Bulgaria: Eighth Bulgarian Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference Held in Plovdiv

On December 15th, 2019, the Trimontium hotel in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv hosted the Eighth Bulgarian Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference. Many Bulgarian practitioners attended the conference to draw inspiration from each other and to improve in the cultivation process of adhering to the three principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.

Following an early morning demonstration of the Falun Gong exercises, the conference began at 10 am with a sharing from a veteran female practitioner, who spoke about her cultivation experiences for the very first time. She explained how difficult this process was for her. Over the years she realized how pure and precious the environment of practitioners was. She emphasised the importance of righteous thoughts and the principles Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance for the success of the projects she was working on.

A married couple, who also hosted the event, were next to share their cultivation experiences. Both spoke about their own perspective on a serious marital crisis they went through together. They understood how ample righteous thoughts and getting rid of attachments like selfishness, vanity and not caring enough about others helped them overcome the desperate situation.

Marital problems were also discussed by a veteran practitioner, who had difficulties solving problems caused by her husband’s previous marriage. Her heart was filled with resentment toward him but the situation gradually improved after she managed to deliberately transform this resentment into compassion.

A serious challenge in cultivation was also discussed in the sharing of a coordinator from one of Bulgaria's biggest cities. As an ordinary person he had a big attachment to money and few years ago, when he started his own enterprise, these human attachments resurfaced. He had a bad accident resulting in serious burns all over his body. Thanks to intense righteous thoughts, his condition improved remarkably fast and he managed to put his cultivation first and foremost.

A similar experience was had by another practitioner from the region of Rhodope Mountains. She harboured incorrect thoughts toward two practitioners. Soon after she was involved in a car accident, which she recovered from in a very short time. “According to the doctors, the recovery of my broken pelvis was a medical miracle,” the practitioner wrote in her sharing.

Many young practitioners also shared their cultivation experiences. Nicole from the city of Varna looked within and found the attachment to reputation inhibited her as she was afraid of being criticized for her actions. Another young practitioner described how in the process of getting married to his girlfriend, he found attachments to competing with his father and sentimentality towards his mother.

A young practitioner from the city of Sofia shared about how he wanted to take his friends to a practice site and for two days he was faced with a number of obstacles. When he realised that he needed to be determined in his mind, they all managed to do the exercises with other practitioners at the practice site in Sofia’s South Park.

Plovdiv is Bulgaria's cultural capital and one of the oldest cities in Europe. Accompanying events took place on the day before the conference when an exercise demo was held at Simeonov’s Garden in the city centre.

Signatures were collected for a petition to bring Jiang Zemin to justice at two locations in downtown Plovdiv. Jiang Zemin is the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party who initiated the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners 20 years ago.

Passersby enthusiastically took flyers to find out more. After learning about the persecution, some eagerly showed their support for efforts to stop the human rights abuses against Falun Gong in China by signing the petition. Many carefully kept the leaflets with the intention of finding out more online.

Two elderly ladies discussed how even though they saw the exercise demonstration and received flyers, they were hesitant to sign the petition: “What can we do at this advanced age? Nothing is up to us!” One of the practitioners answered that age doesn’t really matter when it comes to defending innocent people. She also explained that each person’s individual actions may not be able to do much, but combined together these little actions have a huge impact. Both ladies signed the petition.

A former drug addict, who had embraced spirituality, also signed the petition after a long talk with one of the event’s organisers. He wanted to make sure that Falun Gong practitioners are not judgmental and their practice promotes compassion like Christianity.