(Minghui.org) Since my childhood, I have believed in the existence of divine beings. From as far back as I can remember, there was a voice that talked to me.
When I was four, the voice told me to brush my teeth so that they wouldn’t turn yellow. There were also times when I encountered dangerous situations, but I always ended up safe.
Before I practiced Falun Dafa, even though I was only in my early 30s, I was diagnosed with serious illnesses, including cervical vertebrae hyperplasia, renal ptosis, lumbar muscle strain, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, and migraines.
Whenever I walked, spoke, or picked up a bowl to eat, I felt tired. I had an unhappy marriage and felt hopeless about life. I often thought, “Why did I come to this world? What am I living for? Why are there so many misfortunes? Why is life so hard?” Sometimes I felt I’d be better off falling asleep and never waking up.
Then, on March 10, 1997, a day I’ll never forget, I went to a park to learn Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong. I was a bit late, and the people were already doing the second exercise. I asked a lady, “Is this Falun Dafa?” She said yes and asked if I wanted to join them, which I did.
During the second exercise, which involves holding one’s arms up for a long time, I got very tired after a short while. When I opened my eyes, I saw a lady in her 80s with her hands high above her head and completely still. I thought, “She can do it, so I shouldn’t give up.” So, I continued.
When doing the third exercise, I felt my palms getting hot. My eyes were closed, but I could see that my hands were a shining golden color. As I did the exercise movements, I felt as if my hands were reaching the clouds. It was a very powerful feeling, and I was ecstatic. After I finished the fifth exercise (sitting meditation), my body felt very relaxed. It was a feeling I hadn’t had for many years.
The next day I went there again to do the exercises, and I also purchased the book Zhuan Falun. I opened it up to the first page and saw the photo of Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa. I was shocked and thought, “Why does he look so familiar? Where have I seen him?”
After less than a week, I recovered from all my illnesses. My body felt very light and energetic. I felt so fortunate that I found Dafa. Through studying the Fa, I understood the purpose of life and realized the preciousness of Dafa.
Not long after that, the volunteer coordinator of the exercise site invited me to her home to watch recordings of Master’s lectures. I watched very carefully.
On my way home, I felt so light it was as if my feet weren’t touching the ground. I said to Master in my mind, “Master, please be assured that I will be firm on cultivation and won’t let you down!
When I was arrested for the first time for practicing Falun Gong, Master gave me a hint beforehand so I could hide all my Falun Gong books. When the police ransacked my home, they couldn’t find the books. They asked where I hid them. I said, “Why would I tell you? If I told you then, why would I hide them?” They were speechless.
The guards assigned inmates to monitor me. They told me to recite the prison rules. I said, “I only know how to recite Master’s Fa. Do you want to hear it?” They said yes. So I recited some of Master’s Fa and some poems from Hong Yin, and clarified the facts about Falun Gong. They all loved to listen to me.
The lead inmate of the monitoring section said she wanted to practice cultivation and asked me to teach her the exercises and help her memorize Lunyu. With Master’s help and protection, I taught her the exercises and recited Lunyu and some other Dafa lectures. While we did the exercises, inmates took turns to keep a lookout.
The first day she did the exercises, Master opened up her celestial eye. She was so excited and said, “Dafa is real. It is here to save sentient beings. I will not give it up. Even if they don’t let me out, I still won’t give it up.”
The next morning, she told me that she knew how to recite Lunyu. I was surprised that she was able to learn it in one night. Dafa is truly extraordinary.
I was again arrested and taken to a forced labor camp a year later, in 2001. One night Master hinted in a dream that there was someone nearby who had a close predestined relationship with me, and that I needed to help her start cultivation. At the time everyone in the same section already knew about the persecution, so I was not sure who it was.
Just then someone approached me and said, “Sister, I had a dream last night. I dreamed of a very handsome young man who was wearing a suit. His hair was curly and blue. He told me to find you to teach me the exercises.”
She must have a strong predestined relationship to be able to see Master’s fashen. Due to the environment, I couldn’t teach her the exercises so each day I taught her Lunyu, poems from Hong Yin, and lectures from Essentials For Further Advancement.
