[European Fa Conference] Truly Experiencing “Nothing Is Truly Unbearable or Impossible”

(Minghui.org) I live in Gdańsk, Poland. A friend told me about Falun Dafa when she suggested ways to improve my mental focus and health. She mentioned several disciplines—one of them was Falun Dafa. I was surprised. I heard about all the other disciplines, but I had never heard of Falun Dafa. I decided to find out what it was.

When I opened the main Falun Dafa website, I really liked the colors and the simplicity of its layout. I read the introduction and watched the instructional video for the exercises shown by Master. The movements were simple and the exercises didn’t take too long. I thought it was something for me. That evening I did the exercises without expecting anything. Doing the exercises made me feel very light and good, so I started doing them regularly.

One evening while sitting in meditation, I suddenly felt a strong pressure on my head and then various energy sensations in my hands and throughout my body. I had experienced energy before, tried other methods, and knew people who liked to talk about it—perhaps that’s why I was not scared. I wasn’t sure what happened and I had many questions. At the time, I had not yet read the book Zhuan Falun or Masters’ other lectures, but I realized I had experienced something special.

One day I went to the small town of Sopot, near Gdańsk. Walking through the park towards a café, I noticed a man sitting under a tree, arranging flyers on a yellow trunk. I saw the words “Falun Dafa” on the flyers and on his T-shirt, and I thought I should talk to him. I later learned that he was the coordinator of the practice site in Gdańsk.

I told him what I experienced when I did the exercises. We started an interesting conversation about life and the universe. He invited me to the practice site and said that the Falun Dafa exercises were taught for free. My life so far had shown me that nothing was free in this human world, so I was very surprised by his words. However, since I could feel positive energy emanating from him, I decided to give it a try and refrained from being unnecessarily suspicious. I promised to come to the exercise site.

When we practiced outdoors, I found the exercises more difficult than when I did them online. Doing the exercises in the middle of noisy conversations, while the food smells from nearby restaurants competed with each other, I just couldn’t calm down or stop thinking. It seemed that one thought overlapped another and I had no control over them. I remember wanting to give up. Especially when I did the second exercise, which I found painfully challenging at first. However, when I looked at the coordinator standing on the grass like a statue, with his arms up and without the slightest movement, I decided to keep practicing. I think it made a great impression on me. I clenched my teeth and ignored the cold sweat running down my back. I decided to keep going. For some reason I felt it was very important.

I started going to the exercise site regularly. Despite the pain and initial distractions when I did the exercises, I felt that if I could focus my thoughts in such a difficult environment, progress would perhaps be faster. In the fall, I asked the coordinator if we did the exercises outside in the winter. He smiled and said, “Of course we do!” Seeing his steadfast determination while doing the exercises, his answer did not surprise me.

I had mixed feelings about practicing in winter. I couldn’t imagine doing them in sub-zero temperatures. As soon as my doubts began to surface, I decided to “push” them out of my consciousness. I thought, “If the coordinator says it’s possible, why should I argue with it?”

Winter arrived. The temperature fell below zero. The coordinator would take off his shoes in the cold and sit down in the full lotus position to meditate. Not knowing any better, I felt that I should do the same. As soon as I removed my shoes, I immediately felt the frost on my feet. Since I am thin, I feel the cold intensely. However, to my surprise, when I entered a state of silence, the freezing cold no longer mattered. It was as if it decided to stop harassing me. My feet even became warm. Unfortunately, when I realized this, the cold began to attack my feet again. I figured it was better not to pay attention to it.

When I decided to meditate in the cold and consciously endure the difficulties, I felt confident that I had found the right practice for me.

Another day at the practice site, the coordinator told me about the book Zhuan Falun. Until then, I had thought that Falun Dafa was just about doing the exercises, but I soon learned that it was really about increasing one’s xinxing and becoming a better person. So I started reading Zhuan Falun and Master’s other lectures.

I loved reading and collecting books. Whenever I passed an antique store, I couldn’t help but stop in to see if there were any discounts. Since the discounts were usually there, I often came home with a few books and stored them under my bed.

I didn’t always buy them because of the content but because they had nice covers. I had a rule, however: I only read a book once. I preferred to read another book describing the same or similar topic from a different angle.

But with Zhuan Falun, it was different. It was not an ordinary book. I read it once. It took me a long time, because I didn’t understand everything and read very slowly. As soon as I finished, I decided to read it again to comprehend it better. Only later did I realize that it was the first book in my life that I read many times, and I still read it regularly whenever I can.

Now when I have a choice between reading a brand-new book or re-reading Zhuan Falun, I usually opt for Zhuan Falun. Wanting to read other books, including novels, detective stories and the like, I’ve begun to feel that the moment to read them has passed.

The passage from Zhuan Falun that I consider the most important in my cultivation are the words at the end of the book: “Nothing is truly unbearable or impossible.” (The Ninth Talk, Zhuan Falun)

According to my understanding, Master conveys to us in this one sentence the essence of the process of cultivation and transformation of benti. It will be painful, it will be hard, but we should not give up. We cultivate in the midst of delusion. What’s in front of us — our true self is real, the world beyond the illusion is real—so it’s worth enduring all the difficulties and being patient throughout the process to eventually leave the illusion.

I have been practicing for three years now. Over these years, my life has changed dramatically. I realized that, in order to cultivate well, one must stop being afraid of challenges and accept them as an integral part of the transformation process. Whenever a challenge comes my way, I remind myself of Master’s words when he said that we would go through tests until our cultivation is completed.

