(Minghui.org) I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2020 and I would like to share some of my experiences.
My Understanding of Sleep
When I first started to practice, I got up early because I wanted to do the exercises in the morning. Even in the beginning when I practiced mostly by myself, I was motivated to get up early. However, I often fell asleep in class or at random times during the day.
I heard many amazing stories about practitioners letting go of their attachment to sleep and thought I was doing the right thing. Some practitioners said they slept for only three or four hours a day and maintained a strict schedule. For a long time I thought that was a great thing.
However, I realized that I went a little too far to the extreme and still slept the same amount of time. I had a very light schedule. After school ended and summer started, I started to slack off because there simply was no need to wake up early. I thought I needed to catch up on my sleep so I started sleeping a lot and sleeping in.
University started in September and I lived by myself again for a while. I started to get up early in the morning to do the exercises and had a regular schedule during the week. However, I relied on drinking a lot of coffee to stay awake during the morning when my energy should have been at its peak. I stayed up late at night. I kept falling asleep in class and thought that this didn’t seem right.
In Fa Teaching Given at a Meeting in New York, Master said:
“Sleep itself isn’t a demon. It’s a factor such that humans must rest. This is also one of the things, the factors, that make up the universe. But as a cultivator, if you sleep during cultivation it can play the role of a demon, keeping you from cultivating. It isn’t a demon itself, but it can play that role. But on the other hand, it also has the effect of strengthening your will. Don’t you need to cultivate your will? You need to strengthen your will, and restraining it is strengthening your will—it’s also cultivation. Feeling sleepy while doing the exercises is itself also an effect of thought karma.” (Fa Teaching Given at a Meeting in New York)
The first time I started to read through all of Master’s teachings, I often fell asleep. It happened at group study or on the train. I’d be listening to or reading the Fa one moment and then doze off the next. Sometimes, as an excuse, I used what Master said during the Guangzhou lectures, where he mentioned that people who fell asleep during the lectures would still know everything they heard. It was just that they had karma and Master needed to remove it. There is, however, no excuse for falling asleep during Fa study. After an initial period, I overcame this interference and no longer fell asleep, at least during Fa study.
Recently, I started to have some interference again when I read the Fa. I managed to barely stay awake during Fa study but I fell asleep afterwards. I thought, “At least I didn’t fall asleep during Fa study.” In hindsight, that was just another version of interference. I realized that it significantly delayed my day and prevented me from doing work and other things.
I solved the issue the same way I solved it when I first began practicing: I stood up when I read the teachings. I don’t think that there is a best solution for this issue but standing up proved effective for me. I think the issue of falling asleep during Fa study was when I reached a new low with my issue of sleep. A practitioner shared with me that my sleep issue existed because I didn’t want to face my attachments or the world. It’s like how Master said that sleep can play the role of a demon during cultivation; to me, it has many names: complacency, procrastination, a desire to escape, and so on.
I think that, for a lot of issues we have in cultivation, the will to do better needs to be there first. When I really wanted to let go of my attachment or reject the interference, it became much easier to overcome. I realized that I didn’t really want to wake up the next day. I knew my main consciousness had to get stronger so that I could get up early.
I realized that I can never get enough sleep and that I’m attached to how peaceful sleeping is. However, I also know that there are more important things out there waiting for me to do so it is vital that I wake up early in the morning and do the exercises. My will to overcome this barrier needs to get stronger. Some attachments like playing video games were not that hard for me to eliminate because I logically understood why I needed to get rid of them. Some other attachments, like lust and desire, were much harder.
Why I Decided to Practice and My Understanding of Emotion
I first started to practice in early 2020 because a girl I liked was a practitioner. I tried very hard to get close to her and even thought that becoming a practitioner would improve my chances. Of course that didn’t work out, but I believe that this fundamental attachment of mine was what brought me into the practice in the first place.
It took me a while to realize that my heart when entering cultivation was not pure and I needed to get rid of my fundamental attachment.
Master actually explained very clearly what qing (emotion) is. My understanding is that it is a substance that can allow human beings to live in this dimension according to the laws of the three realms. As a practitioner, I believe that taking it lightly is the best thing I can do to stay detached from it.
