Removing My Fundamental Attachments

Respected Master, Dear Practitioners;

I would like to share some of my experiences I have had in my cultivation relating to my little daughter. Raising her has helped me a lot in my cultivation. Her name is Gloria.

Since her birth until today, I have been able to learn a lot from her, which I am sure will continue. Everyone who has a child surely knows what I am talking about. One cannot simply run away from the problems one encounters with their child. You could choose to ignore or constantly fight with the child and lastly with oneself. Or you can make a decision to look inside and try to find the cause of the prob em within your self, as the principles outlined in Falun Gong have taught taught us. I often witnessed that when I changed myself and looked for my own thoughts that this had a direct result to the matter at hand, leading to greater harmony.

At the beginning of being a mother, I felt an urgent need to do everything I could for Gloria and fulfil every wish she had so as to have a happy child. But I did not succeed with anything I did, except for Gloria crying more and more whenever she was with me. In addition, I was not able to look at Gloria as an independent person, which probably was born into our family just for one reason, namely to be able to cultivate herself. I also failed to see that I had given Gloria the power to take charge of my life and I only did what she wanted me to do. This situation continued until I could no longer stand it. I no longer enjoyed my child and called out for help! Something had to change.

With the help of an acquaintance of mine, I was able to recognise what I had done especially to my child and the burden I had put on her. She does not know anything about life yet and is longing for security, a role model, someone that tells her what is right from wrong. I recognised that I had to take charge and at last become a role model for her. I asked myself, what kind of role model had I been up to now and realised that I should not be surprised at all when Gloria cried a lot and was restless. She was my mirror image and showed me my innermost feelings, my restlessness, my chaos!

Old questions started to appear again: who am I, what do I want, where do I go? What kind of role model do I want to be for her exactly? At last, I wanted to be a mother for her, which she could look up to, which would give her security. But in order to be all that, I needed to recognise what was important to me. I was allowed to recognise that I am not a bad mother whenever she is crying because I cannot hold her at that very moment, because I am getting dressed, undressed, am eating, etc. Before that, I always had a bad conscience, always criticised myself, and I did not realise that Gloria needed to learn all of this at one point in time. I also wanted to teach her tolerance and forbearance which Falun Gong is teaching us. When should she learn it, if not first through our relationship? She was now old enough to deal with small frustrations and to slowly learn that she also had to be considerate of other people.

When I woke up the next morning, and with having this change in my heart, Gloria also had changed. She did not object that I sat her on the floor, while I was fixing breakfast for myself. This was almost impossible before. I felt so free, and so it continued. I recognised more and more that Gloria is an independent being who has her own path here and I was allowed to accompany her on this path. I am continuously learning that l need to let go of my attachment towards her.

A practitioner told me about a good comparison saying that we should look at it like our Master treats us as practitioners, he cannot remove all out tribulations and suffering otherwise ow can we cultivate, that’s how I should be as Gloria’s mother.

I started to be more secure during my daily life, but I still was not able to introduce her to the idea of cultivation. Even though I was able to practice some of the Falun Dafa exercises in front of her, while she was happily playing on the floor, I was not truly able to get rid of the thoughts of an everyday person. I noticed that I lacked the deep understanding of the principles taught in Falun Gong, in order to recognise the urgency of today’s time. It was more important to me to read unimportant books, watch a movie and worry about my life as an everyday person. I continued to be especially interested about the issue of being a parent, the raising of children and everything that other people did wrong about this subject. Besides, I felt fearful when thinking about having to let go of this life and I did not know how to break through the notion of being comfortable. When I imagined all that I, as a Falun Gong practitioner, had to do at this moment, I was terrified of the “mountain of work” which I saw in front of me. I also knew that all I had to do was to study the Falun Gong teachings more, and then everything would work out by itself. Having the right understanding, I would be able to naturally undertake the tasks that I was responsible for involving Falun Gong and would not be afraid to give up something else while participating in Falun Dafa related projects. Yet when I finally forced myself to read, I quickly became bored and I wasn’t truly reading from my heart, my mind was somewhere else and so the reading wasn’t effective. I stopped reading very quickly. Whilst sending forth righteous thoughts, I was not able to concentrate for even half a minute. I had no idea what was hindering my righteous thoughts.

