(Minghui.org) My husband is a professor who does empirical scientific research. He viewed traditional Chinese medicine as superstitious and could not understand why I started practicing Falun Dafa. When I first brought home a copy of Zhuan Falun in 1996, he would not even let me read it due to his belief in science. He said that it was superstitious and reading it would mislead me.
When I first began to cultivate, my husband only let me do the standing exercises as physical exercises at home. He would not let me meditate, study the Fa, or get close to fellow practitioners. I knew that I faced a rocky cultivation path, one destined to be a rivalry between atheist empirical science and my righteous path. In this situation, it would have been difficult to clear the way even without the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution. I was like an earthworm that had to dig out a path through hard, dry soil.
He blindly believed in Western medicine and often used it to confirm that I was ill. If he discovered that I was not feeling well due to karma elimination, he would force me to take pills. (I always put them under my tongue and didn’t swallow them.) Ever since I entered my husband’s life, he had basically treated me like his research subject. He used rigorous logical thinking to analyze my every move and carefully researched and solved whatever he considered my problems to be. This put me in a long-term stressful situation that I cannot describe in words and one that other people cannot understand or imagine.
I complained about him to a practitioner that I was close to, saying, “Since we married, my husband has maintained such tight control over me that I cannot breathe. I am not allowed to have my own thoughts. His wishes are everything. I have to figure out what he is thinking and do things accordingly every day. Otherwise, our home would be like the sky had fallen and there would not be one peaceful day. I am gentle and weak by nature and fear him very much at home. I have only firmly gone against his will when it comes to practicing Dafa, but whenever I do not meet his expectations even slightly, he will vent his anger about my practicing Dafa and say disrespectful words about Dafa. I really don’t know how to change him.”
The practitioner said, “You did not think about the situation from his perspective.”
I said, “How do I not think about him? I take care of all the housework and have not even asked him to wash the dishes.”
The practitioner said, “You have only been doing things for him, but have not put him in your heart.”
I was stunned for a moment, but thought again and said, “You have no idea how tightly he controls me. He is a despot. Nothing I think or do escapes his notice. He is at ease only when he is in control of everything of mine. I cannot let him know about the life-saving projects that I’m involved in. He calculates the time I take to shop for groceries and will get to the bottom of it when there are slight discrepancies. When he does not see me for a short while, he will look for me everywhere in the house. He fears that I am doing Dafa work behind his back. He will not give up until he finds out what I have been doing. I’m afraid to let him know about my doing the exercises in the morning. He even still says that I do not get enough sleep and wants me to stop sending righteous thoughts in the morning and at night.”
The practitioner laughed and said, “He certainly cares about you a great deal.”
I thought to myself, “You’ve never experienced being under someone’s control. Anyone else would not be able to stand it for even a day.”
The practitioner said, “You see, he really cherishes you. Think about it from his perspective. His wife, who had always been gentle and obedient, became a different person after she started practicing Dafa. You were seized by the police when you went to Beijing. He was a doctoral advisor and a top-level college official. The whole school was in an uproar. He could not keep you at home. You two fought for many years. Think about how much pressure he endured. Later, Jiang Zemin came to the province for a meeting, and the police picked you up when you distributed truth-clarification letters outside the provincial Party committee. You were in for some serious punishment. From your perspective, you overcame it with righteous thoughts. But on your husband’s end, he did everything he could to protect you. After you were released, you refused to sign the guarantee statement or stop practicing. He beat you and was going to send you to a psychiatric hospital or pay for you to attend brainwashing sessions, but he sent you to stay with your parent for a while instead. His mental and physical endurance had reached their limits. In the end, he could not convince you to give up Dafa and was left with no choice. At that point, because he cared about you, he stopped caring about his career. But you still do not understand him and complain about him controlling you too much. Don’t you think you have issues of your own? He was able to become your family member, so he must have a great predestined relationship with Dafa. Can you save him if you do not change yourself fundamentally?”
The practitioner’s words hit me like a hammer. I thought to myself, “That’s right, I’d never thought about it like that. In my mind, he is such an authoritarian that I don’t need to be concerned about him. I now realize that I’ve only been concerned with protecting myself. I was afraid of being hurt and hoped that he would change. I’d never thought about what he needed.”
