(Minghui.org) Shen Yun completed their shows in our city the last week of December, 2019. Just as I finished my security duties, my throat felt itchy, and I began to cough. The cough lasted for nearly four months, and worsened. I realized that it must be connected to my cultivation state, but I was reluctant to identify the attachment because I had a knot in my heart that affected me for more than ten years. The sickness karma was like a “stick warning” Master used to help me untie the knots I harbored for so long.
Let me tell you about my background: I was born into a family of Falun Dafa practitioners, and I began reading Zhuan Falun when I was very young. To me, every word was an image, and words that were repeatedly used had layers of images. Each time I saw the same word in the book, the same image appeared, and I could recognize which deity it was. That’s how I obtained the Fa. Before we moved to the United States I just followed my parents in cultivation.
About a year after we moved to the U.S., I was exposed to video games for the first time and became attached to this new toy. I enjoyed playing games because, unlike the real world, one could create anything in a virtual world programmed on a computer. Thanks to my home environment, cultivation was still part of my life.
However, after I started elementary school, I began to slack off in cultivation. Due to the pressures in their lives, my parents couldn’t keep an eye on my cultivation. I became immersed in games and novels, social circles, romantic love, and competing in knowledge and abilities. However, after ten years of searching, all I found was pain and bitterness.
While I was preoccupied with the wrong things, I knew the only way to resolve the issues I faced was through cultivation, even though I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I firmly believed in Master and Dafa because the first book I read was Zhuan Falun, and Dafa was deeply rooted in my heart.
I needed some clarification. On the one hand, I knew that I should not use Fa study and doing the exercises as a way of freeing myself from the pain and trouble of everyday people’s society; on the other hand, as a person, I wished to be happy, but it would be wrong if I used Dafa to pursue happiness. If the meaning of life in ordinary people’s society is to have a high-paying job, a happy family, and a happy life, and yet cultivation among ordinary people is not for such things, then what is the purpose of cultivation?
My cough became really bad. I couldn’t sleep and had difficulty breathing. At one point I felt I was about to die. I asked Master: “Please help me. I don’t want to suffer so much.” But I rejected the thought very quickly because Dafa isn’t here to help people have a good life with no pain and suffering. But all I could see at that moment was pain.
I thought of Shen Yun and how Master repeatedly mentioned Dafa disciples in the “Fa Teaching Given at the 2016 New York Fa Conference.” I suddenly understood that I was living for others, not for myself, and I was here to assist Master in saving people, so I mustn’t die.
I got up around 6 a.m. and managed to do the first four Falun Dafa exercises. As I did, Master cleansed my body. Sticky mucus ran out of my nostrils and mouth, and I had to keep wiping it away. When I finished the exercises, my cough lessened. Two days later, all the physical discomfort I'd felt over the past four months was gone.
Helping Promote Shen Yun
During summer vacation in 2021, I quit one of my two part-time jobs when I heard that a nearby city needed help promoting Shen Yun. I went there to help out and continued to do so for the next few months of the Shen Yun season. I realized this was a cultivation opportunity Master arranged for me.
However, things did not always go smoothly. For example, four days before I was to drive a few hours to a neighboring city to help with the catering, I had a fever and cough, and couldn't taste anything. When I was halfway there, with 200 miles to go, the weather turned bad, and it started snowing heavily.
The week before that, I drove to another city to help with Shen Yun merchandise and security work, and I started coughing again. I realized I had to try hard to keep a good state of mind and not be bothered if I felt cold, hungry, thirsty, tired, or sleepy.
A couple of hours before we opened the doors for the audience to enter the theater in another city, the credit card processor at our merchandise table stopped working. If it could not be fixed, we would have to resort to taking cash only, which would be inconvenient for customers and affect our sales. However, against all odds, things worked out fine in the end.
In the face of difficulties, I thought: "These obstacles are trying to prevent me from assisting Master in saving people, but I will do whatever Master has arranged for me. Whatever Master has arranged will be successful, so nothing can stop me."
After I finished helping with the Shen Yun shows, I had an understanding at my level at that time: I don’t own anything because I gave all of myself to Master; I don’t know anything, because all my wisdom was given to me by Master; I don’t know how to do anything myself because all my abilities were given to me by Master. All the difficulties and hardships I experienced helped eliminate my human attachments, desires, and pursuits. Looking back, all those tribulations and difficulties were, in fact, good things.
