Walking steadfastly the path Master arranged

Greetings, compassionate and great Master!
Greetings, fellow practitioners!

I am a young Dafa disciple from Croatia. I was born in China, and from a young age I cultivated Falun Dafa alongside my parents.

Looking back over my cultivation journey, it has been full of joy, bitterness, moments that moved me, and pain. I know that all of this came from human sentiment, human notions and human thinking, tangled up with a great many attachments. Yet at the same time, when we cast off these degenerate substances that are not part of our true selves and assimilate to the Fa, every cell in the body seems to cheer and leap for joy, all of them celebrating and revelling in that wonderful moment together. At such times I cannot help but marvel at how truly fortunate I am, that I have been able to follow Master and obtain the Fa in this lifetime. I am surely the most fortunate being in this vast cosmos. In those moments something cries out in my heart, and I can hardly stop myself from telling everyone I meet how wonderful Dafa is!

The road has been a stumbling one. I have been like a child learning to walk, feeling my way forward one step at a time under Master’s guidance. Sometimes a test was extremely hard to pass. Before I had got through one properly the next would arrive, until I could hardly breathe. At moments when I felt about to be crushed, a line of Master’s Fa would appear in my mind, “Each and every barrier must be broken through” (“Tempering the Will” from Hong Yin), and it seemed to give me strength, so that I could stand up again and grit my teeth and carry on. Falling and picking myself up, day after day, I have made it to where I am today. The one thing that has never changed is my heart to follow Master and cultivate to the very end. And with each passing day that heart has grown more steadfast.

When a test was hard to pass, thought karma and degenerate beings would also try to interfere with me and shake my resolve. But in an instant Master’s Fa would appear in my mind, “Whether it is a Buddha, a Tao, an immortal, or a demon, they should not move your heart. In conducting yourself this way, success is bound to be in sight.” (“Lecture Six” from Zhuan Falun) With Master’s strengthening, I was always able to disintegrate them smoothly, hold firm to my righteous thoughts, and let my Main Soul take charge.

Below are some of my experiences and understandings from making my way through these tests. I am writing them down for the European Fa conference to report to Master and to share with fellow practitioners. If there is anything inappropriate, please kindly point it out.

After a painful lesson, I came to understand that if I am not walking the path Master has arranged, then I am walking the path the old forces have arranged. Before I began my postgraduate studies, almost everything in my life had gone smoothly, and every step seemed easy. Even things that looked difficult I got through without trouble, under Master’s compassionate care and protection. Even something as major as going abroad to study came to me by chance, and within a week or two I had made my decision and prepared all the paperwork. So I looked forward to a happy and beautiful life. Eighteen years passed smoothly, and I simply took it for granted things would go on that way.

After graduating, I wanted to stay on in the country where I had been studying. So I kept sending out my CV to look for work, sought help from my professors and friends, and let no relevant organisation or opportunity pass me by. Even so, my applications sank without a trace. I often did not even get a reply, and interviews were pitifully few.

I was not willing to accept it. I stubbornly believed that it was Master who had arranged for me to be here, and that since I had not yet done anything, how could I leave? So all of this must be a test for me. At that time I could not take in any advice from fellow practitioners, least of all the advice to leave and go to another country. I always brushed it aside with excuses such as “That place doesn’t suit me”, and I remained convinced that the path Master had arranged for me was right here, and that everything would unfold just as I had pictured it.

And so, from that point on, my road was bound to be rough. Things did not develop as I had imagined. They only got worse and worse, until there was nowhere left to turn. I made a complete mess of things, yet right up to the last moment I still did not wake up. In the end I was forced to leave that country. I began to feel lost, as though I had wandered deep into a forest and could see no direction through the fog. I grew anxious, weighed down every day until I could hardly breathe, and my conflicts with the practitioners I was working with grew sharper because of the distance between us. By then I had long since fallen into the old forces’ trap without realising it.

I began to doubt whether Master still looked after me, and to wonder whether I had done so badly that I had let Master down. I did not dare ask Master what had gone wrong, and I had no courage to look at Master’s photograph. I just held on with what little strength I had left. Then one day, in a daze, a voice suddenly sounded in my ear, “Cultivation is this hard. Why not just give it up and stop cultivating.” I was shocked. Where had that thought come from? It was terrifying! I was instantly on guard and realised at once that this was not me: it was the old forces trying to destroy me. At that same moment, Master’s Fa stuck in my mind: “Human beings suffer a lot. The enlightened beings think that the more one suffers, the better, as one should speed up repaying one’s debts. This is what they think. Some people do not understand and begin to complain to the Buddha if their praying does not work, ‘Why don’t you help me? I burn incense and kowtow to you every day.’ Some people will throw the Buddha statue to the ground because of this and start to condemn Buddha thereafter.” (“Lecture Four” Zhuan Falun)

A powerful current of heat rushed into my head with a roar, like an alarm bell struck right above me, and the shock left my scalp tingling. I immediately sent out a powerful thought to try to destroy it, and I told it, “Old forces, don’t even think of dragging me down. I am a Dafa disciple. I am going to cultivate with Master to the very end, and you cannot treat me like this!” When I came back to myself I was completely awake, and only then did I realise how far off course my path had gone, how the old forces had exploited my gaps and had nearly destroyed me. At the same time I quietly counted myself lucky that at that critical moment I had remembered Master’s Fa.

I began to study the Fa a great deal and to send forth righteous thoughts intensively. Gradually I felt my righteous thoughts growing stronger and stronger, and when I held my palm erect I could feel what seemed like fire pouring out from my fingertips. I knew this was enormous energy, and that it was Master strengthening me, his disciple.

