PureInsight | June 13, 2005
[PureInsight.org] I've been fascinated by qigong practice since childhood. Teacher's picture looked so familiar the very first time I saw it. It was as if I had entered into a trance and saw Teacher dressed in a dragon robe worn by a Chinese emperor. Although I didn't know what it meant then, the predestined relationship with Teacher allowed me to enter into Dafa cultivation. My Dafa cultivation began in the spring of 1999, when flowers blossomed. Just when I was excited about the huge change Dafa had brought to my mind and body, the evil persecution of Falun Dafa initiated by the Chinese regime began. Huge pressure from my family and school fell upon me like an avalanche. My family's opposition has never shaken my steadfast belief in Dafa. When a teacher slandered Dafa during a political science class, I stood up resolutely to defend Dafa and clarified the facts, which shocked everybody in the whole class.
One day I met Qiong, a girl my age, who had started her cultivation in childhood with her celestial eye open. The very first time she saw me, she said to me: "I've found you finally." When she was very little, her friends in heaven had told her: "When you grow to be this tall (gesturing with a hand), you'll find a companion who came down to earth with you." They also recited a poem to her. With her supernormal ability of precognition and retrocognition, she saw the two of us waiting for the Fa for many generations and saw Emperor Tang Taizong playing with us in the imperial garden when we were children.
In 2000, Qiong and I had decided to go to Beijing to clarify the truth. Just before we were to leave, my father became ill suddenly. My head soon began to drone, but I quickly told myself: "No matter how difficulty it is, Dafa is more important." We went to Beijing and held up a Dafa banner in Tiananmen Square.
I was detained for the next 8 months in a detention center. During that time, my family, school officials, and personnel in the detention center all tried to force me to give up practicing Falun Gong without success. The police then decided to try me in a court. One day, out of nowhere a lawyer told me, "I hope you'll be a good Dafa practitioner." I knew it was from Teacher to remind me to do my best. Every day I memorized Fa, did exercises, and clarified the truth to my jail mates. Several prisoners thus obtained the Fa. Prison guards beat up one of them every time he did the exercises. The guards would ask him whether he'd continue to do exercises, he replied firmly: "I will keep practicing!" The food was very poor in the detention center. At the beginning, a prisoner often stared at me blankly when we ate. He told me later: "I am sad to see you suffering so much at such a young age." I smiled and wrote on the courtyard wall: "Only true gold will remain after being washed by large waves; and become as strong as steel through suffering hardship." He once told me, "You will reach consummation." He said he saw the light around me when I did exercises.
On the day of my trial, all of my classmates came to the court. There were many leaders sitting in the audience. I told the judge firmly during the trial: "Falun Gong can only benefit the citizens and will not cause harm in any way!" I saw in their eyes their kind side and my clarifying the truth in the court touched them. Later, I was released because of my age. Qiong told me later that her friends in heaven all were very envious of us; they said they didn't have the chance to do such a magnificent thing. She had seen a thick book in heaven, describing each Dafa practitioner's experience on earth. After I returned to school, the school wanted me to admit my mistake as the condition for me to remain there. Although I cherished my teachers and classmates and the fond memory of school, facing such choice, I left school with resolution.
Many practitioners in my city had been unlawfully sent to jails or labor camps, and there was a shortage of truth-clarifying materials. Two of us thus took up more responsibilities. Our days went by often without sleep or meal. Later, both of us were arrested and sentenced to serve time in prison. In those three years in prison, I kept my righteous thoughts, regardless of whatever pressure was put upon me. Teacher has said: "Just by having your heart unaffected, you will be able to handle all situations." For a period of time, the higher-ups pressured the prison management to force practitioners to give up their practice. If the prison staff could force a practitioner to give up practicing, they would get large cash bonuses or promotions. The prisoner guards thus lost their sense and applied long durations of punishment, night interrogation, and savage beating to coerce me to write a repentance letter. I wrote, "If I do as you want, it will be the most shameful thing in my life and an insult to the truth." I solemnly told a guard who was beating me that kindly treating Falun Dafa is an immense good deed and persecuting Dafa will be met with retribution! During the last night interrogations, I told the guards solemnly once again that their unlawful persecution of Falun Gong would be exposed overseas. They finally gave up when they realized that they couldn't force me to give up my Dafa cultivation. During those most vicious days and nights, the guards coerced criminal prisoners into torturing a young practitioner in his twenties. They applied sharpened bamboo sticks underneath his fingernails. He was eventually tortured to death (his death has already been reported on Dafa websites). A homosexual prisoner violated a practitioner who had just started his cultivation in the prison.
With Teacher's compassionate caring we have walked out in the rain and storm. Teacher once said: "You need to treasure it--you have to treasure the path you've walked. Only when you treasure the steps you've taken can you do well on the path ahead." (From Teaching the Fa on Easter, 2004, at the New York Fa Conference) No matter how difficult the road is, we must follow Teacher closely and finish walking the most glorious page in history. A kind-hearted policeman once told me: "If you were to attend a college, you would be an excellent student." I thought to myself, "Although I haven't been able to achieve my childhood dream of attending a college, Dafa cultivation is best college campus since it is producing the finest elite members of the future universe"
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2005/5/31/32555.html
