Shared at the 2004 Canada Falun Dafa Conference
(Clearwisdom.net) Hello, Revered Master. Hello Dafa Disciples.
You might have heard about a practitioner in Canada who fell from a tree, well that's me.
It started the morning of September 9th, 2003. I reported to work at Sunnybrooke Hospital, only to find out the day's work had been cancelled by the hospital's groundskeeper. Since we were already there, I thought I would show my supervisor a hazardous 100-feet spruce tree that was threatening to fall onto a populated area with a high probability of striking a building. Upon examining the tree, we discovered that the split in the trunk had progressively worsened. Thus, the decision was made to immediately remove it.
I ascended the tree with a rope, removing branches along the way. After reaching about 70 feet, I cut down one 35-foot treetop. Then I swung out, descended on my rope and started working on the second stem. Things were different in that the debris now had to land on the other side of the fence, in the Veterans' compound where the groundskeepers were working. Thus, I lowered the small pieces down on a rope for safety and to prevent damaging the fence right below me. When I reached 57 feet or so, I cut my notch and let a 20-foot treetop fall. I planned to bring down the final remaining stem in even smaller pieces, due to the fact that there were workers crossing directly below in the drop zone. The situation then changed, as the grounds workers left for lunch and my ground crew was waiting for me to finish so they could do the same. I decided to reach over, cut and drop the third stem's top. I checked that all was clear then cut the wedge and let it fall. As it tilted in the direction it was to fall, my safety rope pulled free from around a stub on the first stem, revealing what I hadn't been able to see before due to my helmet restricting my vision: my safety rope was tied around the falling stem. The falling treetop, weighing around 300 to 400 pounds, was going to pull me to the ground from a height of approximately 60 feet. My immediate thought was to cut the rope with my chainsaw.
As fate would have it, my personal chainsaw had broken the Friday before. It had fallen off the locking clip, which seemed impossible, as there was no sensible way to explain how it had fallen. The new one I was given did not idle, hence it wasn't running. If I had had my chainsaw I would have been able to cut the rope, as time seemed to have slowed down, which gave me time to respond. After weighing my options, I decided to jump into an adjacent tree in the direction I would be pulled, this seemed like the best course of action to avoid landing on the fence below. At that time I was not afraid, I knew I had attained the Fa (1), and I felt very calm and assured as everything was in Master's hands, and that all would be fine. The other tree branches could not hold me with the weight of the top dragging me down and they snapped under the pressure. While falling through the air, my mind was clear, calm and trusting. I hit the ground.
I landed well, missing the obstacles that littered the ground around me including the 46-inch chainsaw clipped on the right side of my belt. Miraculous is the word that best describes the way I landed on my left side, even though the 40-pound saw weighed down my right hip. I felt no pain upon impact after falling almost 60 feet. I immediately tried to get up, saying to my coworkers I was OK. They insisted that I stay put. I sat up and struggled to remove my gear so as to stand up, all the while saying I was fine and I really felt well and was not hurt. Again, my grounds man stopped me from rising.
A male nurse who was watching from the hospital window, having seen all this, called 911 and rushed over to me. He asked me not to move and asked me where I was hurt. Somehow my thinking turned around at that second and then I noticed my arm was numb and difficult to move. I looked at it and said, "Yes." At that instant, as soon as I said "yes," I was hurt. Teacher said in Lecture 4 of Zhuan Falun, "We have said that good or evil comes from a person's spontaneous thought, and the thought at that moment can bring about different consequences."
Many severe injuries manifested. My diaphragm and spleen had ruptured; my internal organs had shifted and filled my chest cavity, collapsing my lungs. This was my first omission. I should have held firm to that first thought of a cultivator. Thankfully, Master turned the worst into the best. Even before it received the call, an ambulance was already heading toward me. In about ten minutes after my fall, I was ushered into an available operating room in the busiest trauma center in Ontario. Again, miraculously nine top surgeons were all just finishing their break when I was brought in. They immediately started to operate. My hip and arm bones were set in about twenty minutes. My spleen was removed and diaphragm repaired. My other injuries, a fractured pelvis, broken ribs, bruised lungs and damaged nerve in one arm were left to heal on their own.
One Body
I woke up in a heavily sedated state, but nevertheless my first thought was, "I am a practitioner," and my mind became very clear. Even in that drugged state, I reaffirmed that I was a practitioner. I thought of calling other practitioners. I knew that they had to be near me. I felt a kind of oppressive force, like there was a negative field in that hospital maybe related to the SARS events of a few weeks earlier. It was as if the evil forces related to SARS were still present in that environment. I suddenly recalled a practitioner's number, which I had always had to look up before. Thankfully, when I needed it, there it was. I phoned a non-practitioner friend and gave him the practitioner's number to call.