Not long after that, I slipped and started to fall while we were out walking. My husband quickly caught me so I didn’t fall down, then insisted on checking to see if I was okay. He asked me to stick out my tongue and circle it around my mouth and also circle my eyeballs around my eye sockets. I laughed at him to myself and did not do as he asked. A few steps later, he again insisted that I stick out my tongue and roll my eyes. If I were to do that in public, people would think I was mentally ill. But I knew he wouldn’t let it go. I was afraid of him and thought, “I clearly did not fall down. Is it necessary to see if I am normal by dramatically circling my tongue and rolling my eyes? He often interferes with my cultivation like this, making my cultivation path very narrow. If I deviate even a bit, I might fall into these holes dug by the old forces.”
Just as my habitual thought that “he is controlling me so much that I can’t breathe” surfaced, I recalled what that practitioner had said—that I should think from his perspective. I held his hand tightly and said, “You are so great. Thank you for caring about me and taking care of me our whole lives. I sincerely thank you!” He had never heard me say anything like this. After all the suffering he had endured over the years, he must have been filled with mixed feelings. He became silent and stopped demanding that I stick out my tongue. In the past, he would not have let it go until I gave in. My small change, however, broke through his shell.
I recalled that when we were renovating our new home, we used a tape measure to measure the dimensions of the new house. After we returned to our old home, we couldn’tt find the tape measure. He said that I had taken it and told me to find it. I looked through everything we had brought back that day and could not find it. We could not find it in the new house, either. This was bad, because we used that tape measure a lot. There would be no peace until it was found. He ordered me to look for it and started to rant about my practicing Dafa. He said that I only cared about “my things” (he meant me practicing Dafa) and was irresponsible when it came to things at home. Under all that pressure, I could not explain myself. As a cultivator, I knew that I had to be tolerant. I tried to endure it, but my negative emotions were building up. I felt that he valued that tape measure more than my life. When he continued to hound me, I completely broke down. I hit myself in the face and said, “I am such an idiot. I have no brain. I can even lose a tape measure.” He was stunned to see me sobbing and hitting my own face. He did not bring up the tape measure again. Two days later, he said he found it in his car. He’d clearly put it there himself. I did not say anything and only felt fortunate that I would no longer be blamed. This type of thing happened often at home. Once he made up his mind about something, he would not give up until he pushed you to your limits.
I like literature and art, and my creations have often won awards. I am a visual thinker. However, things that I think are normal often clash with his logical thinking and can become big issues under his intense questioning. When we were first married, he often had emotional outbursts due to “issues” that he imagined. Our neighbors would be disturbed by these outbursts, but no one could convince him otherwise. He himself would also suffer from these episodes. He would have stomach pain and convulsions and sometimes cramps when it was serious. He suffered a lot. I remember seeing a psychology program on TV. The husband’s situation as the wife described it was exactly the same as ours. The psychologist said that the husband suffered from paranoid personality disorder and could not be changed. The expert’s advice for the wife was: either tolerate it or get a divorce.
Since I was little, I had always been passively submissive to my authoritarian mother. I had thus formed a weak and timid personality and feared any trouble. After I started practicing Dafa, I thought I was best at cultivating forbearance. I did not realize that this was ordinary people’s forbearance. Facing a husband with paranoid personality disorder, I thought I’d probably treated him like this in a past life and therefore could only endure it this life. In this family tribulation, I could not see a way to change things.
That fellow practitioner’s help made me finally realize it. While memorizing Zhuan Falun, the Fa also kept guiding me to truly cultivate myself. I began to appreciate my husband’s sacrifices for me and our family. I would thank him often. When he lost his temper and criticized me, I would no longer explain myself and would only say, “Sorry, I am at fault. I will seriously think about what my issues are. Please do not be angry.” I started to truly look within for my own issues and stopped looking at what he did wrong. As I carefully looked within again and again, I gradually saw my attachments. I discovered that the things he criticized me for might not be true on the surface, but he in fact pointed out my root problems. He helped me break through my shell of selfishness.
