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The Cultivation Path of a Former Cancer Patient

September 03, 2011 |   By Lianxin, a Dafa practitioner in Shandong Province, China

(Clearwsidom.net)

1. Malignant Tumor Turned Benign

In 2003 at the age of just 24, I was diagnosed with a malignant cancer. Doctors told me that I had only three years to live. Because I was my parents' only daughter, my whole family sank into great despair. As I was on the verge of dying, we went to visit a relative during the 2004 New Year. When the relative learned of my situation, she said, “I have a suggestion you may wish to try!” She then gave me a copy of Zhuan Falun. I read one lecture each day and didn't feel it could possibly help. I just followed what my relative told me to do. As I kept reading, the book really cleared up my confusions about life and its meaning. I finally realized that the true meaning of my whole life was the pursuit of the highest manifestation of Dafa: Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Perhaps because I did not expect to have my illness healed and because of my righteous attitude towards the Fa, Teacher purified my body. The result of the second operation was beyond everyone's expectation: the malignant tumor had become benign. The experts in the field said that they had not seen any case of a malignant tumor becoming benign in such a short time. After the operation, I left the hospital quickly. I haven't have any injections or taken any medication since.

After being discharged from the hospital, I learned the five exercises and studied the Fa every day. Teacher continued to cleanse my body. For more than six months, I felt one of my feet was cold and the other hot. After I started meditation, I felt wonderful and very comfortable, as though I was sitting inside an eggshell, although it lasted only for a very short time. I understood that Teacher was by my side looking after me and helping me. My mother was so grateful to Teacher for saving my life that she began to study the Fa and do the exercises. We encouraged each other and purified ourselves in the light of Dafa.

After my illness was healed, I went back to work and left the cultivation environment of studying the Fa I had with my mother. Since my understanding of the Fa was minimal and I was in a lonely state of cultivation, I gradually got lost in the big dye vat of everyday people. Seeing that I was not diligent, my mother was very anxious. When I returned home on weekends, she would seize every opportunity to share with me and took me along to study the Fa and do the exercises. I had a lot of interference at that time. I would talk about ordinary people's affairs on and on, and as soon as I heard about studying the Fa, I would feel my scalp tingling. Sometimes I became anxious and felt queasy when I thought about doing the exercises. After sharing with my mother, I felt better for a while. But as soon as I returned to the ordinary people's society, I changed back. Later, I even played online games to pass the time. I was like that for a year.

But Teacher did not give up on me. In 2006, I met my future husband. His whole family began practicing Falun Dafa prior to1999. I knew Teacher didn't want me to be lost and had arranged this for me. I thus returned to Dafa and once again became a happy Dafa disciple.

2. A Promotion at Work

Through my future husband, I met several diligent Dafa disciples, ending my lonely state of cultivation. After sharing with them, I deeply regretted my detour and began seriously studying the Fa. At that time, I had only a few Dafa books and didn’t have any of Teacher's other lectures. By chance I learned from a relative of mine that a fellow practitioner had a box of extra Dafa books. I immediately rushed over there and collected all the Dafa books. Like finding a rare treasure, I read them over and over again. I thus gained an in-depth understanding of the Fa. I strictly followed the standard of Dafa in my life. My surrounding environment had gotten better and my work went smoothly. My boss passed on some of the messy stuff for other colleagues to do. Thus, even though my work had not changed and my workload remained the same, I was not burdened by my work and I had more time to do the exercises and study the Fa.

In 2006, assessments to advance to the intermediate pay grade were due. The assessment had a requirement, i.e., applicants had to have published at least one article in a provincial or a national journal. To get published, an applicant had to give a certain amount of money to the publisher. (The amount depended on the importance of the article published in the journal: the more important it was, the more expensive it was.) Sometimes the editor would simply put whatever name they chose in an article. I thought that was fraudulent and that a Dafa practitioner should not do that. I thus left the column blank and submitted the application. A few days later, a colleague from the personnel department came and saw the blank column on my application. He told me that, without a publication, my application would be weeded out in the first round of screening. I was not upset, because I remembered Teacher had said: “A practitioner should follow the course of nature. If something is yours, you will not lose it. If something is not yours, you will not have it even if you fight for it.” (Zhuan Falun). Then I thought, that since my application would be disqualified, it would be better to get the several hundred dollars refunded to me, as Dafa resources were limited and I shouldn't waste it! I went to the personnel department to ask to withdraw my application, but I was told that it had already been submitted. I decided to just let nature take its course. A practitioner should follow the course of nature. If something is yours, you will not lose it; if something is not yours, you will not have it even if you fight for it.

I then forgot all about it. It was therefore quite a surprise when a colleague called to tell me that my new job title had been approved. How could that be possible? Without having published an article, wouldn't the application have been rejected? My colleague then told me the details. It turned out that a new Party secretary had been assigned to our unit less than a month before and that he was also the director of the job title committee. After the first round of reviews, when the judges were taking a break, he looked through all the ineligible applications and saw mine. It seemed that it made a good impression on him. He called the director of personnel to inquire whether such a person had submitted an application. The personnel director confirmed it. The Party secretary quietly put my application in the pile that had been approved. As the Party secretary had just arrived, he could not possibly have known me. I knew it was our merciful Teacher giving me encouragement. In my heart I kept saying: “Thank you, Teacher. Thank you, Teacher.”

