(Minghui.org) Hello Master! Hello practitioners!
I’ve practiced Falun Dafa for 13 years, and this past year Master used many situations in different environments, along with Dafa projects, to help point out my attachments and expose my demon nature. I’d like to share some of my experiences with you.
My Attachment Is Exposed
The biggest attachment I’ve tried to work on is my ego, which became truly prominent during this last Shen Yun season. The number of times it came up, in the form of “self-justification” and my thinking that, “I’m right,” was surprising even to me, and to be honest it became embarrassing. I’d be having a discussion or reacting to something and even as the words were leaving my mouth, I realized (almost as though I was watching myself from outside my body) that “this is not the way I should be acting,” or “who is this person?” This behavior was exposed several times, particularly when challenging issues came up.
In one instance, one of the staff from Shen Yun was trying to understand why we were having repeated issues with our buses, but my ego wanted to protect myself so I immediately tried to justify that some things were out of our control. As the words were coming out of my mouth, I noticed a venue staff member, who I’d been interacting with the day before, listening to my excuses. The look on her face showed that she had suddenly lost respect for me, and I immediately realized I was in the wrong, and this wasn’t the way to behave, and certainly didn’t reflect the demeanor of a cultivator.
On another occasion, the performers had a free day before the first show, and I went sightseeing with someone I know from Shen Yun. He shared a lot of things with me that I’d never heard before. It wasn’t confidential information, but some really fascinating facts and stories. Some time later, I was talking in private to my wife and two other practitioners. I repeated some of what I’d heard, and I spoke with an air of self-importance, and almost a tone of authority.
Afterwards, my wife pointed out to me that my words were full of ego. She said something like, “It’s as though you feel you’re special because you were told these things and passing them on makes you more important.” She also said that ego is a very unattractive trait. These were not pleasant words to hear, but I could see the truth in what she said. When I reflected on that moment, I realized that it wasn’t just unattractive, it was truly ugly, and I was disgusted by my behavior and this character trait.
After Shen Yun left, I asked Master genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, to please help me get rid of this attachment to ego and self-validation. I could see that after all these years, it just had to be removed. Little did I know how quickly Master would help me with it.
Cultivating in My Work Environment
Two weeks after Shen Yun left, my employment situation changed, and I was in a new role. It wasn’t the typical role I would seek out, but I thought I could do the job, as I’d done something similar before on a smaller scale. In my previous role, I had been considered an expert, which of course inflated my ego. But when I came into this new position, I was treated almost like an amateur.
At first things seemed to go okay, because I was new and not expected to know everything. But after a while, I could tell that my boss was beginning to lose patience with me because I wasn’t doing things fast enough or well enough, and he started making comments that showed his frustration with my performance.
When I shared these challenges with my wife, she reminded me that I asked Master to help me remove my ego, and it looked like that’s what Master was doing. She said, “You asked Master to help you remove a big attachment – did you think it was going to be easy?”
We shared what Master said:
“...a three-foot block of ice doesn’t form overnight,...” (“Fa Teaching given in Manhattan, 2006,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume X)
We talked about how ego can be like that three-foot block of ice and you have to keep chipping away at it, bit by bit, until it’s all gone.
This helped me focus on how this challenging environment, where I was made to feel humiliated at times, was a precious cultivation environment that Master had arranged. Sometimes my wife would text me at work to see how things were going. I would tell her that it was pretty tough, and she’d send me an emoji of a block of ice or the words ‘chip, chip, chip’ to remind me that this was all good for my cultivation. It became a bit of a joke between us, but was a good reminder when I was going through tests at work.
For several months, when I arrived at work, I felt like the person Master talked about in the audio lectures, whose heart was flopping around like a rabbit in his chest—it often felt like a whole colony of rabbits was in my chest!
I later realized that this was my attachment to self being touched on. There were days, and even weeks, when my boss made it clear I wasn’t meeting his standards, and he was disappointed that he had to keep telling me things more than once. Sometimes when I asked him something he would say “I’ve already told you that!” This was definitely chipping away at my ego.
It also made me reflect on the way I treated my mother. My father died a few years ago. She relied on him for many things, including anything that had to be done on the mobile phone or computer. When he died, my mother often asked me for help with her phone and computer, and she sometimes asked me the same thing, over and over, and I became very frustrated with her. I realized that I was treating her the same way I was now being treated in the workplace. I needed to be far more compassionate with my mother and I realized I needed to also be compassionate with my boss, because his lack of patience was a reflection of how much pressure he had in his role.
