Rising from the Depths to Attain the Fa -- How A Young Man Turned His Life Around

I am a 26-year-old man, and I want to talk about my experiences after I attained the Fa. I was a typical young Chinese American from California. My whole family immigrated to the United States in 1989 from the southern part of China, a city called Kaiping in Canton. After I arrived here, I gradually changed into someone that wasn't recognizable as me at all. For example, I took up smoking, drinking, going to nightclubs--I even got involved with a group of gangsters in Chinatown. Fortunately I did not commit any crimes involving fighting or shooting, although I used some fake credit cards to buy expensive things, and stole change from parking meters.

In 1997 or 98 when I was doing nothing, one day I went to the library, and I spotted a golden book called Zhuan Falun. I was interested because I had heard about it before, even though I didn't remember from where, so I checked the book out along with the exercise video. At first, I thought it would be a really complicated book like the Buddhist Scriptures, but it was not. Instead, it used the most common language, yet contained the most profound meaning. I was really amazed and full of wonder at the book. I started reading it and finished it within days. At the time, I did not completely believe everything it contained, but I knew it was really good, so I started practicing some and following the character requirements. But I was a lazy person, so I couldn't keep practicing every day. Eventually I stopped.

Later on, I watched the news on Chinese TV in 1999, when China started persecuting Falun Dafa. I didn't believe the news from China at all, but due to the very limited Fa I had learned from the book, for a very short time I had some doubts about Dafa. But after I read the book again, I couldn't find any evil in it at all--it was a pure book from Heaven. Human beings have a lot of so-called reasons and attachments to give themselves all kinds of excuses not to follow the Fa. I was like this. I was extremely lazy, and even though I believed the Fa in the book, I was thinking how Master Li said in the book that character is most important, that you don't even need to practice; so I completely stopped practicing. Later on, I didn't follow the character requirements either, because I was thinking, "At least I am a better person than the others."
In the past two or three years, I had taken up another really bad habit: smoking marijuana. At first, I gave myself the usual excuses--that it's not addictive (but it is, at least mentally) and it's a natural herb from the earth. So I started smoking it. I didn't know if it was because I felt too sorry to face Master Li, but I didn't want to face reality anymore, and marijuana gave me that. I felt so happy and unattached when I smoked it, and sometimes I even wondered if this was what achieving Consummation was like? In the beginning I started smoking once a month, then once a week, then once every couple of days, until finally I found myself smoking marijuana every day! In California, marijuana is not cheap: the price is $20 dollars for just one gram, so eventually I spent all my money. I knew it had to stop, but instead I stole money from my parents to buy more marijuana, while telling myself that I would stop after just this time. But who was I kidding? I ended up smoking marijuana non-stop every day for almost two years.

One day, I had spent all my money, including the money I stole from my parents. I knew that if I didn't stop right away, it was all over for me. Thus, I decided to put an end to this once and for all. I went online to minghui.org, and after reading some of the new articles from Master Li, and some from the students, I realized how selfish and how bad I was. I swore to myself I would start over again, although I was not sure if Master Li would accept me as his student after what I had done.

Since then, I read the articles on minghui.org every day, did two hours of practice at night, and read Zhuan Falun before I went to bed. It was not easy the first day I started again, especially when I was doing the second exercise. Maybe I had been too lazy in the past, but sweat dripped from my forehead to my chin, as if my hands were lifting thousands of pounds. In my mind I kept telling myself to stop and leap onto the comfortable bed, but visions appeared of the students in Mainland China practicing every day, even in jails, with the prisoners and the police beating them up-- but did they quit? No! The words from the books of Master Li also appeared, telling me that practice is hard, and if I could not even endure these little hardships, how could I practice cultivation? Who was I kidding? Thus, I didn't stop my practice. I followed the Falun Dafa music, and finished the whole two hours. It's been about a month since the day I decided to start practicing cultivation. During this time, the urge to smoke cigarettes and marijuana appeared a couple of times, but I kept reading Zhuan Falun and the articles from minghui.org, and reciting the phrases "The Fa rectifies the Cosmos, the Evil is completely eliminated. The Fa rectifies Heaven and Earth, immediate retribution in this lifetime" constantly to clean up my evil thoughts, and to rectify everything that is not righteous in the universe, especially in China.

Another thing happened two days after I decided to start practicing cultivation again: my best friend called me to smoke marijuana, as we used to do that together. I went out with him, and after we smoked, I was very regretful that I had done that again. I realized this was a test from Master Li, and I failed. I decided to tell my friend that I had started practicing cultivation, and I told him that I quit smoking cigarettes and would not smoke marijuana again (it wasn't easy at that time for me), that this was the last time. He kind of understood what I was saying, because from that day on he hasn't called me again.

Before I typed this article up, I myself couldn't believe I would do this. I struggled with myself a lot, because my English is worse than my Chinese. I wanted to write in Chinese, but I do not know how to type Chinese into a computer, and I don't have any money to buy a scanner, since I have been unemployed for more than two months now. So I will type this in English, even though it will have a lot of grammatical errors, etc. I really hope the Dafa disciples, the dear workers at minghui.org will edit my article and post it online, so that a lot more people like me can have a chance to save themselves. I also wanted to give thousands, millions of thanks to Master Li, and the students who are being persecuted in China. If it were not for them I would still be wasting my life day by day. In the past few days, I have been informing other people about the websites (minghui.org and clearwisdom.net) and I also posted information on the online drug addiction discussion bulletin board. I hope some of them will attain the Fa. Even if only one of them does, that's the least I can do for now.