PureInsight | June 29, 2009
Experience sharing from the 2009 Canada Fa Conference
[PureInsight.org] Greetings Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
Not long ago, I was still not sure if I would share this story or not, but I enlightened to the fact that I should share it out of respect for our Master. I should also share it out of respect for practitioners because any sharing is done to help each other enlighten to the Fa and to cherish the Fa.
While studying for my visual arts degree at university, most of my work was about Falun Dafa, especially about the persecution in China. Those projects that concerned Falun Dafa were always the most successful and appreciated. I knew it was Master who helped me all along.
One of my worst attachments is procrastination. I always leave things to the last minute, and I am very bad with managing my time and respecting a set schedule. Because of this, many times I ended up doing most of my work on the day before it was due. Despite that, those people who saw the Falun Dafa projects had very good responses. I feel very thankful to Master because he always helped me complete the projects, despite my lack of improvement with my time-management issues.
I also feel disappointed because it seems I have made almost no improvement in this regard, and I know I shouldn’t improve slowly just because Master waits for us and helps us in the meantime. I was aware of the fact that when we have righteous thoughts, thoughts to validate the Fa and save sentient beings, Master will help us, but I never experienced it so deeply and obviously as I did during my final graduation project. All graduating students were to show a body of work in the visual arts building for one week. The show was open to the public.
Two weeks before the work had to be turned in, I showed two projects that I had almost completed to my two teachers. One was about Gao Zhisheng while the other touched on the spiritual aspect of Falun Dafa. I also told them that I intended to present a third one that incorporated testimonies of practitioners who suffered under the CCP’s persecution. Both teachers said they were satisfied with the first two projects and that they preferred I focus on perfecting those instead of doing a third project. I told them that I still wished to do the third one. My ultimate goal was to clarify the truth well and not just do enough to satisfy my teachers.
Because I focused most of my time on getting that third project done, I overlooked many small details in the other projects that would later cause problems. Some were technical problems related to the work itself, and some were related to how the work would be set up in the room where it was to be shown.
I finished the third project just in time for it to be evaluated. After that, we had a week to empty the rooms in which we were to exhibit our work. We had to clean them, fill in the holes on the walls, paint the walls, and set up our work. Throughout the week, I had a lot of problems, and each time, someone would come and help me resolve the problem.
For one of my projects, I needed a very long shelf, but the woodshop in our department was closed and I was told that no one sold shelves the length I needed. The next day, a technician told me he found a very long shelf in the storage room that he had not remembered he had. That shelf was almost the length I needed but it was still a little short. When I went back to the storage room, I found a shelf that I could combine with the first one to make the exact length I needed.
I was unsure how I would suspend my projectors, but one day when I went back to the storage room, I saw a ready-made angled projector shelf right in front of me. I felt so fortunate. Something rather complex that I needed was lying right in front of me.
There was a big gap between two walls where one of my projections was to be projecting. I started filling the gap with a compound and just as I finished, a student came into the room and told me I hadn’t done it right and that I needed to add paper tape to level it. He then fixed it. That crack required many coats of compound because the walls weren’t even.
The electronics technician happened to have experience in construction and he voluntarily came everyday after that to sand the previous coat and add another one. He would come in regularly to check whether it had dried so he could sand it and add another coat. Whenever I came to school I noticed that he had done more work on it. I felt very touched because he did not need to do that as he was an electronics technician, but he was so determined to have that wall perfect until nothing noticeable remained. I knew that Master arranged for these kind people to help me, and that they were destined to be there to help with a project that clarified the truth and that would allow them to position themselves well.
On the last night before the opening, I tried to staple a white sheet to the room’s cardboard-like ceiling. However, I was surprised to find that the staple would slide back out as if I had stapled into butter. I had no idea what to do and was sure that I would spend the night trying to figure out a way to fix it. As I was still standing on the ladder thinking about what I could do, a technician came into my room. It was around 9 or 10 pm, and not during normal hours of operation. I explained my problem to him and he told me to try to hold the sheet up with magnets against the thin steel bar. Thus, the problem was solved in a matter of minutes.
I had two separate white sheets, and while I was thinking about how to put them together nicely, the girl who exhibited beside me entered my room and asked me how my set-up was coming. I told her I needed to put two white sheets together in a certain way. She told me that way was not very good and showed me a much easier and more effective way.
Throughout the whole process of getting ready for the exhibition, there were countless moments when I had different challenges, and each time there was a solution that just miraculously appeared.
The thing that struck me the most was the timing. On many instances, just as I was thinking about how to solve the problem, or when I was about to do something the wrong way, someone came right at that moment to show me how to do it correctly. Everything was perfectly timed. I was just amazed because these things didn’t happen just once or twice but countless times throughout the entire week. It was a truly extraordinary experience, which really enabled me to deeply feel Master’s enormous compassion.
On the morning of the opening, I almost had everything ready, except for one DVD. The night before, the DVD program said that it would take eight hours for the video to export, but after a few hours there was an error. I did not have time to export it again because we had to be done by 12pm, which was when the teachers came around to evaluate our final work.
At that point, I thought that I would never be able to make it on time. I thought I would just have two projects ready when the department’s teachers came and that I would only have the third one ready for the opening ceremony at 7 pm. I realized that this was incorrect thinking. The teachers might not be as receptive to the truth if they saw that I couldn’t complete all my projects on time. I should handle it with the right attitude, do my best to have it done, and not just give up at the last minute because on the surface it looked impossible to resolve. If I didn’t do well, I might also give others a bad impression of Dafa. That attitude was better than the one before, but there was still some fear.
I then tried to eliminate the fear and thought that I should persist with a calm heart, and that as long as I maintain a mind of Zhen-Shan-Ren, things would be right. My colleague, who was also rushing to finish up, needed some help with something, and although I was pressed for time, I thought I should maintain a mind of kindness and went to help her.
I finally generated a shortened DVD. It was ready around 11:30, half an hour before the teachers would come to check our work. I did not have time to test it to see if the speed would be right, but it ended up being just perfect. Usually, aiming the projector so that it fit exactly on the paper would require about 10 to 15 minutes of preparation, but this time, I made almost no adjustments and in less than five minutes it was good. I took care of other minor details and was done about 15 minutes before the 12 o’clock deadline. It was very tight. Afterwards, the teachers gave me many positive comments about the projects.
For me, this is a reflection of Fa-Rectification. Sometimes, things can get blurry and obscure and we might not be sure whether we can make it or not, but as long as we maintain righteous thoughts, assimilate ourselves to Zhen-Shan-Ren, and persist with a clam heart, things are bound to be right. When we have righteous thoughts and intentions, Master will help us all the way to the end. [The practitioner concludes her sharing with Master’s poem, “Benevolent Might,” from Hong Yin:]
Dafa is what you carry everywhere,
Zhen Shan Ren, rooted in the mind;
A great Arhat walks the earth,
Gods and demons fear with awe.
January 6, 1996
