A Mother of Three Tells "How Dafa Totally Changed My Life"

There is no doubt in my mind that what the founder of Falun Gong, Master Li, says about predestined relationships is true, due to the fact that I searched endlessly for the Fa (Law or Principle, the teachings in Falun Gong) since I was around 7 years old. At this young age I started reading books on Atlantis, the great pyramids, astral projection, and books by Erich von Daniken. I watched and read everything I could about the universe, aliens and our solar system. I read the Bible through and through and felt close to God, and knew deep within that I must become a better person.

At eight years old I stepped forward in church and received Baptism. Still I knew there was something more, and I always felt like there was something I needed to do, but what it was exactly, I did not know.

As I grew up, my family split apart, and eventually my parents divorced. I fell away from Christianity and started following along with society and materialism. I am from eastern Kentucky and have only a ninth grade education due to a rebellious and angry temperament. I always blamed my parents for all my downfalls and tribulations. I tumbled and lost myself in self-pity, drugs and negative associations. My teenage years were chaotic at best, but inside I still had a little Buddha nature left.

At 20 I joined an ancient mystical society, and through its teaching learned many things about the world and felt better grounded. I belonged to this mystery school for many years, but it did not keep me from sliding down even further, and it never emphasized virtue or how to be a better person. So while still clinging to it for protection, I continued my search to find the truth, but everywhere I looked it was not there. Once I felt drawn toward learning something about eastern thought and read a book on Zen Buddhism. As I read, it came to a part that talked about meditating and sitting in silence and enlightening on your own. I remember my frustration with what I read and thinking, "Enlighten to what? I put the book down and sadly never picked up another book of eastern thought again because I figured that they were all the same.

At age 28 I was still doing drugs, and by this time I was developing severe allergies and chronic bronchitis which led me to the hospital, sometimes three times a year, with pneumonia. I was still a member of the secret order, the ancient mystical society I spoke of earlier, yet my life had become deplorable. I was depressed and lost. I gave up on finding the way and plunged full force into the big dye vat of society.

By this time I had three children. My family life was very strained. I was not an ideal mother. I always lost my temper and always thought of myself first before anyone else. If anyone wronged me, I would surely wrong them much worse to get back at them. I had many enemies. I had an affair to get back at my husband's having an affair, and our marriage never fully recovered.

My mother had lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and never knew her grandchildren. She moved back to the US in 1998. She moved to Texas and asked me to move there with her. It took two years for me to agree because my relationship with my mother had always been rocky in the past. Looking back now I know that Master had arranged everything.

We moved in with my mother in July of 2000. My husband and I thought we were leaving our problems behind. We got good jobs working in the telecommunications industry. By September we moved out and got our own place. Then suddenly everyone was laid off and we lost our jobs. We moved back in with my mother. Terrible fights started between me and my husband and this made things with my mother very bad. I was still involved with the secret order in Texas and would travel to Austin once a month to attend a meeting.

I became very close with the regional monitor of the group. I was looking to him to maybe answer some of the questions I had as to the truth of why was I here. He just wanted to have a physical relationship. I totally lost faith in the order and quit. Something inside of me was waking up. I suddenly had a strange desire to learn Chinese. I started thinking about cultivation practices that I had heard about. I knew that affairs were wrong and wanted to be moral. I wanted to go to China and find a master! Where was I going to find one? I couldn't just leave my family and go away. I went to the highest hill in Canyon Lake and just sat there and spoke to whoever was there to possibly listen to my plea. It was a silent prayer to the universe for a way to cultivate back. Little did I know that someone was listening.

A few days later my husband, my mother and I all got into a big argument which resulted in her throwing us all out and we had nowhere to go but to a homeless shelter. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. My husband found another job and while he was gone from the shelter to work, the children and I would walk to the local public library. We had access to a VCR and I owned a computer but had no Internet access. We would borrow videos and books and CD's. On my second visit to the library, I came across a video entitled The True Story of Falun Gong. I had never heard of Falun Gong, but for some unknown reason at that time, I borrowed it and felt an urgency to watch it.

I can remember putting it into the recorder and pressing play and seeing the Falun and hearing the music. It dumbfounded me. I was speechless and could think of nothing else but watching the story. I knew I had found what I had been searching for all of my life in that single instant. I went back to the library the next day to use their computer and look up www.falundafa.org. I downloaded each exercise onto a disk, took it back to the shelter, put it into my computer and practiced the movements and read the book.

After a week I woke up at night with what felt like an electrical current going into my abdomen. This was not unpleasant, it just woke me up. I feel like that is when I acquired the Falun (LawWheel). From using the www.falundafa.org website I found a group practice site in my area and went there for the first time and met some practitioners. I finally purchased a copy of kthe Falun Gong book, Zhuan Falun and went home and read it all in one day. As I started through it again my lips swelled up like I had collagen injections in both of my lips. It did not hurt but my lips felt very thick and it was annoying. The whole thing lasted about a week. I called a practitioner in Austin and asked him about it. We decided it was a charachter issue and soon after it started to come down, and has never been back.

We started looking at houses so that we could move out of the shelter. One evening we went to look at a house. We stopped by a gas station to fill up our car and get something to drink. As I was coming out of the store and walking toward the car a girl I never met before walked up to me and asked me to open my hand. She seemed harmless, so I obliged and she put a huge bug into my hand. I screamed and she started to laugh. The bug flew up into the air and landed on the sidewalk. I picked it up as she was going into the store. I looked at it and realized it was one of those fake, trick bugs and this made me furious. I got into the car and was waiting for my husband to get back in with the kids, and I was thinking to myself, I must forbear. Isn't this the kind of thing Master talks about in the book? I was still so angry. How dare that girl do that to me? I yelled at her as we drove away and I failed my first big charachter test. I felt very bad afterward.

A week later we moved into that house and I continued to go to group practice and read. Every day, after I came home from the group practice I would sleep for a long time and have loose stools. I coughed up stuff out of my lungs, but I noticed I no longer needed my rescue inhaler and I bravely quit taking the antihistamine medication for a day to see what would happen. I had taken it for ten years and could not breathe well without it. I also had a nebulizer because sometimes I had to have a deep treatment for my lungs. I went off of it and I couldn't' believe my surprise! I didn't need it anymore. So I quit taking everything. My allergies all went away. I am still practicing to this day. Falun Dafa totally changed my life, and I am a different person now. I can hardly believe what I used to be. I owe my life and everything in it to the Fa!