Cultivating My Heart in Conflicts, Forming One Body in Tests

Greetings, respected Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!

I came to London in 2015 and joined the Hongfa in Chinatown. Ten years have passed in the blink of an eye, and along the way I have met with a great many tests: tests from the triads, interference of all kinds from CCP agents, tests involving police officers whom the CCP had bought over and deceived, tests that came from within our own group of practitioners, and more. At times the tests were very great and extremely hard to get through. At the hardest moment of all, while I was studying Zhuan Falun, Master suddenly showed me several large words in bold, which meant: without these conflicts and tests, how could you cultivate to completion? The moment I saw those words, my heart was at ease. I am deeply grateful for revered Master's compassionate arrangement and guidance at every step. Without revered Master's strengthening, and without genuine cultivation guided by Dafa, I do not think I could have come this far. Below I would like to sum up some of my experience in passing tests, to report to Master and to share with fellow practitioners:

1. Telling My True Self Apart from Postnatally Formed Notions and Attachments Is the Key to Getting Through Tests Smoothly

Master said in Teachings at the Conference in Switzerland: "As for some people who can't forgo their self-interest while it is at stake among everyday people, or those who can't tell which thoughts are theirs and which aren't, and who even think that those bad thoughts are theirs, we definitely won't keep looking after them. Why? Because those people have taken those bad thoughts to be themselves, and yet these things of ours are not to be given to those bad thoughts." Having been through many conflicts and tests, I found that the real difficulty is not how big or small a conflict is, but that, when going through a test, one fails to realise that what has actually become caught up in the conflict is one's own postnatally formed notions and attachments, not one's true self. Sometimes I would get caught up in arguing over who was right and who was wrong, sometimes in looking outward, and sometimes I could not work out what it was that I ought to be cultivating.

What truly enabled me to tell my true self from postnatally formed notions was studying the Fa a great deal, and above all studying the scripture Buddha Nature over and over. Master said: "A notion, once formed, will control you for the duration of your life, influencing your thinking and even the full gamut of emotions, such as your happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy. It is formed postnatally." Master also said: "The self that is you is the innate self, and it does not change. But a human being tends to easily form notions when perceiving things, and those notions are not you." And in Teachings at the Conference in Switzerland Master said: "Human beings have many attachments, all kinds of notions, and a range of emotions and desires. All these thoughts are in your head, yet none of them are you." Studying the Fa a great deal and coming to understand these teachings again and again made me realise that a Dafa disciple's true self comes from a god of the high levels of the universe; gods have no emotions or desires, and nothing within the Three Realms or in ordinary human society can stir them. What is easily stirred is precisely the attachments to fame, personal gain, and qing, along with the various notions formed within the Three Realms and in ordinary society. So when I ran into all sorts of complicated conflicts in Chinatown, my way of cultivating in earnest was mainly this: when a conflict arose, I would use it to look inward at my own heart and see which thoughts were being stirred. The true self that comes from a high level is never stirred; what gets stirred is usually a postnatally formed notion or some attachment. So I would seize hold of it and eliminate it.

At first I could not hold it back. When a conflict was especially heated, the false self would drive me to argue and wrangle over it, or I would fall into an attachment of who was right and who was wrong. But as I kept restraining this false self by looking inward and eliminating it by sending forth righteous thoughts, I found that its strength was growing weaker and weaker. I also found that every conflict was aimed at a different attachment of mine, that none of them were accidental, and that each was helping me uncover that false self I might not otherwise have noticed. My understanding of conflicts changed at that point: I saw that the people I had conflicts with were helping me in the process of recognising and eliminating the false self created by my postnatally formed notions, attachments, and the like. What is more, each time I genuinely improved my xinxing, I found that I felt grateful towards the person involved in the conflict, without the slightest resentment.

