Recognising My Fundamental Attachment and Making Diligent Progress in My Cultivation

Dear Master,
Dear fellow practitioners,

My name is Anna. I come from Russia and I live in Germany.

The topic I would like to discuss today is: Recognising my fundamental attachment and making diligent progress in my cultivation.  In the Jingwen Towards Consummation, Master listed a number of typical fundamental attachments:

“Some people think that Dafa is in keeping with their own understanding of science; some people think that it agrees with their own code of conduct; some people think that it speaks to their own dissatisfaction with politics; some people think that Dafa can salvage humankind’s degenerate morals; some people think that Dafa can cure their illnesses; some people think that Dafa and Master are righteous, and so on and so forth.”

My fundamental attachment is: “…some people think that Dafa can cure their illnesses” , or, to put it another way: that Dafa has healed the wounds of my soul.

For a long time, I didn’t even realize that such a fundamental attachment existed within me—let alone that I could clearly recognize it. But this attachment almost destroyed my cultivation, and I had absolutely no idea why. Today, I’d like to share with you the process through which I recognized this attachment.

1. How I Started Cultivating

I used to suffer from borderline personality disorder. People with this condition often develop addictions because they find it difficult to cope with stress. They are sometimes described as ‘people without emotional skin’, because even the slightest incident can trigger deep emotional pain for them.

I grew up in a chaotic family and, ever since my childhood, I felt abandoned and defenseless. Before I obtained the Fa, I actually didn’t want to go on living. In December 2011, I asked God to help me get out of this situation. In February 2012, I was admitted to a medical hospital and had to undergo surgery.

My brother brought me the book Falun Gong while I was there. When I first heard about Falun Dafa and hadn’t even started reading the book, Master had already cleansed my body of my addictions and my emotional pain. I’ve learned how to calm myself down. The three principles have helped me to accept many things, and since then I’ve been able to cope with stress much better.

Through reading the Dafa books and embarking on my cultivation, I came to understand the true meaning of being human and, at the same time, recognized the real cause of my suffering. At the time, however, I was unaware that my desire to ‘heal my emotional wounds’ was, in fact, precisely the fundamental attachment that had led me to embark on the path of Dafa cultivation. During the first five years of my cultivation, I was in a relatively good cultivation state.

2. The Evil Forces Use My Fundamental Attachment as an Excuse to Persecute Me

In Towards Consummation, Master writes: “…some people think that Dafa can cure their illnesses”. Dafa had, in fact, healed my mental suffering. However, the real reason I was able to obtain the Fa was not that Dafa fulfilled my self-centered desire for healing. It was simply because, in a previous life, I had made the great vow: To help Master in rectifying the Fa and to save all sentient beings. Also in the Jingwen Towards Consummation, Master said: “You may start on the path of Dafa with those thoughts, yet over the course of cultivation you need to regard yourself as a cultivator. During the course of cultivation, however, through reading the books, studying the Fa, and diligently making progress, you should clearly recognize what your thoughts were when you first came to Dafa. After cultivating for a period of time, are your thoughts still the same? Are you continuing on the path because of those human attachments?”

I had never considered that the thought with which I had originally entered Dafa cultivation might have been misguided. Nor did I ask myself whether that notion might still persist in my thinking to this day. As my cultivation progressed, I experienced relapses and a recurrence of my emotional suffering. Because of my fundamental attachments, I reverted to the state I had been in before I began practicing cultivation.

For eight years, I found it very difficult to do the exercises and get up early. I couldn’t concentrate while studying the Fa, rarely clarified the truth, and had hardly any inner strength with which to do so. Outwardly, I was practicing, but in reality I wasn’t really improving. At the time, I didn’t know what the reason was.

3. Master Rescued Me Out of My Pit of Despair

At the start of the 2025 Shen Yun season, I had the opportunity to join the team responsible for selling subscriptions for Shen Yun Creations. During a sharing session within the Shen Yun Creations team, other practitioners asked me what my fundamental attachment was. At the time, I thought it was my attachment to romantic love. The topic of recognizing fundamental attachments is a constant theme for the Shen Yun Creations team. Yet it took me a whole year to truly understand what a fundamental attachment actually is.

Later, however, I recalled my thoughts at the start of my cultivation and realized that my thought had been: ‘At last, I have found the meaning of life.’ A fellow practitioner told me that I must have been in a very bad way back then, as I no longer wanted to live, and that Dafa had healed my emotional pain. Realizing this helped me to make a major breakthrough in my cultivation.

