(Minghui.org) I was a former gang member and had been arrested for gang fights and drug dealings. My drug addictions eventually consumed the core of my life and drained my will to live. I tried three times to commit suicide but was saved each time.
Falun Dafa helped me regain my physical and mental health. I now tell people about how Falun Dafa has helped me and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been lying to the world about Falun Dafa all along.
I have been arrested again, but for telling people what Falun Dafa really is. With my help, my former gang friends changed, and many even quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
The year 2006 was the darkest time of my life. I was completely overcome by my drug addictions. I returned home to the countryside with a body covered with gun and knife wounds that I had accumulated over years of gang fights.
With tears in her eyes, my mother remarked with resentment, “Had I known you’d grow up a gang member, I’d have killed you the moment you were born! I would have jumped into a pond with you and killed both of us if I had the strength to do so.”
Looking at my distressed mother, I pondered what had caused me to end up being such a wretch, lying in bed waiting to die.
It started after middle school. Back then I carried a knife with me as protection against street peddlers. Friendship meant everything and I would do anything for my friends.
Every day I got into fights. The fights were real gang battles with guns and knives, and people did get killed in these fights. My liver and heart were injured along the way. I had been detained and sentenced to forced labor for more than 12 years for my crimes.
I fought alone against a small group. Like combat in the Middle Ages, I stood face to face with my enemies. My feet were shot at and badly injured, and I used heroin to ease the pain. I eventually became addicted to drugs.
Drug addiction was like a trap that I could not escape from. I spent more than 1000 yuan a day to buy drugs. Paying for the drugs meant that I had to deal drugs and weapons.
My addiction worsened after I was released from a four-year sentence in 2004, even though I had tried numerous times to stop using drugs. It became so bad that even the drug rehab center refused to admit me.
I had changed from a young muscular fighter into a frail, skeletal, walking corpse. My legs were swollen and I was a husk. Illegal drugs had consumed and sucked away the core of my life.
I tried different means to kill myself to end the misery but did not die. It seemed that my life was not meant to end that way.
When I returned home, my mother believed that only Falun Dafa could save me. Falun Dafa had saved my brother when he was stricken by serious diseases.
When my brother took out the book Zhuan Falun, I remembered my first encounter with Falun Dafa in 1997. I saw the portrait of Teacher Li, the founder of Falun Dafa, at a friend’s house.
I recalled that his family was listening to the recording of Teacher Li’s lecture about the issue of killing and that cultivators must not kill. I believed that I could not cultivate in Dafa since I made a living by killing, so I walked out of my friend’s house and missed the opportunity that time.
My brother gave me the book and I read it through three times. This book taught me how to improve as a human being. I clung to my mother’s shoulder and cried like a baby, wishing I had not let go of it the first time.
I promised myself that I would cultivate in Dafa this time.
The magical healing power of Falun Dafa revealed itself to me when I began to read Zhuan Falun in early 2007. The swelling in my legs disappeared within two weeks, and my body’s strength returned. My addiction was completely cured two weeks after I read the book.
A few weeks later, I dreamed that a man with curly hair in Buddha robes came to me. I knelt down to him, even though I had never seen him before. He said to me, “Study the Fa more and save more people.” I did not completely understand what he meant until two months later, after I read other lectures in the book.
Once when I was reading Teacher Li’s teachings, bright lights appeared on the page. I saw law wheels spinning around me one day when I went out to hang Dafa banners with my brother.
I returned to the city a brand-new person, determined to tell people the facts about Falun Dafa. I posted Dafa signs in public places, labor camps, prisons, police stations, and government buildings.
I was arrested in 2008, but this time for posting Dafa signs. My former gang buddies were surprised to learn why I was arrested and were all amazed to know how Falun Dafa had changed me into a person with a conscience and good health. I told them about how Falun Dafa had saved me from my drug addiction and given me a new life.
Staff members in the labor camp were also impressed with my change, and they listened to me tell them about the persecution and Falun Dafa. They also hid my books when there were people from outside.
I was arrested again in 2010. Although the prison authorities knew Falun Dafa had changed me into a good person, they tortured me to “transform” me, because I refused to write statements to renounce Falun Dafa.
The labor camp used extreme brutality to torture Dafa practitioners. The guards hung me from a door frame, with my toes barely touching the floor. They stuffed my mouth with a mop until I fainted. Once they hit me and stepped on my abdomen until I lost control of a bowel movement.
The five-year incarceration could not shake my will to be a Dafa disciple, however. It actually strengthened my determination to cultivate more solidly in Dafa.
I need to do a better job following the teaching of Dafa to be a person of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.”