The long months I spent in that role was a very humbling experience, a great opportunity to NOT be right and NOT justify myself. It was a reminder that I needed to look at this and address it as a cultivator. It was the intensity of that environment and constantly reminding myself to treat it as cultivation, that helped me get through it. If I hadn’t been a cultivator, I would have quit months before and lost the opportunity to improve.
During that time, I was able to clarify the truth to my boss. I needed to ask for some time off to visit my MP during work hours as part of the government work we were doing. I think my boss thought I was looking for another job, so I explained why I needed to see my MP and told him about Falun Dafa and the persecution. It was a natural opportunity to clarify the truth and I later gave him a lotus flower for his daughter, which he appreciated.
Ultimately, the role ended sooner than I expected. Later, I shared with another practitioner about some of the criticism I’d been getting for not delivering my work fast enough, and how I was working very long hours.
The practitioner sent me an excerpt from Master’s lecture:
“After going through so many experiences all these years, all of you have come to understand on a deeper level that for Dafa disciples in all professions and trades, including the Dafa disciples in the different media—it’s the same for everyone—those who pay close attention to their personal cultivation will achieve double the results with only half the effort in many things that they do. So we cannot overlook cultivation. That is something first and foremost.” (“2018 NTD and Epoch Times Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XV)
I felt ashamed when I read this quote. I’d been coming home from work after ten or twelve-hour days, mentally exhausted, and felt that I needed time to switch off and wind down. As a result, I hadn’t been keeping up with Fa study or the exercises. While I knew the work environment was Master’s arrangement for my cultivation, when I got home I wanted to relax instead of focusing on the things that would really energize me – Fa study and doing the exercises.
From that point on, I made sure to get up every day, do the exercises, and read the Fa, without any excuses.
Cultivating While Doing Government Work
While I was going through the challenging tests at work, I was also working on different Dafa projects. Earlier this year, one of our priorities was to engage more with the government so they could better understand the Falun Dafa community and the persecution happening in China. Things seemed to get off to a slow start in my local area, or at least that was my perception, and I initially started feeling negative, that nothing much was happening. But then I changed my thinking and decided I should stop complaining and do something about it instead.
I spoke to a few practitioners about what they were doing in terms of reaching out to their local MPs, and the feedback was that a lot of them didn’t know how to start or what to do, and the expectation of going to an MP’s office with a letter, or asking their MP to do something to help them didn’t seem effective or appropriate.
Something needed to change in our approach, and I realized that I should take some action if I wanted to see positive change. I felt that empowering our practitioners would be the most logical way to start at the local level.
I have some experience running workshops for my work clients, so I volunteered to run some for local practitioners, thinking that this format would help everyone interested to learn collectively. The first workshop was quite structured, where we defined our short-term and long-term goals, and strategies for practitioners to feel more comfortable meeting with their MPs.
We had a good attendance of Western, Chinese, and Vietnamese practitioners who could speak English. We talked about things that were blocking us, and one practitioner said that their challenge wasn’t about going to see their MP, but was more about asking something of them. This was a pivotal moment, as it highlighted that we had to rethink our approach.
We started holding workshops every two weeks, and more people joined. The workshops became more casual which allowed practitioners to talk about their individual circumstances and the specific support they needed. The whole process was a new experience for us and helped us all improve together.
A great lesson for me was to let go of trying to control the format and structure of how I wanted to run the workshop, and instead help to nurture an environment where there was no judgment or criticism of how well each practitioner did. We invited people to share their fears and attachments, so we could compassionately work through them together. In this way, people felt safe and comfortable to openly talk about their challenges or obstacles.
We discussed each practitioner’s individual situation, what they’d done in the past with their MP, the outcome, and suggestions for what to do in each specific case – which really was different for each person or MP. One practitioner didn’t know what to say to her MP to start the conversation, so we did a role play in front of everyone. It was very challenging for her at first, because she’s quite introverted, but with so many others offering support and positive suggestions, it helped build her confidence.
She later shared that she went to meet with her MP when he had a drop-in event at her shopping center. She started talking with one of the MP’s staff, and made an immediate personal connection, which then helped her to secure a meeting with the MP later.
The combined wisdom of all the practitioners in the room in providing suggestions was amazing. So many good ideas began to flow, and people started to feel positive once they had tangible actions or approaches that seemed authentic rather than pushy. The results were almost immediate, and as people came back each week and shared their positive experiences with the group, or things their MPs said that we could act on, there seemed to be a snowball effect.
More practitioners were successfully introducing themselves to their MPs, building relationships, and becoming able to find a natural way to do so. The wider strategy led us to discuss what sort of community events practitioners could contribute to, as we realized there was so much we could offer.
