(Minghui.org) I was introduced to Falun Dafa in 2012 by my eldest daughter who is a cultivator. After seeing her so happy, noticing that her moral standard had been raised, and her health improved, I started to cultivate myself. I have experienced a lot of improvement in my life, in my health, and also in the way that I act. Nowadays, I am more benevolent with people and I have stopped taking medicine which I used to use to treat gastritis and a hormonal disorder that I needed to control with injections.
When I began practicing all the five exercises that Master teaches us, I had to support myself by leaning on a tree because I had back problems. But now I don't need to do it that way, and people around me are surprised by my vitality at my age because I look younger and my wrinkles have reduced.
My family and friends ask me why I am so peaceful. Even though it has been a process in which I have changed gradually, I have left a lot of attachments. Some of the main attachments, included wanting to control my daughters' lives, resentment towards my brothers for not coming to visit my mom who lives with me, and sentimentality toward my two younger daughters for not showing me filial piety.
I recognize that I still have a lot of a human heart and sometimes I behave like an ordinary person. I want to expose a large attachment that sometimes interferes with my Fa study.
Master says:
“The reason that you cannot achieve tranquility is that your mind is not empty and you have not reached that high a level, which can only be achieved step by step. It goes hand in hand with the level of your improvement. When you give up attachments, your level will ascend, and your ability to concentrate will also improve.” (Zhuan Falun)
My main attachment is wanting to have my granddaughter near me and wanting to improve her life. I think she suffers because she isn't loved and respected by her parents as I love and respect her. When she was a baby she lived with me for a long time and I raised her like a daughter. Nowadays she has a family: her mother, her newly born brother, and my daughter's new husband, but it's hard for me to understand why she doesn't spend more time with me like when she was younger.
I have also felt afraid for her because although I know my daughter's husband is responsible and loves my granddaughter as if she was his own, I have some doubts and some incorrect thoughts about how he could end up hurting her.
When I talked about it with my daughter, also a cultivator, I realized that this is because I still have a lot of qing and still need to cultivate my heart and raise myself up in the middle of these tribulations so that I can let go of my attachments.
Master says:
“Cultivation must take place through tribulations so as to test whether you can part with and care less about different kinds of human qing and desires. If you are attached to these things, you will not succeed in cultivation. Everything has its karmic relationship. Why can human beings be human? It is because human beings have qing. They live just for this qing. Affection among family members, love between a man and a woman, love for parents, feelings, friendship, doing things for the sake of friendship, and everything else all relate to this qing. Whether a person likes to do something or not, is happy or unhappy, loves or hates something, and everything in the entire human society comes from this qing. If this qing is not relinquished, you will be unable to cultivate. If you break free from this qing, nobody can affect you. An everyday person’s mind will be unable to sway you. What comes and replaces it is benevolence, which is a nobler thing. Of course, it is not easy to cut off this qing right away. Cultivation is a long process and a process of gradually giving up your attachments. Nonetheless, you must be strict with yourself.” (Zhuan Falun)
Last year I told a practitioner that I had not yet got married. She told me that it was important for me to do it because I was a Dafa disciple. I set out to do it at a certain time but in the end, I didn't do it. Then that same practitioner noticed a lot of time had passed, and in a meeting asked me in front of other Dafa practitioners when I was thinking of doing it. At that time, I felt angry. Later, looking inside I realized that she said it with the best intentions, because I must behave better than an ordinary person.
She recommended I study Master's teaching:
“I’m talking about the true situation of humankind here. You all know that Westerners don’t understand why Chinese people are still so reserved when it comes to relationships between men and women. Let me tell you that this is how humans should be. Sexual freedom, which has mixed the human races and muddled human ethics, is absolutely forbidden by gods. So as cultivators, you absolutely should not do that sort of thing. You may have a wife or a husband. This is the normal way of life for human beings. But you are committing a sin if you have sexual activity with someone who isn’t your husband or your wife. ” (Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Europe)
When I told my cultivator daughter about the negative thought I had about a commentary from that other cultivator, she told me not to be upset and asked me if I didn't feel bad when I referred to my partner as my husband even though we weren't married. She said that I am now a Dafa practitioner, and doing that is lying, then I woke up and realized that if ordinary people get married, then I should be better than an ordinary person.
I used to think that it wasn't wrong because we are not intimate anymore, but then I realized that being intimate is beyond sexual relations and it's also about sharing feelings, a home and daily life. My youngest daughter lives with someone she's not married to because that's what she saw me do.
Another one of my attachments has been fear of having problems with my partner because I cultivate Dafa. I couldn't communicate well with him, because whenever I tried to talk about Falun Dafa we would fight and many times I would have to stop my truth-clarification activities or study sessions to avoid him getting upset. Every time I had to go out I would tell him a day before to avoid a fight. My heart of fear was too big.
I also worried about the damage he could cause by offending Dafa and Master, because sometimes he would do it aggressively, causing me a lot of discomfort and anger.
After I exposed these fears, I was determined to eliminate these substances and to talk about it, eliminating that heart of fear and feeling benevolence in my heart. I looked for the most appropriate moment and told him that Falun Dafa is good, and that even my health had improved.
He didn't accept it and said that it was because he was doing well economically. I didn't want to fight with him, I raised my xinxing and with a heart of compassion, I told him that I loved him very much and that I would always be with him even if he wasn't doing well economically. Then he also said that he loved me. That day, I had the courage to defend my cultivation way, and when my fear dissolved we could have a peaceful conversation. I know I must be diligent, leaving everything in Master's hands and focusing on doing “true cultivation,” raising my xinxing and behaving like a Dafa disciple.
Today I am happy to mention that I have now got married.
I thank Master for his boundless mercy.
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