In a conflict I would sometimes reach a state of not being stirred at all, and I would then see that it was the false self at work of the person testing me as well. Sometimes I would send forth righteous thoughts on his behalf to disintegrate the interfering factors behind him, and perhaps my understanding was right, because things would quickly become peaceful. Master said in Teachings at the Conference in the Western U.S.: "Without conflicts there won't be improvement." Ten years have flown by since I came to Chinatown. Looking back now, what I am most grateful for, and feel most fortunate about, is precisely all those conflicts, large and small, that I ran into. It was these conflicts that helped me find, one after another, the postnatally formed notions and attachments I would not otherwise have noticed; it was these conflicts that helped me steadily strengthen the mechanism of looking inward; it was the constant impact of these conflicts that gradually carried me from being stirred by conflict to not being stirred by it; and it was these conflicts that made me all the firmer in Dafa, because I found that every time, as soon as I improved my xinxing by looking inward, the conflict vanished at once, exactly as Master has said. As this process of cultivating my heart went on, fewer and fewer conflicts arose around me, and under the effect of Dafa my heart grew calmer and calmer. Yet the mechanism of looking inward keeps running every day, regardless of the time or the place and however many times over. When my eyes see something I like or dislike, for instance, or my ears hear something I want or do not want to hear, the mechanism of looking inward starts up. These mechanisms, formed over the years, prompt me to cultivate my every last thought, and I have benefited enormously from them.

2. Finding the Source of Different Thoughts, Completely Negating the Old Forces at the Root, and Returning to My True Self

In Another Stern Warning Master revealed a divine secret, saying: "The majority of people today are divinities who came here from heavens above, and they wouldn't be able to live here were they not to act as human beings do. And so in many cases they must be given certain animal traits when they incarnate, if they are to live here and go about things as humans. Didn't Shakyamuni's mother have a vision of a white elephant at the time of his birth?" This teaching of Master's helped me understand that the true self comes from the divine beings of the heavens, and does not behave as a human being does; it is the animal traits that make human behaviour possible, and they are not one's true self.

The divine nature that came from the heavens and animal traits exist in the human body at the same time, and that is a normal arrangement for reincarnation. What I would like to share here is something different: the demon-nature thoughts from the communist evil spectre that have been forced into our minds, or worked into them imperceptibly. While reading How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, I came to see how the communist evil spectre injects evil thoughts and notions into the minds of the world's people, whether by force or imperceptibly, and how this includes the minds of Dafa disciples. These thoughts of the communist evil spectre include hatred, intense jealousy, an intense combative mentality, the attachment of fear that was forced upon people through killings and political campaigns of every kind, lust, and other distorted thoughts. It uses these evil thoughts to replace traditional thinking and to destroy people's morality, and thereby to achieve its aim of ruining all of mankind. Yet the real target of the communist evil spectre is not the world's people but Dafa disciples. I have found that many practitioners have been severely persecuted or imprisoned because they did not distinguish these thoughts from the evil spectre and negate them at the root. Among the practitioners around me, some could not tell these evil thoughts apart and, over decades of cultivation, even took them to be entirely their own thinking; some were persecuted to death in the form of sickness karma, and some fell into a serious state of sickness karma.

Master said in Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003: "Negate them, completely negate everything of the old forces!" So whenever I find evil thoughts of this kind from the communist evil spectre surfacing, I refuse outright to acknowledge them as my own thinking, and I eliminate them directly by sending forth righteous thoughts. Sometimes I speak to them. I say: you are evil; you are not me; you harm others and yourself; you are an evil being that goes against Dafa's Zhen, Shan, and Ren; you are sinister and cunning; be eliminated. In the course of speaking to them like this, I found that these evil spirits grew weaker and gradually disappeared. Before I recognised them fully, though, these communist evil spectres would have me believe that the thoughts came from me and get me to acknowledge them as my own, and I found it very hard to eliminate them then. Later I realised that I had been trying to eliminate them while still granting that they were my own thoughts, and that this made them very hard to root out, because I had not achieved the complete negation Master spoke of. Once I truly recognised them and completely negated them, these communist evil spectres really were cleaned out. Reading How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World not only helped my cultivation and my truth clarification, it also gave me a deeper sense of the immense difficulty Master faces in saving people, and of his boundless compassion.

