UK: Cherish the opportunity to cultivate

Greetings Master, Greetings fellow practitioners:

I obtained the Fa with my mother in 1997 and I immigrated to the UK in August of 1999. I started my life in England at the end of 2000. When I started living in the UK, my mother gave me an early edition of Zhuan Falun. Since then, this precious book has guided my cultivation path.

On the path of cultivation, I sometimes became lost, sometimes confused, ignorant, stumbling, and I walked this path at times crookedly, but I still firmly cultivated in Dafa. There was an unforgettable event in my early cultivation that I will never forget.

When I was at university, my father helped me set up a computer for the purpose of making it easier for me to find relevant academic information online. Due to being busy with my studies and with part-time jobs to earn money for prolonged periods, I was immersed in the ordinary people's environment, and I got hooked on playing games online. What's more, I became obsessed with them, and I couldn't extricate myself from them. Due to an irregular diet and rest, sitting in front of the computer for prolonged periods had an effect on me. On one occasion, I felt very dizzy; I wanted to stand up and walk around, just to do something else. I stood up and hadn’t even taken two steps when I blacked out. I fainted and the back of my head hit the corner of the wardrobe. At that moment I was in a dark empty space. I could hear the sound of my thoughts. I was thinking: I can’t leave like this. My mission has not been completed, the mission of saving people has not come to an end yet. Can I just leave like this? As soon as this thought emerged, there was a white light, which was very gentle and comfortable. I felt it was Master who brought me back. It was Master who felt pity for my life. When my life was about to end, in that moment, I still thought about my mission in this life to assist Master and save people. I knew I was wrong, Master had mercy on me and saved my life. I regained consciousness, and realized I was lying on the floor with my head leant against the wardrobe, and the back of my head was in severe pain. When I touched it, there was a lot of blood. I hurried to the nearby hospital to get the wound treated. There was a 7-8 cm gash in my head that needed more than ten stitches. This lesson was to warn me: if I deviate from my practice, my life would be in danger! I owed this life to Master, and the purpose of my life is to assist Master to save people and fulfill my vow.

Overcome low self-esteem and elevate the realm of my cultivation practice

In the UK, I found when I met with locals, they were very calm and friendly. I wondered why they were so nice, even sometimes a little silly; whilst being silly they were natural and they made people feel relaxed. I felt they were communicating with me openly, without any concerns. I originally thought cultivation meant being upright and just, being an honest person. Yet faced with the challenges of loss and gain in my daily work and living environment, I found it difficult to deal with the temptations of the surrounding environment with righteous thoughts, and felt unbalanced in my heart. Sometimes I wondered if it's worth it for me to work so hard when I'm doing something? I held Dafa closely and read the principles of Dafa every day. How come the more I studied, the more negative I became? Isn't it true that the more one cultivates, the better one becomes in cultivation? Why was it the more I cultivated, the more I felt wronged and resentful? I had been diligent already, and I also looked within. What do I have to overcome? I had considered this question for many years, and during further cultivation and elevation, I found my inferiority complex seriously affected my elevation to a higher realm. I realized that as a practitioner, in my work and living environment, I needed to be responsible for my cultivation. My thoughts and motivation, the starting point for doing things must first be correct. In terms of the Fa, does it conform to the characteristics of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance? Where my thoughts were not in line with the Fa, I needed to immediately be vigilant, reflect, and correct them.

Focus on cultivation with my heart

During the Easter holiday of a certain year before the pandemic, my mother and my fellow practitioners drove to the southwest corner of England to visit and sightsee. On the way, I was informed I should go to London for a meeting the next day, and should try my best to attend. That night when I went back to the hotel to rest, my main consciousness went out (exploring other dimensions), and three immortals in white Taoist robes came to see me, keeping a certain distance from me, looking at me with disdain and disgust. They were probably the gods in charge of that domain, and they had very capable disciples. They disliked me as an ordinary person, as I was viewed as weak, timid, and a little bit childish. They came to see me, were very disappointed and dissatisfied. The one in the middle of the three looked at me seriously, and the one next to him said with a mocking tone, “How about it? Look at how powerful our disciples are. Why don't you consider learning from us?” Then they showed me how powerful they were and what magical powers they had. When they were teasing me, one other of them appeared to have felt something, and very nervously told the other two to leave quickly, or it would be too late. Whilst they appeared to be running for their lives, I woke up. It was still early, and we set off for the meeting in London before dawn.

