Taiwan Fahui | Becoming an Upright Practitioner Through Firm Faith in Master and Dafa

(Minghui.org)

Greetings, revered Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!

I am a young Dafa disciple. I started practicing along with my family when I was in elementary school. After years of cultivation, I grew from a bewildered little practitioner to a young adult practitioner who strives for true cultivation. Below, I share my cultivation experience from recent years with regard to believing in Master and the Fa.

Letting Go Of Post-traumatic Fear

During a lecture session three years ago, a firefighter discussed traffic accidents and showed photos of horrific accident scenes. Those images made me feel very uncomfortable, and my head suddenly hurt badly and caused me to form a fear that was difficult to let go of. During the break, I walked to the hallway outside the auditorium. However, my uncomfortable feelings remained.

I then lost consciousness and fainted. I fell to the floor but a gap remained between my head and the floor. Master protected me. Even though I regained consciousness quickly, everything before my eyes was white and blank and was becoming brighter and brighter. I felt as if my consciousness was about to leave my body. In my mind, I immediately denied this state and asked Master to save me. I became fine after about a minute.

Even though I had the right mindset during the event, the true test came after.

When I attended Fa study and experience sharing a few months later, I suddenly started feeling dizzy again. The memory of fainting appeared in my mind again. I started to worry about suddenly fainting while walking or riding a motorcycle. Because I did not treat this with righteous thoughts and let it linger in my mind, I could not live my life normally for a few days.

The strong fear caused me to actually have the illusion of being dizzy. Even though I later increased sending forth righteous thoughts to stabilize the situation, I did not look within to find where I truly needed to improve. After a few months, a similar situation happened again and I worried that an accident could happen unexpectedly. I even started having negative thoughts about my cultivation path. I completely treated myself as an ordinary person.

When I started to increase Fa study and look within, I realized that I did not look at my physical condition as a practitioner should. I was afraid because I did not truly treat myself as a cultivator. Behind this was also a lack of faith in Master and the Fa. I did not have firm thoughts that Master was arranging everything for me.

I then started to negate these superficial feelings. Whenever a dizzy feeling began, I denied it and refused to acknowledge it. Gradually, I became more resolute, and started to realize that those reactions were indeed not real. I was eventually able to cultivate away this fear.

Cultivating Away Fear of Persecution

Since I was a little child, I was afraid of evil interference and persecution. I worried that if I did not cultivate well, I would be taken advantage of by the evil. As a result, I looked at my cultivation in a negative way. When there were attachments that I could not remove, I would blame myself excessively and feared that I would be interfered with one day.

This kind of thinking, on the surface, motivated me to be diligent. However, its basis was in fact fear instead of a true understanding of the significance of Fa-rectification period disciples and the purpose of the three things. Every time a situation happened to my body, I would think that I was interfered with because I did not cultivate well, thus acknowledging interference.

Additionally, I was afraid of the old forces and felt that I was constantly being watched by them. I was also afraid that the karma I owed and had accumulated in previous lives would become an excuse for them to persecute me. I did not know how to distinguish between my path arranged by Master and that arranged by the old forces.

I later read an experience sharing by a practitioner in China. Due to his karmic debt from a previous life, the old forces arranged him to be persecuted in this life, and the people that he hurt in the previous life became the labor camp guards who were going to persecute him in this life.

However, he completely denied this arrangement and firmly believed that only Master could arrange everything for him, and he was only controlled by Master. No other being had the authority to use past adversarial relationships to persecute him. Just with this thought of righteous faith, the guards stopped persecuting him, and the tribulation was resolved immediately.

Master taught us,

“We negate even the very emergence of the old forces and everything that they’ve arranged; we don’t even acknowledge their existence. We’re fundamentally negating all of their things, and all of, and only, the things you do while negating and getting rid of them is mighty-virtue. It’s not that you’re cultivating amidst the ordeals they created. Rather, you are to walk your own path well while not acknowledging them, not acknowledging even the elimination of their ordeals’ manifestations.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2004 Chicago Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Volume IV)

Since then, whenever I feared that not doing well would lead to persecution by the old forces, or when illusions or feelings were imposed upon me from other dimensions, I would firmly negate them. I started to clearly and truly realize that those thoughts were not me, and that my cultivation path is arranged by Master and does not allow the old forces to intervene.

Remove Notions During Academic Research

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree. I have always been passionate about academic research. I did not care too much about future earnings or jobs. My major has limited employment paths and a high entry barrier, but I had been mentally prepared. However, as time went by, I started to worry about my future after graduation. I anxiously wanted to enhance my abilities and accumulate more achievements to make my future career path smoother.

Due to my insecurity about the future, I often treated other people’s experiences as the only path to success, instead of calmly thinking about what abilities I should develop at my current stage. I especially felt the pressure when my professors and seniors talked to me about their own experience, like how to best write research papers, how many seminars to participate in, how I should find an opportunity to go abroad to broaden my horizons, etc. I thought that if I did not become as good as they were, my future would be bleak.

