(Minghui.org) Practitioners held the 11th Bulgarian Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference on November 2, 2025, in the magnificent Hemus Hotel in Sofia. Thirteen practitioners described their recent cultivation experiences, including how they improved their character while overcoming challenges in their lives.
The 11th Bulgarian Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference began at 9 a.m. in the Hemus Hotel in Sofia on November 2.
Practitioners talked about their cultivation experiences.
Raising Awareness of the Persecution
Alexandra from Sofia began practicing Falun Dafa in 2013. She recounted her experiences in improving herself while she participated in petition drives and the Art of Zhen-Shan-Ren Exhibition in Bulgaria.
Alexandra shared her realization that she needed patience and endurance to effectively clarify the truth while she was guiding people through the art exhibition.
“I felt the paintings supported me with an energized motivating force, reinforced on the one hand by the empathy with the repression expressed in the moving scenes of suffering and on the other by the majestic depictions of Master and the significance of our vows,” she said.
In addition to the exhibition, she said her determination and enthusiasm were strengthened by the moving documentaries produced by the Faluninfo TV website of the Falun Dafa Information Center. By recalling important details from films such as Hard to Believe, “The images and facts remain in my mind and I can share them with people whose fate is determined by their position regarding this unprecedented evil that the demon of communism is in the world today.”
Eliminating the Root Cause of Attachments
Valya had a difficult childhood. Although she had a mother and father, they did not stand up for her, and her brother bullied her and sometimes beat her. She ran away from home when she was 14 and went to live in another city with a friend. She lied about her age and started working. She built up her self-defense by “Acting rude and bossy, taking control, acting like I was strong, untouchable, and invincible.”
Valya began practicing Falun Dafa in the summer of 2016. From studying teachings, she clearly understood the difference between Buddha nature and demon nature.
She had a dream in which demons were torturing someone. “I saw how ugly and ruthless they were, how they enjoyed it and liked to mock their victim. That body had fallen prey to the manipulation of these demons and was wrapped in something like an invisible trap,” she said.
This vision made Valya even more determined to eliminate all her attachments such as to competition, self-promotion, self interest, and so on. She realized that, before, she had only eliminated her attachments superficially, but now she wanted “to jump directly into their essence and break them up from the inside out.” She decided to try to figure out what fed these attachments.
By examining the nature of attachments, Valya discovered that they have many similarities in their manifestations, but the most prominent issue behind every attachment is fear. When she was truly determined to completely remove the attachment of fear from her consciousness, Valya confronted it.
“With Falun Dafa, I see the true power of Buddha nature and its virtues. Master accepted me with all my shortcomings and mistakes from the past, along with my strengths and weaknesses. His great compassion teaches me even more what it means to be merciful,” she said.
Regaining Her Focus in Cultivation
Eva said that, in the nearly 12 years since she began practicing, she has faced all kinds of tests and obstacles, but, “With merciful Master’s help, I always stayed on the path, stronger and more aware.” She felt very confident and thought that she was “ironclad” in terms of her health, never needing medications or seeing a doctor. But a seemingly routine gum surgery shattered her ironclad confidence and threw [her] into the depths of human fear.
The first thing she did when she got home after the operation was the fifth exercise. “It was a wonderful feeling of calmness and maturity—I felt confident, humble, and blessed,” she said. In the following days, however, her condition deteriorated seriously. “The heavy clearing of karma was masked by many symptoms of illness,” Eva said.
Several days of severe suffering and unbearable pain passed. During the process, she looked inward to see if she had any attachments that could be causing these external manifestations.
Eva realized that she had taken a wrong turn by viewing this trial as punishment. After talking with a practitioner and her husband, who is not a practitioner but strongly supports Eva in her practice, she began to identify an issue she had.
“I lost focus. I rushed to do dozens of things, thinking they would be helpful to Dafa, but I had turned my back on Dafa. Dafa was my priority, but only in theory. Lessons, courses, university, English classes, countless commitments that took up all my time. Because of this workload, my Fa study was regular but insufficient and lacking in depth. I pursued human things that I thought would add value to me, and I would in turn invest them in Dafa projects. Nothing like that happened,” she said.
Eva shared her understanding of this trial as her greatest one so far. “I have to face one of my most difficult tests—the test of self! To accept what I am, to accept what I am not, and to be guided only by my heart,” she said. She realized that she should return to focusing on cultivating her heart, rather than chasing external things.
“When Master showed me compassion and made me part of Dafa, part of you, I had no education, I didn’t speak English, I had no special abilities. I only had one heart—a heart for Dafa!” she said.
Understanding True Cultivation
Ivo encountered Dafa eight years ago when he read Zhuan Falun for the first time. He was surprised by the truths, principles, and laws revealed in the book.
A year or two earlier, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and was in serious condition. She suffered immensely. Ivo began to study Radiesthesia, attending many courses, and was eventually able to heal his mother.
When he was doing this so-called healing and cleansing, he wasn’t a practitioner and really believed he had a gift to do this and help people. As a practitioner, Ivo realized that healing people was, “Going against the Law of the Universe and totally contrary to what the Master teaches us.”
After he began practicing, he stopped all those healing activities and practices. He progressed very slowly in understanding and applying the Fa and the laws of the universe. “I had many attachments that I didn’t even know about.” He felt the change after joining the project to translate Master’s teachings into Bulgarian. He was given “Fa Teaching Given at the 2004 Chicago Fa Conference.” “After that lecture, I started doing what Master said to do, and things changed dramatically.
“Another extremely important thing, in my opinion, is to try, without letting our attachments control us, to admit to ourselves with a pure heart and with the greatest possible depth and truthfulness, who we really are, how we behave, what we say, what we do, how we do it, etc.”
Ivo also shared another moment in his self-improvement, which he considered the most difficult. As a result of his complacency due to the fact that his cultivation improved relatively quickly, he fell. He slacked off, did not study the Fa, and did not practice the exercises. He fell back to the level he was at when he first started cultivating. It was as if he was starting all over again.
“At first, I didn’t even realize I’d stumbled. But I got up after my near-fatal fall and stood stronger than before.”
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