(Minghui.org) The 16th annual Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference in Israel was held on Saturday, November 3, 2018. More than 100 practitioners from various countries attended the experience-sharing conference in Tel Aviv. Fourteen practitioners presented their sharing articles at the conference.

Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) is a spiritual practice based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, and includes five meditative exercises. In China, about 100 million people were practicing Falun Dafa before the communist regime launched its persecution of the practice on July 20, 1999. Since then, countless practitioners have been imprisoned, put in labor camps, tortured, and even killed for their organs.

Practitioners sit in quiet protest in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv.

In the evening before the conference, dozens of Falun Dafa practitioners gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv. There, they sat in meditation for about an hour, to peacefully protest the ongoing persecution in China.

Practitioners do the Falun Dafa exercises together.

Participants of the 16th Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference in Israel pose with a portrait of Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa.

Russian Practitioner Finds Dafa

Svetlana traveled from Russia to attend the Fa conference.

Svetlana, a mother of three, came to the conference from Russia. She learned Falun Dafa about a year ago after twenty years in another cultivation practice.

“I live according to my heart, and I just wanted to go to the conference in Israel, and that’s what I did,” Svetlana said when asked why she had chosen to travel all the way from Russia.

Svetlana said that participating in the conference helped her gain more layers of understanding about Falun Dafa cultivation. She said that in the past she would idealize practitioners she met. “Now I understand that everyone is different. Each one has his or her own way and level of awakening to the Fa (the Way or Law in Chinese). Therefore, everyone should be treated with compassion. I’m learning it now and trying to develop that compassion,” Svetlana said.

Health and Well-Being

A young practitioner recalls a miraculous improvement in his health after he started practicing Falun Dafa.

A young man who started practicing two years ago shared, “At the moment I made the decision to cultivate in Dafa, the pain I suffered from spinal disc herniation miraculously disappeared after years of suffering and even being diagnosed as a ‘disabled’ person by a professor of orthopedics.”

He spoke of the determination by which he brought himself to practice the exercises every day: “In the last year, I have slept an average of 4 hours a night and remain alert and energetic during the day thanks to doing the Falun Dafa exercises for two hours every day.”

Removing Negative Notions

Another young practitioner shared about coping with the many concepts he had acquired during his life. These concepts limited and influenced him. While reading the Fa, he understood Falun Dafa cultivation at a more fundamental level.

He also said that in the past, when he had bad thoughts about someone else, he would accept those thoughts as fact. But at some point, he began to examine those thoughts when they sprang up and found them baseless, illogical, and not even his own thoughts at all. He refused to accept them, and they left his mind, which allowed for harmony with the other person.

Healing Relationships

A practitioner shares about the difficulties and conflicts in her family life and how she managed to resolve them through her practice of Falun Dafa.

A practitioner shared how she had been given an opportunity to correct a relationship with a relative who lived abroad. At first she tried to avoid the trip abroad, but she gradually began to see it from a different angle: “I understood that this was my lesson! If there was a conflict between us, now I had the option to resolve it.”

At first, she had a hard time overcoming the insults she had suffered before, but she resolved to treat it as a Dafa disciple and meet the standard. As her visit drew closer, she was able to forgive everything and felt warmhearted toward her relative. The tension between them completely dissipated, and by the end of her visit they had become friends in heart and soul.

Moral Guidance

A practitioner who started cultivating Falun Dafa at a relatively old age said, “Being a Dafa disciple for me is a process in which I agreed to change, change my notions about myself, about my honor, to change priorities. I was willing to give up my attachments, my thought habits, and to behave differently.

“Receiving the Fa has created a 180-degree change in my way of thinking and in my life,” she shared. The practitioner concluded, “The principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance today constitute a moral compass for all my actions. These principles give me hope and meaning, and I am determined to continue living my life according to them.”

A practitioner shares his cultivation experience at the 16th annual Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference in Israel.