Some practitioners asked why she was not afraid. Ms. Li replied that in her experience, she holds only the thought of assisting Teacher in Fa-rectification and saving people, maintains righteous thoughts and acts righteously in the face of ordeals. In this way, one's righteous thoughts will be strong, and one is able to walk through the tribulations.

Thus, the only choice I have is to act according to the Fa that Teacher teaches us. We are creating the future. The people of the future will form families, so it's all right for us to have our own families. However, the future people's moral standard must comply to that of the new universe. One of the requirements is never to engage in any sexual activity before marriage, so we should be a role model in this regard.

We had all committed enormous sins. Was it still worthwhile for us to continue practicing cultivation? Before long, all three of us wrote solemn declarations, expressing our repentance and determination to begin cultivation practice all over again. But repentance didn't mean we could easily carry on practicing. Tests followed.

I now realize that all these attachments are the cause of my not wanting to save sentient beings and being a real cultivator. All these mundane matters have moved me, and I was not even aware of the fact that I was bringing losses to myself.

After finding my attachments, I diligently studied and memorized the Fa. When each paragraph of Fa appeared in my mind, a great deal of energy also entered my field. By then, if I felt any desire, I knew the thought was very dirty. If we neglect Fa study, our righteous thoughts can become insufficient. There were so many dirty things in my dimensions, especially the lust.

Last month I resolved to myself that regardless of how busy I am every day, I must ensure that I study at least two lectures in the book Zhuan Falun, even if it means going without sleep. Only a month has passed by, but I feel that I have improved significantly in many respects.

Feeling fear is not your true self; fear is a notion formed after birth in this world. When the attachment of fear appears, we should instantly deny, repel, and reduce it. If we openly and righteously go and do whatever we should do, we will never be affected by the attachment of fear. Otherwise, can we believe that we are practitioners?

After looking inward I began to understand that this opportunity should not only be used to help their education but also to help them understand the truth about the persecution of Falun Dafa in China, and to explain to them the history of the Communist Party. Then they would be able to make their own decision of whether they still wanted to be a member of the Party and its affiliated organizations.

If we truly want to help people, when we clarify the facts with a compassionate and calm mind, when our own space emits positive energy, people will naturally feel comfortable and be willing to listen to us, and it will be easier for them to accept what we have to tell them.

I composed myself and thought over my recent conduct, coming to the conclusion that the incorrect circumstances at the materials site and in my surroundings were reflections of my own cultivation state. Master in many lectures had told us about searching inside so why is it that I couldn't manage to do so?

Nowadays when sharing, practitioners sometimes become trapped within the constraints of who is right and who is wrong. The real issue is that we should look inward so that we can meet the requirements and standards of the Fa at different levels.

When distributing materials containing the facts about the practice and the truth behind the persecution and other such activities, practitioners immediately recognize interference as soon as we encounter difficulties. That's when we have to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the interference. By contrast, when we face technical difficulties, we tend to be immediately trapped within the technology and have a hard time extricating ourselves

I always thought that I held little interest when it came to money. I always thought that even if piles of money were put in front of me I would not take any and my heart would not be moved even a bit. I thought I had let go of the heart of seeking personal gain, but in reality that was not the case. I lost my job because of the persecution. I was in a financially difficult situation. For years I pinched and scraped. Unknowingly I became very attached to material gain.

Later, I stopped taking medication, and my neighbours and friends asked me why. I could barely speak, so my wife explained to them that we were Falun Gong practitioners and our Teacher was taking care of us. After a month, I was able to walk again. Others felt that it was incredible since they thought that I would be disabled. Knowing that I practised Falun Gong, they started to see Falun Gong as being miraculous and spread the truth about the practice.

I could not help looking back at my cultivation journey. How much had I truly thought about others during those painful tribulations or conflicts? How many times had I truly let go of the attachment to myself? How many times had I really realized, from the bottom of my heart, that I should be a genuine Falun Dafa disciple who always searches within himself, compassionately treats others, and tries to offer salvation to the numerous sentient beings?