3. Forming One Body to Break Through Interference, and Believing in Master and the Fa to End the Trouble for Good

Lastly, I would like to share a personal experience of interference in Chinatown. One day, some time after the pandemic, our regular truth-clarification site in Chinatown was taken over by the restaurant opposite, which filled it with dining tables and stools. The man leading this was not a member of the restaurant's staff but an agent who had long worked for the CCP, and I had known him for years. When I asked him why he was occupying our spot, he produced an agreement signed with the Council (the local authority) and told me that the Council had allotted part of our Hongfa area to the restaurant opposite. The Chinatown practitioners put up our banners and roll-up banners as usual. The first thing that came to mind was Master's teaching that when we run into a problem we should clarify the truth. So after I got home I wrote a long letter clarifying the truth, printed out a number of copies, put them into envelopes, and handed them out to the staff and the manager of the restaurant opposite.

Even after we had clarified the truth to them, they still would not move out. I understood that the whole of Chinatown is controlled by the CCP, and that the restaurant's people did not dare to disobey. Things stayed deadlocked like that for several days. Then one day two police officers happened to pass by on patrol, and a fellow practitioner suggested we tell them about it. I took out the agreement for the Chinatown Hongfa site and showed it to them, and once they understood the situation one of them went over to the restaurant opposite. The agent then produced the Council's agreement and showed it to him as well. To my surprise, the officer immediately changed his attitude. He told me that their agreement was the new one and ours the old one, that the matter should be handled according to the new agreement, and that we should move out now. I told him that what we were doing was opposing the persecution and exposing the CCP's live organ harvesting, that it was a human rights matter, that it had been going on for more than a decade, and that we could not move. Seeing that I would not agree to move, the officer told me that he would go in person the following Monday to meet the people at the Council and deal with the matter himself. Sensing that something was not quite right, I said to him, "How about I go and talk to the Council about this myself next week, so as not to trouble you? Would that be alright?" As soon as he heard this he agreed at once, as though he had been let off the hook.

Through this I came to understand a principle: we need to put the relationship between Dafa disciples and the police, the Council, or senior officials in its proper place. Matters like this are opportunities to clarify the truth to them and save them, not to rely on them. Dafa disciples are the ones with the leading role, and the only ones we can rely on are Master and Dafa. Master said in Fa Teaching Given at the 2003 Midwest U.S. Fa Conference: "You placed your hopes in ordinary people, so the old forces had the resolution that they sponsored voted down. And as you kept putting your hopes in ordinary people they made it so that your resolution couldn't even be raised and so that the U.S. was kicked out of the Human Rights Commission. You still placed your hopes in ordinary people, so they made a country that violates human rights the chair." I feel that what happened above was mainly a test of my understanding of this principle of the Fa.

The following week I went to Chinatown as usual to set up our stand and clarify the truth. This time the CCP agent had brought along a new face, said to be some sort of director. They had perhaps planned it in advance, for a good many of the restaurant's staff came and gathered round, as if to create an air of strength in numbers. Inwardly, with Master's strengthening, I was very calm. The agent said he hoped we could move away from the spot that day, and the director spoke very loudly and aggressively. Seeing that he was a new face, I clarified the truth to him about the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong and its live organ harvesting.

