(Clearwisdom.net) Hello everyone! While listening to the experience sharing speeches in New York a few months ago I was in tears as they were very powerful, extremely well-written, and I could relate to many of them. So I have built up the courage to give it a try and share myself. Please forgive me if my writing sounds amateur and please correct me on anything as you see fit. This is my first major experience sharing and I will be talking a little bit about personal cultivation as well as my understandings as a Fa rectification Dafa Disciple.
During the years of the extremely evil persecution between 1999 and 2001, I experienced the worst degenerate phase of my life. I was a successful hairstylist working in Hollywood and living the Hollywood lifestyle. I felt like my soul was withering away amongst all the superficiality and frothiness around me. The only thing that kept me at peace was reading spiritual literature of all sorts. I was a mess. I was doing a lot of drugs to keep up with the long hours of work and the party life, as well as dealing with all the people and general ugliness around me. When I enlightened to the fact that I had to change my life and habits, I went through a hermit phase, in which I started cleaning up, reading books, and only dealing with people while at work. For the first time in my life I asked the universe for true happiness, to understand the truth and to cultivate the most righteous way, even if that meant I needed to go to a monastery and leave the secular world. I knew I had a mission in this lifetime, I just didn't know what that mission was. I understood the saying, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." I was ready. I gave up most of my material possessions, my career, and went back to my family in Brisbane, Australia on a leap of faith. I had not lived with them since I left home when I was 18, and I was nearing 32 at the time.
A couple of months later, when I decided I was not going back to the States and moved into my own place, while working on a commercial, I was given a Falun Dafa flyer by a make-up artist. That was it! A week later I learned the exercises, and within three months I had read all of Teacher's articles that were available in English. I felt I was running behind and had to catch up.
The first two years of my cultivation was mainly personal cultivation - letting go of vanity, reputation, selfishness, ego, lust, and many other attachments. I would support events often and I also started translating Zhuan Falun in Greek, as only Falun Gong was available at the time. That was extremely difficult for me, as my knowledge of the Greek language was minimal, but it was my second language. I translated the first draft version, and later, helped with other draft versions of Zhuan Falun. It's amazing how that improved my language skills for future arrangements in Greece. At that time there was one practitioner in Greece, as the other Greek practitioners were all living overseas. This Greek American practitioner had made the first move to Greece and that was my sign. It was the time when Master said something about it being up to the few practitioners of each country to save their people. At that time I was very attached to the comfort of my home and my cultivation environment which naturally had its tribulations and tests, but seemed quite balanced. I knew I had to let go of complacency and comfort and move on with my path. As soon as I put my apartment up for sale, it was sold within a few weeks and I was on my way to Greece. That was May 2004, and Greece was preparing for the Olympic events. Upon arriving, I felt the cultivation environment was very tough and I felt that the interference was very strong. Adapting to this new environment was difficult for me as Greece seems rather unorganized and chaotic compared to other countries.
In the preparation period before the Olympic events, we began feeling interference which was manifesting through computer problems, difficulty in studying the Fa, and sending righteous thoughts. There were times when after reading only a few sentences, we would suddenly fall asleep. There seemed to be this intense force that wanted to stop us from studying the Fa. There were times when alarms for sending forth righteous thoughts on the hour would not ring, and other times when we would sleep right through the alarms.
Leading up to the Olympics, we had three major events to organize: a press conference and lawsuit, a Dafa parade in the city center, and a musical evening in an outdoor theater. It was also the first time that eight Greek practitioners from different countries were meeting under one roof and learning to work together, share tasks and learn more about each other. We were able to see similar attachments within each other as well as the complementary qualities amongst us. Some examples of attachments were that each of us thought that our way was the best way and we were very opinionated in how we wanted things done. A lot of self was being exposed and we had to learn to respect each practitioner's opinion and work together to achieve the best result. The whole experience of the Athens 2004 Olympics could be another sharing in itself. By the end of that August, I felt that the environment had been cleaned up dramatically and that each and every one of us had upgraded.
My work has been a great way to clarify the truth and introduce Dafa, as I work with models from all over the world and people in the fashion and entertainment industry. After Hollywood, I distanced myself from this industry, and when I moved to Greece I found myself in it again, but with a different heart this time. And what an amazing cultivation environment it has been!
This is my third year in Greece except for a three and a half month break, which I take each year when I visit family and help out in Australia. Within the past two years, our group has been growing in Athens and we have been sending books to different areas of the mainland and the Greek islands. Of course, with the improvement of our Greek website, Dafa is now readily available to everyone. Practitioners in Greece are continuously gaining new understandings, and as a group we are translating, handing out flyers, and supporting events. We are finally communicating more regularly and moving forward. The translation team is doing final corrections on Zhuan Falun before it goes to print this year. We have successfully finished translations of The Great Consummation Way, Guiding the Voyage, and Essentials for Further Advancement. Essentials For Further Advancement II and Hong Yin are being corrected, and Zhuan Falun Fajie and Lectures in the United States are on their way. We are also happy to also announce that we will start the Greek version of the Clearharmony website. We have another practice site in Thessaloniki, and I have just started a new practice site near my hometown about an hour and a half outside of Athens. The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party in Greek will also finally be printed within the next couple of weeks. It's truly incredible to see such a change in such a short time, and of course Dafa will only continue blossoming.
Unfortunately Greece has a Communist Party and many supporters of Communist ideologies, so we still have a lot of work to do in this area. I feel it is major interference that today communism can exist in the country which gave birth to democracy. Unfortunately, where we lack strength as a Greek body, is in our clarification to media and the government. There has been some clarification work done, of course, over the years, but we really need to work on consistency in this area. We hope that our Falun Art exhibition in Athens this coming September will assist our progress in this area since we will invite all levels of government and media.
What has been achieved may all sound wonderful, and it is, but the cultivation process and the xinxing tests have been intense. The last two and a half years have been the most difficult for me, and I feel that I have been an "average" cultivator. The first two years of my cultivation were so wonderful, but what happened? With so much to do, I was exercising less, sleeping more, and my diligence in study had dropped, and with that, of course, the xinxing tests were a lot harder to deal with. Looking within was a lot harder as well. It was just too easy to see the shortcomings of others and blame fellow practitioners, instead of seeing where I was lacking, and where I needed to progress. I was in a more complicated environment for a reason, as Fa rectification is linked to our cultivation and the arrangement is such to make us progress faster. Instead, I wasn't quite keeping up with it all. Laziness, generally, is a big one for me too. I am very aware of it, I clearly see the results, and yet I sometimes feel I am just starting to break through again like my first few years of cultivation. It is truly amazing how smooth things run when we do the three things well that Master asks of us. It is not just smooth, but miraculous on all levels and in all forms. It seems as if time slows down and all of a sudden I can balance everything! I can deal with things a lot better and a lot more clearly. It is so easy when we balance everything and yet so hard when we don't. And that's all it is. Unfortunately I am ashamed to say that I am just breaking through again but I am fortunate to say at how amazing it is. I will keep on trying as this is what I, as a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple, must do. There is so much to look forward to on our path of cultivation, let's keep on going forward. I will leave you with this quote from Zhuan Falun in Lecture Nine,
"When it's difficult to endure, you can endure it. When it's impossible to do, you can do it."
In fact that is how it is.
Thank you, Master! And thank you all for listening.