After everyone sat down at the meeting venue, I had not expected Master to turn up to answer questions at our local Fa sharing in the UK. I asked Master: “In the past, we performed just two Shen Yun performances in the UK, and the promotions were already very challenging. How do we go about multiple cities with ten or twenty performances?” Master answered my question compassionately, with a smile on His face, and since it had been a certain number of years, I can’t remember what He said word for word, though I recall the general meaning was: Master had a plan for the promotions of Shen Yun. He cited the promotion in the United States, the methods, how the main person in charge thought of promoting Shen Yun and came up with a solution. He told us to do it wholeheartedly, and to do it with heart in order to do things well. I listened to Master's explanations and teachings there for more than ten minutes! The words “You have to put your heart into doing things to get things done” were imprinted in my mind.

In the late stage of the pandemic, our local Shen Yun theatre team had already signed up with a theatre in London as before, and faced many troubles and inconveniences caused by the pandemic restrictions. Masks were required to be worn, and to maintain a social distance of 2 meters. As time went by, the British government's policy on the pandemic was changing day by day, becoming looser and looser.

I live in Birmingham, northwest of London, and it takes 2.5 hours to 3 hours to get there by car. When I heard the news that Shen Yun could perform in London again, I immediately signed up to participate in the shopping centre’s promotional activities. I went to work during the weekdays, and drove to the shopping centre on weekends to promote Shen Yun. Because of Master's teaching, “You have to put your heart into doing things to do things well”, every time I participated in the shopping centre promotions, I always set off at 4 a.m. on Saturdays, drove to London to pick up members of our team in different areas, then went to the shopping centre in the outskirts of London to do the promotion. We basically arrived when the shopping centre opened, and left when the shopping centre closed. Usually we stood for around 12 hours, sometimes 14 hours. At the end of each night, I would take our team members home, then I’d return to the house of a fellow practitioner where I’d stay, then repeat the same on Sunday. Usually, the centre closed early on Sundays, and I could take my team members home and return to my home city afterward. We repeated this until we were able to sell out the tickets for more than ten performances before the show started.

Once, during this period, the shopping centre coordinator had not confirmed the team members till very late. Some of them were either busy or lived in a remote place with inconvenient transport. I had to work, but I worked with him to coordinate our weekend team members. There was one practitioner who didn’t live in London, and would be late due to the traffic. He lived north of London, while I was in the northwest. I wanted to go to his city to pick him up, then I would drive to London. It was a bit of a detour, but was still feasible, so I contacted him and promised I would go to his house to pick him up and go to the shopping centre together. I set off on time on Saturday morning and got on the motorway. Everything went smoothly. Then thick fog filled the surroundings, and all around was white. My car's high beams and fog lights could only shine a few meters ahead when they were all turned on. I would definitely be late if I slowed down my speed. Irrespective of the fog I pressed ahead. Fortunately, we had an online Fa-study session in the morning. Everyone would read Zhuan Falun one by one on the platform. I turned on my mobile phone and listened to their Fa-study. In order to hurry up, the speedometer at that time was close to 120 kilometres per hour. While driving, I used the ability bestowed by Dafa to clean up the rotten ghosts and lowly spirits who interfered with the public from connecting with Shen Yun performances! After listening to one Fa lecture, I broke out of the thick fog and arrived safely at this practitioner's home. Together we hurried along to the shopping centre.

