Make Best of Time for Genuine Cultivation and Saving People

[PureInsight.org] Greetings Respectful Master, Greetings Fellow Practitioners.

Obtaining Dafa

I obtained Dafa in February 2009 and I feel very fortunate every time I think of how I encountered this precious opportunity.

I actually first encountered Dafa more than ten years ago. It was in 1996 when I was in China; a coworker lent his book China Falun Gong to me. I was always interested in subjects such as human science, universe and UFO. I stayed up all night and finished reading the book. However, I did not understand Qigong back then, and thought Qigong was only for ill people to improve their health. I therefore returned the book to my coworker rather than joining him to practice cultivation. I remember saying to him that I already followed the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance, and I did not need to practice Dafa. I therefore missed Dafa cultivation for more than ten years. Perhaps my predestined relationship with Dafa was not mature back then.

In 2009, it was an old classmate in Michigan who re-introduced Dafa to me. He is a fellow practitioner and was studying for MBA in Chicago. When taking the book Zhuan Falun home, I felt very warm and feeling at ease. It was a feeling that I missed for a long time-the feeling of a lost life finding the way home. After reading the whole book I felt just like what Master described in Zhuan Falun, "There are some other folks who haven’t practiced qigong but who’ve been searching for the Truth their whole lives and trying to figure out the true meaning of life. When they learn our Falun Dafa they immediately resolve lots and lots of questions they had and that they couldn’t find answers to. And as their thinking climbs a little higher they might get really excited. That’s pretty much a given. I know, true cultivators realize the Law’s significance, and they know you should cherish it."

In the "Lecture Three" in Zhuan Falun, Master said "The student wasn’t scared when that happened. Nobody who runs into this type of thing gets scared, although they might get scared when they think back about it." When I read this, I understood Master has been protecting me all the time. In 2007, I had a surgery because I had a huge tumor weighing more than six pounds in my right kidney. My families and friends were worried before the surgery and I stayed calm to comfort them, "Don't worry, I will be all right after the tumor is removed." My doctor said to me, "I am being truthful to you, 90% of this kind of tumor are cancer." I smiled and said," Thank you for your truthfulness." I suffered a lot during the eight days in hospital after the surgery. In addition to physical pain, I also suffered mistreatment by the nurses. They took so much blood from my body, and when the nurse could not get any more blood, she simply said drink some water and I will be back to get the blood. By the time when I left hospital, I only weighed about 60 to 70 pounds. I was always optimistic and tolerated lots of pain. Several weeks after my surgery when the oncologist told me the diagnosis for my tumor was close to cancer, I was scared and worried. However, this was over soon. Thinking back, I must have paid off lots of my karma then to obtain Dafa. My families and friends all said I must be very lucky in the future after this big trouble. I did not know then it is such a great fortune of obtaining Dafa.

During the first couple of weeks after I obtained Dafa, every morning when I woke up, I told myself, "I am a Dafa practitioner now, I am a cultivator." Master gave me a new life.

At that time I studied the Fa a lot every day. I read Master’s books, watch Master's DVD, and leading young practitioners to recite Hong Yin. I often studied the Fa until 4 or 5 o'clock every morning, then went to bed with little sleep. I slept for about an hour and get up to study the Fa and practice the exercises when my husband went to work. I experienced many miracle moments such as anointment, vaguely saw energy growing upward like a spiral, golden words going into my head in spiral shape. My body with the bed sheets felt like floating up (but I did not float up since I was afraid). My third eye was not open but I understood what I saw was encouragement from Master.

The more I studied the Fa, the more urgent I felt. I shared my understanding with veteran practitioners, learning how they switch from personal cultivation to Fa rectification process after the persecution started. It is different for us new practitioners who obtained the Fa after the persecution and we must do the Three Things well. There are also many Master’s writings for us to study and we have to study the Fa well to catch up with Master's Fa rectification process. It is like what Master said in Hong Yin II, "Unimpeded", "The paths of cultivation are varied. But none is outside the Great Law."