I struggled at first because I had no idea how to start tackling this issue, which to me wasn’t an issue at all. I attended a private high school when I first began practicing, and we had rather strict rules where boys and girls weren’t allowed to closely interact. Because I came from a public school, I thought this rule was ridiculous.
However, I realized that there were many reasons behind this. Our school’s mission is to revitalize traditional culture in education and teach us about the true ethical behavior between a man and a woman. I realized that it was difficult not to have intimate thoughts once I was around a girl for a long time. Maybe her hair looks nice or her eyes are pretty, things like this can really distract you.
It doesn’t mean that these thoughts are wrong, I believe that they are natural. As practitioners, however, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard and save the appropriate things for the appropriate time, which is a part of forbearance as well as traditional culture. My understanding of why traditional culture is emphasized so much in Hong Yin VI is that these values were God-given and hold little room for demons to exploit.
At the same time, I understand traditional culture to be a manifestation of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance at this human level. As cultivators, we are meant to assimilate to these values and their manifestations at different levels. It’s great that I can hand out stacks of flyers during a parade, but what meaning does it have if I’m still a bad person on the inside?
Being entangled by emotion is like an invisible drug. But after going up that roller coaster, no matter how high that track, the steeper the fall will be, even for ordinary people. This is all theoretical and great on paper, but I still needed to go through that phase of rejecting my bad thoughts in this regard. I also realized that many practitioners, especially young practitioners, have all gone through or are currently going through a similar phase.
I once jokingly asked a friend who was 16 and dating another practitioner about why he was dating. He thought that something might happen in the future and he interpreted this as being in line with traditional culture.
My friend knew about the traditional stories of how your love life is actually predestined, so I laid the scenarios out for him. Either he is right when he says this girl is the right one, so then he might spend his youth with her, leaving no emotions left for when he is 40 or 50. Years later when they sit at the dinner table, they might just eat in silence and have a very boring marriage.
The other scenario is that this girl is not the right one for him and when he meets the right one, what will he do? This understanding is purely from a qing perspective and I pointed out that early dating doesn’t make sense. This practitioner ended his relationship with the girl a few days after we exchanged our thoughts. This made me realize that delving too deeply into emotions is a terrible thing because it is a waste of my energy.
Master said,
“But consider that in our practice we utilize the body’s most vital energy and essences to change your body and extend your life. Having regular emissions would deplete these precious substances.” (The Sixth Talk, Zhuan Falun)
My understanding of why Master says this and why practitioners have to first pass the test of lust/desire is that it is to see whether we can cultivate or not. If I kept on indulging myself in qing and spending my energy on these temporary emotions, I would not have enough left to cultivate myself and advance further in my cultivation.
When I realized that lust exists to waste our energy and essence and directly stop us from cultivating, I was quite shocked. This demon had the same effect as the CCP, only that it was more pervasive, more effective, and easier to access compared to spies and detention centers. It really saps your energy.
I understand that in today’s culture where dating and sexuality have become such pervasive conversation topics and cultural themes, they are hard to resist without a correct mindset and strong foundation in the Fa.
In the beginning, I was rather confused about where the line was. My mom told me not to talk to girls until I was in high school. When I was in high school, my mom said to wait until college. Now that I am in college, my mom is telling me to wait a little more, until I am, say, 25. When I turn 25, is my mom going to tell me that I need to wait until I’m 30?
I gradually realized that the man’s role in a relationship should be supportive and someone a woman can rely on. This is part of what traditional culture is trying to teach us. I don’t even have a stable income or a house. What do I have to support another person? I think that practitioners walk the Dao, yes, but I don’t think that it means going with the flow of ordinary society. One big pit I fell into was comparing myself to ordinary society instead of to the standards set by the Fa.
As a person who was once full of narcissism and arrogance, I understand that it is easy to brush off what I said today rather than take it to heart. However, as a person who has made many mistakes in the past and almost lost my life and the chance to cultivate due to my finding excuses for committing wrongdoing, I hope that other practitioners, especially young practitioners, will seriously think about this issue.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
(Presented at the 2023 Fei Tian College Middletown Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference)
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