(Minghui.org) I began practicing Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) in November 2009. The first year I diligently studied the Fa and did all five exercises every day. By the second year I understood that I had to validate the Fa, and I started doing the three things.
After I read what Master said in, “What is a Dafa Disciple ”--Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 New York Conference, I started to understand more deeply what a Dafa disciple is, and the awareness that I am a Dafa disciple became stronger and stronger.
I attended the experience sharing conference in New York in May 2012, and I listened to Master teaching the Fa in person for the first time. That entire week in New York was filled with Dafa activities and passed quickly.
Inspired by the conference and practitioners' experience sharing, I returned home filled with tremendous elation. I felt that we should try again to bring The Art of Zhen, Shan, Ren international exhibition to Latvia.
I shared this idea with practitioners at group Fa study. Gradually a group of practitioners, who were ready to start organizing and arranging exhibitions again, was formed. At the end of 2012 I took on the responsibility of being the project coordinator for the art exhibition in Latvia.
Every time I've participated in experience sharing conferences and listened to the experiences that Dafa practitioners presented, I've often see my own shortcomings in the things that the speakers were talking about. This gives me an opportunity to ascend along with them.
I understand how important it is, as part of our cultivation process, to share our understandings and experiences with each other.
Therefore I want to share my cultivation experience in taking part in The Art of Zhen, Shan, Ren exhibition project with you.
We planned to show the Special Set of The Art of Zhen, Shan, Ren exhibition at the Liepāja museum, which had started its European tour in Glasgow, Scotland. In order to better coordinate with others, I spent one week in Glasgow, helping set up the exhibition and promoting it.
In Scotland, I met two other Latvian practitioners who were also participating in this project. One of them suggested using the 37-second video to promote the exhibition, as it shows the exhibition. When I came back, I talked this idea over with other project participants, and all of us thought that it would be useful.When we began making voice recordings for the promotional video, a test for me began. Three practitioners took part in the voice recording tests. We came together to decide which one of three versions to chose. Opinions varied, I did not consider my voice to be appropriate, but the other practitioners suggested my voice be used. This made me feel that I was good, really capable, and better than others.
Master said, “For a cultivator, all the frustrations he comes across among everyday people are trials, and all the compliments he receives are tests.” (A Cultivator is Naturally Part of It, Essentials For Further Advancement).
Since our opinions varied, we decided to ask the coordinator for his opinion. He reasonably answered how each of our voices sounded to him, but he didn't say anything about my voice. Because of this some indignation and some feeling of being offended sneaked into my heart. I thought, “How come everyone else approves me, but he didn't even mention me?!” Arrogance and selfishness had already started manipulating me.
I now realize how little is needed for the evil to find a loophole in our cultivation and start using our attachments to deflect us from fulfilling our vows to help Master in saving sentient beings.
During our next meeting we discussed again how to proceed better. The practitioner who provided the recording suggested I record an audio track one more time. Since all the other practitioners also supported the idea, I had no choice. One of the practitioners wanted to come with us to send righteous thoughts. That day, immediately after our meeting, the three of us went to the recording studio, located in one practitioner's house to write an audio track for the video.
We studied the Fa first, and then sent righteous thoughts. Right after that we started recording. Two practitioners sent righteous thoughts while I recorded an audio track. During the recording I felt a strong energy going through my body, my mind was rooted in the Fa, and I thought about saving sentient beings. All my selfishness and arrogance disappeared.
This is how I managed to recognize my subsequent attachments and get free of them, while at the same time upgrading in the practitioners' one-body.As a Dafa practitioner, I have to improve my xinxing persistently and always do things in accordance with a Dafa practitioner's xinxing criteria. Before I start doing anything, I should first of all think about others, not myself.
Now I want to share about a test I had at the beginning of this year. One day I couldn't get out of bed, because something happened at the lower part of my backbone, which on the surface seemed like a herniated disc.
My condition was really bad, as I could neither get up or walk or sit. The pain was unbearable even when I tried to turn in bed. At first, I had no idea what was going on. I just lay in bed on my back and couldn't understand what happened to me. I thought: “Is this karma, or an attack from the old forces?”
Many practitioners called me and shared their understanding: one said that it was interference from the old forces to stop me from clarifying the facts. Another said I was eliminating karma. The third one said that I had to look inward more deeply to find the real reasons. The fourth and the fifth ones had yet a different understanding.
Another practitioner called me and said that we could not acknowledge this, and that he wanted to ask the other practitioners to send righteous thoughts to not let the old forces persecute my body. I said: I have no objections to what you feel about this, but I hadn't come to any realizations about it yet.
After all these conversations with practitioners, I understood more deeply that all of us cultivate in accordance with the characteristics of the Universe, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and that each of us is at their own level, and that at each level there is a manifestation of the Fa at that level, which has a guiding role for a practitioner.
Master Li says in Zhuan Falun, The First Talk:
“What’s actually going on is, the same Law changes at each level and manifests in a different way, and for cultivators, it can guide them differently at different levels.”
Along with this understanding, I started looking inward and saw my attachment to judging practitioners and blaming them in my thoughts if their actions or words did not correspond to my level of understanding of the Fa.
I see that this incident was, on the one hand, a test for me to see how truly I believed in Master, and on the other hand, it was possibly an old forces' attack, who were using my loopholes and attachments so I couldn't participate in Dafa projects, through which we are helping Master to save sentient beings.
I have recently devoted much time to Dafa projects, and I could not balance doing them with my everyday work because I spent a great part of my time coordinating the exhibition project when I was at work.
I heard that the book exhibition would be held in Riga, the capital of Latvia. We usually participate in this, and it was coordinated by me the two previous years. However, it was scheduled at the same time The Art of Zhen, Shan, Ren exhibition was to be held in Valmiera. I thought that some other practitioner would be responsible for the book exhibition, since I was really busy coordinating the art exhibition.
As time went by, however, no one showed any initiative. I tried later on to balance everything in such a way that I could do both things and take part in the book exhibition as well.
But the day before the book exhibition was to open, I had this physical tribulation, and I could only lay in bed.
Mutual coordination gave us an opportunity to hand over things I had started to another practitioner, who took it upon himself to also participate in the book exhibition. The other practitioners also helped, and everything went well.I understand we should never, not even in our thoughts, blame any other practitioner for the way he or she cultivates, for what he or she says or does.
By thinking bad things about another practitioner, we cause harm to Dafa. By supporting each other, by sharing experiences and understandings, as well as by encouraging others, we can ascend together and help Master save sentient beings.
I realized I had to clean out all the bad thoughts I had about fellow practitioners and fill my mind with the Fa. Looking at it from whatever point of view I wish, cultivation depends only on me. I have to cultivate myself, not others!
The day after this incident my body began recovering fast, and I could do the sitting meditation. After three days I went outside to do the first four exercises by my house, as usual.
Thanks to Master's arrangements, the Special art exhibition came to Europe in autumn last year. It was the European leg of the tour, and it gave us European practitioners an opportunity to strengthen our bonds as fellow practitioners by cooperating and coordinating in organizing exhibitions in different countries and cities.
It also gave us an opportunity to speak to prestigious art galleries and museums in the biggest European cities about organizing this exhibition, as well as giving us an additional opportunity to promote and show the usual other collections to help Master in saving sentient beings.
I think that practitioners in Latvia have managed to renew the art exhibition project, and by coordinating they were able to expose their human attachments and eliminate them.
If you see anything in my sharing that does not correspond to the Fa, please, point it out!
Thanks you, compassionate Master!Thanks you, fellow practitioners!
(Presented at the 2014 European Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference)
