Experience Sharing Essay, MAY 2000

Hello, my name is Susan Mitchell and I've been practicing Falun Dafa since January 17th, 1999. Before cultivating Falun Dafa, I guess you could say that I spent my life cultivating attachments and avoiding pain of any kind! It was quite a shock the first time I did the 5th exercise.

That first time doing the sitting meditation, I was able to maintain the lotus position for just one and a half minutes. But even so, I could feel, as Master Li has written, the karma attacking my legs and moving like a cramp down and out the soles of my feet. And the experience gave me the encouragement to persevere with the excrutiating pain. And the phrase from Zhuan Falun that stuck in my mind was, "Practice nobly." I would keep a clock in front of me and increased the time by one painful minute each day, until after a couple of months or so I could sit for an hour.

Several years ago, through a vision in my meditation, I knew that in a previous life, I'd been a member of the aristocracy and extremely wealthy. And I knew that I carried tremendous karma in this life because of that other life. The first few months of the sitting meditation, it was sometimes as if that karma was like lumps of hot black tar sticking to my leg muscles. And it was being ripped off in pieces as I meditated. One day, the thought crossed my mind that I didn't know if I would be able to withstand the pain and succeed in my cultivation. And I opened my eyes and glanced down at my feet. To my amazement, I could see hovering above them, a black mist. And I knew that it was true: my karma was actually being eliminated. It gave me the courage to continue. For the first few months, I refused to meditate in public because it was so painful that I cried for most of the hour of sitting.

But again, there was encouragement when I most needed it: One night, after a painful half hour or so, suddenly I was lifted up about ten or twelve feet high and I looked down at my feet far below. And there was absolutely no pain. It was totally wonderful. And I've never been allowed to experience that again! Everything is locked up very safely!

Perhaps some of you have had the experience of being so busy that by the time it's late at night and you're exhausted, you haven't done the sitting meditation. And you have a choice of trying to stay awake and sit, or just go to bed. Has that happened to you? One night, last year, I went to bed instead of sitting. As soon as my head hit the pillow, my tooth began to ache! I tossed and turned for a few minutes and then realized that I was being made to understand: Susan, you have to suffer physically to repay your karma. Would you rather have a toothache, or would you rather sit in the lotus position and meditate?! I crawled out of bed and folded my legs on top and began to meditate. Immediately the toothache disappeared!

About three days after I started to read Zhuan Falun, I finally was able to begin to take my life seriously. Master Li speaks of predestined relationship, and I was able to understand about 98% of the book the first time I read it. Questions that had been unanswered for centuries were suddenly clarified. One of the main questions for me was: Where would I go after death? If I had been Hindu in one life, Christian in another and Buddhist in yet another, which Heaven would I go to. I didn't feel an affinity to any of them, even though I had tremendous respect for all those Masters. When Master Li spoke of many of us coming from different realms and perhaps even beyond this universe, I knew from the depths of my being I was one of those. For many years, I had been looking outside myself and thinking, "I don't belong here." What a relief to know it is true, and that now I have the golden opportunity to cultivate back to my true home.

One section of the book that totally fascinated me was the section of Shwengwan Shewei: the movement of the bubble up the spine beside yuanying, the Buddha body. And my attachment to fear made me rather scared of the thought of feeling suffocated as it passed through the throat area. A few months after beginning the practice, I could feel something gradually moving up and coming closer and closer to my throat. And so I began to "test" the process by eating large amounts of cheese, yoghurt, chocolate and dairy products - all the things that used to make my sinuses get clogged up with mucus. But no matter how much I ate, I could still breathe totally normally. Again, I was made to understand that this is a supernormal process and I didn't have to worry. And there were a couple of days when I suddenly seemed to have a head cold and a sore throat. In Zhuan Falun, it says that there are often physical manifestations, and it's up to us to handle ourselves as practitioners instead of ordinary people. I've found on the whole of this adventure, that one can either stride ahead, or doubt the process. Was it Shwenguan Shewei that I experienced - or not? It doesn't matter.

What matters to me is trying to improve in my relationships with people - to upgrade my xinxing in every way. A lot of this improvement comes through sudden conflicts at work. Again, it's easy to see that they've been arranged! A few weeks ago, I had to fax an order to a publishing house. I followed up with a phone call to make sure the fax had been received. I asked the receptionist to please put me through to the person who would get the fax and she said "Oh, that will be ......so and so.... in the Marketing Department. I'll put you through." - which she did. When the Marketing Department person came on the line and I asked her if she would please check to make sure my fax had arrived, she replied, "Oh! You want me to run to the other end of the building to get the fax?!!" I said, "I thought the receptionist was putting me through to the person closest to the machine!" She replied, "NO! I'm the one furthest away from the machine! - but I'll go over and get it." And I could feel her throwing de onto me as she put the phone down and later came back, slightly puffed, to let me know the fax had arrived safely.