I also talked to her about how to improve xinxing. She told me that she had lent money to someone who did drugs and was arrested mistakenly. I said, “You are here to get to know Dafa. You must study it well.” Master often encouraged her in her dreams. He gave her a shining golden copy of Zhuan Falun and told her to cultivate well and never give up.
Master also told her that her parents in this world only gave her this human body, while the ones who gave her life were her true parents. She told me that she often dreamed of Master, that Master told her to fly higher and that she felt so much joy. I was very happy for her.
Every day, other than doing a lot of hard labor, practitioners were put through brainwashing and threatened. There were “specialists” and “intellectuals” who tried to instill their fallacies into practitioners’ minds. The guards used both hard and soft methods, and their goal was to “transform” practitioners and make them give up cultivation.
My mind had to be like a tightened string, and I could not relax even for a little while. Every moment I reminded myself, “Master’s disciples are the most glorious beings in the universe. I must have a strong main consciousness, and I must not be intimidated by the evil.” I constantly recited the Fa and measured myself against the requirements of the Fa. With Master’s help and hints, I was able to break through tribulations again and again.
Because they weren’t able to “transform” me, they made me do farm work. I thought, “I am not here to be persecuted. I’m here to validate the Fa and save sentient beings.”
Master’s Fa appeared in my mind: “No matter what the situation, do not cooperate with the evil’s demands, orders, or what it instigates.” (“Dafa Disciples’ Righteous Thoughts are Powerful,” Essentials for Further Advancement II)
Thus, I refused to do the work. I found opportunities to clarify the facts. It was in fact another environment Master created for me for saving sentient beings. Even though they assigned prisoners to monitor me, they all knew the facts about the persecution, so I had more time each day to recite the Fa, look inside for shortcomings, and try to find ways to clarify the facts to more people.
Because we couldn’t see the time, the practitioners in the labor camp sent forth righteous thoughts together whenever we gathered at noon. One day I quietly said to Master, “Sorry, Master. Because we don’t know the time, we cannot send forth righteous thoughts at the same time as the rest of the Dafa practitioners throughout the world to eliminate the evil factors in other dimensions.” Then I heard a very compassionate and understanding voice that told me to do as much as I could. I knew it was Master encouraging me.
A prisoner said to me, “Sister, I see that all practitioners who refuse to be ‘transformed’ are great people. You all are so kind. Your families brought you daily necessities, and you gave them to us.”
“That’s true,” I responded. “Because Master taught us to be good people no matter where we are, and to always think of others first.”
She said, “I won’t ever believe those things said on TV. Jiang must be jealous of your Master, because so many people respect Master, and Jiang must be afraid that no one wants to listen to him anymore.”
I was very happy for her and said, “It’s great that you can have such a clear understanding. You have chosen a great future for yourself!”
After I was released, I returned home and went out to clarify the truth to people.
In early 2008, I had small blisters all over. They were very painful and itchy. I couldn’t sleep for many nights, so I got up, studied the Fa, and did the exercises. I lost a lot of weight.
“Master must feel even more pain than me,” I thought, “because Master bears a lot more for disciples than disciples themselves.” During that time, I couldn’t go outside, go to work, or clarify the facts. I felt so troubled. All I could do was stay at home, study the Fa, do the exercises, look inside myself, and make Dafa materials for fellow practitioners to distribute.
One day a fellow practitioner came to my home to pick up truth-clarification materials, and she said to me, “You spy.” I was stunned. My reputation had always been very good among local practitioners. I was known to be someone who was diligent and cultivated well. So when she said that, I almost passed out and began to argue with her.
I said, “Do I look like a spy? If I were a spy, why would I make these materials?” She just insisted and said, “You are a spy.” She was someone who used to respect and admire me, and often came to my place. But that day she just insisted that I was a spy. I could not enlighten on the matter and kept arguing. In the end, she left, and we were both angry.
Other local practitioners’ attitudes also changed, and they all became very cold toward me.
