(Minghui.org) In recent years, I began to experience some abnormal symptoms. My chest felt constricted, resulting in trouble breathing and feelings of suffocation. Walking uphill, I had to gasp for air. At its worst, I felt as if a heavy sack of water was pressing down my chest whenever I bent over at work. Aside from sleeping, every waking hour was spent in indescribable discomfort and occasional severe pain.
I once felt so unwell that I went to visit the home of a fellow practitioner and asked her to help me send forth righteous thoughts. She kept sitting with her hands in the conjoined position, until I finally gave up and left. Besides refusing to help me send righteous thoughts, she even had the nerve to ask me about my condition afterward. I felt that she treated me unfairly. We studied the Fa together for nearly 20 years, and I constantly aided her in her cultivation efforts. When she suffered from sickness karma, she called me and another practitioner to her home to help her send righteous thoughts. Yet when I was in a similar situation, she refused to help. I was taken aback by her selfishness.
At the same time, I realized I had to get rid of my attachments to competitiveness, resentment, and anger. After searching inward, I also realized I should not have the mentality of relying on fellow practitioners. I was asking them to help me pass my tribulation, sacrificing their time for me, despite their already busy schedules. After that, I stopped telling other practitioners about my physical condition and continued to clarify the truth to the best of my ability.
I rejected the notion that this was a human illness, keeping in mind what Master said, “... matter and mind are one and the same.” (Lecture One, Zhuan Falun) Instead, the greater the discomfort, the more I would remind myself, “My body, from the inside out, is healthy, including every cell and internal organ.” I knew the old forces were waiting for me to think I was ill, so they could drag me down. I was determined to leave my life in Master’s hands, rejecting the existence of the old forces and their arrangements.
Whenever I felt pain, I reminded myself, “This is a sign of increasing gong, which is a good thing.” Alternatively, I told myself, “If this is arranged by Master to eliminate my karma, I will accept it. However, if this is a tribulation imposed by the old forces, I completely deny it! I will eliminate all karma and destroy all evil!”
In addition to a firm belief in Master and the Fa, I also strengthened my efforts to send forth righteous thoughts and I began to look inward. I began to pay attention to every unrighteous thought, catching and eliminating most of them at once.
I began to realize that the illness karma practitioners encounter can be highly complex. At first, Master took on our karma and purified practitioner’s bodies, helping us reach a state free of illness. Yet Master also left a small portion of karma at each level for us so we could improve our xinxing.
No matter what our current situation, Master has arranged for us to return home, provided that we accumulate enough virtue, which can be refined into gong. Yet there is no telling how much karma a cultivator has accrued throughout their many reincarnations. Those who did many bad deeds would have accumulated more karma, so they would have to endure more hardships to transform their karma into virtue.
Also, if we stray from Master’s planned cultivation path and commit sins, such as killing animals or bad-mouthing others, we will create additional karma, which we will have to bear ourselves. Throughout, we must cultivate strictly in accordance with Master’s requirements, look inward, improve our character, and do the three things well to meet Dafa’s requirements. This is why every cultivator encounters varying levels of tribulation and why some practitioners even pass away.
One night, I was so breathless I could not sleep, so I begged Master for help. That night I dreamed of a wide space, in the middle of which was a ladder that went up into the clouds. The lower end of the ladder was sloped, while the upper end was straight. I had nearly reached the top when I stopped climbing out of fear. After I climbed down, someone asked me, “Why did you come down?” I replied, “I dared not climb further.” When I woke up, I realized it was Master telling me to overcome tribulations in order to improve in levels.
In another dream, I saw the body of a very dirty creature at the side of a mountain path. Instinctively, I knew that the body was mine. After waking up, I realized I had committed countless sins and harmed so many lives throughout my past lives, resulting in my getting a dirty body. In yet another dream, I was kneeling before a man, crying and begging for him to let me die quickly instead of slowly. The man only gazed at me with contempt. When I woke up, I realized this was an arrangement made by the old forces.
When I first started cultivating Dafa, I was meditating when the face of an elderly man suddenly appeared before my eyes. He stared at me with an expressionless look before disappearing. I knew that those I had harmed were coming back to collect their debts from me, so I knelt before Master’s picture and said, “I am a disciple of Master Li Hongzhi. I refuse all other arrangements, including those of the old forces. All contracts I signed with the old forces shall also be voided!”
As a cultivator, I know I should cultivate according to the Fa, rather than relying on dreams to guide my practice. These examples only serve to illustrate my awareness of the large amount of karma I’d accumulated throughout many cycles of reincarnation. After realizing the cause and effect, I began studying the Fa in earnest, using its principles to rectify myself.
When I have time, I usually spend half the day clarifying the truth, working on other Fa-validation projects, or studying the Fa with a fellow practitioner. We spend our Fa study time memorizing Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Dafa, to check for accuracy. We also share our cultivation understandings and compassionately point out the other person’s gaps. We strive to improve together. Occasionally some friction occurs between us, mostly caused by our own attachments. These conflicts quickly resolve themselves after we discuss them and search inward.
After four years of studying the Fa and cultivating my character, I suddenly realized in June 2023 that my symptoms had vanished, and I no longer felt discomfort. No matter what kind of illness karma, as long as we firmly believe in Master and the Fa, there is nothing Dafa practitioners can’t overcome.