Have you had experiences like that?!! Many, I'm sure! At the moment, I'm being encouraged in many different ways to drop my attachment to food. For several years, I was addicted to decaf coffee and a toasted bagel with cheese for breakfast. A couple of weeks ago, there was a morning when I was really tempted to have just that kind of breakfast. And so I decided, on arriving at work, to make instant oatmeal and tea instead. Just as I was about to pour the boiling water on the oatmeal, one of the other women came over to me and said, "Susan, would you like half of my bagel with cheese? It's been toasted a little. If you don't eat it, it will just get hard and I'll have to throw it away." ! --- sometimes it works backwards. And of course, just as Master Li says in the book: the next time you eat what used to be your favourite food, it won't be as tasty. It wasn't that tasty - and I hadn't really wanted to eat it. Things really do change in this cultivation way!

And speaking of attachments, in the book, it says that many people are very attached to trying to see things with their third eye, or Celestial Eye. For me, it was the opposite: I was attached to NOT seeing things - because, having specialized in attachments in the past, I didn't want to get attached to all the wonderful things in other dimensions. My request was granted - except for the few seconds here and there when I either needed encouragement, or a push to work harder.

One of those "pushes to work harder" came as I was leaving a study session one evening. Just as I was about to turn and go out the door, I glanced at one of the practitioners to say 'good-night' when I could clearly see that their skin had been transformed to the high energy matter. It looked to be a totally different substance and was slightly yellower than a normal Chinese complexion. A few weeks later, when cleaning my teeth while standing in front of the bathroom mirror, my own face transformed in a similar way - just for a few seconds.

Many of you know that I moved to Guelph at the end of January - for many, many reasons - but the primary motivation was to start a group practice there. Guelph was the city where I attended high school and studied ballet. After being in Toronto for 30 years and having a great number of very intense experiences, I really wanted to physically remove myself for awhile to get a perspective on my life. Also, in my heart was a deep longing to perhaps eventually move back to the beautiful village, Eden Mills, where I spent most of my childhood.

It was difficult to get well-paid work in Guelph and I've had to make plans to return to Toronto June 1st. Somehow, it has been organized for me to return to my old place of work - a real blessing. But in February, for two weeks I had a temporary work assignment in the office of one of the funeral homes in Guelph. Within the first week, the husband of a distant cousin died, and he was brought to the place where I was working. Because he was an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Eden Mills where I sang in the choir as a child, suddenly all my old friends and neighbors and cousins came to my place of work! I didn't have to visit them one by one - within three days, I saw them all. And was allowed to go to the church service in Eden Mills. One of my old school friends had told me that although when we were growing up, there were 2 general stores and 2 gas stations in the village, now there was nothing. If you wanted to buy bread and milk, you had to drive to Rockwood, about 5 miles away. Standing on the front step of the church, waiting for the mourners to arrive, I looked out over the countryside and realized that I could never live in a place where I couldn't just walk down the street to buy milk or bread. And a HUGE attachment was dropped. It was such a relief! I knew I didn't have to stay in Guelph, but could visit regularly to support the new practitioners there.

Master Li has said that when we truly give up attachments, our physical bodies will undergo tremendous changes. Ever since I was a child, I had a big space between my two upper front teeth. The day after my experience at the Eden Mills church, the space disappeared and my upper teeth are now close together. My whole upper jaw somehow "relaxed" and allowed the teeth to align themselves properly.

A couple of weeks after leaving the funeral home assignment, I was offered 2 temporary jobs that I felt would be a foundation that would allow me to stay and live in Guelph. Then suddenly, both jobs fell apart and there was nothing. So, I decided to move back to Toronto. The next day, I had to come to Toronto to work for a couple of hours. I had been thinking that if I had a choice of buildings in which to live, I'd choose College Park because the practice site I use is right there, and my workplace is at the corner of Yonge and College. But it's a very popular building and I thought there wouldn't be much chance of a bachelor apartment being available. But... I went and spoke to the building people and said, "If ever there's a bachelor apartment coming up, please let me know." And they said, "Well, actually, there's one coming up!!!" And of course, that's where I'll be living: on the fifth floor, overlooking the practice site and the park.

In these past few minutes, I've told just a few of the thousands of things that have transformed my life for the better in the last sixteen months. In Zhuan Falun, Master Li systematically explains how our bodies will change during the course of our cultivation. When I first read the book, I was amazed and very hopeful. I have now experienced many, many of the phenomena explained in the book in exactly the way he has written about them. When I first read the first page, I knew that Zhuan Falun was the Truth. For any of you who might have doubts, I hope that my experiences told here can give you some confidence to trust the process given to us in Falun Dafa cultivation, as I most certainly do, with all my heart.

Thank you.