One MP said that he doesn’t see us in the community, so a group of practitioners created a team to start booking stalls to introduce Falun Dafa, and fold origami lotus flowers at markets and local community events. This is something we did many years ago, but it gradually dropped off as we got busy with other projects. It created an opportunity for practitioners who don’t speak English to help at the event stalls by demonstrating the exercises, or handing out flyers, while other practitioners talked to parents about Falun Dafa while their children learned to fold lotus flowers.
This was a great way to activate the whole body of practitioners and work together in our local area. Many MPs attend big community festivals in their area, so our participation provided an easy way to meet them since we were already at the festival or market.
When we finished the workshops, several practitioners told me that they were very helpful, and thanked me for running them. I felt pleased when hearing these compliments and thought that because I’d taken action at the start when it seemed that nothing was happening, I helped achieve a good outcome.
Not long after our workshops, quite a few practitioners from Queensland headed off to organized events in Canberra. Due to my work situation, I wasn’t able to go. Later, some of the practitioners who went to Canberra shared about their experiences at our local Fa study. One of the association members shared about the positive outcomes from the success of other activities. As I listened to these encouraging stories, instead of feeling positive, I sat there almost indifferently, looking at the floor. My wife, who was sitting next to me, noticed immediately that my demeanor changed.
Afterwards, she asked me what was wrong. I finally admitted that deep down, I felt I should have been there in Canberra, on the front line. I felt that I had been a contributing factor to the success, but the practitioners who went seemed to be getting the credit.
I realized that this was my demon-nature being exposed again, with attachments of jealousy, ego, and self-validation. I was seeking some sort of credit for my involvement in government work – rather than seeing it as my duty as a Fa rectification Dafa disciple. When I looked within more about why I had reacted that way, I realized that when I received all those compliments about the workshops I had allowed them to feed my ego and sense of self-importance, and turned the overall progress of the body into something about myself.
All of this was happening at the same time as my many tests at work, chipping away at my ego. But even though it was being chipped away in my work environment, it was still surfacing in my cultivation environment.
Cultivating During an Epoch Times Event
The last experience I would like to share happened recently while I was helping at an Epoch Times stall at a large community event. We hand out copies of the English language Epoch Times at these events, and we recently started giving out balloons to children, which makes us a popular stall for families to visit, and gives us more opportunity to talk to parents about the Epoch Times. At the front of the stall, we have a stand to hold all the inflated balloons. The stand looks like a tree of balloons, with each balloon on a stick pushed into the stand to hold it in place.
I was inflating balloons at the back of the stall, and the coordinator was standing at the front, putting the balloons into the balloon tree. It was very windy that day, and some of the balloons were being blown out of the stand, so we had to keep chasing them down so as not to lose any. I noticed that the sticks holding the balloons were not being pushed all the way in, so it was easy for the balloons to blow out and fly away.
I told the coordinator that if he pushed the balloon sticks ALL the way in, they wouldn’t blow away. I guess he was busy talking to people and handing out the newspapers, so nothing changed. The wind blew more balloons away and I felt the need to say something again.
The next time the wind blew hard, in my mind I was thinking, “I’m just going to go up there, push the balloon sticks all the way in, and show them how it should be done!” My thinking wasn’t about how to quietly harmonize and improve the situation, it was about how I was right, and why didn’t the coordinator just do what I said.
I quickly got up from where I was inflating balloons, with this thought in my head, and as I took my first step forward, I tripped over the tablecloth that covered the main table, then crashed into the second table, pulling some things off both tables onto the ground. I fell over hard and landed on my hands and knees on the wet ground.
I stood up, my hands muddy and dirty patches on my pants. Everyone was immediately concerned, asking “Are you okay?” I was okay, but my ego had taken another beating! As I sat down, I immediately thought, “There you go, your ego wanted to show them you were right, and there’s your lesson.”
I stumbled. It was humbling and reminded me that I still hadn’t let go of my ego completely.
Conclusion
Over the past six months, I feel that I have chipped away a lot of my ego. Similar to the novel “Journey to the West,” tests and challenges keep coming up again and again to help me improve. Just as I get through one, another arrives.
Something that I realized is that all these tests helped me become a bit humbler, and in turn more compassionate. Before I may have been judgmental towards other practitioners, but I now have more compassion towards them. Also, when engaging with people during activities to introduce Falun Dafa, when they talk about the injustices in the world, I’m able to be more compassionate towards them.
I am grateful for Master’s arrangements and for looking after me when I asked for his help to improve in my cultivation. While I still have a long way to go, I do know that I’m making continued progress on my cultivation path.
Thank you Master. Thank you everyone.
(Presented at the 2024 Australia Fa Conference)
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