Greetings Teacher and fellow practitioners,
I have practised Falun Dafa since February of the year 2000.
Although I was born in Romania, I have lived in the USA for about 8 years, and this is my first writing on a few of my experiences in practising Falun Dafa.
When I turned 40, I left everything I had in Romania and came to this country with a bag that contained just some clothes and two books. From the many books that I had in my home in Romania, one of the two that I picked was about the life of prince Siddhartha. At the time, I was unaware that the prince Siddartha and Sakyamuni were the same person, and further I did not know who Sakyamuni was.
I found a job quite easily with the help of a very good Romanian friend, and to my surprise, I also made many new friends, most of whom were Asian people! In my first job I worked in a rather small company with a few of my Romanian friends, but I realised after a while that I ate lunch more often with my new Chinese and Vietnamese friends than with my old Romanian friends! It was not that I had forgotten my old friends, not at all. It just happened that all of a sudden I had been surrounded by so many Asian people. It must have looked strange and at the same time a bit funny, and I personally could not understand how this had all come to be. After I learnt about Falun Dafa, I let everyone I knew know about it, but perhaps I was a bit overexcited in doing so. Nobody wanted to practise with me, which was contrary to my expectations. This is especially so consider how I once held many expectations of all kinds, and I was even a very demanding person, though this may not have been easily noticeable!
In the US, I spent most of my time at work, and in my spare time I went to the gym and on trips organised by one of my best Romanian friends. He was the one who would take me to a Falun Dafa workshop a few years later, but before we started the practice, he was also "feeding" me with all kind of information about all kinds of paranormal things. He was "looking for something" quite intensively at that time.
In February of 2000, he and I simultaneously found what we were looking for!
After starting Falun Dafa, I was able to see very clearly how a lot of things in my life were arranged just to help me to gain a gradual understanding of this world, to bring me close to Falun Dafa and to ready me for discovering it. I am unable to comprehend the meanings of many events in my life, but I can now understand some things because I am a practitioner of Falun Dafa.
How I came to practise Falun Gong
One day in July of 1999, my Chinese friend and coworker gave me a flyer about a Falun Dafa Conference in San Jose. She asked me if I wanted to attend that Conference with her. I recall her mentioning that a Chinese Teacher would come and that it would be worth going to. I did not attend that Conference in the end because she told me few days later that it had been cancelled. I didn't know at that time what happened. Later I realised that the persecution of Falun Dafa in China was launched on July 20th of 1999, and it had a huge impact all over the world, including on the Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference that was to be held in San Jose in July of 1999.
I kept the flyer from my Chinese friend and I read it few times. It was a yellow flyer on the Falun Gong meditation system. Then one evening in February 2000, my friend asked me if I would like to accompany him to a certain bookstore to take a look at some books there that he had found interesting. Just when we were about to leave, he saw an announcement about a Falun Dafa workshop at the bookstore entrance. I remembered my yellow flyer from six months ago and told him that this is about a meditation system. He wanted to attend and so did I. We checked the announcement for more details; the workshop was about to start in 5 minutes! So we rushed to attend the workshop, and by the time the workshop ended, I somehow remembered what one of my old friends from Romania told me once in a conversation we had about the Eastern culture and philosophy. He said: "The Teacher comes when the student is ready," and somewhere deep inside I understood something even if I couldn't put it in words very well. I then reiterated to Steve this saying, and we also found that there will be a nine day seminar which would start in few days and which would find us in attendance.
At that time, the left side of my body was injured. I had broken my leg a few years before and was limping because of it. Furthermore, my left heel, ankle, knee, shoulder, elbow and wrist were all quite painful. During the nine day seminar, I noticed that I did not feel any pain when watching the video, but that the next day the pain would return as usual. It was a bit strange...I remember one night after watching Teacher's lecture, I was jumping on my left heel and very surprised of being able to do this, but the next day in the morning it again took me fifteen minutes to be able to walk normally after getting out of bed.
Watching the videotapes and listening to Teacher's lectures had a huge impact on me. Many things He said sounded surprisingly familiar to me, and later on I realised that during those nine days, something very important had happened to me, though I still could not explain what it was. I felt at that time like an enormously heavy object was lifted up away from me, and I felt immensely relieved.
A few months later, my friend and I went to read some of the Falun Gong teachings with some of my fellow Chinese practitioners in Sunnyvale, and few more months later, I participated for the first time in my life to something that looked like a "protest against human rights violations." But it was very different to the protests I had watched before on TV because it was so much more than all of those demonstrations. I suppose it could hardly be called it a "protest," but this is the most suitable word that comes to mind. Really, it was simply an event in front of the Chinese Consulate and aimed at stopping the persecution of Falun Dafa in China. During this event, I had a very difficult time, often feeling as if the whole sky was pressing my head down so that I could hardly move! I remember that somebody who noticed my difficult state helped me to walk around.
