My cultivation experiences

Over the past six months, I have been reading articles from the Chinese online experience sharing conference by Mainland Chinese practitioners, each one of which has helped me with issues that I was working through or connected with when I read the article. Some of the practitioners had not written before, some had not got involved for a long time because they felt they did not have anything worth sharing. Feeling the same at first, I enlightened that this is not pulling my weight in the environment of practitioners as we all have a part to play, directly or indirectly.

After the coordinator asked me to contribute an article to the UK FA Conference, although initially I agreed it took me some time to gather my thoughts and actually do it. After several attempts I felt that the sharing I could offer was based on the FA and came from within as I found I was trying to censor my writing in order to make it “look good” so that it was deemed acceptable. In other words, I was trying to make myself comfortable using human attachments and staying on the surface to avoid opening up.

Writing the article enabled me to root out and remove some bad notions that were holding me back.
Censorship is a tool used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which edits information or distorts the truth in order to lead people down a path that is comfortable on the surface because it supports conformity to the norm and compliance but actually is very evil. Many people in Western society have this mentality, which has been used by the evil forces propping up the CCP to confuse them about the persecution of Falun Gong and is fear based. I have found that people fall into roughly two groups; the ones that think the CCP has improved and is doing good things for China, and the ones that have ideological issues about religion and spirituality. Mostly people think that the CCP has improved which means that they support the CCP and are in danger.

Since I obtained the Fa 13 years ago, my family have found it very difficult to understand Falun Gong and to make a moral choice about the CCP. Although my sister read a copy of Zhuan Falun very early on, she said she could not understand it and gave it back to me. She was trying to follow with her intellect, rather than with the heart and was not open to hearing of the atrocities committed by the CCP. It always degenerated into a debate which was her means of controlling the conversation.

Over the years I have tried many different approaches however none made a visible impression. I came to realise that this was down to my lack of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance when dealing with my family even though looking through ordinary eyes, it seemed like I was justified in holding negative thoughts about them. Actually it was my lack of understanding of the Fa that was holding me back from making progress because I held onto many attachments to justify my position. In Dafa Disciples Must Study the Fa - Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 Washington DC Metro Area Fa Conference Master said: “As they see it, “If you are to save me, you have to reach my level first, and you must have this measure of mighty virtue before you can save me. Without such mighty virtue, without having reached my stature, how could you save me?” So they would have you trip and fall, suffer, and eliminate your attachments, after which, with your mighty virtue having been established, you will have cultivated to that level and be able to save them.” I needed to work harder on cultivation in order to reach them.

As a salesperson in a very competitive market, I was expected to compete and fight for personal interest in order to win business so by conforming to the state of ordinary society’s expectations and my company’s requirements in 2009 I became the #2 salesperson of a massive global company.
At the end of 2009, I experienced a very severe tribulation due to my lack of diligent progress in cultivation which enabled the old forces to hurt me very badly. In Essentials for Further Advancement Master said in True Cultivation “As a matter of fact, when you agonize over infringements upon your reputation, self-interest, and feelings among everyday people, it already indicates that you cannot let go of ordinary human attachments. You must remember this: Cultivation itself is not painful—the key lies in your inability to let go of ordinary human attachments. Only when you are about to let go of your reputation, interests, and feelings will you feel pain.”

So I endured it and when it came to an end I was able to understand that Master was helping me clean up my act and to pay back my debts quickly. During the tribulation, my assistant consciousness knew that this was very important for me to go through to help my cultivation state because my main consciousness was stubbornly resisting and I was not always rational towards myself. At the start of 2010, I went through another very severe tribulation linked indirectly to the first one. It was an opportunity to let go of a lot of things I was hanging onto. Both tribulations combined had the effect of changing my environment massively due to the level of loss I experienced and my tolerance improved a great deal as did my demeanour. I no longer had the need to fight and compete for personal interest because that had gone from my system. If the human body can be likened to a universe, my universe does not have that characteristic in it any more. I was so thankful to Master for helping me with this.

Following this I now found that I had no interest in competing for sales as I did previously and I became an expert at relationship management which is part of sales, far more rewarding for the client and fitting in with the FA which requires practitioners to put others first. However things move more slowly at this pace and I left the big company which continued to compete and fight and went to work with a smaller global company where they were open to truth clarification. They agreed that I could work on the Zhen Shan Ren art project alongside my main work. In fact when Shen Yun came to the UK, I did a lot of work on a sponsorship project using my work time. Because I had not balanced my requirements that well, my company saw that I was not doing so well with my work and reduced my targets to help me, not once but three times. This is unheard of in a sales environment.