I had been talking for only a short while when a Western practitioner who did not often come to Chinatown arrived. I was quite pleased: help had come. When the agent saw the Western practitioner, he took the initiative to produce the Council's agreement and explain it to him in English. Unexpectedly, this Western practitioner, who perhaps did not know much about the situation in Chinatown or how complicated it was, said to me, "They have an agreement from the Council. Aren't we supposed to cultivate compassion? What harm is there in shifting our spot a little?" He added that if I did not agree, he would send the agreement to the Chinatown group chat straight away and report the matter to the FXH. I was not moved by this, but from what he said I saw through the old forces' arrangement, and I thought to myself: is this not the old forces trying to throw us into disarray from within? I then realised that they had already been interfered with and controlled by the old forces, and that I should first send forth righteous thoughts to disintegrate the old forces behind them before saying anything more. So I reassured the Western practitioner, "Please do not rush to send anything. I will explain it to you shortly, but first let us send forth righteous thoughts." I sat down at once and began to send forth righteous thoughts, and the agent immediately said that I could not sit down. I think it was the old forces behind him, afraid of my sending forth righteous thoughts, who controlled him into saying it.

I had been sending forth righteous thoughts for only a little while when the first person to change was that director. His voice became noticeably gentler. He crouched down and told me that he supported human rights too, and that if I did not believe him he would sign; he then really did stand up and put his name on our petition, and he left soon afterwards. Once I had finished sending forth righteous thoughts, I went to share with the Western practitioner and told him the truth about the people behind all this. While we were talking, the restaurant's manager, the agent, and a good many of the staff were all watching from the side. After some ten minutes or more, the Western practitioner understood the truth and said that he agreed with me. Just as he came around, the manager opposite suddenly gave the order to remove all their tables. I was genuinely astonished at the time: how could they clear them out of their own accord? What I understood then was this: "Cultivation depends on one's own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one's master." As long as every step is in line with the Fa, it is Master who has the final say. Later I came to see that the old forces had originally wanted to set Dafa disciples against one another from within, but once we practitioners formed one body they had no gap left to exploit, and the old forces in other dimensions were disintegrated by Master's Fashen and the righteous gods. Reflected on the human side, that was why the restaurant staff cleared out the tables so quickly and of their own accord.

The next day, though, the spot was occupied again. Because I had already come to understand the principle of putting the relationship between Dafa disciples and ordinary people in its proper place, Master gave me the wisdom to resolve the matter. I told the agent that I had two ways of dealing with it. First, if they did not clear out the tables that day, I would let every customer who came in to eat know that they were taking part in the persecution of Falun Gong and supporting the CCP's live organ harvesting. Second, if they still did not clear out, we would take them to court. Having said that, I rang fellow practitioners for support right in front of the agent. He passed the message on to the restaurant's manager at once, and they cleared out the tables immediately and never came back. Later, when I looked into British human rights law and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, I found that our Hongfa activities are protected by that law, and that it applies throughout Europe.

Later, people from an organisation of CCP agents came to me again and said that they had obtained permission from the Council (the local authority) to build a construction project on the very site where we clarify the truth in Chinatown, and that we would have to move; they had also lied to the Council, telling them that we had agreed to it. So another Western practitioner and I worked together: we clarified the truth to the heads of the Council's various departments and to its most senior leadership, and we set out the evidence that these people were CCP agents, along with our agreement for the truth clarification site and the legal basis of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the end, the Council's most senior leadership wrote back to us to express their support. Not long afterwards, this organisation of CCP agents closed down, and it remains closed to this day.

This left me deeply moved once it was over, and I came to see that everything exists in order to help us succeed in cultivation. On the surface it was an organisation of CCP agents, but what it actually corresponded to was a test of our xinxing and the need to clarify the truth to the Council; once we had done both of these properly, that organisation no longer played any part. It made me realise that the key to truly resolving a problem does not lie in surface methods or means, but in improving one's xinxing in Dafa cultivation and saving people with compassion. It also reminded me to cherish every opportunity that a test brings, and to treat the people and situations I meet with the greatest compassion I can. "Cultivation depends on one's own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one's master."

To sum up in one sentence: let us improve our xinxing in conflicts, form one body in tests, and together fulfil our mission of saving sentient beings!

That is my sharing. My level is limited, so if there is anything inappropriate, please kindly point it out.

Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!

(Submitted to the European Fa-Conference 2026)