(Minghui.org) I am a Mexican Falun Dafa practitioner who has cultivated for 15 years. Over these years, I have experienced the power of Dafa and the infinite mercy of Master Li (Dafa’s founder) many times.
I studied acting, singing and some composition, and for many years I did music production for the most important TV channel in Mexico. I was living a good life. I had a good job, economic comfort, and freedom to do whatever I felt like since I was single. I had achieved some goals of an ordinary person that I had set for myself.
Yet I came to feel a great emptiness in my life, as if none of what I was doing was what I had been born for and come to this earth for. So, I asked the divine to show me what I really came for in this life – that was in June 2007. Otherwise, I felt that I could no longer continue to live in this world, experiencing this seemingly comfortable and fulfilling life. I felt a deep emptiness.
Just one month after my plea to the divine, Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong) came into my life – it was July 2007. A brochure had been given to my mother two years ago, at a public health event. Surprisingly, one morning, when I was visiting my mother in the city, I found that brochure in her purse. I read it and felt a great excitement. This spurred me on, so I searched for a nearby Dafa practice site, and attended the practice for the first time. Immediately after, I could feel myself bursting with energy, and felt a great joy in my heart. I had found what I was looking for.
Extraordinary Recovery from Illness Karma
After studying the book Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Dafa, and experiencing a strong physical tribulation, it was as if my vision and understanding came alive. That helped me understand more clearly the meaning of my life, and I knew that I was meant to be here. The happiness in my heart exploded, as when a small flame suddenly lights up like a sun. The joy that I felt every day from then on, and the motivation to get up every day, were enormous.
The first miracle I experience was that I had a strong physical purification. Two months after starting to practice Dafa, this purification manifested on the surface as a Herpes Zoster which is a mutation of the childhood chickenpox virus that remains latent in the nervous system. When the immune system has problems, it can reactivate. It is very painful because it manifests as blisters in the nervous system. It is bulky, difficult to remove, and there are scars and spots on the skin. I got it on the left side of my face, covering my eye and nose. It looked as if the left side of my face was deformed.
After three days of seeing me in this condition, my mother became scared and took me to the doctor. The doctor scolded me for taking so long to visit her, telling me about the dangers of not taking care of this condition from the beginning, and that it could even affect my vision.
I remembered what I read in Zhuan Falun about considering myself a cultivator at all times, and that Dafa disciples do not have diseases because Master purifies our bodies. Therefore, I denied it in my head all the time and even told the doctor, “Don’t worry, nothing like that is going to happen to me.” She prescribed me medicine, which I did not take. The doctor had warned me that this condition would take almost two months to improve.
I never took the pills she prescribed. When I got home, I just listened to the audio of Master’s lectures all day long since I could not do much more because of the pain. I also practiced the Dafa exercises as much as I could. On the fourth day, my condition improved a lot and on the sixth day it had disappeared without leaving a trace, nor spots or scars, as the doctor had told me.
My family and friends were surprised. I told them that it was because I practiced Falun Dafa, and I thanked Master. Now I understand that Master cleansed my body to help me advance in my cultivation.
Importance of Group Fa Study
After this body purification, I had a kind of awakening in my understanding of the importance of clarifying the truth. I felt an urgency to go out to the streets to hand out Falun Dafa fliers and tell people about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of the practice.
Since I started to practice Falun Dafa and began to get more involved with local practitioners, I realized that there were many problems and misunderstandings in my region. Over time, I understood that this happened because there was no solid Fa study every day and almost no group Fa study, as the practice of the exercises had been given more importance.
After a while, a veteran practitioner began to encourage us to study the Fa every day online. That is how we have started to study the Fa every day at 7 a.m. on the Internet, and one day a week, we met at a practitioner’s house to study in person.
Little by little, the cultivation environment improved, and more opportunities for truth-clarification projects were opening up in my region. I started to participate in the coordination of some projects, such as New Tang Dynasty TV, the art exhibition, and Shen Yun, which came to my region for the first time in 2013.
Looking Within
I participated in the coordination team and in the marketing of Shen Yun in that first year, which was a very difficult process. Despite the difficulties, including strong conflicts between practitioners and not having any experience as a local group in this regard, it went quite well since it was presented in the largest and most important venue in the country. We had an average of 3,500 attendees per day over a three-day period.
However, in the process of being involved in this great project, there were many conflicts in my region. It happened mainly between our local Shen Yun coordinating team and the coordinators of different cities around the country. Personally, I had strong conflicts with fellow practitioners on the coordination team. I made many mistakes. First of all, I did not balance well the time between doing Dafa projects, my Fa study, sending forth righteous thoughts, and my ordinary work. This generated a situation where I was no longer diligent in my Fa study, and when I studied, my mind was distracted. Without my focusing on Fa study, the old forces took advantage of my gaps. When there were coordination conflicts with some practitioners, I could not solve them based on the Fa, but on the notions of an ordinary person. This resulted in a lot of interference, added a load to the problems that we already faced as one body, and impaired the environment – which was already very tense.
I faced conflicts beyond my human limit. That revealed my different attachments such as bad character, selfishness, impatience, not thinking of others’ needs first, competition, envy, personal validation, arrogance, and believing myself superior to others. Over time, a strong and heavy heart of feeling injustice and resentment was also formed.
I remember that at the end of the first season of Shen Yun in my region I was exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. At the beginning I could only see outside myself and I felt a big sense of injustice for the situations that I considered I had to “carry.” As a result, for the following two months, I did not want to see any practitioner from my local group. After getting out of the city for a few days and visiting friends on the southeast coast, I had a strong physical tribulation – four days of diarrhea and vomiting. After this experience, when I returned to the city, while I was studying Essentials for Further Advancement, this phrase, “Get rid of that thought that you’ve been treated unfairly!” (“Further Elimination of Attachments”) resounded in my mind like a thousand bells.