I slowly started to accumulate a sense of inferiority. I would feel ashamed and inferior if I saw outstanding people. The ordinary people’s academia is a highly competitive field, so everybody is trying hard to stand out in order to secure scholarships and be noticed. As a result, I buried myself in research. Then someone suggested that I needed good foreign language skills. I then forced myself to learn a foreign language even though it was not suitable for my current abilities. Someone else said that academia cared much about connections, which made me feel that I did not have enough of a network. In summary, other peoples’ suggestions made me feel stressed, self-abased, and anxious. I always felt that I lacked something and could never catch up.

During the summer break over a year ago, the scholarship I received came to an end, and my other academic assistant work also ended. I suddenly did not have any income and was under a lot of pressure. Under these circumstances, I also looked at online discussions about housing and commodity prices. As a result, my state of mind was seriously impacted, and I felt that my future was bleak and I had chosen a path that was arduous and unrewarding. Even though I knew that cultivators’ paths are all arranged by Master, I did not use righteous thoughts while being influenced by people around me.

At the same time, I encountered a major setback while planning the topic for my doctoral dissertation. My advising professor was not content with the concept I proposed, and the data I was able to obtain was insufficient to support my research. Despite multiple revisions, I had hit a bottleneck. In the end, the professor suggested using a different and unfamiliar field to reframe my research, in order to bypass some existing bottlenecks. The professor had my best interest in mind. However, at the time, I thought that the professor did not endorse my idea because he looked down on me and looked down on my hard work and dedication along the way. I was very frustrated.

Having no other choice, I tried to switch, but my inner resistance and pressure kept growing. To me, learning a new field meant that I had to give up what I had worked on for many years and which had given me a sense of security. It could also delay my graduation. Additionally, this new field receives relatively less attention from the academic community. So I also worried that I would be unnoticed by others, and that people would be skeptical about my professionalism, making finding a good job difficult.

Next, almost on a daily basis, I was caught in a cycle of immense distress and pressure. I frequently felt a sense of panic and my nerves became highly strained. I also suffered from tinnitus and insomnia. Finally while in the middle of a panic-attack I stopped and asked myself: “Do I want to be a true cultivator? While facing these troubles, can I still remain firm with the righteous thoughts of a cultivator?”

I carefully looked inward and first found that I did not have enough faith in Master and the Fa and did not truly believe that the path had been arranged by Master. At the same time, I had the habit of using my achievements and other people’s recognition as the standard to measure my personal value. As a result, I always sought validation from my peers and professors and felt that not being recognized meant that I did not have value.

When other people gave positive reviews of my academic research, those would eventually become my shackles, because I did not want people to discover that I was in fact not that perfect. That was why I felt that the path ahead became narrower.

Master said,

“If a person wants to be saved, he must transcend the fact that he is in and experiencing firsthand a tough environment where there is adversity, self-interest, emotions and desires. … If you are able to step out of the reasoning and attachments of ordinary people, then you are a god.” (Teachings at the 2004 International Conference in New York)

Master’s words woke me up. I realized that I did not have to be ceaselessly striving and scheming in order to have a good path forward like ordinary people. I only needed to strive to achieve a breakthrough in my own field of research. I am a Dafa disciple, the luckiest being in the universe. Being able to assist Master in Fa rectification is extremely honorable, so I did not need ordinary people’s commentaries to validate myself. I also began to strengthen my righteous thoughts through memorizing the Fa. When I became anxious, I rationally analyzed my notions and was able to overcome the challenges.

Firm Faith in Master Allowed Me to See Master’s Arrangements

Master said in Lecture Given at the Conference in Sydney, “… getting things naturally without trying to get them.”

After I completely gave up all my concerns, accepted the professor’s suggestion, and switched my research field, I realized that on the surface, I had given up a familiar path that I thought would more likely lead to success. However, after I gave it up, I found that the new field made my perspective richer and I was able to explore a wider range of issues than before. More importantly, I had always hoped to use my research to clarify the truth and discuss the true face of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and this new topic actually allowed me to have the greatest possible space to showcase my abilities.

Thank you, Master, for painstakingly making these arrangements. After I gave up the human things, I saw everything arranged by Master: I did not miss any opportunities to present at academic conferences and obtain scholarships. The skills and perspectives obtained through research also helped me with projects that validate the Fa. What truly left me were those old notions that impeded me from moving forward in cultivation.

Concluding Remarks

During my cultivation in the past few years, I more and more felt that Master’s arrangements are omnipresent. When I looked back after improving my xinxing, I realized that all those issues were caused by human attachments and my lack of faith in Master and the Fa.

As long as I can bravely let go of fear and selfish thoughts, I achieve belief in Master and the Fa. Every single day now is extremely precious. I hope I can take lightly the pursuit of ordinary people’s fame, fortune, and status, and do the three things well while conducting academic research.

Above is my understanding. Please kindly point out anything that has room for improvement.

Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!

(Selected submission for the 2026 Taiwan Fahui)