I Found My Way Back in Dafa

Hello everybody,

I am a relatively new Falun Gong practitioner. I am 26 years old and I obtained the Fa in August 2007 but I was lost in another qigong practice for some time.

I used to be sure I was a perfect person and a model citizen. After I began practising Falun Gong, I discovered that I wasn’t perfect at all and was actually far from it. Besides this, sensuality tormented me for a big part of my life. I would like to describe how I succeeded in overcoming these issues. I will also explain other things that I have come to understand in my 4 years of cultivation about the principle of “following a single way”, laziness and the importance of The Epoch Times project in Eastern Europe. I hope that what I write will be useful to my fellow practitioners.

The problem of lust and how I managed to get rid of it
One year ago I married a practitioner. Everything happened so fast. From that moment I said I must take this attachment very seriously, respect my wife and give her an environment full of purity, one in which we can advance quickly in cultivation and do well the Three Things that Master requires. I was very happy that this was happening but, in that period, a very strange phenomenon started to happen around me.

It became very hard for me to walk in the street with my head up. Everywhere I looked, all kind of images, immoral advertisements and persons were present. These things stirred my senses, making me think that this attachment was too strong and that I would never be able to overcome it.

It was exactly how Master says in Zhuan Falun: “Therefore, this present, objectively existing environment seriously interferes with our practitioners’ cultivation toward high levels. Nude pictures are displayed right over there, hanging in the middle of the street. Once you look up, you will see them.” This state persisted for months and felt quite painful. It seemed like the situation would never be over and I felt ashamed. There seemed to be no solution to it.

After many discussions with my wife, one day she came to me and read a short passage from Zhuan Falun: “The first thought that came to his mind was: "I’m not an ordinary person. I’m a practitioner. You shouldn’t treat me this way, for I’m a Falun Dafa practitioner." Once this thought emerged, everything suddenly disappeared since they were all transformed anyway.”

I realized my problem was exactly the following: my ‘first thought’ was not right. The second one was self-disappointment, and the third one was the fact that I gave up resisting, taking that immoral thought to be myself. I started to take this ‘first thought’ very seriously and, as a result, I managed to pass this test in about two weeks.

The first thought was not right because I wasn’t strict with my thoughts. I wasn’t strict with my thoughts because I didn’t regard the cultivation process in a fundamental manner. I discovered that this state existed because I didn’t cherish the Great Law.

I understood that being diligent and strict with oneself comes from cherishing the Law. If we cherish the principles of the Great Law and Universe, then we will treat everyday details with seriousness and from a fundamental point of view. We will be strict with ourselves and the first thought that arises at the critical moment will be an upright one.

When the heart is sincere, pride becomes the most idiotic refuge
This first upright thought was useful to me in overcoming a great deal of pride. I already understood that I’m not a perfect person, but with all this, being criticized was very disturbing to me, be it straight in the face or through email exchanges on the practitioners’ email list. Again I understood that if the first thought is not upright when I am criticized or contradicted, that means that I am not looking at the situation from a fundamental point of view. I am not cherishing the Great Law, and that is a very sad thing. In Zhuan Falun, Master tells us that: “If you can return, the greatest suffering will be the most valuable.”

After understanding this, criticism and disputes with others became excellent occasions to get rid of this fear. The best moments in my cultivation were those in which I was criticized.

A single boat is the only way
Many new practitioners have very good intentions and the heart for cultivation. But even so, this doesn’t mean that they understand very well some fundamental issues explained by Master. So, I’d say that the majority of them are quite fragile, and veteran practitioners should be very careful and look after them a little at the beginning. Patiently listen to them, give them advice and dedicate some time to put them on solid ground. I thank those who did this with me.

After I started to practise Falun Gong, I didn’t understand well many of the principles set out in Zhuan Falun. Nevertheless, I was determined to practise Falun Gong and I knew it is something good. Cultivation was something extraordinary for me and I was fascinated by the fact that a person is able to obtain so much through cultivation. To cultivate Dafa is not an easy way for me. I encounter many disturbances.

In my town there were few Falun Gong practitioners and the environment to share experiences and talk with veteran practitioners were missing. Because I felt lonely, I enrolled in the spiritual classes of a different practice. I bought many of their books and read them all. After some classes I saw myself exercising some of their paranormal exercises. I was getting more and more attached to this new practice. I became very confused, and had a sensation that I was lost, with my feet not in two boats but in ten. It was very hard for me to read even one page from Zhuan Falun and do the 5 exercises. I avoided Falun Gong practitioners and I starded to see them as weird people.

In 5 months I was wondering if I still want to practise Falun Gong. The most painful detail is that the person that put me into contact with the other cultivation way was a so-called ‘veteran Falun Gong practitioner’ from another town. Other new practitioners also came into contact with this other cultivation way, being guided by the same person. I don’t know what happened with the rest of them, but I heard they don’t come to the group Fa Study often.

If you see this kind of practitioner, give them a helping hand. Don’t condemn them in any case. Help them understand and they will hopefully thank you later on. Among them there might be some genuine Falun Gong practitioners, but they’re just lost in some kind of notion and in an environment that lacks purity. Besides this, our truth clarification projects need a great deal of hard working hands, and their sentient beings need them to fulfil their vows and be saved.

