Selfishness is the root cause of all my difficulties

My name is Biljana. I am originally from Bosnia and have lived in Sweden for 30 years. I started cultivating about 9 years ago.

Transformation of karma

During the Shen Yun performance in Stockholm, I had the honor of guarding the button that activates the evacuation alarm, so that no one could activate it as sabotage. After everyone went inside and I heard music from the performance, I got such a strong cramp and pain in my left leg that I couldn’t move at all. Another practitioner came by and asked if I needed to take a break for a moment, I told her I was fine and that she could go and ask the others if they needed a break.

Just before the performance ended and people started to leave the hall, it suddenly felt like a big stone was released and fell from my left leg. After that, the pain completely disappeared, my leg was mobile again and it felt like a completely new leg. It felt lighter and more mobile than before.

I was so grateful for that help to reduce my karma and realized that I had been holding on to something where I would sometimes complain about how difficult something was and feel sorry for myself in difficult situations. Now I had the chance to endure without saying anything to others and the time to look inward.

Master says in Lecture 4 Zhuan Falun: Transformation of Karma,“Why do you encounter these problems? They are all caused by your own karma. We have already eliminated for you many, countless portions of it, leaving only that tiny bit that is divided into tribulations at different levels for improving your xinxing, tempering your mind, and removing your various attachments.”

Letting go of the attachment to fear

When I was young, I was very shy and couldn't stand up and speak in a group. It was so extreme that several times I would learn a poem or a longer text by heart when I was at home, but when I got to school and the teacher told me to stand in front of the board and recite in the classroom, I forgot everything and couldn't say a single word.

It has haunted and limited me my whole life and I have really wanted to work on myself and manage to become a little more relaxed in such situations.

When I was in Visby, the island of Gotland on the east coast of Sweden, during Almedalen week, when all political parties meet and there are a lot of visitors and media around, I handed out information sheets about a film that was going to be shown in the Cinema in Visby. The film was about the persecution and forced organ harvesting of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. A fellow practitioner suggested that I would go with them and watch the documentary the night before because there was no opportunity to do so on the day it was shown in the cinema. The film touched me very deeply.

The next day I felt strongly that I wanted to go out and talk to people who passed by our booth about the documentary and tell them that it was a very important film. Previously I used to feel some fear when standing in front of people and talking to them, but now something had released its grip on me inside and I wanted to do it with all my heart.

It went pretty well, lots of people took the time to stop and talk with me. A man came up to me and asked if I was scared and if I was aware of the risks that what I was doing could entail. I replied that I see life as the greatest gift and when you realize it deep inside, then you want to help others who have lost or are at risk of losing their lives. And you want to tell the truth about those who take innocent people's lives, so that it will reach the whole world. The man looked at me kindly and wished me luck and success in what I did.

I truly felt deep gratitude for having the chance to help spread awareness about the persecution, giving the people passing by the chance to open their hearts and understand the evil behind the falsely successful facade of the communist regime in China.

I thought about my childhood in a Communist country and how easy it was to manipulate ordinary people, and how hard it was to realize that you were brainwashed. A strong feeling of compassion arose in my heart. The time I stood there felt short, I didn't want to leave because it felt like the most important thing I've ever done. I regretted not starting earlier to reach even more people, it was such a good chance to reach many people in one place. I then decided to take the chance next time and do it even better.

This experience in Visby was very valuable to me. No one laughed and many took the time to listen and talk to us, which gave hope for the salvation of people.

I also thought about my fear of standing and speaking in a group. It's so easy to blame external factors, such as my upbringing, teachers who gave us students (slap on the ears) and yelling at us, etc., but when I looked inward I felt strongly that this was really about my attachment to reputation and my own gain, that I was afraid of standing and speaking in a group for fear of making a fool of myself. I wanted so badly for others to think what I was doing was good. When I stood there and just spontaneously and from my heart talked to people, it worked out well. It was about my own attachments and that I was thinking a lot, instead of just letting the attachments go and letting everything come from the heart.

Looking inward and letting go of the old

It became clear to me that I had previously viewed my mother and my upbringing from far too low a level and it was time to change that. In Lecture 4 Zhuan Falun: Loss and Gain, Master says: “We should focus on a broader range of things instead of trivial matters. Cultivation should focus with openness and dignity on a broad perspective.”

One day later, I accidentally stepped on a rock and sprained my foot. It soon started to hurt a lot and I had difficulty walking. I felt a little sad that there was no one else to take care of my mother, so I went to bed to rest for half an hour. At first, I focused on all my cells saying Falun Dafa Hao, Zhen Shan Ren Hao, and soon fell asleep. When I woke up, almost all the pain was gone, and I was able to go and help my mother with everything she needed. I looked inside and Master’s words from the lecture Critical Times Reveal One’s Spiritual State appeared: “You are in effect doing the evil’s bidding when you allow any selfish motives or thoughts to seep into your mind while doing things at critical times.”

I also thought that small mistakes and shortcomings can easily turn into serious attachments if you don't realize that it is wrong and let it go on for a long time. It also became clear to me that selfishness can be difficult to detect and it can easily happen that we think we want to do something in a certain way to protect others but in reality we do it in order to not make a fool of ourselves, i.e. for our own reputation and gain.

To always look inward and view all difficulties with gratitude

During the process of writing my experience story, I discovered that I have too little patience with technical things. I knew this already before, but now it became very obvious because I initially sent my experience sharing in a chaotic form and did not take the time to edit it properly, which certainly created more work for the practitioners who edited it.

I received great feedback and the chance to change and edit my experience story, which became a new chance for me to look inward and discover new shortcomings in myself. While I was editing, I had to read Zhuan Falun several times to find Master’s quotes. Each time I read, I discovered a new attachment in myself and gained new insights. It also felt like a relief in my mind after each insight.

Writing this Experience sharing has been a profound and purifying process in which I had the chance to look inward and discover several of my attachments at once. I am so incredibly grateful for that opportunity. Master says in Zhuan Falun at the end of Chapter 9: “ When it is difficult to endure, try to endure it. When it looks impossible and is said to be impossible, give it a try and see if it is possible. If you can actually do it, you will indeed find, ‘After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead!’”

This is my understanding from the level I am at now, please point out what is not in line with the Fa.

Thank you Master! Thank you, all practitioners!

(This article was presented at the 2025 Nordic Fa-Conference)