I was finally able to calm down and look inside. I was known in the region to be one of the most diligent disciples. Fellow practitioners respected and admired me. Wasn’t this a major problem? Hadn’t I been immersed in praise and become complacent?
Even though I’ve said again and again to fellow practitioners that we must take the Fa as our teacher and that Master said there are no role models in cultivation, and even though I often reminded myself not to be complacent, unknowingly I had formed a notion that I was better than others and often forced my ideas on others.
I had everyday people mentalities, including competitiveness, showing off, zealotry, not letting others say bad things about me, and so on. On the surface I was very humble, but in reality I always felt that I was above others. Very few practitioners would say anything negative about me.
I finally awakened. Isn’t this Master using a fellow practitioner’s mouth to warn me?
Master said,
“I don’t emphasize any specific approach; I use various means to expose your deeply-concealed attachments and get rid of them.” (“Digging Out the Roots”, Essentials For Further Advancement)
It was so dangerous. If the fellow practitioner didn’t call me a spy, when would I have realized this? I quietly repented to Master in my heart, “Master, I did not cultivate well. I still have so many human notions. I promise I will do better now and won’t let you down.”
To make the tribulation harder, my daughter suddenly ran into great financial difficulty, and someone came to our home to force her to pay it back. I quietly recited Master’s poem in my mind:
Each and every barrier must be broken through,And everywhere does evil lurk.Abundant troubles rain down together,All to see: Can you pull through?The world’s miseries endured,One departs the earth a Buddha. (“Tempering the Will,” Hong Yin)
At the same time, evil elements in other dimensions constantly pushed evil messages into my mind. I was so tense every day and didn’t dare to relax. The evil’s goal was to shake my righteous belief in Master and Dafa. I continued to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate them. It was only then that I realized the seriousness and hardship of cultivation.
I am soft on the outside but firm on the inside. I don’t cry easily, but that day I cried and felt that it was getting to the limit of how much I could endure. I looked inside and asked, “Why am I having such a big tribulation? Is there something really wrong in me, or is it caused by karma?” Then I had a dream that during the time of Wu Zetian (the late Tang dynasty empress, who reigned from 690 to 705), I played a role who killed a lot of people, and my daughter was one of them.
After I knew this history, I valued today’s opportunity of practicing Dafa even more. Indeed we did not get to this point easily. We followed our great Master to this horrific dimension where we couldn’t remember our past or see other dimensions. We constantly created karma and got more and more lost.
We played many roles in history, and in each life we made a ton of debt. It was our compassionate Master who picked us up from hell, washed us clean little by little, and endures the enormous sin that we and sentient beings in the universe have accumulated. There is also much more that Master has to go through that we do not have a clue about. Once I thought about this, I quietly said to Master in my mind, “Master, please don’t worry! I have Master and Dafa. What could this little tribulation do to me?!”
Through constantly studying the Fa, doing the exercises, looking within, and with Master’s hints and encouragement, I was finally able to break through this tribulation. It took me an entire year.
I teach dance professionally, and in my work I get to meet all kinds of people. Especially when teaching the youth, I get to speak to lots of students and their parents. So I’ve used this opportunity to present Dafa’s goodness and clarify the facts.
When I clarified the facts to a parent once and she agreed to quit the Chinese Communist Party, I gave her a Shen Yun DVD (this was during the period when Shen Yun DVDs were distributed in mainland China). The next day, she came to the classroom and said, “Shen Yun is so beautiful. When watching the first program, looking at Master bringing sentient beings from heaven down to earth, I felt very familiar, as if I was one of them.”
So many sentient beings have come to the human world and gotten completely lost. They forgot why they came originally, which is truly pitiful. Dafa disciples are so fortunate to be able to have this sacred relationship with Master, and so many sentient beings are so fortunate to be able to learn the truth.
With Master’s protection, hints, and bearing an unimaginable amount of karma for disciples, I walked through these years of cultivation with ups and downs and tribulations. No matter what I do, it wouldn’t be enough to pay back Master for what he has endured for us. I can only say thank you and greet Master from far away! Thank you, Master!