Your Cultivation State Determines Your Environment

During the process of validating Dafa four years ago, I was taken advantage by the evil Party and was illegally sentenced (Although the Public Security Department issued an unconstitutional set of restraints on the practice at the onset of the persecution in 1999, no laws have been passed by the only legislative body in China, the People's Congress, banning Falun Gong or granting the police the authority to arrest Falun Gong practitioners for practicing the exercises or distributing flyers) to a three-and-a-half-year jail term. As I passively endured this persecution, I became disheartened and even thought about giving up cultivation.

When my term was almost over, I had a dream. In the dream, I was floating in the sky. A voice told me that I was in charge of the region below, an area of about 2,400 square kilometres. After waking up, my assistant consciousness made me feel that I might begin to practice cultivation again some day. (Recently, after I studied Teacher's new article, I finally understood the meaning of that dream.)

The first three months after I returned home, I went through all kinds of suffering. I was dismissed from my job, my husband had an affair, I had difficulty finding a new job, my parents complained a lot, and I had conflicts with my daughter. Recalling the time when I practiced Dafa, I was filled with enrichment and happiness. However, after being away from Dafa, I could not find that kind of happiness and my entire being became very fragile. I decided to return to Dafa.

When I began to read Zhuan Falun again, I quickly found a job, and my daughter's attitude towards me suddenly changed. I began to see the relationship between my personal cultivation and the external environment. Especially after the following two events.

First, I noticed that when my personal cultivation was not good, different foods in our home became spoiled, due to not putting them in the refrigerator in time. The fruits rotted and the vegetables decayed. The most startling was when two cucumbers totally turned to water. At that time, I felt that the sentient beings in my world were wilting away as well. I felt very sad.

Another event had to do with my attitude towards my husband. When I first returned home, I felt that he was very apathetic towards me. A few days later, he frankly told me that he was having an affair and that he might not come home at night. For over a month, I had insomnia every night. After I began to study the Fa, I repeatedly sought to eliminate all feelings of affection for him. However, I still did not pass some of the Xinxing (character/heart and mind) tests very well. He did not come home two nights a week, but every time he did come home, he pretended that nothing had happened. It was unbearable for me, but on the surface, I did not show my feelings. A few days ago, I was not in a good mood, especially after I felt that I could not let go of my sentimentality towards my husband. With that mindset, I went to do tutoring at my students' home. That day it seemed that my three students regarded me strangely and were not patient during class. I tried to suppress my anger and spoke softly, but my tone of voice was stubborn, and I emphasized that they must do things according to how I taught them. You can imagine the results I got under such conditions. In fact, I was very close to these three students. After I explained the truth about Falun Gong to them, they all withdrew from the CCP's (Chinese communist party)Youth League and Young Pioneers. On my way to catch a bus after class, I fell down very hard, and my skirt got dirty and my legs hurt. At that moment, I began to enlighten and thought about what had happened that day. I realized why my students had a bad attitude towards me. My attitude towards them was the same as towards my husband. Even though I pretended to be calm, deep in my heart, I was very upset. They felt that and could not endure it. Thinking about an article I read on the Clearwisdom website, fellow practitioners constantly mentioned that only by cultivating oneself well will we be able to save sentient beings. That is really the truth.

I wrote about the above two events hoping that fellow practitioners with similar issues can learn something from my experiences and be able to do the three things (study the Fa [the teachings of Falun Dafa], send forth righteous thoughts and clarify the truth about Falun Dafa and about the persecution to the world's people) well. I also wanted to remind myself get rid of the selfishness and lust that should not belong to a cultivator, therefore being responsible to myself and the sentient beings in my world.