For some time afterwards, I would cry every day when I read Master’s scriptures, and I could not hold back the tears. Sometimes it was because I felt I had not done well and had let Master down. Sometimes I knew it was because, somewhere I could not see, compassionate Master was again silently giving and enduring for a disciple who had failed to live up to what He expects.

I will walk only the path Master arranged

After I settled down in a new country, my life and my cultivation environment gradually began to steady. And just as I was starting to relax and long for comfort, another test arrived. A year into the job, something similar happened again. Changes in the staff and in the wider situation meant my work began to shift, and I lost my job. I started looking for opportunities again and applying online, and once more there were no replies at all. The one difference was that this time I was calm. I firmly believed there was a path waiting for me, even though I did not yet know where it was.

There were many voices around me: worried ones, complaining ones, anxious ones, concerned ones. None of them moved me. When I received good advice I took it, thinking that this must be Master speaking to me through a fellow practitioner, so I would act on it. I was no longer attached to what kind of work I did or which country I stayed in. Even if I did not like it or had no interest in it, I thought that as long as it was what Master wanted me to do, I would do it, letting go of my own attachments and preferences, and letting go of the heart that always wanted to arrange a path for myself. I told myself: this time, I am going to listen to Master. I will walk only the path Master arranges.

Two months later, through Master’s compassionate arrangement and the help of fellow practitioners, I found a new job. Because of the language, the work was a completely new field for me. At first my boss did not think much of my chances and was unwilling to take me on, and I had no confidence I could do it well either. Remarkably, though, after a fellow practitioner talked to her, she agreed to let me try.

My boss had a rather short temper, and she would often lose it when the place was busy and I could not understand what the customers were saying. And the moment she lost her temper I would be at even more of a loss and would make more mistakes. Once she even shouted at me in front of everyone, “If you still can’t learn the language and can’t understand, we’ll be saying goodbye next month.” I was mortified, and although the people around me all spoke up for me, I was a little worried that I might lose my job again. But once I had calmed down, I thought: this job was given to me by Master, so what anyone else says does not count. Then why was she treating me like this? Ah, it was because I had attachments to be cultivated away. I wanted to save face, I did not want to be criticised, I was afraid of making mistakes, I cared about how others looked at me, I liked to hear pleasant words. So that was it. She was actually helping me.

After that she never said anything of the kind again, and she even praised me for learning quickly. Numbers that the other staff found hard to remember I had memorised within a few short days, without ever setting out to learn them by heart. They simply lodged in my mind bit by bit in the course of ordinary work. I know that all of this was given to me by compassionate Master. And I firmly believe that a true cultivator can do well at whatever they do.

Everything Master arranges is the best

I live in a very small place where the communal areas are shared with a number of other people. Given how much my working situation had changed, I felt that simply having somewhere to settle was good enough. And I have never minded how big a space is or what facilities it has.

I was constantly surrounded by voices that did not understand: “Why are you living in such a small room and paying so much for it?” “How can you sleep with a window that tiny?” “How will you get through the summer without air conditioning?” At first, I did not really mind. Then one day I found the bathroom had become very dirty, a flatmate was washing shoes in the shared washing machine, a male flatmate had helped himself to the clothes I had left in it, and cockroaches were appearing in the corridor. I felt desperate. I wanted to have it out with them. Why should I have to suffer in an environment like this? Should I move somewhere else?

So I put the question to myself: “Why do you want to move?” Answer: “I can’t stand this environment any more. I want to find somewhere quiet and comfortable.” Question: “Once you have moved, will these problems stop happening?” Answer: “Of course not. As long as these attachments are still there, if it isn’t these problems it will be others.” I understood then that all of this had been brought about by my own attachments, and that the matters themselves did not really matter at all. If I made solving the problem my starting point, thinking about it from an ordinary person’s angle, new problems would keep coming. It would treat the symptoms and not the root, and it would waste the painstaking arrangement Master had made. Next question: “So is it a bad thing when you run into these things? Why do you always want to run away? Can running away solve anything?” Answer: “I know it is a good thing. It has come so that I can remove my attachments.” And again: “What did you come to this world for? Did you come for comfort and an easy life?” Answer: “No. I came to cultivate, and to assist Master in Fa-rectification.” “Then what are you doing wanting comfort?” Having reached that answer, I felt ashamed. After cultivating for such a long time, my first instinct when I ran into a conflict was still to look outward, and to view things with human notions, human thinking and human sentiment.

At that same moment, Master’s Fa stuck in my mind: “The complicated environment, in my view, is instead a good thing. The more complicated it is, the greater the individuals it will produce. If one can elevate oneself above and beyond it, one’s cultivation will be the most solid.” “Only by being among the most complicated group of people and in the most complicated environment can one cultivate high-level gong…” (“Lecture Nine” from Zhuan Falun). 

I asked myself whether I still wanted to move. I answered myself lightly: everything Master has arranged for me is the best, and it is the same wherever I am. Thank you, Master, for the painstaking arrangements you have made for a disciple like me. Heshi!

Conclusion

Writing this sharing article was extraordinarily hard. Several times I wanted to give up, and in the end I finished it with Master’s strengthening and the encouragement of fellow practitioners. Even after clearing away a great deal of interference, I would still find as I typed that I could not carry on, that I did not know what to write, that my mind went blank, or that the sentences would not join up. All I could do was write and delete, delete and write again. By holding firm to my righteous thoughts, I finally finished it. Thank you, Master, for your strengthening and for watching over me at every moment. And thank you, Master, for giving me the chance to complete this sharing.

May we all walk steadfastly on the divine path Master has arranged, assist Master in Fa-rectification, and reach Consummation and return with Master!

(Speaker at the European Fa-Conference 2026 in Prague)