One of the first things that came to my mind after I started the practice was to let my Chinese friend who gave me the Falun Dafa flyer and who had since moved to another company know what a nice thing I was able to find. In a way, I wanted to thank her for that flyer. In the spring of 2000, when I spoke to her again about the practice, I was shocked. She was now against it, and she kept telling me what the Chinese communist propaganda was spreading around the world. After we talked a bit, it seemed that she changed her mind, although not as much as I wished.
The disappearance of physical problems and illnesses soon after practising
The many problems I had once had disappeared rapidly and almost unnoticed after I started practising Falun Dafa.
For a very long period in my life I had struggled to fix some major issues that I found in myself, but I could never do much about them. There was one specific problem that I tried very hard to fix and that bothered me often, but somehow it was always beyond my power to do anything about it. After starting to practice, however, I realised a few months later that this major problem was already gone and that I could not even recall when and how it went away! It was gone even before I started the practice! For the first time, I became aware that Teacher was taking care of me and that He had been taking care of me even before I started the practice!
All of the other physical problems that I had also disappeared within a few weeks or months. At one point, I found myself running down the stairs in the morning without pain at all on the left side of my body, and the limping was gone too.
The changes in me were so noticeable that my friends started to ask me what I was doing. They could see and feel something really good, even if I was not yet aware of it personally. It was the power of Falun Dafa that they could feel, and I was happy to let them know about Falun Dafa.
Tianmu
My Tianmu (third eye) opened following the nine day seminar, but I did not realise this either. After the nine day seminar, I went on vacation in Utah because skiing was one of my many hobbies. I loved being at the top of a high mountain with fresh snow in a cold winter. So I went to ski, and a few days in a row I noticed that there was something moving with me that looked like a drop of water on my goggles...I tried a few times to clear my goggles, but somehow that thing did not go away! It would appear for a while, then disappear and then reappear. I did not know what it was, but after a few months, I realised that my Tianmu was opened and that I could see things in other dimensions. Even at that very early time in my practise, I understood that reading was very important and I took the book Zhuan Falun with me to Utah and tried to read it every day. I also took a book for my friend who arranged the trip and gave it to her to read. She is a medical doctor, and she did read it but did not start to practise as I had expected. It seems as though I always expect people to act in specific ways, and perhaps even now I have not completely fixed this major personal cultivation problem that has been so prominent for me.
A few months later when I was hiking near the Bay area, I suddenly started to see lot of blue lights falling like snow flakes from the sky on top of me! I was watching the sky in the middle of the path, and most likely those who passed me thought to themselves, "This guy might have some problems." While the lights continued falling, I also saw an indiscernible transparent shape, which frightened me. I remember at that time my first thought was, "I am not ready to see more! This should be enough! I am not ready to see Teacher's fashen yet!" I do not know if it was Teacher's fashen or not, but at that time I realised for the first time that my Tianmu was open and I was seeing scenes from other dimensions, most of which I could not understand at all! After a while I remembered that in fact I had seen this kind of rain with lights of different colours before I started the practice; it was once in a company meeting about two years before I started the practice that I saw it raining green lights. When returning home from my hiking trip, I saw something else; it looked like I was walking in a mist. I could see very fine grains of particles everywhere in the air and those fine grains looked like mist to me. I checked with my hand few times and it was not mist! I could feel anything, only see the "mist".
After reading more, I understood a few more months later that "the drop of water" on my goggles must have been a small Falun ( Something that impressed me the most happened one morning immediately after I woke up while I was still in bed. On the ceiling of my bedroom I suddenly saw things similar to flames of different colours, including purple, blue and green, all rotating, and I felt a very a strong force pulling me up. The pulling repeated two times. I almost felt like trembling when I was pulled up, and I never understood what happened then. The only thing I could figure out was that Teacher wanted me to get out of bed and go to the park and do the exercises! In this regard I did quite poorly so many times. It sounds like such a trivial thing to be able to wake up in the morning and go to the park to do the exercises, but for me this was so difficult most of the time! I can see clear that I have a problem here, and I have had it for a long time. I do not try to cover it up and to find excuses for myself, but this is not enough! I should fix it, yet I still have not corrected it for such a long time.