Likewise my interpersonal relationships improved although not all at once. Recently the coordinator of a project I am working on kept chopping and changing actions, issuing orders that were not always that constructive to the project. One thing he did that directly affected me made me feel very angry. The anger was unexpected and I looked within. The passage in Zhuan Falun Lecture Four about the husband and the wife fighting over Qigong practice came into my mind: Master said “In fact, your wife is helping you eliminate karma, though she does not know it herself. She is not fighting with you only superficially and still good to you in her heart—it is not so. It is real anger from the bottom of her heart, because whoever has acquired the karma feels uncomfortable. It is guaranteed to be this way.” The coordinator was helping me remove karma on a personal level. I realised that the coordinator comes from a very different realm to mine and so our communication styles are very different. I sent a very simple email which was neutral so he could think about the situation from a different angle. I sent forth righteous thoughts. Immediately after finishing righteous thoughts, I received a phone call from the coordinator who agreed with my point and we put a different plan of action in place with no conflict.

When working on the China Forbidden News translation, which is news censored by the CCP but broadcast by NTD, I initially found it hard going due to the fear and confusion about the CCP which is sitting just beneath the surface of society and which mirrored my lack of progress with helping my family. As the weeks went by, I looked forward to doing the news because I became so well informed on the actual current situation in China that I could clarify the truth to my business acquaintances very easily and clear up misconceptions during the conversations. As a lot of my time is spent networking and meeting people, this is extremely useful and a very subtle way of reaching people who may otherwise not listen to the truth.

My husband thought the CCP was doing well and believed that Mao was a hero who helped China become a superpower. Like my sister, he also tried to debate with me to justify his views. After I stopped trying to convince him of the facts, I discussed with another practitioner who was worried and said I must try to help him understand because of our karmic relationship. I was thankful to be reminded of this as I have not always got on so well with my family in the past and I had to make more of an effort. I did not know exactly what to do but have learned to trust that Master has a plan for everything, even if I cannot see what it is. I have learned to wait and let things unfold and follow the path arranged for me.

One Saturday I went to Hong Fa in London to help hand out flyers. I had to pick up something from a shop so went to the Hong Fa later than I had planned. I tapped on the shoulder of a practitioner who was managing the activity to let him know I was there – straight away he said that I had arrived at a perfect time and asked me to speak to a journalist who just arrived to do an interview. This is an example of following Master’s path because I was in the right place at the right time through no actions of my own.

At this Hong Fa I came across an English DVD of the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party. Immediately I knew this was the way to reach my husband who loves to watch TV, films, documentaries and follow politics. That evening I gave it to him saying this was a gift from China. The DVD is very, very long. He watched it straight through. I experienced purification afterwards and my husband’s attitude to the Communists changed totally. He was horrified by Jiang Zemin – he said he was the worst of them all. The communist fighting spirit does not want to leave the three realms and is trying everything it can to interfere with life before it is eliminated. A couple of weeks after watching the DVD, my husband picked a huge fight with me which I refused to acknowledge. He was so fixated that we had to use ordinary means to restrain him. Afterwards I understood that the CCP does not want to give up those it has its claws into and the fight was generated by that evil in conflict with good. Following that incident my husband changed for the better and became calm and more restrained.

In the article What Is A Dafa Disciple, Master said: “As for saving sentient beings and clarifying the truth, a lot of people haven’t done it in depth. They’ll say just a few words to people, thinking “Listen or don’t listen, just do whatever you like. You don’t want to listen, fine!” and they’ll go on to find the next person. In whatever you do you should carry it through to the end, do it well, and if you intend to save someone, then go ahead and save him. When someone is placed before you, there isn’t a choice—you’re wrong if you become selective in terms of saving people.”

I became optimistic that I could still reach my sister and the rest of my family to help save them and recently I asked them to support me as I am running a marathon overseas to raise awareness of the persecution of Falun Gong. They agreed to come with me. Although this looks on the surface like something very ordinary, actually this is a major breakthrough as they are aligning themselves with the Fa by helping me for the first time. I also gave my sister a DVD of the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party and a copy of the Minghui special edition newspaper. I told her that she would learn something about the CCP that was very important. She said that she teaches many mainland Chinese students and started asking them about life in China. Most of the girls tell her the propaganda version but that a couple of students told her the truth of what it is really like. She was willing to take the DVD and newspaper when before she had no interest. I believe this came about because I was willing to make more effort with my family as no matter how they have behaved in the past. If I don’t help them understand about Falun Gong I will not have completed my mission correctly on their behalf and they may not have any other chances.

In lecture three of Zhuan Falun Master talked about not having feet in two boats. Master said “If you step on two boats at the same time and cultivate both this and that, you cannot attain anything.” Although Master was speaking directly about religion, according to my understanding following the cult of the CCP is like a religion which many people still worship like a deity without thought. In Master’s article To Choose, Master said “People, do not choose the wrong direction, Curry favour with the wicked regime, and you’ll be duped by demons. Dafa has already spread to the West from China, Only by learning the truth is there hope of salvation!”

These people cannot have one foot in the boat of humanity and one foot in the boat of the CCP. I hope we can all work harder on helping people wake up using whatever means we can as it is time to make a choice.

Thank you to Master for giving me the opportunity to be saved and to help people awaken. Thank you to fellow practitioners for being part of it.