I began practising Falun Gong in 1999. After the illegal, ruthless and highly inhumane persecution started against the practice in China on July 20th, 1999, I used my human notions to show other that Falun Gong is something and good and shouldn't be treated in such a way, as a result I was subjected to constant harassment. Afterward I diligently studied the Falun Gong teachings and found that I needed to change my thoughts.

At the very beginning I was afraid that other people might know that I practised Falun Gong and so I hid the Falun Dafa books and practiced the exercises in secrecy. In doing things for Falun Gong I was always timid and felt like my heart was in my mouth. Whenever someone knocked on the door or the telephone rang, I would instantly be overcome with nervousness. Even when I saw a police officer or a police car in the street I would be terrified.

Is my kindness selective and conditional? If I like you, then I am compassionate. If I don't like you, then I am not compassionate? Isn't this a manifestation of selfishness? I suddenly came to realise that my son's behaviour is a mirror of myself.

Right then, I suddenly saw my husband walking towards me. I couldn't believe my eyes. My husband drove all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles! It must have taken him a minimum of six to seven hours of driving. How would he know that I would be in front of the Consulate? Why did he come? Would he force me to go back? I must not go back, because tomorrow was the Conference. Would he make a scene? All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind.

Although I kept reminding myself of these things, I couldn't help feeling good about myself and held myself in high regard for my understanding of the Fa. I didn't realize that the thought was not from my true nature, and as I didn't eliminate it right away, it gradually grew into an attachment to self.

I have noticed that whenever I feel uneasy or angry because of another practitioner's behaviour, I have always started venting at them, resulting in a heated and negative outcome. I can now see that this is all caused by my attachments and notions.

February 26th, 1996, was the most unforgettable day of my life. On that day my husband and I were visiting Xifeng, where we spotted real treasure--the book Zhuan Falun. We bought it right away. During the New Year's holiday season, I did not go anywhere but continuously read the book. The more I read, the more I came to understand.

In both lectures, as soon as Master started talking, I would fall asleep, or my whole body would feel uncomfortable. Once the lecture was over, I would suddenly wake up. After returning home, I felt more and more energized. My body was undergoing amazing transformations. A section of my spine was irregularly large. I had arthritis in my leg, stomach cramps, sinus trouble and many more illnesses--all of which miraculously disappeared.

Eventually, through my continued study of the Falun Gong teachings, the Fa, I realized I was not behaving righteously. I came to understand that it would be better to maximally conform to the way of everyday people while cultivating instead of behaving like a lay monk or a nun. I realized that if I didn't come into contact with the general public, there would be fewer conflicts and fewer chances to improve my heart. Without tribulations I wouldn't be able to improve my realm and level.

The whole body is unwittingly divided into small pieces if practitioners feel as if they can't resolve a conflict with a fellow practitioner or when practitioners isolate themselves from each other. Also, when we all treat projects in which we have no involvement as other people's things, the strength of the whole body is weakened. Moreover, when we fight over our different opinions, we further weaken each other's strength.

The other practitioner advised her to send righteous thoughts. Ms. Wang improved her understanding of the problem. After a period of sending righteous thoughts, the symptoms which had lasted for five years disappeared. It was only the difference of one thought!

Indeed I had given up a lot, but it did not make me improve, and I developed a lot of attachments. I wanted to be diligent, but I had a lot of obstacles. On one hand I wanted to let things happen naturally, but I then felt as if I was falling behind. I got stuck and was not able to put things into perspective. After pondering deep and hard, I came to realize that the root cause was because I practiced cultivation to benefit myself.

I started to practise the exercises in the dormitory. A week later I developed a severe fever. I believed it was not sickness but was to cleanse my body. The next day I recovered. Two weeks later my tendency to easily get a cold and headache had vanished and many questions about life that I had always held were answered one after another. My stepping onto the cultivation path was one of the reasons I had come to this world. I had a chance to practise Falun Gong and so I treasure it.

