(Minghui.org) I was born into a Protestant Christian home and was always active in the church and Christian communities. At one point my father was a music minister. I started school at a private Baptist elementary school and then went to public schools beginning in fourth grade. Looking back now, I am grateful for having an upbringing with such righteous influences.

I was very active in sports, and then, around middle school, I was into playing music, mainly the guitar. Around the time I graduated from high school I started drinking and doing drugs. It started to get out of control, and I hit low points I’d never thought I’d experience, such as getting fired from jobs, almost getting kicked out of my parents’ home, and then getting caught for driving while under the influence (DUI).

After the DUI, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the 12-step group meetings, and was able to quit drinking and doing drugs. At AA, spirituality is at the center of recovery. Getting divine help and working on improving one’s character is basically the way to become and maintain sobriety in the program.

Of course I was familiar with going to church and that kind of thing, but this was a new take on it and not a fully Christian group. In short, I slowly became open to the idea that there are other righteous ways outside of Christianity.

During the process of recovering, I had an intense spiritual experience and haven’t been the same since. I started looking into other spiritual paths, something I wouldn’t have dared to do before as a Christian who firmly believed in only one way to the divine.

There’s a lot more I could say, but, in short, I started trying all kinds of things. My main practice for a while was yoga, but I was always mixing in and trying other things as well. Due to this mindset, I was in a good state to accept and give Dafa a try.

I started practicing in 2013 in California. Before then I lived in a few different states.

I first received a flyer around 2010 or 2011. I was walking in downtown San Francisco with my girlfriend at the time, and someone gave me a Dafa flyer. As I was looking at it, my girlfriend said something like, “Oh, my mom does that. It’s supposed to be really good for healing.” It got filed away in the back of my mind.

Then in 2013 I was working a job that coincidentally required me to hand out promotional flyers at different events. I was scheduled to go to a Peace Festival in Golden Gate Park. All kinds of spiritually-related things were there. This event was right up my alley. Several Dafa practitioners did some of the exercises as a demonstration of the practice, and I was given another Dafa flyer.

After going home that day, I ended up starting the practice. I watched the video lectures online over the course of a week or so and learned the exercises by following along with Teacher Li’s video. I felt that the practice was very powerful. I noticed a lot of tension leaving my body, and it became much lighter. An issue with both of my knees improved greatly over the coming weeks, and I was able to run and jump again, something I thought I might not ever be able to do again. I stopped doing all the other things from the other spiritual practices and just did Dafa.

I practiced and read every day. I eventually went to an in-person Fa study, but I only went for a few months. I continued reading and doing some of the exercises daily, but I didn’t fully understand the Fa-rectification period and also didn’t know how to send righteous thoughts. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit in 2020 that I was guided to a rude awakening about what was happening. I started getting involved with local practitioners and learned about clarifying the truth and sending righteous thoughts regularly.

Filling Myself with Righteous Things

I heard a stand-up comedian once talk about how he was driving when traffic stopped due to an accident up ahead. While stuck in traffic, he automatically thought something like, “Someone better be dead up there,” alluding to the idea that there better be a good reason for the delay. He said, “You know you shouldn’t think that, but you just do.”

I was out walking one day when a scantily dressed female jogger passed by. Pretty much before I could even think, lust-related thoughts started to surface. While this type of thing is something that’s improved a lot over the years, I wondered to myself, “How do these thoughts and emotions just automatically happen in different situations?” I realized that it was the result of filling myself with certain things over the years, and perhaps even lifetimes, from TV, books, movies, parents, friends, etc., and even thought karma.

Master taught us,

“A person is like a container, and he is whatever he contains. All of what a person sees with the eyes and hears with the ears are: violence, lust, power struggles in literary works, struggles for profit in the practical world, money worship, other manifestations of demon-nature, and so on. With his head filled with these, this kind of person is truly a bad person, no matter what he appears to be. A person’s behavior is dictated by his thoughts. With a mind full of such things, what’s a person able to do?” (“Melt Into the Fa,” Essentials For Further Advancement)

Master said,

“Because one is lost among everyday people, one will often form in one’s mind thoughts for fame, benefits, lust, anger, and so on. Over time, these thoughts become the powerful thought karma.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

So these thoughts can happen automatically as a result of this process. It is the same the other way around, too. For example, a homeless person came up to me one time and started yelling at me about who knows what, but apparently I was doing something he didn’t approve of. I remained calm and let him finish and then go on his way. The reaction I had was natural and was the result of filling myself with righteous things like Dafa. In the past, all kinds of emotions would have probably flared up if that had happened. Today, however, I’m able to embody Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance internally and externally during a situation like that.

So if I want to improve how I react to things, then I should keep filling myself with more righteousness. Then the righteousness will eventually overpower and replace the bad thoughts, notions, and attachments I’ve accumulated.

This deeper understanding inspired me to want to have higher quality Fa study, to listen to music like Pudu, Jishi, and the Shen Yun Orchestra, and to appreciate traditional cultures more, etc.

Learning to Tolerate My Mother

My parents live in another state, and I usually visit them at least a couple of times a year. My mom is notorious for being an overbearing and rather angry backseat driver. It used to get pretty bad when my father drove. Eventually, they worked out a system where my mom would drive and my father would navigate whenever they drove somewhere together.

When I visit, we often go out for dinner and sometimes everyone drinks. Since I don’t drink, I get asked to drive everyone home. It was always a huge challenge for me to keep calm, because my mom would give micromanaging directions all the way, despite knowing that I knew how to get there. It didn’t matter. I’d hear, “Slow down. Watch out for that car. Get in this lane. The speed limit is such and such, etc,” all the way home. Like I said, she was quite passionate about her backseat driving, and drinking made it even worse. I found all of this very irritating, but I’d still try to forbear and follow her borderline tyrannical and overly detailed instructions calmly. However, I’d usually snap back at some point to tell her I knew where I was going. This usually led to my sister or someone else coming to my defense and trying to get her to be quiet.

Over the years, I’m happy to say this has gradually gotten better each time. During my last visit, after eating out, I was able to endure a whole 40-minute ride while staying pretty calm inside and not responding at all. The next time we went out, her directions were pretty much non-existent, and the ride home was actually rather quiet.

Over the years, I also realized that part of the reason her actions irritated me so much was that I sometimes had the tendency to do the same thing when I was a passenger. Not to the same extent as her, but the tendency was there nonetheless. Whether I had learned it from her or whatever doesn’t really matter. I have since been able to work on refraining from being a backseat driver and staying calm inside and relinquishing control while others are driving.

This is based on my understanding at my current level. If there’s anything not on the Fa, please feel free to let me know.