As soon as he got in the car, we started chatting. I was less focused on the driving, and we discussed how to introduce Shen Yun more effectively to attract customers to buy tickets and they can gain their salvation. I wasn’t listening to the satnav instructions, and I hesitated whether to get off the motorway on approach where there was a turn. A momentary lapse almost led me to crash into the barriers on the side of the road. I applied heavy braking like an emergency stop, and luckily there was no danger. It dawned on me suddenly on another matter, that a massive catastrophe was about to happen to mankind. I was using Google Satnav, which is something electronic. Artificial Intelligence was expanding out of control, but because I stepped on the brakes immediately, no danger occurred. I hope humankind will find a way (apply the brakes) to deal with it (AI) in the future safely and save the day.

The promotions at the shopping centre went relatively smoothly from all aspects. During Shen Yun reporting and sharing that week, the person in charge of coordinating Shen Yun said the British government had completely undone all pandemic restrictions, and there was no need to be double jabbed or show vaccination passports, no need to wear masks, and no need to maintain social distancing. All restrictions were lifted, one can enter and exit freely. This good news did not come easily.

At the beginning of this year, there were 4 cities having Shen Yun in the UK, including my city. Although my city had Shen Yun for many years and Shen Yun had a certain reputation in the local area, with the promotion of 4 cities at the same time, overall, practitioners still felt anxious. I was in charge of leaflet promotion in our area. Our promotion method was relatively conservative. In previous years, we basically followed the map given by a leaflet coordinator and drove to the different areas to distribute leaflets door-to-door. In the initial stage of Shen Yun promotion, the general coordinator introduced putting up posters as they were a popular project in North America, and the effect was very good. He wanted to try it in the UK to see the effect. When Shen Yun flyers and posters were printed and shipped to my house, I was a little apprehensive. I had to find a way to send out so many materials. In previous years, we went to so many places and distributed them one by one, from morning to dusk. It was dark, and 5 people couldn’t even distribute 2-3 boxes of materials each day. What should I do? This was my responsibility. I was responsible for coordinating this project. Introducing Shen Yun face-to-face could lead predestined people to buy tickets directly. The form of putting up posters just provided me with a platform to take the initiative to come face-to-face with more people.

First, I chose a bustling commercial street in the city centre, along which there were supermarkets, bars, hotels, retail stores, clubs, banks, real estate, and commercial office buildings. I walked around and spoke to the receptionist at different establishments to promote Shen Yun and asked if they could put up Shen Yun posters on their windows or walls. Some large businesses were not allowed to put posters on their windows due to company policy, but they were very happy to let me leave Shen Yun leaflets and they could pass them among employees, or put them directly on the counter for passing customers. Feedback had been very positive throughout the day. Almost all businesses were willing to have Shen Yun flyers. In some supermarkets, bars, and cafes, they would put Shen Yun posters on prominent positions on their community boards. I was able to distribute 5-6 boxes of materials by myself in one day. This result gave me great confidence. With this experience, I tried my best to persuade other local practitioners to get involved. After finishing the business district in the city centre, I turned to the commercial streets of the surrounding villages and towns. Compared with big cities, the people in the villages and towns were more friendly. I left a lot of Shen Yun leaflets, and a large percentage of shop owners in small towns also accepted Shen Yun posters to be put on their windows. During the promotion, I took some photos to preserve the precious moment when sentient beings who were predestined to know the joy of Shen Yun's arrival, and maybe I could share it on social media in the future.

With the joint efforts of our local practitioners for this year's promotion of Shen Yun, I obviously felt a lot less pressure. Over 500 posters were put up, and more than 60,000 leaflets were distributed. Among the 4 cities, the ticket sales in my city was the best. About 90% of the tickets were sold two weeks before the show started, and all the tickets were sold by show time.

Of course, there were many tribulations and conflicts during the promotion process, and there were still many problems that needed to be improved. Generally speaking, I was confident we would welcome more Shen Yun performances in the future. Let more local people watch Shen Yun and be saved.

Finally, I end my sharing by quoting Master's poem “Falun Dafa” in Hong Yin:
"Gong cultivation has a way, the heart is the path 
Dafa has no bounds, hardship serves as the ferry"

Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!

 

(Selected article for the European Fa-conference 2023 in Paris)