PureInsight | July 27, 2009
Experience sharing from the 2009 Canada Fa Conference
[PureInsight.org] Greetings Master. Greetings fellow practitioners.
I have been working as a full-time advertisement sales person for the Epoch Times for two-and-a-half years. During this period of time, I’ve been rectifying myself at work through studying the Fa. I have some understanding of this sales occupation in the human world, in the cosmos, and in the Fa-rectification period that I’d like to share with everyone.
1. The significance of sales in the cosmos
Master says in “Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005,” that, “…many lives from distant cosmic bodies brought their things here to the human world.” Master also said, “Let me tell you that those are in fact [parts of] cultivation and unique characteristics of the realms of lives from distant systems. Elevation in that kind of realm involves combining the understanding of those skills with the Fa. It requires elevating one's understanding, a limitless upward climb.”
Master said in 2006 in “Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles,” that, “If the many occupations and the many fields seen today were brought here from those distant systems of beings, and Dafa disciples are cultivating in this setting, with Dafa disciples cultivating in different occupations, then isn't it just like rectifying [those systems] with the Fa? Isn't that acknowledging their existence? Isn't that saving them?”
In my personal understanding, since an advertisement salesperson is an occupation in the human world, then there has got to be a world in the immense universe that is sustained by elevating their sales skills. The higher the beings’ realms gets, the higher their sales skills will be, and the higher their realms get, gods of higher levels bestow them with greater wisdom and they become more creative.
In the human world, we Dafa disciples build our own media and run them as businesses, and advertisement income is the main revenue source and operating capital for media. For those of us Dafa practitioners who take advertisement sales as our occupation, it’s not only for us to cultivate in this environment—we also enable this occupation to be rectified in Dafa and enable that level of the cosmos to be rectified by Dafa, which is acknowledging the existence of that world and its beings, and is also saving the high-level beings of that world and their sentient beings.
2. The significance of sales in the Fa-rectification period
The Epoch Times is an important channel to clarify the truth and save sentient beings. Our newspaper is published in more than 30 countries in the world and in 12 languages. The weekly distribution is two million copies, so if one copy is read by three people, there are six million people reading our paper on a weekly basis. Through reading our paper and getting to know the truth, they will gradually get rid of the bad thoughts in their minds, have karma eliminated, and have a positive view of Dafa. The sentient beings that get to know the truth will have an opportunity to remain instead of being weeded out. The Epoch Times plays an important role in this.
Advertisement sales not only produce funds to maintain the paper and enable it to clarify the truth, but are also one of the best ways to clarify the truth and save sentient beings in mainstream society.
Western financial groups, large corporations, and big businesses are the main audience we clarify the truth to; they are in the mainstream society and guide the direction of the society. Most of them directly or indirectly fund the CCP. For example, they dump large amounts of money in advertisements in Chinese newspapers, which are controlled by the CCP. These newspapers sing high praise of the CCP and defame Dafa, they poison the Chinese readers’ minds, and oftentimes these readers are the people we can’t approach in our regular truth-clarifying activities.
As media people, we start with helping them promote their products and services in the Chinese community, then we meet with them to introduce the Chinese market and our newspaper, and naturally we talk about the truth of Dafa and talk about things they are interested in from another perspective. Oftentimes, a half-hour meeting gets extended to one hour or two hours even before the client realizes it, and they don’t think we wasted their precious time. Before they know it, they have accepted the truth and decided to place an advertisement in the Epoch Times. We therefore attained two objectives by doing one thing. Some clients didn’t sign up right away, but they got to know the truth and treated us with respect. A lot of companies invite us to attend their events, and we get to know more people and have more opportunities to develop our business and clarify the truth.
A fellow practitioner who is also a sales person shared her experience that she once told a client some inside information about a pro-CCP Chinese newspaper. Later in a large-scale advertising seminar, while the CEO of the pro-CCP newspaper was making an introduction of his company, this client questioned him in front of a crowd of businessmen and media people. The CEO became speechless and looked embarrassed.
3. Getting rid of attachments while working as a sales person
Sales is a very sensitive project among various Fa-rectification projects, as it touches money directly and easily exposes the attachments to self-interest, fame, jealousy, competitiveness, and showing off, etc.
