(Minghui.org) It has been almost four years since I began practicing Falun Dafa, and the effect cultivation has had on my life is nothing short of a complete 180-degree turn. I encountered numerous challenges, some were harder to overcome than others, and all of them have ultimately made me a better person. This past year, there was one tribulation that was especially hard to overcome. I’d like to share my experiences regarding the issue of emotion in hopes that it will not only solidify my own understanding but also help those that might be dealing with similar issues.

After attending public schools in Germany throughout my life, the non-intimacy rule at the new school seemed odd. I was used to casually talking with people regardless of their gender, so having to suddenly stop talking to girls was quite a change. However, after spending just a few months here, the policy started to feel completely natural. I no longer wanted to talk to the opposite gender and everything went smoothly. Six months later, however, the COVID-19 virus started spreading, moving us to online school. I was in 8th grade at that point, and once online classes started, some people in my class created a group chat, which had both guys and girls in it. When I was first added, I didn’t really know what to do, since I had gotten used to not talking to girls. A few friends convinced me to join a platform, and from there I fell into a rabbit hole that would continue to affect me.

Things started out relatively harmless, with a group chat where people mainly just made jokes and talked about random things. But eventually, more and more people joined, more and more group chats developed, and before I knew it I started talking to and becoming friends with some girls. Since everyone was doing it, I didn’t think much of it. This went on through all of the quarantine, and even after we went back to school, I kept talking to some girls which whom I was already friends at that point.

The things we talked about were casual, for example comparing our homework, talking about things that were happening in school, and often even exchanging cultivation experiences, which I always felt was a good thing. When I look back now I can see that my attachment to emotion was starting to consume me from the inside. As time passed, I developed a few close female friends, and despite the schools’ non-intimacy policies, I continued talking to them.

At this point, most of my friends moved to another social media platform, which not only had the capability to chat, but also watch videos and posts, and I quickly started to spend way too much time mindlessly scrolling and chatting with friends for hours. This went on until late last year when I finally realized how much this was actually hurting me. Gathering all my self-control, I finally deleted the app. Unfortunately, the problems didn’t end there. By deleting the app I wanted to get away from modern society’s ideas and from the huge waste of time that it was, but the attachment to emotion was still deep inside me, so I continued chatting with a small number of people on an alternate platform.

I didn’t realize how enveloped I was in my attachment to emotion until the root cause of it was taken away. During this past winter break, I started to separate from a friend I had grown really close to over the years. I felt the friendship that we had for years slowly fade away. I initially tried to somehow preserve it, but I soon realized it was pointless. I spent a lot of time thinking about why it was that all of a sudden, we both acted as if we had never met each other before and only then did I realize just how much emotion it had in me. I had been friends with her for years, and after we stopped talking, it felt like a part of me had been taken away, and what was left in that spot was pure emptiness.

Master said,

“I would say physical pain is much easier to bear,” (The Fourth Talk, Zhuan Falun)

During the days and weeks after I stopped talking to that friend, I felt for the first time how real that statement was. My mental state became so bad that my mom was concerned and asked me multiple times if I was okay. Before this happened, I never felt sad about anything for more than a day or two. That feeling of emptiness, though, felt just as painful as any physical pain I felt before, and trying to hide that feeling was certainly not an easy task.

In reality, I knew from the start that everything happening to me had been arranged by Master Li (Dafa’s founder), and that it was a tribulation I had to overcome. Even though I knew that suffering meant karma was being eliminated, and that overcoming the tribulation would increase my xinxing, it was incredibly hard to stop thinking about all the memories that had accumulated over the years. Many days after getting home, when I would have gone on my phone to chat, I just sat at my desk trying to do homework or practice my horn, but I had difficulty focusing.

Eventually, after weeks, one day when I was sending forth righteous thoughts at night, I found my mind wandering off again, as it had many times before. At this point, I was so tired of feeling all those emotions that I forced myself to face what I already knew deep down but refused to accept. Master had arranged my path in life, and whatever happened to me was because of karmic relationships from my past. I needed to accept whatever happened for what it was, and if I tried to force something that wasn’t supposed to happen, then I was committing a bad deed. I told myself what I had been telling myself over and over again for a long time: My purpose in this world is to help Master spread the Fa and return to my original true self. For the first time in a long time, it felt as though I actually meant it. At that moment I was so determined to finally accept the reality that I managed to cut off all the emotions that were distracting me from doing the things I knew were right. After I finished sending righteous thoughts, I began to do the exercises, and for the first time in weeks, I was able to feel calm.

Ultimately I think experiencing all that emotion was necessary for me to finally get past that stage of qing, and the mental pain I went through taught me valuable lessons. I now know how to balance interactions with the opposite gender, since completely refusing to talk to girls is another extreme. Interactions are inevitable when, for instance, dealing with chamber music, group projects, or running Fa study, and the key is to not allow your qing to cloud your thoughts.

Another lesson I learned from this experience is that all things happen for a reason.

I hope that everyone can draw some lessons from my experiences. I sincerely thank Master for giving me the opportunity to overcome this stage of qing, and I will do my best to assimilate myself to Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance even more in the future.

My understanding of the Fa (teachings) is limited, so if you find any inconsistencies with the Fa or have any suggestions please kindly point them out.