My cultivation path as a new practitioner

I started to practise Falun Dafa in February 2016.

As of 2008, I started reading various spiritual teachings. Then in 2013, I felt a sudden urge to visit Asian countries and find a master to guide me.

In that period, a friend introduced me to a spiritual teacher, but it didn’t feel right to me. I even asked him after two or three days of meetings how far he had gone in his own cultivation.

I felt I was at a crossroads and didn’t know where to go. For that reason I stayed with him another 2 years, before I finally left him.

Finally, I met with my pre-destination in Thailand, where I went as a tourist. My hotel room had a mountain view and I could see a statue of a Buddha from my window. I wanted to visit that place, and I did visit it three days before I returned home.

I spoke to the Buddha statue seeking help, expressing my wish to break loose of all worldly things. I felt unusual calmness when we headed back to the hotel from that place. I felt as if fire was starting to burn in my heart.

Upon my return to Montenegro, I contacted my friend in Serbia who I met in earlier years of my spiritual quest, and shared my experience from Thailand. She was already a cultivator of Falun Dafa at that time. She mentioned the book Falun Gong to me. I asked for the link and started reading it right away.

Next time when we talked, she mentioned Zhuan Falun and brought me the printed version by bus after that. I couldn't wait till I got home – I started to read the book right on the street.

I was reading for 9 days, carefully absorbing each and every word. And I felt this was definitely it. The book was providing me with answers I longed for.

Keeping one cultivation way

Although I felt like a practitioner from the very beginning, I made a huge mistake some three months after starting.

I met a guy who told me about his own cultivation. Curious by nature, I listened to him carefully. At that time I did not know, but I was unknowingly accepting things from his own cultivation way.

Consequences came a bit later. I was with friends and smoked some pot. This made me feel very strange.

I felt as if two different energies were struggling inside me. Through my third eye, I saw a low-density gong column rising from my body. I saw Falun rotating inside me and above my head. A net of emotions rose from within my heart, and I saw beams of light emitting from the heart. My heart was connected to the universe and then the area around my neck, where I saw blue light. After that, a part of grey matter rose up from the brain area. I heard a voice talking to me.

The next day it continued. My head twitched and I fell down to the floor multiple times. My body was tormented.

On the third day, in the early morning, something moving inside my body woke me up. I felt as if something possessed my body. At that moment I felt great fear. I knew fear was not good, so I turned to Master Li for help. I called him in my heart, and declared to anyone who could hear me: "I'm a Dafa practitioner and my only Master is Li Hongzhi."

After a while, it disappeared from my body. I described this episode in few sentences, but the process I went through was utterly scary. Fellow cultivators should pay attention to following only one way in cultivation. Stick to one discipline! As Master said in Zhuan Falun, Lecture 3, “Practicing Only One Cultivation Way”: “Therefore, one must focus on only one practice, and even thoughts from other practices should not be mixed in.”

The tests

When I was a little girl I was stung by a bee. That's when I found out I was allergic.

After I turned 30, I was stung again. I thought I was not allergic anymore, so I just observed surface reactions, until at one point I started to breathe heavily. My parents urgently got me to the hospital and when I got there, I was barely alive. When it was all over, doctors advised me to pay special attention - as next time could be fatal.

The next time was in May this year. I was in a shopping mall, heading for a bank to pay bills. Riding on an escalator, I pushed my hair with my hand. That’s when I felt I was stung and I actually found the sting in my finger. I wasn't scared. Holding my finger I pulled out the sting. I was looking inward, observing my thoughts and the first thought was: "I'm a Dafa practitioner." I remembered Master's words from Zhuan Falun, Lecture 4, “Improving Xinxing”: "We have said that good or bad comes from a person’s initial thought, and the thought at that moment can bring about different consequences."

From the escalator, I stepped into the bank and stood in the queue. No one could see what I was going through. Bad thoughts were rising, and I was fighting them back. One thought suggested I call my colleagues for help, but I knew by the time they arrived I would be dead. I also knew if I collapsed right now, people wouldn't know what the reason was, so no doctor could help either.

Then I said to myself: "No, I'm practitioner; I won't call anyone." My main consciousness was strong at that moment. While my finger was painful and my body was trembling, I started to chant: "I'm a practitioner; my Master is Li Hongzhi; Zhen Shan Ren is good; the outcome depends on one thought."

At one point I had a vision of myself being very tall. I saw myself different from the person in this dimension. It was the body and the image of a Buddha. The body was transparent, so I could only see a small part of myself, the human part. There was a field around my body, around 1.5 meters wide. Outside of that field I saw all sorts of demons, ready to devour me, but none could penetrate the field. I was so big and strong and solid that they could do nothing. I never collapsed. My finger even didn't swell much. I passed the test.

Sending forth righteous thoughts

After one year of cultivation, I started to send forth righteous thoughts. This definitely cleaned away my thought karma, but still, being a new practitioner, I often had doubts: Am I doing it in the right way and do I really have the power to eliminate evil?

One time when I had thought like that I suddenly remembered Master's words from Zhuan Falun, Lecture 3, “Supernormal Abilities and Gong Potency”: "Supernormal abilities are directed by a person’s consciousness. When a person is sleeping, he might not be able to conduct himself properly and with a single dream, by the next morning, he might have turned Heaven and Earth upside down. Now, that wouldn’t be allowed."

With that I saw myself with the top of my head opened and a high-density gong going out. It seemed as if my body was nothing but a pipe, while human skin was just clothing.

All of the visions I mentioned come from my third eye opened at very limited level. I had visions prior to Dafa as well, but I wasn't aware those come from my third eye.

Master said in Lecture 6 of Zhuan Falun, in “The Mentality of Showing Off”: "Precisely because he does not believe them, he thinks that what he sees is absolute and that there are only these things. It is way off, because this person’s level is just here."

Truth clarification

In the beginning, I didn't use many of the opportunities I was given by Master. I used all kinds of excuses not to talk to people, such as not knowing how to approach them or what to say. Sometimes I'd judge a person based on looks, behaviour etc.

However, after looking inside and finding my attachments I didn't care any more about what was on the outside. Now, when I talk about Dafa and the persecution, people listen to me carefully. By changing the situation inside, we change the situation outside.

As Master said in "What is Dafa disciple": "When someone is placed before you, there isn’t a choice—you’re wrong if you become selective in terms of saving people. As long as he is someone you run into, you should save him, regardless of his position or social status, or whether he be the president or a beggar. In the eyes of gods, beings are equal. Social status is just a distinction made in human society."

From the very beginning, I've considered cultivation as very serious. On this cultivation path, I should be strict with myself and there are no excuses. We should raise the standards all the time. Master emphasizes that cultivation is up to us. Each tribulation is tough, but we must learn to look inside, because the more we look the more we see attachments in various layers. If we think we have no such situations, then we should ask ourselves whether we are actually cultivating or not.

Please point out if anything is inappropriate.

Thank you, Master!
Thank you, fellow practitioners!