The first is the attachment of jealousy. Master says in “Jealousy” in the Seventh Talk of Zhuan Falun (North American translation version, 2003):
“When I’m teaching the Law I often talk about jealousy. And why is that? Because jealousy is really intense in China, so intense it’s become natural, and people can’t sense it in themselves anymore.”
At first, I wasn’t aware of my jealousy and I felt I had gotten rid of it. In fact, it was hidden and it manifested whenever the opportunity arose.
Right after I became a sales person for the Epoch Times, a fellow practitioner became a sales person too, and she signed a good contract shortly afterwards and it was a pretty big one. I didn’t get anything myself. I started to feel uneasy. I know a lot of practitioners did better than me but they all started before me, and it’s natural they did better than me, so I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. However, this practitioner came after me and did better than me. Therefore, I became mentally upset. I knew it was wrong. However, I just couldn’t suppress this strong jealousy in my heart.
I shared my situation with another practitioner and he told me the other practitioner made more phone calls than me. When I thought about it, I remembered I did spend a lot of time reading news in the office and the day passed by very quickly. I made very few phone calls and was too lazy to go out on the streets. So, I started making more phone calls the following day. However, I could feel that my jealousy was still strong. I was upset and couldn’t get rid of it and decided to expose it. In a group study and discussion, when this fellow practitioner was also present, I summoned my courage and told everybody that I was jealous of the practitioner who did a better job than me, and I wanted to get rid of the attachment. Later on, my jealousy became weaker and weaker but it was still not completely gone. It came back twice, and I was able to remove it more deeply. Right now, it can’t cause too much interference to my character anymore.
My attachment to validating myself was also strong and concealed. There was a period of time when I was doing a pretty good job and I started to become complacent and thought highly of myself and almost wanted to report my achievements to my superiors. I was comparing my clients with fellow practitioners’ clients with a mentality that “This is my client, that’s your client.”
One day, I read the following paragraph from Master’s “Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference”:
“Some are more capable when it comes to one thing, others with another—you definitely shouldn't let your thoughts run wild based on that. You say that you have such great abilities and so on and so forth, but that was all bestowed upon you by the Fa! Actually, it wouldn't work if you failed to attain that level of abilities. Fa-rectification required your wisdom to reach that point, so you definitely shouldn't think that you're so capable. Some practitioners want me to check out their abilities and skills. But actually, what I think is, all of that was given by me, so there's no need to look.”
I felt ashamed of myself after reading this paragraph. What I did was far away from Master’s requirement, and I even wanted to show off and thought that I was capable. These are all attachments of showing off and validating oneself. Even if I did achieve a little bit, that’s done by Master and given by Dafa. Just like Master says in the Third Talk of Zhuan Falun:
“When you teach someone the exercises he might say, ‘Wow, I’ve got a Law Wheel now.’ And you might think that you planted it. But that’s not what happened. I’m telling you about this so that it won’t fuel that attachment. It’s my Law Bodies who do all these things” (North American translation version, 2003).
It’s easy to feel discouraged for a sales person as we get rejected from time to time; right now it’s the majority of the time. Without certain psychological endurance or righteous belief in Master and Dafa, it’s hard to persist. Of course passing all kinds of xinxing tests and conflicts is itself a process of strengthening our righteous thoughts in Master and Dafa. Recently three clients of mine all of a sudden told me that they didn’t receive good result from last year’s advertisements and decided not to renew this year. No matter how I persuaded them I couldn’t change their minds. One day I read this paragraph in the Third Talk of Zhuan Falun:
“Some people don’t even believe the person when he heals them. When he treats them, he drives out a lot of bad things, but maybe at the time it’s not obvious how much he’s healed them. So they’re not happy, they don’t even thank him, and they might even call him names and say he cheated them! It’s exactly in grappling with these problems, it’s in this environment, that the mind is tempered” (North American translation version, 2003).
I suddenly had another understanding of this paragraph: doing advertisement work is the same; they had the opportunity to advertise in the Epoch Times, support Dafa disciples’ media, accumulate virtue in other dimensions, and have their karma eliminated. Even though they couldn’t tell the difference from the surface and didn’t thank us and even said there were no results and decided to cancel, Dafa disciples’ minds were tempered in this environment, our character was improved, and the process of working as a sales person was a process of getting rid of our attachments.
The above is my personal experience, please point out anything inappropriate.
Thank you Master!
Thank you everyone!
