(Minghui.org) I’m a French teacher. At the end of 2021, my school director announced that all employees had to get the COVID vaccine. When the pandemic first broke out I read stories of practitioners in China on Minghui and those practitioners talked about avoiding getting vaccinated. I decided to do the same. I decided that if COVID certificates became mandatory I would quit my job. When I told the director my plan he was supportive because he was against mandatory vaccination.
For several months I worked as usual and took the mandatory weekly COVID tests at my work. But the government eventually passed the law about mandatory vaccinations for teachers. The director told me that I had to find someone to replace me and that it was me who should search. I was worried. There were few French language teachers in our area and they all had positions.
Then the ministry of education lengthened the transition period allowing teachers to work without getting vaccinated. The whole situation made me feel stressed. I didn’t know where to find a teacher who could replace me or how long I could continue to work in that school. Sometimes I even thought that it would be good to contract COVID so I could get the certificate and continue to work. But I quickly realized that this thought was very wrong. The cultivation energy Falun Dafa practitioners can kill any viruses.
However, shortly afterward I felt sick. The lymph glands on my neck swelled so much that I could barely speak. I felt exhausted. I experienced similar problems when I was a child. For the first time in my life, I was on the sick list at work. My relatives thought that it was COVID, but when I took the test it was negative.
I previously experienced sickness karma in the first years of my cultivation and after that, I rarely felt ill. I realized why it happened this time: because of the challenges at work, my mindset became like an ordinary person's. I didn’t know where to find a teacher to replace me. I was worried that I wouldn’t get unemployment benefits. I tried to eliminate these thoughts. After three days I felt better and after a week the symptoms of sickness completely disappeared.
The secretary at my school advised me to contact a French language teacher who used to work here. I knew she quit her job because she didn’t like working there, so I doubted that she would agree to return. The secretary told me that she quit her job because she had conflicts with the former director. Since we now had a new director she might agree. I contacted the teacher and to my surprise, she was interested and asked when she could start working. So all the problems vanished. The director was very pleased that I found my replacement. I registered as an unemployed person and I received unemployment benefits.
Several days after I settled my problems Master’s new teaching “Wake up” was published.
At first, I wasn’t able to understand Master’s words. From my point of view when a practitioner doesn’t take the COVID vaccination, it’s the same as not taking drugs during an illness tribulation. In addition, I felt the measures governments were implementing to fight COVID were communist. I had a feeling the old forces were using this epidemic to make Europe more authoritarian, to make Europe similar to China. Practitioners should not comply with the old forces’ arrangements. Since I was able to find a teacher to replace me I had the feeling that it really was time for me to quit that job and everything happened the way it should.
It wasn’t just quitting the job that made me stressed but a gnawing feeling of uncertainty. I didn’t know how many months I would work at a school but I’m one of those people who liked to plan everything in my life. I also noticed my attachment to material gain. I was worried I won’t get unemployment benefits since I heard that people without a COVID certificate would only get benefits for three months. I eventually learned the information about the unemployment benefit was just rumors.
Then I remembered what Master said,
“So we believe in letting things happen naturally. There might be instances where something seems to be yours, and people might say so too, and you believe it is yours, when in fact it’s not and in the end, it goes to someone else. From this, it will be seen whether you can let it go. If you cannot, it means that you have an attachment. We use this approach to rid you of your worldly wants, for that is what’s most important.” (The Seventh Talk, Zhuan Falun)
I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2001. All this time I never took any pills when I faced an illness tribulation. However, I recently had insomnia and I took sleep medicine and sedative drugs. For a while, I even became addicted to them. So I am not a practitioner who never took any medicine during my cultivation. However, my thought was: I failed one cultivation test but it doesn’t mean that I should fail in others. From my point of view, to agree to get vaccinated is to fail in cultivation.
Master’s teaching on this allowed me to see my deepest attachment. I was an obedient child, and I always tried to do what my mother told me. I grew up in an overprotective environment. However, I don’t like to obey. As a result, I don’t argue on the surface but I can’t stand it when someone tries to control me.
I perceived the measures to fight COVID, including the COVID certificates as an extreme form of control. Inside I was silently rebelling. I also developed a negative attitude towards the government. I especially resented the ministry of education because they fired all the teachers without COVID certificates even though there was a shortage of teachers.
The second problem was that I was influenced by the early articles Chinese practitioners wrote who tried to avoid vaccination by all means. I took those experiences like guidelines to follow. But we shouldn’t follow other practitioners, the only guideline is the Fa. Other practitioners could be wrong and we all make mistakes. In addition, other practitioners’ situations might differ from our situation.
Master said,
“Studying the Fa and doing cultivation are a person’s own affair. Yet often there are quite a few students who consistently take other people as their role models; they look at how other people do things and then follow suit. This is a kind of poor behavior developed among ordinary people.” (“Path,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress II)
I think many practitioners have an ordinary person’s attitude about COVID certificates. As a result, Master had to publish the lecture, “Wake Up.” After reading what Master said, I understood that it doesn’t matter whether practitioners get vaccinated or not. What’s most important is one’s attitude and whether he has a mind of a practitioner or the mind of an ordinary person.
Practitioners should also pay attention to how other people perceive their behavior. When I was a child I had a serious allergic reaction after getting vaccinated and I was hospitalized. I told everyone this story to explain why I didn’t want to get vaccinated. Therefore I was not criticized when I refused. However other practitioners have different situations and some were misunderstood because people didn’t understand why they refused to be vaccinated.
About my insomnia. At first, I thought that it was some form of illness karma. I often had insomnia before events to introduce Falun Dafa. I tried to send righteous thoughts to destroy it but it didn’t help.
When I read “The Fear of Practice Going Wrong” in the Sixth Talk in Zhuan Falun I had a new understanding. I suddenly realized that mental problems and mental illness are created by information from other dimensions. When a person’s main consciousness is gone or taken over, he becomes insane. When humans are influenced by these negative substances in small or moderate amounts, the person is mentally competent however he or she might have different personality disorders and conditions or mental health struggles. For example, anxiety, depression, insomnia, autism, neurosis, and so on. Those conditions are not created by ordinary illness karma which creates illnesses in a human’s physical body.
I noticed I have a substance that could be called anxiety. It influenced not only my mental health but also my physical body. Practitioners often told me that my movements when I do the exercises are not accurate. When I exercise at home I always do them in front of a mirror to correct myself. I feel that this issue is caused by anxiety. It made my body numb and not able to move freely. In addition, one side of my body was tense. Because of it my movements were often asymmetrical. I took sedative pills to relax my muscles. I became addicted to those pills since it helped to get rid of anxiety and my body was less tense.
I decided to send righteous thoughts to destroy that physical anxiety in my body. It worked. When I was able to eliminate the anxiety I no longer took the drugs.
Thank you Master! Thank you fellow practitioners!
(Presented at the 2022 European Fa Conference)
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