(Minghui.org) When other practitioners ask me how I began practicing Falun Dafa, I usually tell them it’s a long story. I recently shared some of my story with a fellow practitioner who encouraged me to share it with the group. Another practitioner who heard my story many years ago also encouraged me to talk about my story, but I never took the time to write it down.
I began practicing Falun Dafa in New York City in late 2010, but for the decade prior to this, Master gave me many opportunities to obtain the Fa, that in retrospect seem like miracles.
Predestined to Practice Falun Dafa
I indulged in some vices and addictions before I began practicing. Buried in karma and desire, I didn’t take the precious opportunities I was offered to begin practicing, but Master never gave up on me.
My first encounter with Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) was in 2001 when I saw the reenactment in midtown Manhattan of how the Chinese Communist Party tortures practitioners. I remember thinking that a persecution so severe can only mean that what the people practiced must be supernormal.
I was in high school at the time. Every Wednesday, all the students in the school went to different places to learn something new. In the winter months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a teacher took our class to a small indoor gym in Central Park. When we arrived, two practitioners taught us the five Falun Dafa exercises. I could feel the Falun spinning in my abdomen when I did them.
I was very excited afterward and I asked them what the practice was called, and when they told me it was Falun Gong, I said, “Oh, you guys are being persecuted.” Then I asked them what I should do next, and they told me to go to the practice site in Madison Square Park. I had only arrived in the United States from Russia two years prior, so I had no idea where that was.
When we were walking through the Central Park on our way back to the subway, I felt very light and full of energy. The feeling reminded me of how I felt when I practiced martial arts in Russia. But I always felt that martial arts was empty because all the teacher taught us, in addition to the movements, was not to fight outside of class. I thought that Falun Gong was a grand practice because it teaches truth and kindness. I couldn’t remember what the third word was. As soon as I had the thought that Dafa is great, my third eye opened and I could see that the entire park was filled with golden energy, and even the sky was golden. I walked through this wondrous scene too amazed to think of why I was seeing it.
When I got on the subway, I guess because my celestial eye was still open, I saw that a demon was sitting on top of a woman’s head, and it was controlling her. It was a shocking sight. Instead of realizing that I was having these experiences because of Dafa, I started thinking that I was special. As a result, the vision faded. By the time I got home I forgot about Dafa.
Later that winter, I saw another torture photo exhibit on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. As I was looking at the photos, an elderly practitioner ran up to me, pointed at my abdomen and made circular motions. She couldn’t speak English, but somehow through the gestures she reminded me about the Falun. Through gestures I told her something to the extent of “So what should I do?” She gave me a copy of Zhuan Falun.
I guess Master had a plan for me to read Zhuan Falun, because not long after this, a friend with whom I took the subway home every day started telling me about a book he was reading. Every day, he would talk about parts of the book, including the celestial eye, karma, etc. When he asked me what I thought about it, I found that everything was true. Many years later, after I finally obtained the Fa, I asked this friend about it, but he had completely forgotten all about it—he didn’t know what Falun Gong was.
Other students in my high school practiced Falun Gong. A Chinese girl offered me a free ticket to the New Year Spectacular but I didn’t take it.
Opportunities to obtain the Fa followed me everywhere I went. In a videogame I played, one of the people I played with had an account name—Lunyu. I asked him a few times what the word meant, but he just told me to Google it. I kept on asking, and one day he sent me a link to Lunyu. I was surprised that I could read and understand it because I was still learning English.
When I moved to my own apartment around 2004 or 2005, one of the first pieces of mail I received was a flyer about the CCP’s persecution. I looked at the faces on the flyer, and thought, “These are my people.” I tried looking up Falun Dafa, and went to the section with the teachings, but I couldn’t figure out where to start.
In college, I worked for the city government near Wall Street. During lunch break on a very cold winter day, I saw an elderly practitioner dressed in ancient Chinese clothes, and I felt that she was not an ordinary person. She nearly sold me a ticket to see Shen Yun.
I was in a very low place at that time. Chasing my desires had made me depressed. Soon after I met that practitioner I dreamed I was walking on a busy street in the Wall Street area, and a tall Chinese man was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. He was dressed in a suit and tie, and smiled at me. When I came toward him, he shook my hand, and his smile filled me with compassion and happiness. When I woke up, I wondered why a being so great would shake the hand of someone as unworthy as me. I shook and cried in a way I had never cried before in my life. After I started practicing years later, I realized that Master was encouraging me to not give up on my life.