Master Guides Me on My Cultivation Path
After Shen Yun 2022 ended in June, I realized that a new phase of cultivation was ahead of me. If the busy Shen Yun season could test how a cultivator performs under pressure, then how should I conduct myself in a relatively more relaxed period after Shen Yun?
In the first two days after the Shen Yun show in our region was finished, I felt so tired that I just wanted to stay in bed and relax my brain, which had been tense for months. Yet, Master gave me a stick warning. I accidentally left the house key in the door, and my parents nagged me about it. I realized that Master was reminding me to keep my main consciousness focused, so I quickly pulled myself together. I realized that I still had attachments to gaming, novels, and other desires like I did ten years ago. Because I'd never relinquished these attachments, I had to redo the tests and pass them so that I wouldn’t have any loopholes in my cultivation.
I experienced some very strong thought karma, which kept coming back even after I cleared it out by sending righteous thoughts. Master gave me a hint that my thought karma was like grass. If I didn’t dig out the roots, it would keep growing. I remembered Master’s teaching “Digging Out the Roots” in Essentials For Further Advancement and reread it.
I realized the root cause of my thought karma—I failed to truly conduct myself on the basis of the Fa. Put simply, when I said, “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” I always felt there was a gap between me and what I said. In the past, I often looked at Dafa from a bystander’s point of view. What was in my mind when Dafa was being persecuted? What did I do at that time? I thought about my selfishness and the evilness of the old forces in persecuting Dafa disciples in jails. The old forces instigated evil people to torture Dafa disciples with the excuse of finding out what was on their minds when they shouted, “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” and how they viewed Dafa in the face of tribulations. Everything the old forces did was evil and against the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. In other words, the old forces would only meet failure.
Master gave me another hint, and I realized that my cultivation and my original true self hoped to assimilate to the universal principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and that the only way to achieve that was to study the Fa more often, study the Fa well, and cultivate my xinxing.
I let go of my old attachments and desires and felt relieved. Master said, “Just by staying unaffected you will be able to handle all situations.” (Teachings at the Midwestern U.S. Conference)
Master then tested me on how to maintain rock-solid righteous thoughts and compassion when clarifying the truth, assisting Master in saving people, validating the Fa, and eliminating evil, as our local promotion of Shen Yun 2023 would soon start.
Master helped me realize that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a cult that opposes the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. From another perspective, the CCP is against everything good in my life. If I can’t see this clearly, position myself properly, and negate all the CCP elements I’ve been instilled with, I won’t be able to completely assimilate to Dafa because I would have loopholes in my cultivation.
Master also helped me realize the importance of clearing out the CCP’s influence. My first language is Chinese, and since I was born in and attended school in China, my mind was poisoned by the toxins in the modern Chinese language which were instilled there by the CCP. There is Party culture in everything we read. I realized that I must dig out all those toxins in myself and get rid of them completely.
Letting Go of Resentment
Around the end of July 2023, I had a conflict with my father. I thought that his cultivation state wasn’t good and he interfered with me and others. I was angry and failed to maintain my xinxing.
The next day, my mother had a chat with me about the argument, and I explained my viewpoint. She agreed that I had a point but thought I should have shared my opinion with my father calmly instead of getting emotional. I argued that my father wouldn’t listen to me, and I even used some Fa principles to justify my position. She didn’t say anything and left the room. However, I felt as if I had done something wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
I realized I used the Fa principles to cover up my resentment for my father. When I used the wisdom the Fa gave me to attack others, I was wrong and unkind. I was not acting on the basis of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance but venting my resentment for and dissatisfaction with my father. So, although I thought I was being reasonable, I was actually wrong.
After digging deeper, I realized the reason I resented my father was because I didn’t like the way he treated me after he was released from jail during the persecution in China. Over time, I'd accumulated a lot of resentment for him, which also allowed my demonic nature to dominate. By the time I recognized this, the feeling was already too strong to be easily eliminated. Due to my poor cultivation, I could only try to lock it up and try to control it.
