(Minghui.org) I am now in my 80s and have been cultivating in Falun Dafa since 1996. I recently learned while going through a tribulation that simply doing the three things without understanding the real essence of the Fa is insufficient as a genuine Dafa disciple of the Fa-rectification period.
The first time I read Zhuan Falun, I was deeply impressed by what Teacher said:
“When I come to this ordinary human society, it’s just like checking into a hotel for a few days. Then I leave in a hurry. Some people are just obsessed with this place and have forgotten their own homes.”
When I did the second exercise for the first time, I felt heat in my left arm when I held my arms up. My left arm got hotter, as if an acupuncture needle was inside it. Other practitioners told me that Teacher must have been cleaning my body. From then on, my left arm has never felt uncomfortable.
My son’s family lives with us. When they went to work, I baby-sat their 10-month-old son and did all the housework. I never missed doing the exercises nor reading Zhuan Falun. I was full of energy; my wife told me that she could hardly catch up with me when we walked together.
I was afraid at the beginning and asked only my family to quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. I invited my entire family to my birthday celebration and introduced the book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party to them. All six of them quit; four used their real names, and two used pseudonyms. I still did not have enough courage to tell strangers to quit the Party, so I traveled over 2000 li (more than 600 miles) back to my hometown to tell my close relatives. More than a dozen of them quit the CCP right away.
Another practitioner and I traveled to Shandong Province one summer. We taught some practitioners there how to break through the internet censorship and access the Minghui website. We went to the markets to tell people about Falun Dafa and the persecution. We covered up anti-Falun Dafa propaganda with mud so that people’s minds would not be poisoned.
When we talked to a group of workers and told them about Falun Dafa, one quit the Party on the spot. However, another person yelled at us and threatened to call the police. Without any fear, we continued and told them that we were doing this for their good. One worker stopped the person from calling the police.
We stayed in a senior housing facility and told all the residents and staff about Dafa. Our perseverance helped the entire staff, including the director, to quit the CCP.
When visiting a small island, we left Falun Dafa brochures at residents’ doors and wrote the words “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.”
One day, my right retina detached without warning. I knew that everything happens to me for a reason, so I realized that I must have been lacking in my cultivation; Teacher had cleaned our bodies for us at the beginning of our cultivation.
Searching within, I found that I was full of human desires and attachments and had mistakenly thought that human desires were necessary for me to live in this world.
A week later, my family took me to the hospital. After the surgery, I was required to take medication and eye drops. I thought that I had to do what doctors told me now that I had had the surgery.
After a while, I began to feel drowsy. I finally remembered Master’s teaching:
“One of our students went to the hospital and had several syringe needles bend on him, and the last vial even squirted out, but the needle still couldn't go in.” (Zhuan Falun)
I decided to study Master’s teachings all over again. A fellow practitioner sent me an article from the Minghui website titled “Walking Out of Humanness,” which helped me to realize the source of my tribulation—I was attached to human notions and had to catch up with the Fa-rectification process.
This revelation startled me: I was actually not genuinely cultivating in Dafa. I was still an ordinary human being–using anti-itch drops on mosquito bites, jaywalking, and putting one leg on top of the other... I failed to pay attention to trivial things like these and followed human thoughts in handling daily affairs and issues. I also invested in stocks but lost all the money. Cultivation is a serious matter; it does not allow room for such deficiencies.
As I studied the Fa and shared my understandings with other practitioners, I learned that Fa-rectification is in its final stage and that I would not be able to move forward if I did not cultivate diligently. I was determined to work harder for the sake of my own cultivation as well as my sentient beings.
I remembered Master's words:
“As the Righteous Fa spreads,Untold fiends try to impede,Yet sentient beingsdo still gain salvation,And human notions change,The degenerate things purged,Brightness now shines forth.” (“Born Anew” from Hong Yin)
I decided to start by changing my human notions, unlocking the doors that had blocked me from being diligent, and purging the dirty substances that had hidden inside me.
To elevate in cultivation, I was determined to walk out of humanness and understand the Fa from the perspective of the Fa.
Master said in “Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference,”
“You should know, and I have been saying all along, that when you, as Dafa disciples, look at something, you have to make sure to view it in reverse since the Three Realms are inverted, and you have to conduct yourselves in a positive, correct manner. What ordinary people regard as not good is good for cultivators--beings who wish to leave this place. If your thinking is the same as ordinary people's, then you will forever be an ordinary person and never be able to leave here. So, when you meet with ordeals, it is the perfect opportunity for you to improve. If you are able to look inside, that trying situation will become instead an opportunity, something to overcome and a chance to enter a new state.”
I am turning this ordeal into an opportunity for me to reach a new state in cultivation. I must be more diligent, since there is no time to waste.