Little did I realise that I would soon become much more clearheaded. Everything started with a fight which I had with my father. Of course it was about Gloria. I was not satisfied with the way he treated her and he became stubborn, etc. On the surface, I had hoped that this fight would have been resolved more to my satisfaction, but in retrospect it was absolutely correct the way it turned out. It surfaced so many of my hidden attachments.

My father made me aware that, in certain instances, I was always hurting other people’s feelings. I always looked at others faults and often told them about their wrong actions in a rude manner. I was unaware of the impact my words had on this persons feelings, though most of the time it was about Gloria. For example, I always wanted to protect her from rough encroachments because she was very shy and became afraid easily when someone approached her too quickly. I never considered the feelings of other people and how I forced my wishes and requests upon them and this often was anything but compassionate. It hurt me a lot to admit this to myself. I could not explain why I always acted this way.

When my father returned home after we had talked about our previous fight and we came to an agreement, I thought a lot about everything. I was suddenly aware about many issues I had. I recognised myself as the person I was before I started practising Falun Gong. At that time, I was sort of a “small society rebellion” and was convinced that I knew more about life than everyone else, who were just living their mundane lives. During my entire cultivation, I thought that I had broken through all of this and that I made peace with society. It was always one of my first answers when someone asked me what Falun Gong has given me. Now I had to recognise that I still was this little rebellion and only on the surface did I lead a normal life and conformed to society. Yet deep down inside, I still wanted to be the one who knew everything and who forced her opinion upon others, under the guise of helping others. I always thought that I looked at the positive aspects in people, but I now noticed that this was just wishful thinking and that I was kidding myself, in fact I was been prejudiced. I looked at people as being only stupid, wandering around beings who did not know what life is all about and was convinced that I was the only one who was right under every circumstance. At least, I recognised what is right even though my actions didn’t follow. I acted wrongly, yet I was demanding others that they should live according to my thoughts. I was no longer surprised that I was unable to imagine or feel compassion for every human being until this moment. Now, I even realised why it disturbed me so greatly when fellow practitioners seemed to act as they knew everything and were better than I.

I asked myself, how can I break through this, how can I change my actions around? How can I truly respect them? I then realised that our Master has already explained this to us, but I was never able to understand it from my heart, nor could I truly recognise it. At that moment, I felt my understanding completely change. Suddenly, I was able to understand it from my heart, I had a new perception on what the Fa rectification is all about, what my task is and especially why all beings are on this earth at this present time.

Every person, no matter whether it is my father, my neighbour or the person I meet on the street, etc. they truly are all high beings, which represent a complete heavenly system. If I am not compassionate with this person, than I am not compassionate with his system either. Even though this person is in the maze and cannot recognise who he/she really is, from studying the Falun Gong teachings we as practitioners do know that they are truly special. If this person is unable to recognise this, then I who knows how valuable this person is, has to treat him/her with respect. I clearly realised what my task is. I am to represent Falun Dafa. I have to give the people a chance to learn about this great practise. Not by lecturing or debating, but by example! Not only distributing flyers and collecting signatures, but I have to act, speak and think like a Falun Gong practitioner. That is why the three things which our Master asked us to do are so important. Only if we do these three things, can we improve.

At last, I was able to improve. Even though I had to painfully argue with my self it was well worth it. It was not easy to uncover this strong ego within me, to admit to it and to break through it. Thereby, a lot of knowledge was released and now I am sure that this was an important step towards my true self and through this more was revealed to me.

I was again able to set priorities, was touched again when I was reading, was able to concentrate again when sending forth righteous thoughts and most importantly, once again I knew why I am doing all of this. Automatically, more tasks for helping with the Fa-rectification opened up for me. Other practitioners asked me whether I would like to take over this or that. How wonderful it was to gratefully take on these tasks, since at last I was able to understand how important they are. In the past, it was more a burden for me when I was asked to do certain things and was looking for excuses, or I performed them without looking at it from the perspective of a practitioner.

Today, I am able to look at us as one body, realising and that we are doing something so very, very important even as we sit here today! I hope that we can all continue to make improvements and release our human attachments so that we can close our gaps allowing us to act as one body so as to to better in our related projects.

I thank our respected Master and my fellow practitioners for the help and last but not least for your attention.