(Minghui.org)
Greetings, Master! Greetings, Fellow Practitioners!
I would like to share some of my cultivation experiences from the past two years.
Emerging from Sadness
Just a few days before Mother’s Day in 2023 my mother passed away after going into cardiac arrest. Her last five days were spent in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on life support with a ventilator.
During that time, I constantly begged the doctors not to discontinue her life support, but the staff insisted that she was brain-dead and that only organ donors were to be kept on life support measures indefinitely. Those days felt like an inescapable nightmare to me. For an extended period, the experience continued to haunt my thoughts and was difficult to dismiss.
Shortly after my mother’s passing, my husband resigned from his job for various reasons. In a struggling job market, he encountered numerous challenges to find employment.
On my first day back at work, I was summoned to a meeting. One of my colleagues, lacking in an understanding of my computer code, blamed all of a project’s errors on me. As a result, I had to work overtime, both weekdays and weekends, to revise code that had already been modified by several other people.
I felt engulfed in a whirlwind of negative emotions and attachments. The feelings of sadness, disappointment, anger, resentment, and guilt weighed heavily on me.
I had always regarded my mother as a diligent practitioner and had never expected something like this to happen. During her time in the hospital, I tried to stay strong, convincing myself that everything around me was just an illusion. However, the moment she was taken off the ventilator and ceased breathing, all my righteous thoughts shattered in an instant, making all my previous efforts seem irrelevant.
Reflecting on it now, I realize that my attachment to comfort and my sentiment toward my mother were quite intense. I had also not been able to let go of my pursuit of fame and my feelings of jealousy in my workplace.
While my mother was in the ICU, seeing her connected to all those tubes filled me with deep sorrow. It was painful for me to watch her suffer. Through Fa study, I have come to realize that, although it may appear that a person has experienced significant hardship, the suffering will help them eliminate a considerable amount of karma.
Master said,
“If there were no deaths among Dafa disciples, wouldn’t that be a miracle? No deaths among Dafa disciples—think about it, everyone, what state would that be? Everyone would come to learn Dafa, and the veil would have been lifted. “There is no death in Falun Gong!” It would be the largest protective shield for humankind, and all would come to learn it. So the old forces do not allow it, and they want this group of people to be in a state like that of ordinary, normal people; they want you to grow old and to show sickness karma.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2016 New York Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XIV)
Master said in the recent article, “Stay Out of Danger,”
“What’s to be done when the creditors whom you have racked up debts with and even those who have suffered from doings that have made you massively indebted, over many lifetimes, insist on your paying them back? The laws of the universe are also evaluating every individual. That’s why you meet with tribulations on your spiritual journey, and have been subjected to persecution.”
In studying the Fa, I have come to realize that a practitioner’s life is not about seeking happiness and a good life, but rather about cultivating oneself to return to one’s true origin. I cannot see the karmic relationships, including the karmic debts that my mother owed, or the interference from the old forces.
However, if I truly believe in Master and the Fa, I should feel happy for her having had the opportunity to cultivate Dafa in this lifetime. She is no longer suffering and can see the reality of the human world. She must be waiting in a very beautiful place.
I have also come to realize that what is truly tormenting me and is difficult to negate, is my sentimentality. I can no longer allow myself to be manipulated by it, or be affected by the old forces’ arrangements.
After gaining a better understanding from the Fa, I felt a long-awaited sense of relief, as if the dark clouds that had been hanging over me had finally lifted. Many aspects of my life also began to improve. My husband secured a new job, and we successfully purchased a house in a highly competitive real estate market. We are now settled in our new home.
I am deeply thankful for the arrangements made by Master and the support of fellow practitioners, especially shortly after my mother’s passing. Participating in truth-clarification activities at a local street fair and meeting with a congressman made me realize that I can not succumb to grief. I have more important things to do. I have my mission and responsibilities.
Letting Go of Jealousy and Resentment
I was transferred to a new team last year at work where I encountered a very strong-willed colleague who enjoyed establishing various rules. For example, she recommended that everyone use pronouns and was against using certain standard words when naming a file or a data table to avoid offending certain races. I personally did not agree with many of the topics she brought up regarding gender and race.
During a team meeting, she said that the code that I had written was “dirty” and did not meet her requirements. Her comments further frustrated me. During a peer code review, she insisted that I must modify my code according to her suggestions, even though the end results would prove identical. Her proposed methods of modification were neither required by the company or necessarily better. When I voiced my objections, she argued that we should aim to do better, implying that her approach was superior. Unless I complied with her suggestions, she would refuse to approve my work.
Our supervisor lacks knowledge of programming and is unfamiliar with the new platform. Prior to transferring to our team, this colleague’s opinions were frequently accepted in their entirety, and she even received a promotion. Several attempts on my part to communicate with her were met with objections and suppression. I have come to view her as akin to the doctor who forcibly removed the ventilator from my mother. Both are like devils in my eyes.
I felt quite uneasy during meetings when she spoke. I found myself wanting to counter her various new proposals. I worried that they might turn into new rules. During discussions with other colleagues, I started to voice my complaints. However, after expressing my grievances I felt regret, thinking that I should cultivate my speech. Yet I still felt quite distressed by our interactions.
While studying the Fa, I came to the realization that I have strong attachments of jealousy and competitiveness. I feel envious of her position on the team and look down on her ways of doing things. While I struggle to get rid of the attachment to fame, I am eager to demonstrate my skills and abilities at work. Nurturing a deep resentment influenced by Chinese Communist Party culture, I tend to dismiss her entirely for any flaws she has. In this context, I have failed to embody any of the three principles: Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
I have come to understand that I fall significantly short of Master’s requirements. I find myself still engaged in debates over who’s right and wrong with ordinary people. Like my colleague, I am strong-willed and have a show-off mentality. I also aggressively oppose others’ opinions. Many of my colleague’s suggestions have merit. When others point out my shortcomings and mistakes, I should be more open-minded to hearing them. I now ask myself: “Are all the things I oppose truly wrong? Are all the things I stand firm on necessarily right? Are my reactions, as a result of my colleague’s actions, triggered by my ego and attachments?”
She neither praised nor agreed with my perspective, but instead she presented opposing views and even criticized some of my approaches. My colleague challenged my ‘false self’ that craves praise and admiration, while I clung to the attachments of showing off, competitiveness, jealousy, and resentment.
While I believe that some of my colleague’s thoughts and actions stem from the moral degradation in society, I realize that this is not her true nature, and I should be more tolerant. I need to remind myself that I am a cultivator who has the goal of clarifying the truth and saving more people. Her actions of judging and correcting me trigger and reflect the attachments that I still need to cultivate away.
Before meetings, I now remind myself to let go of my attachments. I also engage in conversation with her and acknowledge some of her good ideas. As I write this article, I am reminding myself to get along with those around me and guard my speech, and to always remember that I am a Dafa disciple.
Reflecting on my past experiences, I have come to realize that I have many shortcomings. I will strive to get rid of my attachments to comfort and laziness and cherish the opportunity and time left for cultivation in order to become a more diligent Dafa disciple.
Thank you, Master!Thank you, Fellow Practitioners!
(Presented at the 2024 Philadelphia Fa Conference)
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