3. Fellow Practitioners Are a Mirror for Me

My husband grew up in a traditional family. He is very honest and does not talk much. I had accepted a lot of deviated ideas from contemporary society after I left high school and lived away from my parents. Although I cultivated, I had many bad habits that I was unaware of. For example, I liked to joke around, talk without considering others, occupied myself with trivial matters, and so on. Initially, I did not accept anything he said. I felt he was always finding fault with me, so I disdained what he had to say and considered him an old man with no social experience. Gradually I found him changing. Occasionally he joked, and he was even a little slick. And when I said something was wrong with him, he would immediately find excuses to justify it. Very simply, he had changed. I was confused: I thought what I was doing was wrong, and sometimes I felt guilty.

Once we had a quarrel over a little thing. I said, “How can you be like this?” He said, “I am your mirror!” I suddenly woke up. Yes! All my husband's behaviors that I couldn't bear were all the things I was! It wasn't that my husband was deteriorating. Teacher used a fellow practitioner as a mirror to allow me see my bad thoughts and actions, so I could rectify myself! I dug deeper down and found out why I couldn't see my problems and could only see clearly what happened to others. As a matter of fact, I had always focused on someone else during all those years. I used the Fa to measure others and used Teacher's words to blame others. When others did not listen, I got very angry and told them that Teacher had said so and how could they not listen? I used Teacher's words as a stick to beat others. It was really the greatest disrespect to Teacher! I always found excuses to justify myself and did not conduct myself properly. How could this be the behavior of a cultivator? Recognizing this, I started to read the sharing articles regarding our every thought needing to be on the Fa. I realized that cultivators' fields were controlled by their thoughts. When there were bad thoughts in their minds, the bad matter would be sent out and affect the people and things around them, resulting in changes in the environment and “transformation following mind-intent.” Since then, I have strictly followed the Fa and mended my every word and deed. It was like what Teacher said: “For a cultivator, looking within is a magical tool.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference”)

4. Advance Together, Improve as a Whole

My husband has two sisters. Seven of us in the family practiced Dafa together, but conflicts did not diminish even though we were cultivators. There were times when our family got together, and we would argue. We all held onto their own opinions. We often argued heatedly and finally broke up on bad terms. Every time after I calmed down, I wondered why there were such sharp differences even though we were cultivators? One day when I was reading “Fa Teaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference,” a fellow practitioner asked a question relating to the same situation. Teacher said:

“As Dafa disciples go about cultivating, conflicts are sure to surface. If you can't all search inward, then regardless of whether you belong to the same family or are normal fellow practitioners, the conflicts will keep growing larger and larger, and you still won't be able to pass the tests even as time drags on. How can you resolve this, then? All of you must search inward. If one person is able to take the lead in doing so, he will cause things to ease up. If all of you are able to do so, things will be resolved.”

I thought that this situation had to change. Nothing could separate Dafa disciples, and I had to go first. When we got together again, I tried to restrain myself from talking too much and did not force my idea onto others. In daily life, I tried to do more housework. I often exchanged ideas with my sisters-in-law and tried to be kind and genial. I soon discovered that the elder sister with the fiery temperament had changed. She became more forgiving. And the other sister, who loved to chat about ordinary people's things, could discuss problems from the angle of the Fa. My father-in-law also occasionally was able to give up his old ideas and accept our ideas. I thus had a deeper understanding of what Teacher said to the disciples from Australia in the “Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners.”

Now our whole family works well together. My elder sister-in-law text messages me to prompt me to read good sharing articles. My other sister-in-law sends me phone numbers for clarifying the truth to be posted on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. Even my two little nephews collect names and addresses to mail truth-clarification materials to. Sometimes when our whole family goes out to play and runs into people with predestination relationships, one of us will send forth righteous thoughts while the other clarifies the truth. If one of us can't convey the truth, the other will clarify it from a different angle. Our home has become a group Fa study site and we study the Fa together twice a week.

5. Do the Three Things Well and Walk Well on the Journey of Returning Home

Not long after I met my husband in 2006, he brought a cardboard box to my dormitory. In it was a printer. From that day on, the little flower within me began to take root. In recent years, our family's material production facility has operated safely. We make truth-clarification materials, notes, and other items. Sometimes I did the design work for making CDs. The process of making discs was also a cultivation process. I did not have a professional background in that area. A fellow practitioner often put forward a request asking me to improve the design. I felt wronged in the beginning, not understanding why the requirement needed to be so high. Sometimes I worked for a long time to come up with a design, but it still did not meet the requirement of that fellow practitioner and I had to start all over again.

Sometimes I thought my design was very nice, but the other practitioner thought it wasn't up to the aesthetic standard. Many times I thought of quitting, but I went back to the computer in tears. I knew the other practitioner was being responsible for the Fa. I needed to not argue and unconditionally cooperate with him, so as to maximize our collective strength. After reading Teacher’s article, “Be More Diligent,” I knew I had done the right thing. During this process, I eliminated lots of human notions: the attachment to quick success, the attitude of “just going through the motions,” the attachment of zealotry, and so on.