Communications without words
A long time ago, I noticed that sometimes it is possible to for me to read other's minds and also it is possible to somehow send my thoughts toward other people. Before I was practising Falun Dafa, sometimes I was just playing like this in different situations. It was like a game for me but sometimes people became really scared when I was able to tell what was in their minds. I also noticed that it only worked sometimes, and it worked better with some people than with others. After I started the practice, this became even more noticeable for me. It just happened that sometimes I was thinking something and somebody would start to do whatever I was thinking...almost every time this happened I would be frightened! I understood this: if someone's thoughts can have these impacts and most likely other impacts that I cannot even imagine, a cultivator must cultivate his mind to such a degree! I knew, as much as I could based on my realm, the fact that cultivating our hearts is extremely important, and I further understood, again according to my realm, why Teacher emphasises again and again that there is no way for us, Falun Dafa cultivators, to attain perfection if we are not able to upgrade our heart nature and reach the standard that is required of us.
One time I was in the cafeteria at my work place and I was waiting for the chef to prepare my vegetables in a pan. Suddenly, a thought came to my mind, "I want to make this guy add two more mushrooms!" Right away after this, another thought came to my mind, "How can I do this! It is totally inappropriate and wrong! I shouldn't do this!" The guy glanced at me, took two mushrooms and drop them in the pan! I was shocked! I thought to myself, "So, it is that real! I should be so much more careful with my thoughts!"
Another time I was in New York last year, and it happened that somebody sent me to distribute flyers close to where two of our practitioners were doing the exercises. Those about 2 hours of distributing flyers were probably the best I had ever experienced. A lot of people got the flyers, a lot of people asked many questions about the practice and almost nobody had a wrong attitude. A reporter also came to me and we had a chat for a long time and he took a lot of notes. After the ladies finished practising, it was time for us to move to another place. I felt very comfortable and happy because I was able to give so many flyers and I was thinking in my mind, "those ladies should get an ice cream for me now since I was able to do such a good job. They couldn't see it but I think I deserve an ice cream from them!" I was talking to myself and joking in my mind, but, when I turned around, I saw one of them was offering me the ice cream! I became scared again. Teacher told us many times how important our thoughts are, but do we really understand that? In my case it looks like every time I experience those kind of little things I remember about that teaching. Teacher gives me more and more chances to get a better understanding of the Falun Gong teachings. Maybe the reason it happens to me is because I need those shocking experiences to get a better understanding. I should read more, and I should really become more diligent.
Another time I was giving flyers to people at a fair. After a while I became lazy and wanted to take a break. While I was sitting close to a table, I noticed a lady passing close by me. I didn't give her a flyer, didn't even try... But as soon as she passed me a thought came to my mind, "how can I be like this! I came here to give flyers to people and this one just passed me and I didn't even try to hand her a flyer! I should have given her a flyer!" I was watching that lady walking away from me when she suddenly stopped, turned around, glanced at me and said "Thank you!" and then walked away! My tears almost came out. Even if I am so lazy, Teacher is always here, and even if I do not do what I should, the smallest intention is enough for Him to help others and to help me too!
This is the time of Fa Rectification
I participated in a few events and projects that had the goal of putting an end to Falun Dafa's persecution in China as soon as possible, but almost always I felt that I was not doing much and certainly not enough. Somehow my intentions did not have enough support from the personal cultivation basis point of view in order to allow me to fully transform those intentions into something real in this world. Perhaps I dreamt too much.
Among all those events I'll say a few words about the trip I made to China in 2002. I think it would be interesting and also useful for people to find out about it even if it happened a while ago.
As mentioned before, I was born in Romania and lived under communist rule for 32 years until 1989, when the Eastern European communist countries were able to get rid of the most horrific social system that ever existed on Earth. Living in such conditions for such a long time would have an impact on anybody regardless of whether or not you were aware of it. I was really afraid of that evil power deep inside, and so making the decision to go to China in 2002 was very difficult for me. It was not that I was not clear about the evilness of the Falun Dafa persecution; it was about being able to overcome that tremendous fear that had been carefully built up in our minds from childhood to adulthood in communist Romania, previously one of the worst communist dictatorships. I understood the principle of cultivation that the as soon as you can get rid of your fear, the element that produces the fear will disintegrate instantly, but facing the evil environment in China without any fear is a different story!
My Trip to China
After some thinking I made the decision to go, and I landed in Beijing in February 2002 with a few other practitioners from Bay area. As soon as I got there it was like I had landed back in my own country 15 years ago during the communist rule. The buildings looked the same, the people had the same worried faces, and I could tell that we were surrounded by those sinister plainclothes secret police agents [or maybe it was just my attachment that made me feel like that].
