(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioners from Long Island, New York gathered on April 6, 2019, to exchange their experiences in cultivation. Twenty-three practitioners told their cultivation stories at the conference. Their righteous conduct and pure hearts touched other practitioners, and provided an environment for everyone to learn from each other and find where they could improve on their paths of cultivation.
Assimilating Through Memorizing the Fa
Yuling became a practitioner in the 1990s, before the persecution began in China. Over the past 20 years, her righteous thoughts have come from studying the Fa frequently. She makes phone calls to people in China's judicial system to tell them why the persecution is wrong. In 2016, the practitioners she works with on the project proposed that they all memorize the Fa so that they could do well the three things required of them.
“When we decided to memorize the Fa together, they wanted me to lead them. There was a lot of pressure on me, because everyone's xinxing levels were different. I had to plan the amount of Fa we would memorize each session and pay attention to the length of the text I assigned to each practitioner. However, not everyone would come each time. I had to plan carefully,” she said.
The number of practitioners who attended the Fa memorizing sessions went from 7 to more than 20. After they finished memorizing Zhuan Falun the first time, a practitioner said that she was glad she had come to the sessions, because she had tried to memorize the Fa herself for years and not succeeded once.
“We did it every day. Now we have finished memorizing Zhuan Falun twice and are on our third time. During the process, I felt that Master [Li Hongzhi] was helping me every step of the way, from managing the time and length we memorize each session, to the number of practitioners who attended each time. I was just leading on the surface and Master was doing all the work to help us!”
Cultivating While Helping an Elderly Practitioner
Liu Mei worked with an elderly practitioner who had become stuck in an illness karma tribulation. The practitioner was bedridden and in immense pain. Liu decided to help her get through the tribulation.
She talked to the elderly practitioner about finding any deeply-rooted attachments and told her that she should eliminate attachments to personal gain and affection, and not acknowledge the evils’ arrangements even one bit. The elderly practitioner needed to face the pain with righteous thoughts, because it was a fundamental test of her faith. They sent righteous thoughts every day and exchanged opinions based on the Fa. A week later the elderly practitioner began to recover.
Liu also looked within as she helped the practitioner. She often asked herself if she thought that helping the practitioner was troublesome and whether she really wanted to help. She wondered if she had an attachment to validating herself, or whether she was thinking that she was better than the elderly practitioner and had stronger righteous thoughts. She thought that maybe she wanted to show off that the elderly practitioner had recovered from a serious illness karma test because of her help. She asked herself whether she helped out of a notion of friendship, instead of compassion.
“Only when I rectified myself and cleaned up my surroundings could I truly help the practitioner. When we worked together as one, that was when we could most effectively eliminate the evil elements that were interfering with her. My every notion could have had a negative impact on the practitioner trying to pass the test,” she said.
Letting Go of Human Notions
Hong Ying gave tips on how to effectively make phone calls to people in China.
“The trick is to make more calls,” she said. “The more I called, the stronger my righteous thoughts became, and the more powerful my words were to clear the person’s mind and eliminate the evil behind them. I had to study the Fa before I called, even for just one paragraph. I also sent righteous thoughts. Master would take care of the rest.”
Li Jianying described how she goes to a popular tourist destination to tell middle school and high school students the facts about Falun Dafa.
Every year during summer, buses of students from China would go to the destination as part of their visit to New York. “I would wonder how I could better tell these students the facts,” she said. She started by making small talk with the students and would then ask them if they had heard about the self immolation incident on Tiananmen in class. Most students had, and Li would provide an analysis of the suspicious scenes in the video. The students were very smart and could see that the CCP had staged the immolation incident to frame Falun Gong. In the end many students were happy to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
Young Practitioners Making Progress
Casey Wang and Diana Liang are both 16 years old. They talked about how they have eliminated their attachments.
“My attachment to fighting was like a well-concealed, invisible bomb planted inside me. It exploded every time there was a conflict,” said Diana. “I recently realized that it was very serious and existed in two forms. One manifested in my not being able to listen to other people's suggestions. I always had to prove that I was right when others criticized me and never wanted to listen. It was time for me to improve my xinxing level, but instead I felt wronged and had to reason with the person–or, I should say, argue with the person. But when I argued, I became an ordinary person. When I became conscious of this attachment, I felt a huge weight was lifted off my body. It was a wonderful feeling.”
Casey talked about her experience of repeatedly downloading and deleting the WeChat application on her phone.
“It was a big test for me,” she said. “When I was doing well in cultivation, I never wanted to use WeChat. But then I would download and use it when I wasn’t progressing diligently. I know that I should listen to Master. Even now I am still working on eliminating this attachment, and I am confident that as I improve through studying the Fa I will pass the test.”
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