Even if we manage to pass the tests, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be yet more tests. So I started treating all challenges as tests—instead, I view them as an opportunity for personal growth. I realized that if such tests were going to be with me until the end of cultivation, I should start treating them as part of my life, rather than something that happens once in a while.

Shen Yun’s Return to Poland Offers Me Cultivation Opportunities

One day after we did the exercises, the coordinator mentioned a performance that hadn’t been seen in Poland for a long time but which was making waves around the world. I asked for details. He said that he was talking about Shen Yun, a well-known and respected Chinese classical dance company. I wanted to see this performance live at least once in my life, but since it was not currently scheduled to perform in Poland, I thought it would cost me a lot to travel to a foreign country.

A few months later, however, we learned that Shen Yun might possibly perform in Poland again. After some time, it was confirmed that the host city of the group would be Torun. I was very excited to hear this.

Shen Yun was going to come to Poland for the first time in seven years. The performance was amazing. Full of color, grace, and precision, at times funny, surprising and thought-provoking.

After seeing Shen Yun, I had the opportunity to assist the media, NTD, and The Epoch Times in interviews with audience members. This was a valuable experience, without which I wouldn’t have been able to handle the challenge that, as it turned out, was about to come.

The next city to host Shen Yun’s successful return to the Polish stage was Lublin. In Lublin, I was offered the job of independently doing interviews with the audience members, both during the break and after the performance. This consisted of asking the spectators their first impressions after the performance, what they liked best, or what was particularly memorable. Afterwards we would create articles from the interviews.

Before the start of the performance in Lublin, I felt nervous like never before. I had watched professional journalists as they did interviews or I translated their statements, but I had not yet interviewed anyone on my own. Fortunately, one of the practitioners, who is an experienced journalist, gave me valuable advice. I was given a voice recorder and I waited for the first interviewee.

I thought about the Fa and whether overcoming phobias wouldn’t be a form of combat. Instead of trying to overcome it, I tried to think about what I heard from yet another practitioner. She said that it was good to watch the performance again shortly before doing interviews, because then we would be filled with its positive energy and the conversation would flow on its own. At the time, I had already seen the performance several times and saw no need to see it again. However, hearing this advice, I decided to watch it one more time. This helped me a lot when I was doing interviews, because they became a dialogue between two viewers, turning into an interesting exchange of impressions and eventually becoming a sketch of an unforgettable evening.

I know that, without the support of other practitioners and frequent meditation prior to Shen Yun, I wouldn’t have been able to handle this challenge. I feel that it all worked out because I decided to become a Shen Yun audience member who simply talks to other audience members first and was only secondarily a journalist.

I’ve noticed that, thanks to the fifth exercise, I’ve been more focused on what other people are saying for a while now. Before I practiced Falun Dafa, I used to listen to what others were saying, but I had trouble focusing my attention. My thoughts would wander, and when I returned to the conversation, I realized that I’d missed part of it. I didn’t feel good about that.

Nowadays, following Zhen (Truthfulness), I consider such behavior to be disrespectful of the person I am interviewing, as well as not being honest. If I happen to misunderstand something or miss anything, I ask the person to please repeat or rephrase it. According to my understanding, at least at the level of “cultivation of speech,” that is how the Fa also corrects the practitioner.

Quite recently there have been other changes as well. Some people I know, mainly members of my family but also friends who previously enjoyed drinking alcohol (too much), suddenly found that they’d stopped drinking for various reasons. Each of them found a different reason to stop. They don’t practice, although I have mentioned Falun Dafa to them. It’s not that they’re drinking a little less now. They have completely given up drinking and are trying to live healthier and more mindfully. Perhaps this is related to my cultivation, because some of these people were very attached to their previous lifestyles, and now they suddenly realize that such a life does not serve them.

In the future, I would like my first thought when I wake up to be a thought concerning the Fa. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case. I’m currently at a point in my life where only when I start the day, when I encounter the first challenges, shortly before I make a decision, I stop, take a few steps back, and re-evaluate the situation according to the Fa. The result of decisions made in this way is often not only positive, but the action itself turns out to be more effective.

Falun Dafa is a very powerful practice, changing people for the better. I feel this in my daily life and every time I read the teachings or do the exercises. After each exposure to the Fa, I feel that my perception of the world has changed a bit, and I have come closer to the truth. When some of my previous interests cease to matter so much, all that remains is the Fa. When I go to work and talk to people, I notice, in their interests and aspirations, their goals and dreams, and all the things they’ve learned and talk about, between the lines, that I can see they too are searching for that Fa. It’s all about the search for the Fa. When I recall who I was three years ago and who I am now, I appreciate all the more that I was able to find the path of cultivation.

When it’s hard for me to do something or pass a test, I know I can pass it. I remind myself of what Master said: “Nothing is truly unbearable or impossible.” (The Ninth Talk, Zhuan Falun)

Nobody can tell us what the future holds and what difficulties we can still expect to encounter, but I am always encouraged by these few words from Master: “Nothing is truly unbearable or impossible.” This shows me that our cultivation is the only chance we have been given, so we should take it very seriously. For some reason, we were given this chance, so one should always remain hopeful and move towards consummation with courage.

(Sharing paper submitted to the 2022 European Fa Conference)