I spent several nights a week drinking and partying. On one such night, after the bars closed I was walking home drunk with a female friend. The streets were empty, and she was also drunk. She suddenly stopped, pointed at my chest, grabbed my shoulders, shook me, and said, “You need to practice Falun Dafa. You are like those people.” I was too surprised and drunk to react. When I called her the next morning to ask about it, she had no idea what I was talking about.
On one of the worst days of my life, I stayed out all night, doing drugs and engaging in shameful vices. By the time I decided to head back home, the early commuters were already emerging from the subway station around 42nd Street. I felt so ashamed to face these sober, clean-cut, working people, that I decided I would walk all the way home to 171st street instead. I took a path on the West Side by the river which wound through Riverside Park. The park was empty and quiet. After I went up a staircase I saw a young woman meditating. Later on I learned that this was a member from our sales team. She had an orange scarf over her legs. I stood watching her for a while.
When I got home, I had a thought that since she had the orange scarf she must have a Buddhist master. Then I thought, “If only I had a Master, then I would practice too.” Instantly, I saw a beam of golden light shooting through my body, stretching from one extreme of the universe to the other. I remember this moment sometimes when I read this sentence in Zhuan Falun:
“Once this person thinks about taking the path of cultivation practice and once this thought occurs, it shines like gold, shaking the world in ten directions.” (Lecture Two, Zhuan Falun)
I felt like the light purified every cell in my body. I dropped to my knees and wept for a long time.
Throughout the years, I never thought of doing the exercises. But during the time when I was very lost, when I was sitting on the roof of my apartment building one night, I stood up and did the “Golden Monkey Splitting Its Body” from the First Exercise. As soon as I stretched, I felt an energy explosion in the center of my chest, my third eye opened, and I could see energy channels in my body, how it was connected to the universe, and how the universe is reflected in the human body. Instead of remembering Falun Dafa, I thought I was special, and the vision disappeared.
Unable to wake up from the delusion of the everyday world, I dropped further and further. Somehow, no matter how much I harmed my body, I remained relatively healthy. On at least two occasions I had a dream where someone would take out the organs from my body to show me they were clean and pure. I think Master was trying to show me that he was still protecting me.
Master protected me during a car crash about a year or two before I obtained the Fa. I was driving on the highway after a long night out with my girlfriend. I was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and I blacked out. It was already morning and the highway was filled with commuters. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the car was rushing toward a concrete barricade. The car hit the barricade, launched into the air, and as we were upside down I saw that we were going to land right into the traffic merging from a ramp. At that moment everything turned black and I saw an enormous hand take the car, carry it over the merging ramp, and drop it down on the shoulder on the other side. The car landed with a thud and my girlfriend woke up. She didn’t realize what happened. The only damage to the car was a flat tire. A minute later a highway rescue truck pulled up behind us. The driver looked at us with surprise, and suspiciously looked at our car. He asked if we were with the government. I think he saw the car flying through the air like a ship.
It’s so clear to me now that Master was looking after me. At the time, I didn’t give it much thought. My understanding is that Master has looked after all beings, through all lifetimes, and no one can ever repay him in full.
After years of drugs, vices, videogames, and unhealthy living, one day a girlfriend I was living with for about a year announced she was leaving me. I was already depressed. When she looked at me waiting for an answer, I said, “It’s okay. I’m a Falun Dafa practitioner.” I didn’t even know what those words meant, and I didn’t remember what Falun Dafa was. Somehow my saying this infuriated her and she stormed out. I still don’t understand how I came to say those words.
Not long after this, I moved back in with my parents. They decided to rent a large apartment for me so they could use part of it for their online business. My dad hired a Russian woman to take care of filling orders. She was a practitioner, and one day she gave me a Dafa flyer. I asked a stupid question about the female practitioner on the cover. She later told me she gave up on me after that but she thought perhaps my dad would begin practicing Falun Dafa.
I was still consumed by vices at the time. My dad could see I wasn’t in a good place, and one day he told me I should ask the Russian woman about the “yoga” she practiced. When I asked her, she said she practiced Falun Dafa. I remembered what it was, but also remembered the many times I didn’t obtain the Fa. I asked her to show me the exercise video. She turned it on, on my computer. After all these years, it was my first time seeing Master. From that day on, I devoted my life to cultivation.
