Growing Up Under the Light of Dafa, Unwaveringly Walking on the Path of Cultivation

Greetings Benevolent Master!
Greetings Fellow Practitioners!

I am a young Dafa practitioner currently in my twenties. I began cultivating Falun Dafa when I was little. When I was ten years old, due to the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal persecution of Falun Dafa, we were forced to leave Beijing and move to London, and in this democratic and free country, we have continued to firmly believe in Dafa. Growing up under the light of the Fa, I have been blessed with a happy childhood and have grown from a young practitioner into a young adult practitioner. What Master and Dafa have bestowed me with is truly beyond measure. I feel that being able to melt into the Fa and become a particle of Dafa is an immense blessing and an eternal glory for a being. After going through tens of millions of years waiting for Dafa through countless reincarnations, I was fortunate enough to obtain the Fa in this lifetime, fulfill the historical vow and embark on the path of returning to our heavenly home. This is only possible through Master’s immense compassion and benevolent arrangement.

I feel deeply saddened when the Chinese Communist Party, and media outlets under its order, shamelessly slander and attack Master, Falun Dafa, and Dafa projects such as Shen Yun Performing Arts. Master has taught Dafa without charging a penny and has guided us to become good people by following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, to become people who contribute positively to society. Hundreds of millions of people have benefited both physically and mentally from the belief, so why do such vicious and horrible defamations arise? In the face of this turmoil, I would like to share my own cultivation experiences to show the beauty and greatness of Falun Dafa.

1. After Truly Practicing Dafa, I Became an Outstanding Student in Character & Academics

I began my cultivation in Dafa with my mum when I was very young. Every day, I was immersed in the teachings of the Fa, and my life was peaceful and fulfilling. However, when I was seven years old, my mother, a lawyer, was unlawfully detained for two years in the Beijing Women's Forced Labor Camp. During those two years, without my mother and without the guidance of Dafa, I became uninterested in studying and became obsessed with watching television every day. Because of my obsession with TV, my father dismantled our television three times.

When I was ten years old, plainclothes police rented the flat across from our home and monitored our front door 24/7. As a result, we were forced to flee from China and the control of the Chinese Communist Party, to the United Kingdom. At that time, my English was very poor, my English grades were low for a long time, and because of the language barrier, I found it difficult to fit in and make friends. As a result, I began spending time on the internet.

At that time, I had just started junior high school. Because I was constantly exposed to the internet, I unconsciously absorbed many negative influences, ideas, and matters.

Master said: “A person is like a container, and he is whatever he contains. All of what a person sees with the eyes and hears with the ears are: violence, lust, power struggles in literary works, struggles for profit in the practical world, money worship, other manifestations of demon-nature, and so on. With his head filled with these, this kind of person is truly a bad person, no matter what he appears to be. ” (“Melt Into The Fa”, ESSENTIALS FOR FURTHER ADVANCEMENT)

As I spent more and more time online, the once simple and compassionate me became increasingly complicated. As my attachments and obsessions grew stronger and stronger, I also became shorter tempered and easily angered. Gradually, I drifted away from Dafa.

When I was in Year 10, it was time to start preparing for GCSEs two years later. At that time my academic results and attitude toward studying were far from ideal. GCSE results are very important—not only are they required to apply to sixth form and university, but some employers also look at GCSE results. Because of this I was extremely nervous. Every day after school I would study from the afternoon all the way into the evening, without a break. However, at that time my revision was mostly copying notes from the textbook to a notebook rather than actually absorbing the knowledge into my head, let alone being able to apply concepts and formulas to solve more complex problems. The enormous academic pressure, combined with my unsatisfactory results and my insatiable pursuit of fame and monetary gain, left me feeling exhausted by life every day. My heart would often race with anxiety and I would break out in cold sweats.

At this low point in my life, I suddenly remembered cultivation. When I felt I had lost everything, I realized that I had not studied the Fa or done the exercises for a long time. I found that only when I listen to Master's Fa lectures and to Dafa music would I feel calm and tranquil, no longer sinking in the pain of chasing after fame and gain. Gradually, I began to persist in studying the Fa every day and eventually found more efficient revision methods.

Master said, “... for a [Falun Gong] student who is a school student, your natural duty is to study well, since you are a student.”

Master also said: "If you always think about getting into college, getting into college, and yet you don’t study well, how can you get into college? You don’t need to think about getting into college all the time. Wouldn’t it be a waste of energy if you couldn’t get into one? Don’t think about getting into college, just work hard to study well, and that’s enough. When you have done well with your studies, college or graduate school will come along, right?" ("Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Guangzhou”, Explaining the Teachings of Zhuan Falun).

I realized that the reason I felt such pain and anxiety was not because I disliked studying or because of the intense exam pressure, but because I was scared that doing poorly would affect "my” prospects and hold back "my” pursuit of fame and gain. Having realized this, I began to actively eliminate these pursuits and attachments of the false self toward the ordinary human world, to persist in studying the Fa, doing the exercises, and cultivating my xinxing every day, as well as doing more exam questions and past papers. Gradually, I found that my memory became better, and my efficiency and concentration became better and better. Naturally, my academic results got better.