Over ten years, my demonic nature also changed my personality, and I became self-destructive, making one mistake after another. By and by, I became separated from Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. When I realized my demonic nature was manifesting, I thought: "Master helped me see my demonic nature, and I absolutely won’t allow it to stay in my heart. I will eliminate it completely."
First, I must let go of my resentment for my father and talk with him. I also realized that the old forces took advantage of my father’s loopholes to cause me more tribulations over the years, and if I wanted to continue cultivating, I must resolve the issue via the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance that Master taught us.
My demonic nature was also a being, and before I talked with my father, it sent an intense nervous feeling that made my hands tremble with fear and caused me to delay talking with my father. However, this tactic failed because I knew it was the demon that was scared, not me. Later, my father told me that I could not untie the knot of resentment on my own, and we both had to let go of it to dissolve it.
Master Gives Me Hints in My Dreams
I had two very special dreams that significantly impacted me. I’m sure that Master arranged them to encourage me to improve further.
In one dream, I traveled in a cosmic body that looked like a museum. I saw ruins and debris of some destroyed civilizations from the past. A virus destroyed some of them, and when a virus appeared in a civilization, it was doomed.
When I returned to my planet, the others discovered I was infected with the virus. The virus kept slowly expanding, and wherever it reached, everything died. People, flowers, and trees all turned white, like dead coral reefs. But I was fine. In fact, the virus prevented me from dying and kept me alive until the entire civilization was destroyed. It was such an indescribable and desperate scene—lifeless and hopeless. People were trying to leave the planet. I ran back to our apartment. When I got there, I saw my mother sitting on the sofa. I said, “Everyone is running for their lives; you’d better leave. You can only survive by keeping away from me.”
My mother didn’t seem to hear me and said, “It’s such a nice day. You should go out and have some fun.” I looked outside and saw the sky was covered in dark clouds, it was very windy, and pouring rain. Why did my mother say it was a nice day?
I remembered that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner, and Master said that despair and dark clouds have no place in our hearts. Our hearts should be filled with brightness, vitality, and hope because we have Falun Dafa. Everything I'd just encountered was fake. I was dreaming, and it was all an illusion. With this thought, I woke up.
In another dream, my father and I were running a business in China. My father caught a worker sleeping instead of working. The man claimed that he was working hard, so I asked him a question, but he couldn’t answer it. I thought he was lying, so we tried to remove him in a pretty rude manner.
He cursed us and walked towards me. I felt nervous and scared, so I ran to the kitchen and picked up a spatula to scare him away. He took out a knife, so I picked up a kitchen knife to fight him. I seemed to have slashed him somewhere. He became weaker and weaker and then collapsed. I suddenly remembered: I’m here to save people. How could I kill someone?
I began to cry, feeling very sad and helpless as I watched him dying in front of me. I called to Master in my heart, telling him that I didn’t want the person to die and that I wouldn’t hurt anyone again. I killed someone to protect myself. If Master arranges for me to die, I’ll accept it without complaint.
I turned the man’s body over and saw his abdomen was slashed open, but there was little blood, and his internal organs were not injured. I remembered Master told us that there were no blood vessels between the internal organs. I told the man this and said that he’d be fine if I sewed up the cut. I tried to call an ambulance, but couldn’t get through. Two fire trucks came, and two men carried the person away without asking any questions, as if they knew what had happened. The injured man looked fine and used his phone while on the stretcher. He said to me, “You’re right; there aren’t any blood vessels between the organs.” Before I woke up, Master showed me that if I had not picked up the spatula, the attack would not have happened.
From these dreams, I understood that Master helped me see a big problem I have—I am selfish. I now understand that one gradually becomes selfish during one’s life and, in the process, deviates from Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. If one doesn’t rectify themselves, one will be destroyed. As Dafa disciples, we must eliminate selfishness through cultivation and regard everyone with compassion and kindness in order to truly be able to assist Master in saving sentient beings.
I’m extremely grateful to Master for his benevolent compassion and kindness and for taking care of me all these years.
I hope my sharing can encourage young Dafa practitioners to be more diligent in cultivation and do even better in assisting Master in Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings.
This is my understanding at my current level. Kindly point out anything that doesn’t align with the Fa.
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