Memories Encourage Me to Be Diligent
After I began practicing cultivation, many memories came back to me from my childhood. These made me firmly believe that Master has been watching over me long before I ever heard of Falun Dafa.
When I was an adult, my mother told me that she tried to abort me by sitting in a bathtub filled with alcohol. But I survived. One of my first memories is of crawling and sticking a fork into an electrical outlet. I lost consciousness, but survived. My grandmother told me that when I was an infant, a neighbor tried to poison me with porridge. I stopped breathing and turned blue, and everyone thought I was dead. But Master saved me again.
Around the time I could walk, I was in the yard by myself and choked on a piece of hard candy. I was beginning to lose consciousness when I felt someone hit my back, and the candy shot out of my mouth. When I turned around, no one was there. Now I know Master saved me. When I was a little older, I broke away from my grandmother’s grasp and ran into a busy street, where a truck was speeding toward me. I heard my grandmother scream. I stopped in front of the truck and it came to a halt right in front of my face. My grandmother fainted and the driver laughed.
Episodes like these happened over and over. One time I was climbing a wire fence that was two meters tall. When I jumped from the top, wire caught my pants and I swung down, head first, into a rebar spike sticking out of a concrete pillar. I was struck right above my eye. The force should have been enough to pierce through my head, but I just bled a lot, and afterwards there was a small scar. Another time, my cousin and I were fishing from a concrete dam. I failed to grab the rail and I was beginning to fall into the interior of the dam, which had steel bars sticking out. I was sure I was about to die. But my cousin, who was about my age, thrust his hand out, caught me by the shirt, and pulled me up. He didn’t say a word. I believe that Master used him to rescue me.
For a long time I felt like I shouldn’t share these things because others may think I was trying to seem special. I believe I am not special at all. I just want to share these things to show how much our Master has gone through to keep all of us safe throughout this life and our previous lifetimes.
One of the most miraculous things that happened to me was the day I came closest to death. In Russia, poor kids find crazy ways to entertain themselves. One of these was to grip the back of a trolley car during winter, and slide with one’s feet on the snow. I did this during the first snow that winter, and as the trolley sped by the side of a soccer field I was knocked down by bricks that were on the tracks, and had my left leg nearly ripped off. When I looked at my leg it was all crushed bone and gore. I screamed like mad.
An older man was walking with a cane on the soccer field track. When he heard me cry, he suddenly straightened up and became tall, ran to the tall chain-link fence, climbed over it, and got to me in what seemed like seconds. He carried me to a car nearby as I was bleeding heavily. I believe our Master used this old man to save me. Thank you, Master.
These memories came back to me when I began cultivating and they inspired me to be diligent. I experienced many wonderful visions as Master encouraged me to keep going when I began practicing. When I first read about Master planting energy mechanisms in practitioners’ bodies, I had a dream in which my body was a great dark ocean, much like the cosmos. Looking up at the surface from the bottom, I saw a long white boat. A man in the back was using a tall pole to navigate the boat. Master was standing at the front of the boat, tall and radiant. From his hand, stars were falling, like seeds being sown, into the ocean.
About three months after I began practicing I met some practitioners who took me to distribute Shen Yun flyers at hotels. Shortly after that, a practitioner invited me to my first big group Fa study. I remember looking at every Chinese auntie and feeling like they were the most amazing people. After we read, Master came in to talk to us about Shen Yun and some other things. I was very excited, and I don’t remember what he said. I was so excited that after clapping, I sat down on my copy of Zhuan Falun and an elderly practitioner had to poke me to get the book out. After the lecture, everyone applauded with an enthusiasm I had never felt before. I was sitting in the back of the room. As Master was leaving, he looked at me for just a moment. I still have this image in my mind—there’s no way to describe it.
When I came home after the lecture, I did the first exercise, and as I did it I felt countless Falun spinning all over my body. All I could think was, “I am a Falun Dafa practitioner.”
My understanding is that Master has been by our side for countless years guiding us to this period, and that my story is not special. I wrote it down hoping that it would encourage others.
If there is any room for improvement, please point it out. Thank you, Master; thank you, fellow practitioners.
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