In the GCSE exams two years later, I did 10 GCSEs (only 9 were required) and got six Grade 9s (the highest possible GCSE grade), two Grade 8s, one Grade 7, and one A*. The A* was in Further Mathematics, which I signed up for only a few months before the exam and taught myself from a textbook. I, who had once been really weak in English and poor at my studies, achieved the top grade in English Literature, English Language, Mathematics, Triple Sciences, and History.

After persisting in truly cultivating Dafa, improving my xinxing, and focusing on study itself rather than chasing illusions of fame and gain, I moved on to A Levels where only three subjects are required. I did five and earned four A*s (the top grade) and one A. My dissertation research project was a truth-clarification documentary I filmed myself. It showed the personal experiences of me and the young fellow practitioners around me, including the CCP's cruel persecution of young Dafa disciples. When the family of young Dafa disciples in China are taken away by the police for practicing Dafa, how are these helpless children to survive in such a cruel society? I showed this documentary to my teachers and friends, and they were all deeply moved. I also added it on my LinkedIn profile page, and one person contacted me to say that she was so moved by the document she was crying.

During my sixth-form years, the CCP virus struck, and many universities delayed their application and offer process. Under Master's compassionate arrangement, after finishing sixth form I successfully enrolled in one of the world's top universities: The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to study Bsc Economics. During university I did several internships in Investment Banking and Quantitative Trading, and post graduation, under Master's compassionate arrangement, I joined a Hedge Fund as an Investment Analyst.

I discovered that once I stopped chasing fame and gain, the suffering of never being satisfied dissolved along with it. Desire is a bottomless pit. The pursuit of empty fame and fleeting profit can never bring true satisfaction—it only draws one in ever deeper. Lost in the pursuit of fame and gain, one forgets the true purpose of coming to this world. Using a Chinese idiom, it’s like flowers in a mirror or the reflection of the moon in water—it all comes to nothing. How sad is this!? After I realized how important cultivation is to one's life and gave up these attachments, simply concentrating on doing the proper work a student should do, I gained many unexpected opportunities and results. But at these times I was not excited; instead I was very calm because they are all Master’s arrangements and encouragements.

2. Experiences of Sending Forth Righteous Thoughts

Regarding sending forth righteous thoughts, Master has told us: "Let me put it this way: Dafa disciples need to do three things well on their way to Consummation, right? And sending forth righteous thoughts is one of those things. If it’s that important, why can’t you do it well?! Why do you think of it as such a simple thing and not take it seriously? You do know how important it is. Besides, if you don’t do one of the three things well, then what?"

I came to realize that failing to do well at sending righteous thoughts means failing to fulfill my mission as a Dafa disciple, and that reflects not taking cultivation and saving people seriously enough. I also found that when I slacked off in sending righteous thoughts, many bad beings grew, which made it easy for me to fall into a state of not being diligent and low spirits. Whereas when I sent righteous thoughts regularly, my cultivation state was more diligent. I have had many wondrous experiences with sending righteous thoughts, and here I would like to share several of them, in the hope of encouraging others to be diligent together.

When Master’s jingwen “The Ordeals Our Spiritual Discipline Faces” was published, I would send righteous thoughts whenever I had a free moment, often sending righteous thoughts silently on my way to work or while on public transport. Back then, when I recited the righteous thoughts formula, every word felt like a thunderbolt, calling to mind Master’s poem:

"They surge like thunderbolts to cosmic heights
Roaring with colossal power, reaching beyond the heavens
They sweep across the cosmos, no crevice left untouched
Eliminating at once all that’s degenerate and deviant "
("Righteous Thoughts", Hong Yin IV )

For a period of time, while sending righteous thoughts, I felt that my hands and head were extremely far apart, as though one is as high as the sky and the other as low as the ground. Sometimes I could see a giant Buddha statue, in a place that looks like an ancient temple.

There was another time when sending righteous thoughts, I saw myself rapidly breaking through one level after another—heaven upon heaven, one cosmos after another, one layer of particles after another—at tremendous speed that made me feel nervous. 

Once, I dreamed that the Fa had rectified the human world. We were kneeling before Master. Master pointed toward my mother, and I began to feel nervous, afraid that I would fail to succeed in cultivation, my heart uneasy and restless. At that moment, Master also pointed toward me, and in an instant my heart became incomparably calm. All human emotions and thoughts vanished in a flash, and I was utterly tranquil. Afterward, I saw that we had already returned to the heavens, kneeling before Master, listening to Master teach the Fa.

