An American Practitioner's Story of Encountering Falun Gong

Let me start by first sharing a general outline of my life. My life has been a reasonably typical American experience. I grew up in the late fifties and the sixties and seventies in middle-class America. As a child, I loved to play sports and games with my brothers, sister, and friends, and I was on my bicycle as often as possible. I loved school and was quite successful at it. My family experience was also typically American. My family had its strengths and weaknesses; my parents eventually divorced, but we managed through it. I would describe myself as a child as optimistic, intuitive, intelligent, and a little emotionally immature. My family typically waddled through the rough times without really talking about negative emotions; so I did likewise until into adulthood. Yet, I had a strong certainty about the truth. For example, I always knew who (adults or children) was sincere and who was telling me nonsense or being manipulative. Moreover, I had always had a certainty of who I am and how much I am willing to compromise.

While in college I married my boyfriend of four years; I also accepted a job at a major computer corporation. I divorced a few years later due to our lack of managing our differences well. I continued to work for the computer company in various aspects of their business over the next 10 years. During that time I greatly enjoyed the environment, work, and co-workers there. However, then I reconnected with an interest in psychology and decided to return to college to study psychology. After many years of study and life proceeding, I am now a clinical psychologist in private practice. I also conducted research and published in the field of psychology. Throughout my personal and professional life, I generally considered myself to be looking for the truth.

Now, let me share with you some detailed experiences in my life. These are experiences that I did not understand until I found Falun Gong. At the times of their occurrences, I filed them in my "unexplained" file. The first such experience occurred when I was in seventh grade (age 11 or 12). This was the first time I heard the word "Buddhism." I attended Catholic school, and in seventh grade religion class we began to study other religions. The experience I had was a very profound inner experience. When I heard the word "Buddhism," I had the experience of a bell sounding (like a school bell) and something of significant stature turning over. It was like a giant turning over in its sleep. This captured my complete attention, but I did not know what to make of it. So I just filed it in my "unexplained" file.

A second experience I had was at the age of 16. A friend of mine had gotten her first car, and brought it to another friend's house to show it to us. We all piled into and onto it to go for a ride. The car was a Chevy Nova; so it had a short stubby trunk. I was sitting on the trunk of the car. As we were riding around, we crossed a major street. After we crossed that street we hit a bump, and I fell off the trunk and onto the major street. After landing on the street in a lying down position, I turned my head to see if there were any cars coming in my direction. There was a car heading towards me that was around 10 feet from me. I saw two tires coming at me. The next thing I knew was that I was standing at the edge of the road with no physical pain or any concern. When I had hit the road, I had hit my head which hurt then. However, when standing at the edge of the road, I did not even feel as if I had hit my head. The Spanish man driving the car that was coming at me pulled over. He insisted that he had hit me and that I flew into the air. He insisted that I be taken to the hospital. (There were no cell phones then.) I insisted that I was OK- as I felt fine. My friends were dumb-founded; they didn't know what to think. I insisted that the man continue on his way, and he eventually did. At that time, I interpreted the occurrence as my having a guardian angel.

Another "unexplained" experience I had was in my mid to late 20s in a parking garage at a major airport. I was there at noontime to pick up a guy I was dating and was waiting for the elevator to go to a higher floor to enter the airport from the garage. When the elevator doors opened, I noticed two or three guys inside the elevator, but I did not have any concern about entering the elevator. While beginning to walk into the elevator, a force like a wind or something pulling me back by my shirt kept me from entering the elevator. Immediately after the elevator doors closed, the thought flashed in my mind, "You would have been their lunch." I became a little fearful and used the stairs. This experience was also filed in the "unexplained" file.

Around the age of 30, I had a second profound inner experience while travelling on a business trip. Upon entering the airplane, I found my seat and was getting settled in. An occurrence across the aisle captured by absolutely full attention. (I did not typically give much attention to such small situations.) Across the aisle, a woman who was clumsily making her way down the aisle bumped into a man who was putting things into the overhead compartment. The man's response was selfless and gracious. He seemed genuinely concerned about her well-being. His doing so seemed very much beyond merely being gentlemanly. My immediate thought was that was how I wanted to be. The man seemed to function at a different level than the vast majority of people. I was generally kind and considerate, but I think I would have been irritated or annoyed at the woman. The man, on the other hand, did not seem the least bit irritated. Throughout the flight I occasionally looked at him with great curiosity to try to identify what kind of person he was. He was so different than anyone I had seen before. I had worked with some incredibly gracious, generous, non-ego oriented people, but this guy was different; he was purely, genuinely not moved by the experience except for his concern for the woman. This experience was very unusual for me; I didn't finely observe or want to be like other people. However, I walked away from the experience vaguely knowing this was how I wanted to be.

Throughout my life I have had numerous experiences of being protected, whether it was in a life or death situation or from being robbed. Just in the two years I lived in New York City alone, I was protected from having my pocket picked, my purse snatched, and being hit by a van, cars, delivery guys, etc. There have been too many accounts to detail here.

During my twenties I picked up a book at my local library titled The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. In it, I read about the Buddha. From there, I began to read books on Eastern beliefs, and I felt somewhat insistent on good English versions of ancient texts such as the Dhammapada, Upanishads, and Bhagavaad Gita. They were books I was interested in reading. I occasionally went back to the library to pick up The 100... to read again about the Buddha. I had a hunger for this information. However, I did not understand or see how I could live my life according to those beliefs. Thus, my life (which was a mild version of the "rat race") and beliefs were not cohesively one. I encountered many Eastern practises (such as Mahayana Buddhism) and spiritual figures, but I clearly knew each was not what I was looking for. That is, until I found Falun Gong. A Chinese coworker told me about it.

At that time, I was looking for something that included spiritual and physical aspects and that was pure (that is, not watered down or contaminated over time). I had attended a presentation on qigong at a local bookstore, but I didn't feel right about the qigong teacher/presenter. (My intuition has always served me well, and I have learnt over time to trust it.) When I heard about Falun Gong, I immediately wanted to know more. It was like my ears perked right up. After reading Zhuan Falun, I kept after my co-worker to teach me the exercises. She was busy, so she showed me one or two of the five exercises. I brought home the exercise music and listened to it. That night I awoke in the middle of the night and intensely threw up, as if I had food poisoning. I knew it was for the same reason Master Li details in Zhuan Falun - body purification. I recognised the teachings as the Truth. Additionally, all the experiences I had in my "unexplained" file all made sense after reading Zhuan Falun. It has been almost five years that I have been practising Falun Gong. In that time I have experienced many aspects of Falun Gong, such as the opening of my third eye (although I am very limited in what I can see).

Falun Gong has been incredibly meaningful to me. It presents the truth and it has opened my heart, calmed me down (I previously was a bit high-strung at times), given me a means to live according to my spiritual beliefs, and given me an indefinable joy and well-being. Although I did have to look up forbearance in the dictionary when I first started to practise Falun Gong, I understand my experience of the man on the airplane. I am becoming more like that every day as I develop Truth-Compassion-Tolerance. I still have the option to live in the "rat race" as some of my friends do. I live in a health-conscious, wealthy community, and I could focus on those things if I wanted to. However, Falun Gong is something beyond these and other ordinary matters.

In my professional life, I continue to practise psychology as I was trained to do. Yet, I bring to it greater generosity and less self-interest. I also look within myself, professionally, to assess how I can continue to improve my piece of the work I do with clients.

Regarding Master Li (the Teacher of Falun Gong), I have never seen anyone else who more purely practises what He teaches, and He goes unimaginably above and beyond.