I’d like to take advantage of this moment and to make an appeal to those practitioners who are not very clear upon the principle of “following a single way”. I have known some practitioners in Romania that used to read other qigong books or cultivation methods before starting to practise cultivation in Falun Dafa, and they continue to browse those books even now. If you don’t want to get rid of those books and those thoughts, that is your problem, but I give you one piece of advice: don’t come into contact with new practitioners. Don’t explain to them even one of your understandings on cultivation. You can easily make them renounce everything or delay their understandings. You can delay their involvement in Dafa projects. You can make them lose a great deal of time before making that important step forward. You can make them not fulfil their vows as they promised, and their sentient beings will never forgive you. Won’t this bring a lot of black substance upon your body?

I think that many people cannot understand and cherish this cultivation way of ours because it is simple and direct. The minds of those people are complicated, so they want to read complicated things. It took me so much time to realise that nothing is explained more simply than in Zhuan Falun. If we feel we need some extra help to understand what cultivation is... well, that is because our mind is twisted.

After getting tired wandering among those complicated books, I realised I couldn’t advance in cultivation this way. A Great Law is simple and is on top of the pyramid. The complicated books and cultivation ways are for those people with a medium inborn quality or worse. Finally, I have thrown away or burned all those books and now I am at ease and content to be with both feet in one boat. Everything became clearer than ever, and cultivation began to have a whole new meaning for me... a solemn one.

Don’t lose contact with other practitioners
Before, I didn’t cherish practitioners’ companionship, but now I realise that this environment helped me a lot. Through repeated discussions with practitioners you can reveal a lot of attachments and cultivation becomes more and more serious. I discovered that the most dangerous attachments are the ones that seem to be unimportant. The most damaging, I think, is laziness or the attachment to comfort, whatever form it may take. Laziness makes every attachment seem ten times harder to overcome.

Some of its subtle forms are:
• being too lazy to sit with your back straight when sending forth righteous thoughts
• being too lazy to consider yourself a practitioner all the time
• being too lazy to search for the profound origin of an attachment
• being too lazy to be 100 per cent sincere with yourself or with others in the middle of a conflict
• being too lazy to give a helping hand when a practitioner has problems in cultivation, hoping that he can make it without your help
• being too lazy to be strict with your thought activity during the exercises
• being too lazy to clarify the truth to an ordinary person during Dafa activities
• being too lazy to listen to someone sharing his cultivation experiences.
This list is endless.

Even if these things seem to be minor when they happen, they are everywhere and I think that if this condition is rectified, a big change can occur in cultivation. If not rectified, it will become a habit over time. It will lead to some deceptive situations and become worse and worse.

I feel I made some big steps in cultivation. Probably, I couldn’t do them so fast without my wife and other Dafa practitioners, and I couldn’t do anything without always being guided from Master. There were moments when I felt he forgot about me, but in the end I understood that only I can forget him. I don’t want to do this ever again!

Our newspaper
When a practitioner makes that step forward, he realises that saving sentient beings is something urgent. When he makes this step forward, every second in his cultivation should be dedicated in this direction. When I started to understand what this step means, I started to seriously think what to do and what direction to take in truth clarification.

From what I heard and understood, the biggest problem in Eastern Europe is the influence of the communist mentality. This mentality puts negative labels on anything unknown to it, it criticises everything that it doesn’t understand and condemns what is pure and beautiful. Of course, our righteous thoughts can resolve a lot of this kind of problem, but a big part of this mentality is still present and interferes with our efforts in our many important projects. For example we didn’t get approval from the authorities to hold Shen Yun in Bucharest. We had some problems with the art exhibition in Slatina City. We are often labelled very negatively by people that don’t have the patience to listen to us, and China’s politics seem to be more and more welcomed, since it means lots of money for the country’s budget during this recession. Many people are nostalgic after the communist regime here, and this was stated officially by the Romanian mass media. Maybe it’s the same in other Eastern-European countries.

During my cultivation, I asked myself many times: “How can we help change this communist mentality faster in Eastern Europe?”, “How can we help the people to understand more quickly what Dafa is and why Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted in China?”, “The Falun Dafa Association has many projects, but how do we change things to open the doors for any project organized by practitioners, be it Shen Yun, the art exhibition, etc?” My conclusion is that the most suitable approach must be able to really shake this communist mentality from its base. So, I joined The Epoch Times Romania. Being a third party, it can very quickly gain people’s trust.

The project is quite interesting; it puts us in direct contact with many of society’s VIPs and gives us the opportunity to use these contacts in other Dafa projects. It is a flexible job since you can work from anywhere if you have a laptop, and it is the best place if you want to cultivate your xinxing.

I’d like to end this sharing by giving advice to newer Falun Gong practitioners. Master tells us in Zhuan Falun: “If you want to be a practitioner, it all depends upon your mind and your awakening quality because there are no model workers.” The understandings of some veteran practitioners are not necessarily correct, and the way certain practitioners behave is not necessarily something to copy. Try to participate in Dafa projects and spend more time with other practitioners, there are things to learn from them, but the only real way to advance in cultivation and understand the Fa is through sincere Fa Study.

Thank you.