Cultivation is like boat sailing against the current: if it does not advance, it falls back. I realized that I must do everything I can to cultivate as I did at the beginning, always maintaining a diligent state. I found that, besides sending righteous thoughts regularly, reciting and copying the Fa are also very helpful for elevating one's cultivation state. With the same Fa, the inner meanings revealed through reciting differ from those revealed through reading: when I recite the Fa, almost every sentence reveals to me a vast inner meaning that had never been revealed when I read it before. For example, once while reciting and copying Zhuan Falun, just as I recited the book's title, Zhuan Falun, I was suddenly enlightened to the understanding that "Zhuan Falun" is the very process of Master's Fa-rectification.

This is how I recite and copy the Fa: for a given sentence of the Fa, I first read with concentration three times, by which point I have nearly memorized; then I recite twice, and then I copy on a clean and empty notebook. One must never pursue speed; rather, one should earnestly study it and assimilate to the Fa.

3. Fulfilling My Historic Vow and Assisting Master in Saving Sentient Beings

From last year's Shen Yun promotion season to this year's Shen Yun performances, I was fortunate to take part in more Dafa projects related to Shen Yun. This year, in addition to the usual ticket promotion and sales and doing light boarding at the theater, I also joined in translating audience feedback and ordering meals for Shen Yun performers. I came to realize that, in doing Dafa projects, the most important thing is to maintain a diligent cultivation state—only then is one a cultivator doing Dafa projects, and only then is one less easily interfered with by evil beings. When I was diligent, even translating late into the night, I was full of energy and not the least bit sleepy or tired, because I knew that a divine body is not limited by the material space of ordinary people. When I was not diligent, the later I translated into the night, the less I wanted to translate. Human notions would surface, I would glance at the clock and think how late it was, and I would desperately want to sleep, worried that staying up late would be bad for my skin. When ordering meals for the Shen Yun artists, I would always confirm and place the order weeks in advance, to avoid complications from potential delay. When ordering takeout for them, I would always create a word doc. listing several Chinese and Western restaurants, making sure that the dishes I recommended included both meat dishes and vegetarian options for those who don't like meat, while also noting details such as price, calories, and whether each dish was spicy or not. Shen Yun is the Dafa project with the greatest power to save people, and I feel deeply honored to have had the opportunity to take part in it. Through these experiences I realized that to do well, one must be diligent in cultivation and have strong righteous thoughts.

Master said: "... how well you cultivate yourselves determines your power to save people …" ("2018 NTD and Epoch Times Fa Conference", Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XV)

Once, just after finishing promoting Shen Yun at a shopping center, I was about to leave when something suddenly came to my mind, so I stayed to discuss it with a fellow practitioner. About half an hour later, a lady passing by suddenly noticed us and was very excited. It turned out she had wanted to buy Shen Yun tickets for several years, but for various reasons, had never managed to. She quickly phoned her family to come and they bought several tickets. At one point she said to me, with great trust, "Whichever seats you recommend, I'll buy—I trust you." This may seem like a small thing, but it has stayed in my heart ever since. I was very moved, because I knew this was no coincidence: Master brought a predestined person to us.

I have an ordinary human job during weekdays and have always fallen short when it comes to clarifying the truth. Recently I have worked hard to maintain a state of cultivating as I did at the beginning of cultivation and to study Fa a great deal, and as a result my cultivation state and my understanding of Fa-rectification have undergone a great change. I realized that Dafa disciples must fulfill their vows and seize the time to save sentient beings, and I began to feel anxious about how far short I had fallen in clarifying the truth.

So I began to do more truth-clarification work by handing out leaflets at tourist attractions. At first, I really did not want to: the main reason was that on previous occasions many Chinese tourists, deceived by the CCP's lies, would mostly glare at us coldly, which made me feel that each time I went I was just going to be subjected to ill treatment. On one occasion I stood handing out flyers on the street for two hours without successfully giving out a single one, and felt all the effort was for nothing. But now my perspective has changed: I feel that whether or not they accept a flyer, we must give them this opportunity. Moreover, if one cultivates well and has strong righteous thoughts, so that every glance and every word carries compassionate energy, one can eliminate the evil beings controlling ordinary people. So I ought to look forward to why I was not able to hand out any flyers.

After changing my way of thinking, each time I went to a truth-clarification site, seeing the righteous ordinary people who understood the truth and the remarkable fellow practitioners moved me deeply. I remember one time when it was over 30°C in London—simply scorching. When I arrived at the site, the sun blazed overhead. Many fellow practitioners came that day, and everyone handed out flyers or did the exercises under the blazing sun without a single complaint. Two people passed us and took a flyer from my hand. A little while later, they came back and very earnestly signed the petition. Looking at their faces, I was deeply moved.

I hope that we can all live up to Master's expectations and the hopes of sentient beings, live up to our own true wishes, refuse to be deluded by the false appearances of the mortal world, live up to the magnificent title of Dafa disciples of the Fa-rectification period, and walk unwaveringly on the path of divinity!

My personal level is limited. If there is anything not in line with the Fa, please compassionately point it out.

With deepest gratitude, I bow to revered Master!

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