UK: Cherish the cultivation path arranged by master

Hello, Master! Hello fellow practitioners!

I am from the UK. Today I would like to take the opportunity at the Fa conference to share with you my nearly ten-year cultivation process. Because I wrote a sharing article for the Fa Conference a few years ago, this sharing will start after that.

Get rid of resentment and be compassionate

In the early days of the lockdown in the UK, fellow practitioners were very anxious, knowing that this was another major weeding out. We started trying to save more sentient beings. After further discussion, we planned to clarify the truth to the MPs in the UK, and send some truth-related letters to the MPs every day. Because some fellow practitioners have good electronic skills and have experience in clarifying the truth to MPs, it took about a week to send about 500 to 600 letters to MPs. As a result, there was a lot of support and positive feedback from MPs.

During the lockdown, one practitioner also asked me to distribute The Epoch Times newspaper with him. This fellow practitioner has been distributing newspapers for several years, targeting apartments popular with residents from Mainland China. He always does this project in his spare time, which is admirable. But at the beginning, I felt that he liked to say nice things, like always giving you sweets to eat, but I don't like very sweet things. Later, I gradually understood his approach. He is optimistic and likes to encourage others. At the same time, he can balance family, work and cultivation well. I learned many good things from him such as always to be optimistic and rational about things. We would spend five or six hours on Saturdays distributing The Epoch Times newspaper in popular apartments in southwest London, and we would distribute Shen Yun leaflets during the Shen Yun promotion period. We distributed them for about a year or two, and the time passed so quickly.

When the city went into lockdown for the second time, I disagreed with him and had a dispute, because I had a dissertation to write and was already doing teacher training. However, he wanted to go outside of London to distribute Shen Yun flyers during the lockdown period, but at that time there were laws that prohibited us from doing so. In addition, I felt that he was treating me in a forceful tone, so I didn't agree to go. He was very angry and left. I was also very angry and didn't want to talk to him, but after calming down, I thought, in fact, his thinking was not wrong, and he wanted to save more sentient beings. During that time, my family didn’t understand me distributing newspapers during the lockdown, and I was impatient, so I didn’t have a rational explanation. They eventually decided to leave me and go back to China with strong opposition towards me and fear of getting infected with Covid. At that time, I felt very sad. I had been doing good deeds, but few people could truly understand.

The city was in lockdown for about a year. During this time, because I worked at home and had plenty of time, I was able to study the Fa, do the exercises, and post some facts about Dafa on the Internet. But gradually I came into contact with ordinary people's videos and articles, and I started watching romance TV dramas, so I slacked off doing the three things. During this period, I met some friends on Facebook and a girl who had just obtained the Fa.

One day, she suddenly confessed to me, saying that she liked me and hoped that we could be together. Because of my own experience of being rejected by others before, coupled with the fact that it was difficult for me to be together with her and taking many factors into consideration, I wanted to turn her down, but after she was repeatedly pleading with me and saying many nice things to me, I finally agreed. Before agreeing, I asked her some questions about whether she could accept my culture, height and move to London to live with me. She agreed to come down. At that time, I was very emotionally involved with her. But all this was a lie. Just when I was about to tell my parents to arrange the wedding, she suddenly decided to break up with me because she fell in love with someone else. I was extremely angry and felt that I had been abandoned by others again. I knew she had made up her mind to go, so I left her. This was after the lockdown of the city, and the school had started classes. The pressure of work, the loss of relationships, and the departure of family members made my heart very depressed, and I could no longer bear the depression. I started to hate this world. Because of my negative thoughts, I could feel that the colleagues and students around me were all negative. Some co-workers would say nasty things in front of me, and there was a notoriously difficult student in my class.

I had been holding on to these things all the time, looking at everything that happened with my ordinary mindset, and I was really angry at that time. I could only ask Master for help, but I couldn't get into it when I was studying the Fa.

There was another time when I was on the Tube (underground). I was listening to Master's lecture on the surface, but I was resentful of everything that happened at that time. Then, I attracted something bad. When I got out of the station, I felt something moving on my neck. 

I happened to grab something in my hand. A big spider was in my hand, and it had a big red spot on its body. I was startled, and I threw it on the ground. Later, I realized that it was my own resentment that attracted it. It was extremely poisonous, and it could have killed me if it had bitten me. I realised this was corresponding to my own heart. After going through these things, I remembered what Master said in Lecture 1 of “Zhuan Falun”: "The entire cultivation process for a cultivator is one of constantly giving up human attachments." Although it was difficult, I still chose to cultivate.

Later on, the fellow practitioner who distributed the newspaper took the initiative to come to me, invited me to drink tea, and chatted about the current situation. Afterwards, we let go of the bad experience and continued to work on this project together again. Later, A Vietnamese practitioner listened to my experience, and he also shared his experience, and encouraged me to let go of the attachments. Then, I thought studying the Fa more would definitely help, and I hoped to have the opportunity to study the Fa with practitioners face to face. He told me that a practitioner couple had recently moved to my neighbourhood and that they might be able to help me. After getting their consent, I called that practitioner in my local area after work. After learning about my situation, he pointed out how I should look inward using the Fa taught by Master. In his understanding, he realized that fame, profit, and emotion are the three major demons that a cultivator faces. People just can't let go of them, so they can destroy people. As a cultivator, you can't be influenced by them.

I understood right away and my righteous thoughts occurred. On this occasion, I spent a long time communicating with this fellow practitioner. For me, this was a new beginning for my cultivation, the path Master arranged for me. In the following time, I would often go to this fellow practitioner's home to do the exercises, study the Fa, and share about our cultivation. From then, I only wanted to do the three things well, namely study the Fa, send righteous thoughts, and save sentient beings. I also realized that I did not look inward and did not have enough righteous thoughts in my past cultivation, and I was far away from their level, so I made up my mind to speed up my steps to cultivate up. I started going to Chinatown and Trafalgar Square to spread the Fa and clarify the truth. At the beginning, I just went to practice for two hours to demonstrate the five sets of exercises, and then gradually distributed truth-clarification materials, and I could stay for a day.

