(Minghui.org) I am not a morning person because I don't have to get up early to go to work. My work schedule is very flexible, so I have been going to bed late and getting up late. Even my neighbors know that I don't get up before 9:30 a.m. My mother jokingly says that I only live “half a day,” and sleep the mornings away.

Getting up to do the Falun Gong exercises in the morning has been a challenge during my cultivation practice. I set my alarm for 4:50 a.m. every day, thinking that I could do the fifth sitting meditation, and then the standing exercises. The alarm on my cellphone was set to come on twice, yet I still couldn't get up when the alarm sounded. I felt ashamed, as even my cellphone fulfills its “duty” every day, but I couldn't.

My cellphone stopped working properly one day, and the alarm sounded only once. I got a new phone that was bigger than my old one, two days later, and set the alarm to come on twice. The alarm sounded, but I still failed to get up.

When I finally woke up that day, I looked at my cellphones, and I could almost hear the smaller phone telling the bigger one, “You don't have to work so hard. She is not going to get up anyway. I've got it all figured out—just sound once, and you will be doing a good enough job for her.”

I was very ashamed of myself. Am I fulfilling my duty as a practitioner when I don't even do the exercises? When my cellphone stopped working for only a couple of days, I wanted to get rid of it immediately. Yet how many days have I missed the morning exercises? In other beings' eyes, wasn't I being remiss in not fulfilling my duties as a practitioner?

A cellphone's function is to make and receive phone calls, and also act as an alarm at set times—it is such a being. Then what about myself?

Before I went to bed the following night, I put my cellphone far enough away that I couldn't reach it from the bed. When I opened my eyes the next morning, the first thing I told myself was, “I will get up. I am such a being.”

My first thought in the morning every day is now, “I am such a being.” I can get up in the morning to do the exercises most of the time. My old cellphone is also working again—the alarm comes on twice a day, right on the dot. There is no longer a need for the newer cellphone. I will strive to do better.

I ask my fellow practitioners to kindly point out anything that's inappropriate.