PureInsight | January 7, 2019
[PureInsight.org]
Greetings to our benevolent, great Master!
Greetings to fellow practitioners!
I had a very slow reaction since my childhood. When I had conversation with someone else, I didn’t know what to say until the whole conversation ended. Moreover, I was bad at pronunciation. For instance, I wanted to say “Grandpa”, but what I said was actually “Mr. Dong”. I was criticized as being slow. I didn’t know how to pronounce “grandpa” correctly until I was eight years old. I remembered I was thrilled and told everyone that I could say “grandpa” on that day. Because of my bad experiences in childhood, I normally chose not to talk in public.
I know that I need to have a focus when talking. However, everything, every sentence was important to me. I could not tell which one was more important. Therefore, what I said was always digressive and nonsense. Whenever I needed to speak in public, I always asked someone else to write me a script in advance. In most cases, I chose to not even open my mouth in public.
Master said in Be More Diligent, “There’s also the matter of Shen Yun ticket sales. I have said that we are now to focus on higher-end society, and only by making ourselves part of the cultural mainstream can we unlock society at large, have a greater impact, have more people attend, and have more sentient beings come to be saved”. In order to save mainstream people, I joined a local club under fellow practitioners’ invitation. Club members need to be the host of group Fa Study in turn.
Even though I was told one year in advance that I would be the host on a specific date, I was still anxious. For the past decades, I had always chosen to listen quietly. I was hardly the one who spoke. But now, I was suddenly asked to be a host and speak in front of fellow practitioners. What should I say? How to ensure that all my words were aligned with Fa? I felt worried even by thinking about it. I didn’t know how to make a breakthrough.
One month before being the host, I felt extremely anxious. My mind went completely blank, and I felt very scared. I asked several fellow practitioners for help, and then I felt a little bit better. However, on the day of hosting the group Fa study, even though I had a good preparation on everything, I still felt extremely anxious. My whole body was trembling, my teeth were bitten tight, and I felt super cold. I was so scared. I was so scared even before I went to the stage. Therefore, I called the fellow practitioner who made arrangements for hosts and told her not to make me host anymore in the future.
On that day, I drove my daughter to the group Fa study location. She felt my fear. She asked, “Mom, when you host the Fa study tonight, do you need me to seat next to you?”. I felt very moved. My daughter was very shy too. She had been unwilling to come inside the room to study Fa together with fellow practitioners in the past, but now even she dared to come inside and showed her support to me. I needed to do more as a Mother. How could I just be afraid and refuse to do anything? Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Assistants’ Fa Conference in Changchun, “Just focus on cultivation. All fears are attachments, and all attachments are obstacles”. I told myself fear was obstructing me from advancing in cultivation. I told myself to calm down even though I was still afraid of talking in public. I told myself to negate all interferences and my fear.
Finally, I was done with hosting the group Fa study and experience sharing. I felt very happy: wow! I could finally close my mouth and stopped speaking in front of people! Nonetheless, saving people is urgent. Even though I did not realize my attachment of fear to speak in public, compassionate Master arranged fellow practitioners to help me. A fellow practitioner volunteered to teach me how to call and invite mainstream people to our tea party. Such a task was a great difficulty to me. People would not come to the tea party if you merely read your script! Such tea party invitations required much more communication skills than I had.
Master said in Fa Teaching at the 2013 Greater New York Fa Conference, “It’s not that if you have fear you are no good. It’s about overcoming your fears and trying to do the three things well with stronger righteous thoughts, and that is outstanding. (Applause) To put it in perspective, no matter how afraid you may be, if when faced with the responsibility of saving sentient beings you feel compelled to take action, to go save people, then that is remarkable.” What Master said is so true! It’s Dafa disciples’ responsibilities to save sentiment beings. No matter how fearful I felt, saving people is still my responsibility. Therefore, I accumulated all my courage and went to meet with the fellow practitioner who would taught me how to invite people to the tea party. On my way, my stomach really hurt. I really wanted to go to the bathroom. But I knew it was old force interference. I needed to keep a righteous mind. I went straight to the meeting. When I arrived, the fellow practitioner helped me draft the invitation letter. I finished all the phone invitations when the fellow practitioner sent forth righteous thoughts for me. I felt very relaxed. However, everything was not over yet. On the next day, another fellow practitioner invited me to share my experiences of inviting mainstream people to the tea party after the group Fa study.