I remember one time when I went to Chinatown to do exercises, some passers-by took a video of me and they posted it on the Internet. Later, the video spread in schools, and students asked me what I was doing, so I took this opportunity to clarify the truth to them. In school and in life, I have behaved according to the standards of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. In the past, students would always ask me strange questions, such as "Why is the sky blue?" "Why is my book orange?" I used to look at them angrily with a cold face, but now I calmly tell them that this is a good question, but now it is maths class time, after the class has finished, you can come to my office and we can talk about these questions. After that, they stopped asking such questions again. In the face of a colleague who once disrespected me, one morning she hadn’t prepared a class and the file couldn’t be opened, and I knew there was another way to help her open the file. I let go of my resentment and told her this method immediately, so she could prepare lessons again. Afterwards, she was very grateful and shared with me some past events such as teaching English in China. I told her the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and she expressed sympathy and wanted to practice.

Actively participating in Dafa projects

When I learned that fellow practitioners planned to go to a small town in England to distribute truth-clarification leaflets and collect signatures, I really wanted to go, but when I checked my time schedule it was time for me to go to work. I was very sad that I couldn’t go and went back to school again. I have also become patient with my students, and will explain in a logical way over and over again to make them understand. In fact, that child who is difficult to teach has become like this because of domestic violence since she was a young child. One day she was talking, clapping and throwing things in class again, making it hard for me to teach. She was sent to detention after three warnings. In the afternoon, I went to speak to her and her adoptive mother, hoping that she could listen to me in the class and abide by the classroom discipline. She said something like "I discriminated against her", but I didn't take it to heart. In the next week, fellow practitioners were going to distribute leaflets. They would go for about a week, and would distribute more than 30,000 leaflets for clarifying the truth and collecting signatures. They would leave on Tuesday. I really wanted to go but I had my job to do, so I asked Master to help me. Master really helped me. When I went to class on Monday, I was told by the school staff to go home and quarantine for two weeks just as I was about to start class in the morning. The reason was that the child who was difficult to teach was infected with Covid the week before, and I had contact with her before.

As soon as I heard it, I realized that it was arranged by Master, so I called fellow practitioners, hoping to go. On the second day, a total of ten people went to distribute truth-clarifying leaflets. On the first day, because I had a disagreement with one of the fellow practitioners in our group and wanted him to listen to me, we didn't finish distributing in the areas that we intended to cover. After returning home, I looked inward and found my selfish heart. On the second day, I stopped emphasizing my opinions and cooperated with fellow practitioners. At the same time, I issued a military order to myself: I will not go back until I finish distributing in the areas I want to distribute today! After spending an extra hour, it was finally done. On the third day, the notion of my being on my own began to emerge, as if I was tired and needed to rest more. Because we started to meditate and do the exercises and send forth righteous thoughts around 5am in the morning, we studied the Fa after we did the exercises, and then we had breakfast after studying the Fa, and afterwards we went out to distribute leaflets. The schedule was very intense. I felt tired after spending five or six hours distributing leaflets every day. But the fellow practitioners didn’t have this notion, and they still insisted on doing the three things every day. I knew that I should let go of this human notion, and remembered Master’s teaching “Buddha Nature” from “Zhuan Falun Volume 2”: “If you can truly remove the notions formed after birth and recover the perception of your original nature, that will be where you came from, the earliest concepts that you formed—that is, the concepts from the place where you were first created. But it is very hard to vanquish thinking and notions acquired after birth, for that is what cultivation is all about.”

After letting go of these notions, I am in another state. I am very energetic and my body is very light. If I think I am tired, I can meditate and recover immediately. This time for this task passed quickly. When fellow practitioners asked me what I felt the most this time, I said, there are people beyond people, and there is a sky beyond the sky (meaning there are higher levels of people above me). At the end, I knew that my xinxing had improved again, and I no longer dared to be arrogant, and gradually understood the importance of unconditionally cooperating with fellow practitioners. Another week later, a fellow practitioner told us that thousands of people in that small town had signed our petition. Soon, it will be the school summer vacation, and I want to clarify the truth further before leaving this school. Once I went to a fellow practitioner's home and saw lotus flowers, so I wanted to give lotus flowers as gifts to my students and colleagues.

On 7/20, I asked the school for a two-day leave, and at the same time, I needed the consent of the director and the principal in our school. I wrote the truth about Dafa and the persecution, and they immediately agreed after reading it. When we met again later, I felt that they had more respect for me afterward. The fellow practitioner gave me about 200 to 300 lotus flowers, and the colleagues and students were very happy when they received them. Colleagues also asked for a few more for family members. At the same time, I typed the meaning of the lotus on a small piece of paper, hoping that they can learn like a lotus, "coming out of the mud without being stained".

When participating in the Shen Yun promotion project, I would do door-to-door distributing leaflets on weekends, and I do this every year. During this process, I am constantly improving myself and letting go of attachments, and I have witnessed the hard work and great dedication from fellow practitioners. I remember once I went to a popular apartment block to distribute Shen Yun leaflets and met the old lady who clarified the truth to me many years ago. I am filled with emotions, time is fleeting, and I know that everything is coming to an end, so I can only be brave and diligent in my cultivation and save more people to repay the grace of Dafa’s Master and disciples for saving me and the human race in this world.

Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good, Falun Dafa is good!

Please correct me if there is anything inappropriate.

Thank you all!

 

(Submitted to the European Fa-conference 2023 in Paris)