(Minghui.org) Even though I call myself a new practitioner, I’ve been practicing Falun Dafa for the past seven years. I left China in 2012 to attend school and began to practice Dafa after finding it on the Minghui website.
Living in China, I had been poisoned by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) indoctrination and atheism since I was a child. I never believed in the existence of divine beings. I even scolded those who went to temples to worship gods. At that time, I only believed in science and the theory of evolution.
Remembering that, I feel ashamed. With my mind driven by these beliefs, I generated a horrible amount of karma at a young age. My health was poor, I always felt cold, and I experienced insomnia.
My attitude then was that life was short, so we must enjoy it. I smoked, drank, and focused my effort on earning money and meeting girls. I did not understand how to be good to others at all. My mind was guided by selfishness.
I realized after I began practicing cultivation that it was only because Master Li (the founder of Falun Dafa) was looking after me that I was able to survive at such a low level. For example, I always wanted to copy others’ work at school because I didn’t want to work hard. I rarely succeeded in copying anything, as if there were always a force preventing me from doing such a bad thing.
When other classmates cursed at me, I was often incapable of talking back. When people hit me and I tried to hit them back, often I couldn’t put much force into the punches or I was held back by other students.
When I was seven or eight years old, I had a scary dream that I still remember vividly. In the dream, I was surrounded by snake demons, and even my relatives turned into snakes and tried to hurt me. I woke up in fear. Now, I realize that it was demons in other dimensions trying to persecute me and that they were eliminated by Master. Also, I experienced sleep paralysis many times. It was with Master’s protection that evil spirits didn’t succeed in harming me.
My girlfriend (now my wife who began practicing Dafa three years ago) and I traveled to another country together to attend college. One day, she told me that we could freely access websites that were censored in China.
From then on, I spent all my time browsing through websites that were blocked in China. I learned so many things in just a few days: the real history of the CCP and the Nationalist Party, who really fought in the war against Japan, all the political movements and persecutions since the CCP took over China, what happened during the Cultural Revolution, the events of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, and so on.
Eventually, I read about the persecution of Falun Dafa on the Epoch Times website. The entire process of discovery was well arranged. In just a few days, all this information turned my mind upside down. I felt that I had been completely fooled by the CCP. I felt ashamed and insulted.
I started to think about the real purpose of life, because learning the truth about Dafa made me realize that divine beings do exist. I developed an interest in cultivation and finding a way to go back to heaven.
I found the Minghui website and then falundafa.org. I watched the recordings of Master’s lectures in Guangzhou almost continuously from beginning to end. The principles of Dafa made me forget all my worries and troubles and completely eliminated the atheist concepts in my mind. I knew Dafa was what I had been looking for.
When I was young, I often wondered, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go next?” But these thoughts had slowly faded away. Now I knew the answers and was determined to cultivate until the end. I felt I could let go of everything and even wanted to go to a temple. But, as I studied Dafa more, I understood its principle of cultivating in ordinary society.
Master said:
“But in our practice, for all of us who are still part of this world, we strive to lead lives that are as normal as possible while going about our spiritual practice. And so you aren’t asked to give up anything in a material sense.” (The Fourth Talk, Zhuan Falun)
Since then, I have been cultivating in ordinary society and have gone through many tribulations. Because my enlightenment quality isn’t very good, I was often unable to let go of various ordinary human notions and attachments. I would stumble again and again before embracing a Fa principle. With Master’s compassionate care and protection, I am still walking my cultivation path to this day.
During this process, besides tribulations, I have also experienced many extraordinary things. My inner eye has always been closed, but my senses are not locked. When I first learned the exercises from the online instructional video, even though my movements were not very accurate, I clearly felt the rotation of Falun and the energy on my hands. I was shocked and happy. This awareness gave me extra confidence in cultivation.
I realized that I had met a real Buddha who had come down to the ordinary world. I have a real teacher now.
Not long after I began to cultivate, one night shortly after I went to bed, I suddenly felt that I could no longer move. A strong, warm energy entered the top of my head and went through my entire body. I knew that Master was cleansing my body.
I stopped drinking alcohol and smoking after becoming a practitioner, and my insomnia disappeared. Before taking up the practice, I had always felt cold, but this stopped. In the past, during any change of season I’d have to take medicines to prevent a cold, cough, and fever. But, during the past seven years I have not needed to do so. This is all because of the power of Dafa.
Last year, when I was washing my car, I found Udumbara flowers on it, which are said to bloom only once every 3,000 years. I think it was an encouragement to us from our compassionate Master.
I cannot describe in words my appreciation for Master, who has helped me countless times and resolved all my bad karmic relations in my current and previous lives. When I couldn’t break through tribulations and was about to give up in despair, it was Master who didn’t give up on me and picked me up again and again. Whenever I read Master’s poem, “The Master-Disciple Bond,” my eyes are filled with tears: “...There is no affect between master and disciple – The Buddha’s grace remolds Heaven and Earth...” (“The Master-Disciple Bond,” Hong Yin Volume II)