Maturing in Shenyun Project

During this year's "Fa Teaching on World Falun Dafa Day" in New York, Master said "What is a ‘Dafa disciple’? Whom Master teaches are precisely you, these disciples of Dafa. You are being cleansed, being tempered to maturity, and made ready to save sentient beings. These are Dafa disciples." Pretty soon, I participated many Shenyun projects, such as answering hotline phone calls, selling tickets at shopping centers, distributing Shenyun materials in residential areas, and promoting Shenyun in community activities.

Two Miracle Experiences

I often experience the miracle of Dafa when promoting Shenyun performances. After I had my baby I did not work anymore, so I can help selling Shenyun tickets at shopping centers. One afternoon, I noticed very few shoppers around our counter. Our counter is at a good central location of the shopping center and it was a holiday. I started to send forth righteous thoughts in every directions connecting our counter to the mall entrance, placing signs of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance is Good in the other space, disallowing any factors from interrupting sentient beings to come to our Shenyun counter. I believed everyone who came to the mall are beings predestined to learn about Shenyun and buy tickets. When I was still sending forth righteous thoughts, all of a sudden lots of people showed up like in a movie and I could not figure out where they all came from.

Just before the Shenyun performance, I kept wondering if I missed any predestined sentient beings. One day two mothers and their children came to listen to our introduction about Shenyun. Suddenly I found a business card on the Shenyun pamphlets. Whose card was it? I asked the two mothers but they said it was not theirs. Where did it come from? I understood it must be a predestined person waiting for me. After I finished up the work at mall, I entered the address on the business card into my GPS and drove over. As soon as I arrived, I realized it was a Navy recruiting office. The first time I met the officer when I was distributing Shenyun pamphlets on the street, and the second time was at our shopping mall. He even introduced Shenyun to two other officers that were with him. As soon as the officer saw me, he asked is that performance here again? He said he did not see the show last year due to a conflict. I gave him the Shenyun materials and told him not to miss it again this year. After that I introduced Shenyun to other officers in the office, and distributed more materials to a couple of neighboring offices. I was in tears when I went back to my car. Master knew I did not want to leave any predestined person behind and helped me. It was a miracle! I thanked Master in my mind.

Work together as a whole to save lives

On one weekend, our region sold 39 tickets during three Shenyun promotion activities and our promoting site sold 16. During these activities I truly experienced the situation when we worked as a whole body. For the activity we took part in, although we had only three practitioners signed up at the site, many other fellow practitioners provided support behind the scene. Some provided materials and all kinds of gadgets for the children’s hand craft activities during the day; some prepared wireless network cards and installed the necessary software for ticket selling and they worked until midnight; some provided tents, tables and chairs; and some prepared clipping boards with detailed ticket promoting information. One practitioner drove from another promoting site to my home at 9 pm the night before and delivered the tickets for selling at the activity. This practitioner then had to drive another 45 minutes to get home. In the late night before the activity, a practitioner brought theater seating chart to me and her child had already slept in the car. Early in the morning on the activity day, some older fellow practitioners brought to the site a large poster board they made. During the activity, a fellow practitioner who is not fluent in English twice came to help and brought drinking water and provided good suggestions.

This activity was therefore well supported and the local fellow practitioners sent forth righteous thoughts on the hours. We all experienced the importance of sending righteous thoughts. When we had more than two practitioners at the scene, the special field then became very good. When there were practitioners sending forth righteous thoughts nearby, the promotion effects were also greatly improved. A fellow practitioner at our site did not speak English. She kept sending forth righteous thoughts while teaching the kids to do the hand-craft activities. That day the ticket promotion and sales went smoothly. To co-ordinate this activity I spent a lot time to make phone calls and communicating with practitioners. Through this activity, I truly understood how hard those practitioners had worked.

Later on I started writing articles for "Touring the world with Shenyun" and audience interview reports. Together with other fellow practitioners we contacted various merchants for Shenyun sponsorship, went to various clubs and organizations to introduce Chinese culture and history, to tell the truth and distributed Shenyun materials to office buildings. I also got involved in telling the truth on RTC platform. I now came to understand that Master arranged these opportunities to prepare me for working as a reporter and marketing person for the local Epoch Times.

