(Clearwisdom.net) Jessie came to Toronto from Mainland China as a student in 2009. Her first job was to promote a government welfare program. In a very short time, she became a key member of the project. Jessie attributed her success to Falun Gong, which gave her wisdom.
Jessie meditating in Milliken Park
Jessie used to worry about everything that she needed to do: whether she could get the task done well, whether others will be satisfied with her performance, etc. “My head used to be occupied by all these concerns and I was always very worried,” said Jessie.
This mental state started in middle school, and she could not sleep or eat well because of anxiety. While she is about 5ft 5 in., she weighed only about 100 pounds and had to rest several times to climb a 6-story building. She had good grades, but she was rarely happy.
Jessie started to practice Falun Gong in 2005 when she was a junior. While striving to live up to the standards of a cultivator, she became more peaceful and could sleep and eat normally. She gradually started to realize: “Worry is useless. I only need to focus on my actions and results will come naturally.” The result of this change in her mindset change was that she got better grades and directly sent to graduate school.
As soon as she started her first job in Toronto, she faced new challenges:
When she started, she did everything that her boss told her to do. Soon, she felt very good and started to think her boss had problems and things could be done better. “Soon, I felt that there was a huge conflict and it seemed that I could not work there any longer,” said Jessie.
At the most difficult moment, Jessie applied a cultivator's standard: looking inward to see if she had done anything wrong.
“In fact, I only backed off a small step to acknowledge that everyone is different and to look for my own shortcomings,” she said, “With this, the conflict was soon dissolved. My boss had good intentions, the only problem was that his plan was not exactly what I expected. If I tried to change him, this conflict would have never been resolved.”
Fundamentally, she realized that she had a strong attachment to competition because of her education and living environment in China.
She said: “If I were not a practitioner of Falun Gong, when such a conflict with my boss surfaced, I would probably have resigned. Since I am a practitioner, cultivating myself helped me to dissolve the conflict and harmonize my working environment. Attachments such as competitiveness and jealousy are all negative emotions and they can easily hurt you both mentally and spiritually. Cultivation helped me eliminate them and gave me good health.”
Her main job function is community service, giving seminars to explain government welfare details. The more citizens attend her workshops, the more funding she will receive.
Jessie shared: “For a while, I worked very hard to earn more funding; however, not many people were attending my workshops. Gradually, I let this attachment go and focused on how to improve my workshop quality. Soon, more and more people came, as did more funding. This process helped me understand that I have to perform well at work. If I focus on how to get more funding, money issues will distract me and I will not have the energy to improve my work.
“Cultivation gives me wisdom. Many people commented that I was more mature than my actual age. I think this is from my cultivation which let me view things intelligently Cultivation will not succeed overnight. However, I can make improvements every day. If I knowingly follow the principles of Falun Gong every day, I am becoming a better person.”