Again I felt strong. The doctors were commenting on my miraculous recovery and I felt I was ready to go home. But the doctors wanted me to stay for observation. The next day, a test presented itself as a surgeon came to my bedside stating that my aorta was torn and they wanted to do open-heart surgery. From deep inside my being I knew I was fine and that they should not operate and I told them this. But part of me was trying to measure the risk, bringing in thoughts like, it is too soon to operate and my lungs would not be able to sustain the operation. This was my human side's fear bringing in these thoughts, making me, at least in that instance, vulnerable. They insisted, proceeding to tell me how they would operate, explaining that there was little chance of survival if they did not. I said again that they should not operate and that I would be fine.
They went ahead and operated without my permission. The surgery just worsened my condition. The surgeons cut around my shoulder blade and under my arm spreading the ribs and collapsing a lung to get at the aorta. Upon seeing the aorta, they saw it was indeed healed already. The doctor later told me that my body structure design is one in a million because of how the flesh around the aorta sealed the tear completely--how could an ordinary person, explain it. He said normally one is dead in seconds. During the operation there had been other complications, as the one lung left for me to breathe with could not sustain my body with the damage it had incurred. Maybe it was those thoughts of mine about my lungs not being able to sustain me through surgery becoming a reality. So my heart stopped and they had to manually massage it to get it working. They decided to stop the operation.
Things got worse as they put me on all kinds of alien machines. At one point, I had thirty machines connected to my body. The next complication was a severe case of pneumonia and then they induced a coma on me. With this event, my cultivation experiences in other dimensions began. They were all very vivid and I was fully aware of who I was and that I was a Falun Dafa disciple. Many things happening in the human level were experiences that were reflected in other dimensions. Before describing some of these experience, let me first talk about the support I received from practitioners.
Right after learning about my situation, many practitioners had come and spent long hours by my side, supporting me with righteous thoughts and reading to me around the clock. This 24-hour presence met with interference at the beginning. Their thoughts and the interference from the hospital staff trying to keep them away from me was reflected in the various situations I experienced in other dimensions.
In other dimensions I sensed that I was in a battle with the evil, which was trying to keep practitioners away from me. I knew the evil forces were not letting the practitioners get close to me, but that could not stop us. I was still meeting with my fellow practitioners for reading. I went to them many times to listen to the Fa.
The turning point came on about the third day. This time, my fellow practitioners and I met to read on an open balcony at night, exposed to the bitter cold and wind. As I looked down at my arms and chest, I could see they were swollen so much that they were at least double their normal size. In addition, practitioners told me that I had severe pneumonia. These are things I should not have been able to know, as I was in a coma. One practitioner told me that the evil was trying to keep them away but that as cultivators we have our own ways to deal with that. One other practitioner moved toward me and wrapped her long winter coat around me. At that moment I felt as if feathers on an Angel wing were sheltering me from the cold. They began to read Zhuan Falun to me. My heart became pure, my mind righteous, my voice rose, proclaiming strongly, "I am a Fa-rectification Dafa Disciple! I am here to help save sentient beings, and you, evil beings cannot stop me." As soon as these words came out, from deep within the core of my being, arose the most powerful force I have ever felt. Radiating from every pore, it grew more and more intense. As I tensed my body, I felt a shift in my surroundings and I let the full force loose. As I let it out I could hear the hospital building creak and groan under this immense force and felt it shake to its foundations. With these righteous thoughts the tide changed.
One practitioner was reassuring me, and promising to take care of my mother. My mother, a new practitioner at the time, might have been worried about me and this was weighing on me. I felt this pressure removed from me. Months later, when I was out of the hospital I told this practitioner about this experience and asked if it meant anything to him. He explained how he had gone to group study and said to everyone there, "Mike's problem is my problem." Those righteous thoughts and his thinking of others first were strong enough to reach me in other dimensions. In some instances, I caught a glimpse or sensed practitioners who came to support me without a question in their hearts, and saw their level shooting up. It made me very happy.
A Lesson in Compassion
One other experience in other dimensions I had was another instance of how other practitioners' thoughts were affecting me in other dimensions. One time I found myself tied in a crucified position surrounded by millions of people, all judging me and accusing me of things I knew I had not done. I felt so sad for them to be saying such terrible things about a cultivator and I felt my compassion for them grow. They were building this ivory tower with me on its pinnacle, making it higher and higher. As their torrents of insults rose, my heart seemed to widen with compassion for all of them. With this, the tower grew so tall, reaching to the sky, so that I seemed miles above the earth. Then a practitioner appeared in front of me questioning my worthiness; was I a good practitioner, was all of this my doing. My attachment to what other practitioners thought of me seemed to be hit upon and suddenly my heart narrowed and so did my compassion. I felt my focus change from compassion to proving my worthiness. With this search in mind, I leapt from the tower, flying down, looking for things with which to prove myself. As I was descending, Zhuan Falun appeared with a two-inch tall practitioner standing on it. After a few words he then began to read the Fa to me. As I listened, my mind became calm and rational, my emotions subsided and out of that, clarity and compassion again surfaced. I started thinking of these practitioners judging me and felt compassion for them, and the attachment to what my peers thought of me dissolved. Suddenly, I was surrounded by practitioners all embracing me and they were so happy for me. The group of practitioners parted to one side so the practitioner who exposed my attachment could usher in my family who all had beaming smiles. I have never seen them so happy. All of them were saying how wonderful practitioners are, and that Falun Dafa is good. Tears began to run down my face, I was so happy for my family.
