no money to take her to the hospital. He said that practicing Falun Gong can improve health.
On the way back to the office, my colleague complained that the government had gone too far in prohibiting Falun Gong, especially when medical care was so expensive. Why not allow people to practice Falun Gong if they could return to good health? I fully agreed with him and sympathized with the practitioners. But, because of all the negative propaganda about Falun Gong, I missed my first chance to become a practitioner.
In 2007, my mother received a leaflet with information about Falun Gong and quitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliates. She believed what she read, read it over and over again, and then carefully folded it and put it into a book. I was still held misconceptions due to the Party's propaganda. I told my mother to not believe what the leaflet said and throw it away. This was the second time I missed my chance to become a practitioner.
Starting on my Cultivation Path
In August 2010, I read about Falun Gong through an internet blog of a practitioner. I read some of Teacher's lectures and started to do the sitting meditation.
My mother passed away in November of that year. I was devastated and had nightmares every night.
When I was in despair, I came across a passage about the Falun Gong practice on the practitioner's blog. I felt that this was what I was looking for and decided to commit myself to practicing Falun Gong.
Early one morning, after I did the sitting meditation in the single lotus position, I lay on my bed. My body began to float to more than a foot above the bed. I felt a strong energy flow being injected from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I felt very warm and full of energy.
However, I didn't receive a copy of Zhuan Falun until July 2011 and read it for the first time. I then understood that Falun Gong is not at all what the CCP propaganda claimed. Falun Gong is a Buddha school practice. Killing, including suicide, is forbidden. Therefore, I knew that the media's claims about the self-immolation incident must be false.
My symptoms such as fatigue, depression and blurred vision no longer bothered me and I was full of energy. Before stepping into the practice, I was so weak that I could not sit in front of a computer for more than an hour a day. Later, I could work more than 10 hours. Every night, I didn't want to go to sleep, because I wanted to read more lectures. If I was tired, I simply closed my eyes for a little bit, opened them again and continued reading.
Back in 2009, my father picked up a piece of paper containing a paragraph from Teacher's lecture (it must have been copied by a practitioner). My mother really liked it. She read it repeatedly and even asked me to read it to my father. We all thought it was really good and we felt refreshed after reading it. My mother even hand-copied it once, and read it for many days. It was such a pity that my mother's encounter with the Fa was so short before she passed away. She did not get a chance to read the Falun Gong books.
Stepping into the practice was not easy, but Teacher continued to point me towards the cultivation path. It was my own attachments that delayed my entering the practice.
Eliminating Attachments, Including Fear
I was very moved when I watched the Shen Yun performance on DVD in July 2012. I realized that Teacher and many practitioners were doing their utmost to save people.
I began to produce Shen Yun DVDs. That first night, I dreamed about two giant pink lotuses blooming.
During my morning and evening walks, I inserted the DVDs into people's bike baskets when no one was around. At the time I had a lot of fear, so I was afraid of being seen and I did not dare to give them to people directly.
After I returned home, I watched one of the Shen Yun DVDs and realized that the discs were not of good quality. I looked inward and discovered many attachments. For example, being a little stingy, I had bought blank discs that were not of good quality.
Distributing Shen Yun DVDs
I was kind of a loner and I seldom interacted with people other than my colleagues. Once, I wanted to learn how to drive, so I registered for driving classes. This was a good opportunity to meet people since there were people there from different backgrounds and ages. During the two-month training, I distributed nearly 80 Shen Yun DVDs.
No one had seen Shen Yun before. My area must have been a blind spot, where the facts about Falun Gong were yet to be spread. This encouraged me to make and distribute more DVDs.
Many people were yearning to hear the truth about Falun Gong. They liked Shen Yun and they thanked me sincerely. One driving teacher recommended that his students watch the Shen Yun DVD.
Sending Righteous Thoughts to Support Fellow Practitioners
I came to understand that the persecution of practitioners was forced upon them by the old forces. As practitioners, we must deny this. I still was fearful. When I talked about Falun Gong to people, I only told them it is a Buddha school practice, yet I did not say I myself benefited from it. I found this shortcoming after I read practitioners' sharing on the Minghui website.
I read the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party several times and I sent righteous thoughts to eliminate the CCP's evil spirit. My fear was gone after my righteous thoughts became stronger.
I have not met any local practitioners, yet I can feel practitioners from the local area supporting each other as one body. It is their strong righteous thoughts that cleaned the field so it was easier for me to distribute the Shen Yun DVDs. In addition, when I send righteous thoughts, I also silently support other practitioners.
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