(Minghui.org) Many Falun Dafa practitioners in China get up at 3:50 a.m. to do the exercises. I tried a few times, but wasn't able to make myself get up. I shared this with other practitioners and read some articles about it on the Minghui website to try to help me, but I still couldn't do it. It was only after looking inward that I made a breakthrough and discovered my hidden human notions.

Some veteran Dafa practitioners don't think it's that difficult to get up early. They say “Just change your human notions.” I tried to, but it still didn't work.

I realized that other practitioners were sharing their experiences on their own cultivation paths. I wanted to find an easy way—a shortcut—to solve the problem, which is not what a genuine cultivator would do.

I started to think about why I couldn't get up early and what was preventing me from doing so. The fundamental reason was that I wasn't serious enough about cultivation. I could get up if I had to go to work or for something else that needed doing, no matter how early it was.

If I couldn't get up and get to work on time, I would be in trouble. So when the alarm went off, what came to my mind was that I didn't have a choice, I had to get up.

However, my human notions and karma regarded “getting up early to do the exercises” as something that wasn't necessary to do right at that moment, because I could do them later on. So I just turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.

So how could I make a breakthrough on this? I had to treat this as a something I needed to overcome on my cultivation path. Only then could I make it.

I decided to go to bed a bit earlier each day. The first four days I couldn't do it, but I finally got up early on the fifth day.

I was really calm when I meditated and felt energized afterward. I was so happy. I had finally broken through and could do the exercises early in the morning.