Months later when out of the coma, the practitioner who exposed my attachment, said he did indeed voice a similar opinion. In retrospect, my attachment had played a role in drawing out that criticism and its reflection in other dimensions as I experienced. It showed me the power of compassion and made me aware of how important it is to have righteous thoughts about others. As for the practitioner who appeared two inches tall standing on Zhuan Falun reading the Fa to me, he explained that when he read to me in the hospital room, in order that the reading would not go to my assistant consciousness, the idea to ask Master to please have the reading go to my main conscience had occurred to him. Of course that is exactly what happened, and more than once he appeared on Zhuan Falun at times when I was irrational and distressed, or going through a test and needed it …quot; he would thankfully appear. As for my family, when I came out of the induced coma, and each came to see me, the first words they said to me were, how wonderful practitioners are. My brother, who was poisoned by misunderstanding of Falun Dafa before, had actually turned around and even read Zhuan Falun to me and he uses expressions that indicate he now understands the Fa. Again, tears of joy ran down my face. Thank you Master, thank you my fellow Dafa disciples.
With all the visions I saw, it felt as if I had lived many months in other dimensions. During these experiences my attachments were revealed. One in particular that was hit hard, was my fear. When afraid, I was far from the Fa, and the world where I was seemed distorted and warped, and those in that world could not see the incorrect state of things. I longed for the Fa, I remember trying to reach Zhuan Falun but it was just out of reach. A thought came to my mind at that time that if I got a chance to again learn the Fa I would study as much as possible, as without the Fa there was disorderly chaos and misery, and in the Fa, all was perfected. The stronger my fear, the worse things got. When I let go of the fear, I would finally be able to concentrate and look inside, and try to recite "Lunyu." When the fear was let go, I could remember the Fa and the Fa strengthened me, and all things in that world returned to righteousness.
One time, I was rising up towards the heavens. I seemed to be passing through layers, it was like going through thresholds or vales. At a certain level, I stopped and experienced being physically stuck and felt how attachments were literally like threads, some woven so thick that it was similar to cloth gluing me to the substances at that level. As I struggled to free myself, I saw a practitioner who was free and others who were all in various degrees covered. I could not force myself out of it, until words of encouragement from this practitioner who was free, telling me to look inside and let go, somehow caused me to be free again and rising along with this practitioner. Then, we passed another layer where odd-looking beings were surrounding a circular hole that looked like a window in the sky, working all kinds of controls and levers. They were so intent on what was below them and so feverishly manipulating things, that they did not see us at all. We went higher and passed more layers, entering a very beautiful world, with trees so huge they must have been thousands of years old, rolling grasslands, meandering streams and an ancient forest bordering an open field. It looked unspoiled and we were with other practitioners there. It was very peaceful and welcoming.
Greatness Manifested
Practitioners came to support this particle of Dafa as one body. First, one practitioner knew unquestionably what she was to do, so she organized a schedule so that there would be a righteous field around me at all times when I was unconscious. She would read to me for hours and at one time she even read for 18 hours in one stretch. Such selflessness is remarkable. Practitioners cleared the field in the hospital where there had been SARS cases a month earlier. Their unwavering righteous mindset that I would be fine both comforted my family and showed the quality of Dafa disciples. They were like an island of calm in that sea of grief in the waiting room. When the doctors would relay their dire prognoses, my family and friends would break down, and then be lifted by the compassionate reassurance of practitioners saying that I would be fine. The righteous field was so strong that even my friends who lived far away also knew that I would be fine. The doctors and nurses had never seen anything like our practitioners before, staying there around the clock sending righteous thoughts and reading to me. They all got to know the truth about Dafa and some were very interested and wanted to read the book. The goodness was recognized even by the minister at the hospital who requested to keep Zhuan Falun in her chapel. She was very impressed with the practice and practitioners. So much time was spent there by the practitioners that a deep understanding and respect for Dafa developed on the part of the hospital staff, my friends, and my family.
Practitioners have told me how this whole experience has affected them. I think we all learned a lot. I spent three months in hospitals. Practitioners continued to come even when I could read by myself. They came bringing Chinese chicken soup made with the essence of their compassion, which gave me so much strength. I was practically running around the hospital. Staff and patients alike marveled at my quick recovery. Sometimes when it was difficult with the staff and family focusing on the physical limitations, practitioners would visit and it was like a light was turned on inside me, and my resolve was solidified. All the grace you showed helped me through. I would like to thank all of you , and I would like to also thank Master for the merciful recovery and everything that he has done for me.
- Fa: Law and principles, the teachings of Falun Dafa.