Looking Inside for Reason and Cultivate Myself

While writing this sharing article, I read a PureInsight article entitled “Gap” which a fellow practitioner had shared with me months ago. I came to realize that Master was giving me hint and encouraging me to be diligent. In the article the 365 days in a year is described as the power of 365 and 1 representing a day’s effort. 1.01 means each day the effort is increased by 0.01 and 0.99 means each day the effort is decreased by 0.01. After one year one is increased to 37.8 and another one is decreased to 0.031. How big the difference is! The ratio of the two numbers is 1219.35. Although the day to day change is only a small difference, accumulated over time the difference is more than 1000 times a year later.” Every time after I read this article, I got anxious and encouraged myself daily to be diligent.

In a recent training organized by the Epoch Times headquarters, I came to realize how big the difference is between my sales work and the sales in other regions. When working on sales with local fellow practitioners I also found many of my short-comings. For example I did not put enough effort to my sales work, including not preparing well before visiting customers, not taking good visit notes and not following up with customer services. I was also not persistent enough. Although I had visited some merchants many times, because I was refused I finally give them up. The training was the head-quarter’s first systematic training, I will study and review the training material well and improve myself in my sales work and in my cultivation.

Since I started cultivation, I have a mind to look within. Master told us that this is a fundamental difference between practitioners and ordinary people. However, when facing something that irritated my soul or needed more persistency I still missed the chances to improve myself using various excuses. For example: I am still interfered by the demon of drowsiness, I am not kind and patient toward young practitioners and I have show-off and self-validation mentalities. A few weeks ago, I read a sharing article "Taking Credit for the Accomplishments of the Gods", and I have been working on letting go of this attachment and it has gone down a lot. I also have jealousy and competing mentality and I am not accepting other’s critics of me well. I had thought that I did not have the problem of refusing other’s critics until two practitioners pointed it out to me. I look into my heart. I found that I did not reject others words while they criticized me. I rejected them in a way that I made excuses to say I was not like what they had thought I was. Actually, those are valuable input and they may have pointed out my attachment which I had not found yet.

This time, I knew that I should not miss the opportunity to share with fellow practitioners about my cultivation. Last year I had missed the opportunity using the excuses of being too busy and being in an undesirable cultivation state. I have read in fellow practitioners’ sharing articles that the process of writing the articles is a process of summarizing the cultivation in the past period and is a process of finding my gaps. I had the same feeling. I had encountered different interferences when I was to write this sharing. I kept persistently rejecting these interferences. But when I started writing I had a lot to say.

I found the following two paragraphs of Master’s teaching and thought. Master was giving me hints and encouraging me.

Master taught us on May 23, 1999 in Toronto, “In fact, when many of you can’t pass the trials that you encounter, it’s all because you drag along and can’t give up the petty things of human beings. The trials will be prolonged as a result. If you can truly sever the attachment and take the path that you want to take, everything will change. This is especially true with the things that interfere with you while you study the Fa. It can be changed swiftly.” ("Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Canada")

Master also taught us, “Of course, this undertaking hasn’t been completed yet, Fa-rectification hasn’t been concluded, so there’s still a chance for you to do well again. Indeed, as long as there’s still one day when the persecution hasn’t ended, that day is an opportunity. Use it well, do better, come back sooner, and don’t miss any more opportunities. Don’t dwell on your past mistakes—if you’ve made mistakes, then do well from now on. Don’t think about the things that have happened. Think about how to do well from now on, and become truly responsible to yourself and to sentient beings.”(“Touring North America to Teach the Fa")

The title for my sharing today is “Make Best of Time for Genuine Cultivation and Saving People”. The title does not mean whether I did well or not. I have being using this phrase to remind myself. Here I want to encourage fellow practitioners and myself again with this phrase. We all know that the time we have now is Master gained for us with enormous suffering. I want to learn the Fa well with solid effort, discard my attachments, save more people and do the three things well so that we will not regret later.

Please point out any mistakes in my above sharing.

Thank You Master! Thank You Fellow Practitioners!