I started to look inside, and what I found were attachments and notions. In addition to the strong attachment to feeling injustice in my heart, I found selfishness, pride and resentment. It was a very painful and difficult process to see my attachments without looking outside and without blaming others. When I returned to the city, I went back to the local Fa study group, and although I could still feel that my heart was heavy, I decided to persist in going to the Fa study group and tried to share my experiences no matter what. Sometimes, I still shared while looking outward, which obviously did not generate a good result. Now, I understand that it came from my inability to let go of resentment.
Despite the heavy heart of attachments, misunderstandings, miscommunication, and all this history of seemingly endless and sometimes irreconcilable conflicts, we were able to rectify the cultivation environment over time by joining the Fa study group, sharing experiences, and exposing our attachments with a sincere heart of self-improvement. Once a month for several years we have held a National Fa Study. Practitioners throughout the country attended to study together and share cultivation experiences. This has often involved a great effort, but it helped us to continue cleaning our dimensional field.
Eliminating the Mentality of Resentment
A Fahui was held in my region in 2016, and I had the opportunity to share my cultivation experience exposing all the attachments that I discovered during my participation in the Shen Yun project. I feel that this was a turning point that helped me a lot to clean out those strong attachments. It helped me to advance in my cultivation and to improve my relationship with the practitioners with whom I'd experienced conflicts.
Over time, we have been able to improve the cultivation environment of our local group. In my understanding, by sharing with other practitioners, we have formed a cultivation field that helps and strengthens us all and allows us to face our difficulties and xinxing problems based on the Fa. Of course, there are still problems to solve, and we still need to improve a lot.
For example, as Latin Americans, we still display a lot of emotions – which brings us difficulties sometimes. It also does not keep us on the Fa when doing the three things, and it causes our human attachments to manifest. But, I feel that the situation is no longer as it was in the past, when we were losing precious time because of endless discussions, affecting our opportunities to clarify the truth.
For example, now, when I experience difficulties in my cultivation, or when I feel stuck in the coordination of a project, I always share about where I fall short or where I made a mistake after the local Fa study and in the Fa study groups of the different projects. This sharing with my fellow practitioners clarifies my perspective and helps me recognize hidden attachments. Many times, someone shares something with us that helps us find problems that stop us from looking inside. Sometimes, some practitioners point out something that I have not found yet. Sometimes I receive it well and sometimes I find it hard to accept the criticism. In the end, I always listen to what I’m being told and try to see what’s lacking internally. This way, I feel that we elevate as one body. But, I also understand that, considering our responsibilities, there is still a lot to improve. Today, I can treasure the whole process of cultivation in my region.
Although the environment and my relationship with fellow practitioners in our region have improved, the challenges in my cultivation have returned over this past year. But this time it had to do with my family, mainly with my brother who is not a practitioner. These difficulties have shown me the root of my attachment to resentment. At first, I felt frustrated and, as if I was going backwards in my cultivation process, I thought, “If I already managed to harmonize this with my fellow Dafa practitioners, and this attachment was already identified and I worked to eliminate it, why does it seem to appear with more strength now, in this new situation with my family?”
I think there are two reasons. One is that perhaps now there is a deeper layer of that fundamental attachment. The other is that before, when I continued to make an effort every day to improve, I compared myself with what I faced when I’d just started to cultivate. I saw great changes in me, deceiving myself and making me feel that I was really improving.
Today, I understand that we must not measure ourselves with our past state, since that is to measure ourselves with a fallen standard. We must measure ourselves all the time with the Fa, with Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, the characteristic of the universe, and only by assimilating ourselves to the Fa will we be able to do better.
After studying the Fa and sharing with my husband – also a practitioner – I understand that my attachment to sentiment has increased and strengthened the attachment to resentment, preventing me over time to reconnect to the Fa and the state of solid faith and the compassion of a Dafa practitioner to deal with my family issues.
I understood that, by carrying a heavy attachment of resentment, one disconnects oneself from compassion, and therefore from the Fa, since resentment is the fuel that keeps the CCP’s perverse specter alive. Therefore, with a heavy attachment of resentment, aren’t I going to the opposite side? Therefore, if I do not strictly renounce the attachment to the feeling of injustice in my heart, I will not be able to elevate myself. Thus, disconnecting myself from the power of Dafa’s compassion and following a deviant path allows the pursuit of the old forces, causing endless trials that I cannot pass.
A few months ago I wondered where that feeling filled with energy had gone, as well as that joy and motivation that I woke up with every day when I first started cultivating that made me feel that there was no test I couldn’t pass as long as I had the Fa.
After the warning stick I had through the argument with my brother, I have been constantly eliminating this attachment to resentment. Besides studying a lecture from Zhuan Falun on a daily basis, I am studying Essentials for Further Advancement again. I am eliminating more and more of this resentment, not only with righteous thoughts but also with righteous actions, trying to think more of others and trying to be benevolent to my brother no matter how he acts. My heart has become lighter and I feel that it has been rekindled as in the beginning. I can again feel that joy and sense of good fortune every morning when I wake up and thank Master for having allowed me to obtain the Fa and for having one more opportunity to improve myself and assist Him in this last moment of the Fa-rectification.
Currently, I am still involved in the coordination of various truth-clarification projects. My heart is focused on going forward, looking inward unconditionally, and on improving myself faster by doing the three things, so I can walk the path that Master has chosen for me and fulfill the mission that Dafa practitioners have to save sentient beings!
Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!
If you see anything out of line with the Fa in this article, please point it out benevolently, to correct me.
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