PureInsight | March 30, 2008
[PureInsight.org] (2008 Los Angeles Fahui)
I am both honored and humbled to stand before you, my fellow
practitioners today, as I have been practicing Falun Dafa for just a
year and a half. In this short time, my life is becoming utterly
transformed. What I want to share about today is my experience, as I
understand it, of returning to one's original self, something I feel
has always been a deep wish.
I remember learning the story of Jacob in the Old Testament. He
had a dream of a ladder ascending to Heaven. I knew that this dream was
more real than anything in my human world.
I studied painting and became an artist. I did many paintings of this
ladder, creating that which I knew to be real in my heart, real, in
three dimensional form. Some weeks after obtaining the Fa, I was quite
amazed, and affirmed to hear Shifu speak of Dafa as a ladder.
I had also already come to understand and learn the hard way that even
this pursuit of cosmic knowledge was an attachment which could be taken
advantage of, and the only way to access real wisdom was in and through
one's heart and with righteous teachings.
What I could not have predicted is how difficult letting go of human
attachments would be. I understood the basic principals and had already
come accept that this was the only way to really live in this chaotic
existence. I remember using the very phrase, being lost in a maze, as Zhuan Falun
says, and was quite resolute in wanting out of the human delusion.
Knowing all this, surprisingly, did not make it any easier.
When I first began to cultivate, I had tremendous fear and apprehension
about letting go of certain attachments. I had so identified with
sentimentality. Like Shifu says, "humans just live for it." As an
artist, it was the source of everything I did, all my work, thoughts
and behavior. In order to free myself of this incorrect thinking,
I would remind myself of Shifu's words about how if something was
really mine, it couldn't be taken away from me. I understood that, if I
let everything go, what is really mine, my true essence, cannot be
taken from me. If it is taken, it is, therefore, only something I do
not want (!) because it is not my true self. Then I am happy to let it
go for the opportunity to know and to live my true self.
I am constantly baffled by these contradictions, by the tenacity
of my human attachments, especially to sentimentality. I know it
is common to have one attachment which is greater than all others, for
which the karma is most dense. As a single woman, I was filled with
romantic aspirations and desire and, then, a great deal of
disappointment, hurt loss and confusion almost always
accompanying the experience of connecting to a man. The more I
desired this connection, the greater the karma, like how Shifu explains
the desire for the third eye to open when he says in Zhaun Falun, "So
this Law needs to be taught to you thoroughly. When some people seek to
get the Third Eye, the Third Eye might block itself, and it might seal
you off." And the more I got lost in the maze the more I became
hurt, confused, and even creating distorted notions about myself and
the world. I formed beliefs about myself that were neither truthful nor
compassionate, separating me further from the nature of the universe
and my true self. As Zhaun Falun says, because "it forms a field around
one's body and wraps a person right in the middle, one is caught off
from Zhen- Shan-Ren, the characteristic of the universe."
I started to have deeper awareness about how this happens, the
cycle, the constant painful reminder of how I elude and mask my
original true self.
It reminds me of what Shifu delineates in Zhuan Falun:
"demonic interference of ones mind- transformation follows mind
intent." One's impure thoughts, of either grandeur or worthlessness,
can create a mirrored reality which affirms the false premise.
He says, "Everything in your dimensional field is controlled by the
thoughts in your brain. In other words, when you look at things with
your Third Eye, if you calmly observe with no thoughts added in, what
you see is real. But as soon as you use your mind, even if it's just a
little bit, everything you see will be false, and this is "breeding
demons in your own mind," which is also called ‘transforming according
to thoughts.' It's because some practitioners aren't able to act as
cultivators"
I thank Shifu who has taught me the principal f wuwei, for this alone has revolutionized my life.
Almost a year ago, a fellow practitioner asked me if I wanted to write
movie reviews for the Epoch Times. My first response was "sure," but
within a few hours I was lying in bed, awake, recounting all the
reasons why I could not do this. I had never done journalism after all,
I couldn't type, could not spell, did not have a computer, etc. And
then it occurred to me that thinking "I can't" was also an attachment
that I needed to get rid of. This new way of thinking, or
thinking less perhaps, has profoundly changed me.
As one who perceived myself as unable to succeed in many areas, because
of learning disabilities as a child, I now was freed to know that the
Fa can do anything and can accomplish anything through me. My writing
is improving all the time, as well as many other skills, as I have many
opportunities to learn and expand constantly.
Each new thing that presents itself actually feels like an old skill or
talent or interest that was never realized or developed because of some
false notion I had, karma no doubt. In this sense, I feel that
this is one manifestation of returning to my original self, to innate
abilities and tendencies that I had discarded, as I had loved to write
as a child.
Additionally, writing for EET's Arts and Entertainment section, both
nationally and locally, has meant interviewing various artists. I
learned a new level of clarifying the truth.
A few months back I interviewed a director at a lunch meeting. He
invited the leading actress of his newest film and play. It became
apparent they were a couple but this was not public information. We
were very congenial and I was able to tell them all about EET, which
they both thought was wonderful.
The following week, I met up with the actress to give her a copy of the
article. I admitted that I hadn't used her best quotes as I was
honoring her privacy about the relationship. She was stunned, "Ya know,
no one does that," she said "No one would have done that," She paused
and then said, "but I guess that's what your paper is about, isn't it?"
I have discovered a real appreciation in making these personal
and sometimes intimate connections, as I have always preferred one on
one situations.
Again, I started to feel that these arrangements for me, though I could
not have imagined it so, were perfectly suited to both my abilities and
to where I still needed to improve myself.
Quite recently, I was talking to an acquaintance, a filmmaker, who was
reading a book about directing. When I inquired about the book, he
asked, "Are you interested in directing?" I said, "Yes, but no, but
yes." He asked me to clarify my ambivalent response. I explained that,
in my practice, I don't pursue anything. Yet, if I am to be honest, the
memory came rushing back, 15 years prior, directing was a real secret
desire of mine but I had so many reasons why I could never do it. Now
that I have given up this attachment, I guess I have to say that I am
interested.
Right then and there, this friend offered to take me on as a student
and mentor me. I felt immediately that this was Shifu's arrangement and
now it was up to me to work hard.
As Shifu states in Zhuan Falun,
"So you cultivate in a state of nonaction and just focus on cultivating
your character, then you'll be making breakthroughs in your level, and
you'll definitely have whatever you should."
I often think of the divinely inspired artist, Michelangelo, who
spoke of carving away at the stone to allow its true nature to emerge,
"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the
sculptor to discover it."
This is how I often understand cultivation, the slow, deliberate
chipping away process, letting go of karma, notions, attachments, etc.,
so that we might return to our original magnificent selves by the grace
of Shifu's benevolence, and the impeccable guidance of DaFa.
This has been the most salient and profound part of cultivation
for me, the continuous shedding of the layers. As I have been able to
discard being led by selfish desires and the tiresome existence of
trying to figure everything out myself, or futilely trying to do, make,
and have the things of the everyday people's world, I get closer
to these other parts of myself. Through adopting wuwei as a
guiding principal and a deepening of my ultimate trust of the Fa, I
have experienced so many of my old, or original, wishes being realized,
wishes even I had forgotten.
I finally have my true ladder to heaven.
