(Minghui.org) These past 11 years, I have been sluggish in my practice of Falun Gong, and have fallen behind in cultivation. Our local practice site was dismissed in 2001, as many fellow practitioners were sentenced to prison or forced into homelessness. I married a girl who did not practice Falun Gong, and from then on I began to fall behind in my cultivation. Although I still did the Dafa exercises and read Zhuan Falun at home, I basically did not spent any time on truth clarification or sending forth righteous thoughts. When my sickness karma surfaced I simply regarded it as illness and sought medical treatment, just like a non-practitioner.
During those years, I had some opportunities to communicate with fellow practitioners. In our experience sharing, I could sense their feeling sorry for me about my sluggishness in cultivation, but they gave such thoughts no tongue because they did not want to embarrass me. After our sharing we parted and gave ourselves over to our worldly lives, learning almost nothing from our sharing. I later realized that it was a manifestation of our failure to improve to a higher level in cultivation as a whole body.
In the past two years I was stricken by a series of troubles due to my father's passing away, my affection for my family and my own sickness. I could not let go of such frustration and sluggishness until April 2013, when, on my own initiative, I decided to meet regularly with fellow practitioners. I even asked a practitioner to teach my son calligraphy. To my surprise, my wife showed no opposition to this.
With the help of this practitioner I started my return journey to genuine cultivation. He had no reservation in pointing out to me, “You have fallen behind. You have a big distance to cover, to catch up with the others.” He told me I had so many things to do to catch up, such as publishing a solemn statement of my return to Dafa, having a clear understanding of what the “old forces” actually means, and letting go of my attachments and wishful thinking about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Upon hearing his words I felt very regretful for having spent so many years without making any progress in my cultivation. I felt guilty when I realized that so many practitioners were risking their lives to save sentient beings and assist Master in Fa-rectification, while I gave myself over to my mundane life like an everyday person.
I made up my mind to change my course and be diligent in my cultivation. I first made a new schedule for my daily life, reducing my sleep time by 90 minutes. I used to be quite serious about getting enough sleep, but I found that my energy was the same as usual after I decided to sleep less. I read all of the Fa lectures given by Master after 1999, letting Dafa dissolve the shadow in my heart and rectify my mind. Some practitioners gave me DVDs of the 2011 Shen Yun performance, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, and the serial documentary, “Let the Future Be Informed.” The beauty and magnificence of the Shen Yun performance revealed to me how spectacular the Fa-rectification is, and cleansed my heart and helped me get back to my long-lost true self.
I gradually realized how the old forces were conspiring against me. I would certainly have been taken in by them had I not returned to Dafa. They enhanced my emotional attachment to my family, barred me from contacting fellow practitioners, kept me occupied with looking after my son and parents, and gradually intensified my sickness karma. In the long run, they would have dissolved my righteous thoughts and cast me into everlasting darkness where no light of the Fa-rectification can be seen.
Upon making these realizations, I pressed forward. When my wife came to disturb my Fa study, I sent forth righteous thoughts. The old forces tried to prevent me from teaching my son Falun Gong, but I did it anyway. They did not want my mother to obtain the Fa, but I resisted their restriction by playing the audio lectures to her every day. They wanted to keep me away from doing the three things, but I did them anyway. I now get up at around 3 a.m. every day to do the Falun Gong exercises, which I had not done for many years.
I devoted myself to truth clarification. I contacted many of my colleagues and friends, gave them Shen Yun DVDs, sent them software to break through the Internet blockade, and helped them withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations. I have now made progress from clarifying the truth to acquaintances to talking to people on the street with a light heart.
Rome was not built in a day. My returning to Dafa is bound to be a thorny and a steep path full of obstacles, since it has been so long since my departure from a cultivation environment. I would have fallen behind even further had it not been for the timely reminders of practitioners. The difficulty of cultivating alone in a mundane world should not be underestimated, especially when there is no group cultivation environment, where one is prone to giving himself over to his human attachments and deviating from the cultivation path, gradually and unknowingly.
In my neighborhood there were a few practitioners who were in a similar state as I was. I personally visited them every few days, brought them materials about Falun Gong, and shared with them how to let go of the attachment of being afraid and how to do well the three things. My efforts paid off, as one of them, who has long been away from Dafa, returned to Dafa. On his own initiative, he even reached out to practitioners around him and asked them to return to Dafa.
The whole thing was like an expanding wave, where the energy propagates through the ripple effect. Behind every practitioner that we help come back to Dafa, many others follow to return to the cultivation path. Thus it is imperative for us to help them come back. By doing so, our power of truth clarification can be greatly enlarged. In sending forth righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth, a group of practitioners will certainly be more powerful than a single practitioner.
Since Beijing, where I live, is under the closest watch of the evil, we must give security issues top priority. In particular, we need to be very careful of the manner and method of our truth clarification. It is the obligation of practitioners who are doing well to contact, by various means, those who are falling behind. Although we cannot hold a Fa conference or group Fa study on a large scale, we can communicate with each other in small groups. This will create an equally significant ripple effect so that we can improve together as a whole body.