Some attachments manifest themselves on the surface. It is often very difficult to eliminate them if one fails to recognize that a fundamental attachment lies beneath them. As I understand it, all trials that manifest on the surface ultimately reveal our attachments. And in one way or another, they always touch upon our fundamental attachment.

For example, when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, I experienced on several occasions during Dafa activities that a practitioner from Ukraine would join in conversations with passers-by and then switch to Ukrainian. This excluded me from the conversation, which hurt me deeply. Furthermore, she asked all Russian-speaking passers-by where they were from. If someone said they were from Ukraine, she was particularly pleased. I found that unpleasant too.

At first, I thought it was just envy on my part. Yet I couldn’t find any inner peace. Later, I realized that these situations touched on a deep emotional pain within me—the feeling of not being accepted or of being rejected. It was precisely these feelings that had led me into depression in the past. Once I understood this, the situation changed, and I no longer felt hurt.

Another incident occurred while I was helping to sell subscriptions for Shen Yun Creations in Füssen, Germany. One day, I was manning the stand alongside another practitioner. At some point, I decided to go over to another stand. When I returned, she criticized me for leaving her on her own when she needed my help. Later, I experienced some interference and had to go to the toilet urgently. When I returned, she criticized me again for having left while she was having difficulties. That hurt me deeply.

The next day, overwhelmed by my emotions, I told her that I wasn’t there because of her and that I didn’t have to stay by her side all the time. This led to a major conflict, and for a long time I couldn’t calm down inside.

It was only when I realized that my fundamental attachment had been touched upon that I was able to calm down again. That feeling of being controlled triggered the familiar emotional pain within me. When I realized this, I spoke to her about it and apologized sincerely and with a peaceful heart. I sold well that day—my very first sales in that town.

4. Overcoming Drowsiness and Practicing All of the Exercises Each Morning

After the 2025 season, I suggested to a fellow practitioner from the Shen Yun Creations project that we could do the exercises together at 5 o’clock in the morning. We’ve been doing this for a year now. However, even for some time after we’d started doing the exercises in the morning, I still couldn’t break free from my attachment to sleep. I still found it difficult to get up. I realized that behind this sleepiness lay my fundamental attachment: emotional pain.

I use sleep to try to avoid this emotional pain. When I’m feeling low, I don’t want to get up, and sleep protects me from having to do so. Whether I am tired or not is directly linked to my cultivation state. When I began to pay attention to my fundamental attachment, my condition improved. I became able to pass tests more quickly and to raise my xinxing.

Today I feel that in the past, I didn’t really cultivate myself properly. Now I can concentrate while studying the Fa, and I have the inner strength to clarify the truth. In the past, I would hand someone a leaflet and want to move on as quickly as possible. Today I make an effort to tell them more, and I talk to people until they are the ones who end the conversation.

One day, it occurred to me to get up an hour earlier. I suggested this to my fellow practitioner—with whom I do the exercises every morning—and she said she’d had the same thought. So we started doing the exercises as early as 3.50 a.m. That way, we manage to complete all the exercises before sending forth righteous thoughts.

This brought about major changes in my cultivation. I began to get through significantly more tasks and to use my time much more effectively.

When I am calm within myself—free from worries and fears—I am able to get up before 4 a.m. Likewise, I don’t feel tired throughout the day, even if I didn’t go to sleep until after midnight. When my cultivation state isn’t so good—when I’m preoccupied with emotions or worries—I go to bed as early as 10 p.m. Then I can still get up at 4 a.m. and do the exercises. The following words from Master touched me deeply: “You claim that you are too busy and don’t have the time. Actually, you are afraid that you don’t get enough rest. Has it ever occurred to you that cultivation is the best form of rest?” from Teachings at the First Conference in North America (1998).

I realized that it is only fear and our own notions that hold us back, while we practitioners are in fact capable of far more than we sometimes believe. It is very important to overcome the fear of tiredness. How could I be afraid of getting tired when Master has created everything in this universe and is always by my side?

5. Conclusion

I cannot put into words how grateful I am to Master for his compassionate salvation and support. In Towards Consummation, Master said the following: “Studying the Fa with attachments is not true cultivation. Yet during the course of cultivation a person may gradually become aware of his fundamental attachments, rid himself of them, and thus meet the standard for a cultivator.”

I understand that only by recognizing and eliminating one’s fundamental attachments can one reach the standard of a cultivator.

I am deeply grateful to Master for the extra time he has granted me, enabling me to clearly recognize my fundamental attachment before the end of the Fa-rectification period, and to reach the standard of a cultivator.

This is my limited understanding. If anything in my experience-sharing report does not align with the Fa, please kindly point it out to me.

Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.

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