I will not go into too much detail, but I should mention a few quite interesting things that happened to me. Before the day we planned to go to Tiananmen Square, some of us wanted to show "Falun Dafa is Good" banners, and I personally planned to take some pictures of them. That night, I had a dream in which I was followed by an army in a forest. I was running and trying to hide but ended up in a place where the trees disappeared, and I was caught very easily. Something similar happened the next day when the police stopped and searched two of us while we were close to the Square and then followed us in close proximity.
I ended up alone at the Beijing airport trying to return home when I was abducted by four plainclothes agents who put me into their car and started to drive it to an unknown destination. I was on the rear bench between two of those people who were holding my arms very tightly without any reason because I did not have any way to escape from the moving car. In that situation, my mind became very calm. After that, I felt that Teacher and the Fa (Law or principles, the teachings in Falun Gong) were the only things that I could rely on, and my fear disappeared. The two guys freed my hands and one of them exchanged a few words with me a bit later. In the next thirty or so hours, I was detained and interrogated in a prison that looked like a hotel from the outside. I tried to send forth righteous thoughts as much as I could, but I did not feel at ease at all. I admired some of the practitioners who were also detained there and who were able to hold their character much better than me. I did not sign any of their papers, nor eat or drink anything. I felt that it was just impossible to touch that food and/or water, but I was not able to oppose a strong enough resistance to the evil over there: they confiscated a video camera and a Romanian translation of Zhuan Falun from me without any reason, and I was not able to react the way I should to those vicious acts. In my case, it was so obvious that, for any reason that might be, I had not done do anything against any law in the world! Even so, I was detained, interrogated and then expelled from China after thirty hours of detention.
This is, in short, what happened to me in China. When I landed back in the Bay area, I wanted to write down my experience so as to remember all the details later on, and as soon as I finished my writing, even before having the time to reread carefully what I had written, I met a friend who heard about my trip. She asked me if I wrote it down, and when I said that I did, she asked if I would mind having it published by a Romanian newspaper in the US. I gave her the file, and not long afterwards, my writing was published by the most popular Romanian newspaper in the US. Then, I found that this newspaper had sent my article to one of the most popular newspapers in Romania, and it was published there as well. Somebody gave me a copy of that newspaper, and I felt a bit strange reading my own article. Almost all my words were there, the way I had written them; I felt a bit irresponsible because I had not polished that article further. Later on, I found that some other publications from Romania wrote about that trip. I did not fully realise the significance of that article being published until few years later when other Romanian practitioners spent a lot of effort trying to have something published in the same newspaper, and, at least for a long time, they were utterly unsuccessful.
This was just the beginning. A few days after I landed in the Bay area, I was invited by some friends to a meeting; the Romanian ambassador in Washington DC was visiting. I joined that meeting and, in the end, I was able to have a conversation with the Romanian ambassador about Falun Dafa. I had a problem opening my mouth, and I needed few opportunities before I succeeded. But as soon as I did speak, I was invited to another meeting the next day. This time, the Romanian officials were with some prominent US political figures. Since I had no knowledge of politics, when one of those prominent people started to talked to me, he kept talking about China and the Chinese economy, and this time I failed to let them know what I wanted them to know. I was so surprised that I did not realise what had happened until after the event was over.
Among the many things that I learnt from these experiences is also this: even if you do not do that well, Teacher will help you all the time, and as soon as you do just a little thing right, in an instant, door after door opens in front of you and opportunity after opportunity unfold! We should always be ready and not waste these opportunities! The slightest good intention we have is rewarded by Teacher in a way that we cannot imagine and should not try to imagine. We should just try to not waste the opportunities to save people and all sentient beings. It is easy for me to say this, but in practise I find it much more difficult to do! I should read more and really became more diligent! And of course, I should not wait for Teacher to open the next door for me! I should just do what am I supposed to, and then everything will be fine! But how can I do that? Truthfully, I do not know because every time things can be very different than the previous times!
Conclusion
After almost six years of cultivation, I did not sense the extraordinary nature of Falun Dafa cultivation way in my daily life until I started talking to people and sharing some of my experiences. Many times, it is then that I can see how really extraordinary a journey it has been! I decided to write this experience-sharing article to let more people know about this journey even though I may not have picked the best examples here. I understand that one of the most important things that is happening now is the process of disintegration of the Chinese communist party. Hopefully, I will be able to do better here and in the future.
Until then, I shall try to improve as much as I can, and I know there is a lot of room for me where I can do that in all of the three things that Teacher asked us to do at this present time.
Thank you Teacher, thank you fellow practitioners.
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