I discovered that, because I was afraid of my mother from the time I was little, I had only thought about how to avoid her criticism. I lacked initiative and had never developed a sense of responsibility. I had been in the same mode when I interacted with my husband. This was an issue deep within me. I realized that there are many good things about my husband: He is conscientious, adheres to high standards, and has a strong sense of responsibility. There are many things I can learn from him. He really is here to show me an example.
The changes in me also greatly impacted my husband. In the past, I wanted him to know that Dafa is good, but no matter how hard I tried, he would not accept Dafa. I tried reading Zhuan Falun to him, but his sensitivity about empirical science was triggered, which led him to say disrespectful things about Dafa. Now, even though I do not talk about Dafa directly, he has begun to understand my practice. As I have changed myself, the barriers between him and Dafa have come down.
Now, when it is time to send forth righteous thoughts, he will remind me and take over my work in the kitchen. Every day, he ensures that I can study and do the exercises undisturbed. This year, I intentionally moved my Fa study to the living room. He can hear me reading Zhuan Falun when he walks or sits nearby. I’ve found that he is taking the content of Zhuan Falun to heart. He uses my computer to go on Dynaweb every day and he withdrew from the Chinese Communist Party. He has even asked me about things that he does not understand about Dafa. He would never discuss these topics with me in the past. These things would be completely unimaginable in the past.
A few days ago, my husband reproached me for something I did wrong. After he said two sentences, he stopped himself abruptly, turned his head, and said, “No problem. Who doesn’t make mistakes? This was something you were not familiar with. It’ll just be treated as learning.” I was in a self-blaming mood at the time and absolutely did not expect him to say that. In the past, he would always hold onto people’s mistakes and use his logical thinking to dissect you until you were full of holes.
I said, “I have never heard you say something so heartwarming. You are even comforting me. How did you become so nice?”
He said, “Don’t I have paranoid personality disorder? I also have to change.” The psychologist on that TV program had said that people with paranoid personality disorder could not change. That psychologist’s jaw would drop if he heard what my husband said.
My husband has become noticeably more tolerant and open minded. My sister said he has become a different person. My husband said that I changed him by overcoming hardness with softness. In fact, I was changed by cultivating Dafa. I experienced how rectifying myself through Dafa cultivation could turn seawater sweet.
I had a dream in which I was in an unfamiliar place rushing to take a long-distance bus. When I finally found the bus depot, I saw a long line and got in it right away, but I had not yet bought a ticket. I was worried and did not know where to buy tickets. My husband suddenly appeared and said he would buy me a ticket. I waited anxiously in line. When I could not see him, I went to look for him but didn't find him. When I went back to where the line was, it was gone. Someone nearby told me that the bus had come, and everyone had gotten on and left. I was terrified and started running to the boarding platform, which was about a floor high. A bus employee at the platform waved at me and said, “I have the ticket your husband bought you.” He handed me a ticket and a stack of change. I grabbed them and headed toward the check-in gate. I kept dropped coins, but I didn’t care and ran to the gate. Ah! The bus was still down there and the door was open. I would be able to make it onto the bus after all!
When I dreamed about taking a bus in the past, I would be unable to find the depot, something would keep me from boarding, or I would miss it altogether. This time, I could get on the bus. So my husband was, in fact, the person who had bought a ticket for me on my cultivation path.
Fortunately, I have begun to memorize Zhuan Falun the past few years. I can clearly feel that the power of Dafa has been eliminating my stubborn self with stronger force. With Dafa’s support, that timid, cowardly, and weak person that I was has opened up a cultivation path from a harsh environment step by step. Looking back, this cultivation path that was originally narrow has become wider and wider. I have become soft but not weak.
Indeed, there will still be challenges down the road. Persecuted by the evil Party, under great pressure from atheism and empirical science, and without models or examples to refer to or learn from, Dafa cultivators all have to walk a path to the divine alone. That will be a reference for later generations. That is what Master trusts us to do. This responsibility is great and sacred. With guidance from Dafa, my heart is steady and poised.
Revered Master, I hope that you are glad to have a disciple who is soft but not weak.
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Category: Cultivation Insights