As soon as I heard what the fellow practitioner said, I refused, “No, No, I cannot. It took me great efforts to be the host already. I finally do not have to worry about speaking in public. I finally do not have to get nervous. Why do you want me to speak in public again?”. My fear hid all my righteous thoughts. I only cared about my own feelings. I said a lot to blame the fellow practitioner. At that moment, I was not like a practitioner at all. After I listed a lot of reasons why I couldn’t speak in public, a story shared by a fellow practitioner several days ago suddenly popped up. A city in Taiwan sold Shen Yun tickets poorly last year. However, they sold most Shen Yun tickets this year. Why? Fellow practitioners in the city all looked within and collaborated with each other. An indivisible unity among Dafa disciples was formed. After recalling the story, I changed my mind. I accumulated all my courage and told the fellow practitioner that I would share my experiences after the group Fa study. I also wanted to help Master rectify the Fa and did not want to be obstructed by my fear!
I was trembling and afraid by just thinking the experience of hosting the group Fa study in the same location not long time ago, but now I forced myself to speak in public again. I was required to sit next to the host in order to be visible to all fellow practitioners. It was really hard to believe that I agreed to share in public. Even though on that day, I did not actually share my experiences because of time limitation, I overcame my fear during the process. I experienced the state of peace for my first time.
There was another time when fellow practitioners mentioned that our city so far sold the least Shen Yun tickets over the past 12 years. I was very sad when hearing this. I regretted not doing good enough, which contributed to our current undesirable situation. Since then, I have become more active in promoting Shen Yun and sharing my experiences with fellow practitioners. One time a practitioner suggested to form a Shen Yun promotion group to speak to fellow practitioners after group Fa study in different locations, in order to encourage fellow practitioners in different areas to come out and help with Shen Yun promotion. The practitioner asked if anyone was willing to take the responsibility of forming the group. I raised my hand and took the responsibility immediately. I shared my experiences of how to overcome my fear and invite ordinary people to our tea party with fellow practitioners in different areas. Now as long as fellow practitioners need me, I will not say no. Instead, I will try my best to collaborate with them.
Even though the 2018 Shen Yun tour is over, I still interact with ordinary people. Now, I find my Chinese language ability has improved. At the same time, I worry less about speaking to people. In the past, I did not know how to combine sentences. For example, I used to say “We donated some textbooks. Thank you for using the textbooks”. Now I can say, “Thank you for using the textbooks that we donated”. In the past, when Shen Yun tour was over, I became relaxed and stopped interacting with ordinary people. Now, I continue to talk to ordinary people no matter if they bought Shen Yun tickets or not. I also made new friends and expanded my social network, which laid a good foundation for Shen Yun promotion in the future. For example, a new friend called LINE told me she wanted to book the 2019 Shen Yun ticket.
Reflecting back, I changed from a person who was too nervous and fearful to talk in front of people to a person who volunteers to share experiences in public; from a person who refused tasks to a person who takes tasks willingly; and from a person who did not know how to interact with people to a person who makes a lot of friends and has a large social network. Such transformations couldn’t be done without Master’s systematic arrangement, encouragement, and assistance. Master helped me get rid of my fear, improve myself, and advance in my cultivation. I finally overcame my fear, came out, and helped Shen Yun promotion. It’s exactly like what Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Assistants’ Fa Conference in Changchun, “No matter how a person cultivates, he can’t conceal the attachments that haven’t been eliminated. No matter how he cultivates, I use all kinds of methods to expose his most stubborn attachments—even when he thinks he’s doing the most sacred work. Even when you’re doing Dafa work I will still have them manifest. It’s no good if the work itself doesn’t help him to improve; the improvement of his xinxing is the number one priority, his elevation is what’s most important”.
I had accumulated my fear for decades. I have been successfully removed some layers of my fear. I was enlightened that as long as we wanted to improve, fear would be gradually removed. Master said in Study the Fa Well, and Getting Rid of Attachments is Not Hard, in The Essentials of Diligent Progress, Vol. III, “The fact is, those who can’t step forward, regardless of the excuse, are concealing fear. Yet for cultivators, fear or lack thereof proves [one’s] humanity or divinity, and it is what differentiates cultivators from ordinary people. It is something that a cultivator must face, and the biggest human attachment that a cultivator must remove.”
I hope to share my experiences with fellow practitioners who have the same difficulties. I hope fellow practitioners can all overcome the biggest attachment, “fear”, come out and help Master save sentiment beings. I hope all fellow practitioners will do better in Dafa projects and advance in their cultivation.
If I said anything incorrect, please correct me.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/247153