During the first few days of the class, the illnesses that I had disappeared, including myocarditis, cardiac hypertrophy, edema of the face and feet, migraine headaches, joint pain, irregular menstruation, and frequent colds or flu. For the first time in my life, I felt what it meant to be completely free of any illnesses, I felt happy, fulfilled.

Later on I was unable to get up in the morning for the exercise practice due to some personal reasons. Sometimes when I did get up, I didn't finish practicing the exercises. At other times, I skipped sending forth righteous thoughts at midnight in order to get up in the morning to practice the exercises. I struggled for a while, but could not make myself do both. Then I started to look for excuses and neglected both.

At that very moment I felt the compassion of a genuine Falun Dafa practitioner, which was peaceful, unintentional, in accordance with Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance, beyond the realm of ordinary people's emotions, and not moved by ordinary people's attachments. She helped me to see that my complaints and accusations were against Falun Dafa's principles and wrong, and I was able to see them as shortcomings in my cultivation. I stopped complaining and was moved to tears.

My younger brother is a doctor of Chinese medicine and very well known locally. Many patients go to him for treatments. He often tells his patients to practise Falun Gong. He says, "My elder sister suffered from so many diseases and I treated her for so many years and was not able to cure them. She practises Falun Gong and has recovered from all of them. The best thing for you would be to start practising Falun Gong."

Why were we so indignant? Why did we have resentment? Why did we have hatred in our hearts? Why did we feel bullied? Why can't we be more forgiving? Why did we show displeasure? Why did we find it hard to forget the conflicts? Why...?

I started to practise Falun Gong at the end of 1998. The first day I had planned to learn Falun Gong I awoke at 5:00 a.m. and immediately went to the practise site. When I did the five sets of exercises that morning I was thrilled. It was a kind of wonderful feeling that I had never experienced before.

I was reading Zhuan Falun at the time. I understood that only Falun Dafa could resolve the deeply rooted conflicts in my family, so on several occassions I recommended the book to my father. Finally my father started reading. Right away he changed. His 58 years of bad temper improved greatly. He started being tolerant, even during conflicts with my mother. His spirit improved, and all of us benefited. There were fewer conflicts in the family.

I am 73 this year but people say I only look like I am 50. My skin is wrinkle-free and healthy, my teeth are good, and I am alert. I speak clearly and walk so well that even some young people cannot keep up with me. My husband, daughter, son-in-law, grandchild, relatives, and old classmates have seen the changes in me since I began to practise Falun Gong, and they have come to cultivate and become Falun Dafa practitioners one by one.

When I had just started practising I had the sense that I would one day return to Cornwall to give the people in that area a chance to find out about the practice and the brutal persecution. Now it seemed that was coming true. However, instead of making the best use of my new found time, my attachment to comfort came up and I became lazy and found excuses for not practising the exercises or studying the Falun Gong teachings, the Fa, saying “I have to spend time applying for jobs” or “I have to fit in with my family’s routine now”.

Gradually I reduced my sending forth righteous thoughts to three times daily, then to twice or once a day. My excuse was I felt tired during sending forth righteous thoughts. This abnormal state continued for several months. Finally the evil took advantage of my loopholes and started persecuting me.

Right now I must tell you that writing a sharing article like this is an accelerated cultivation process and so I am not the same person at the end of this sharing as I was when I began the first draft. As you will see, I begin full of doubt and uncertainty - to explore rather than to explain. As I am going to talk about a recent event where I was confronted with a life or death choice, I would like to say a few words about events in my life prior to this that put this specific event into some context.

Later at moments when I had a more peaceful mind, I found what annoyed me most was not so much his opinions as the fact that his opinion was different, very different in some aspects, from that of mine. At these peaceful moments when I could better let go of the ego, I could see more clearly the value of the suggestions of the other party. Even when facing the issues on which I still believed the other party was not correct, my mind state was one of more benevolence, care and respect for the other party.

The head of the security bureau said, “No wonder that there has recently been a lot more leaflets in our area. Tell the truth, was it you?” This seemingly simple question sounds completely different in the kind of evil and harsh environment of mainland China. If you admitted guilt, ordinary people would take it to mean “doubly guilty”. So many would reply, 'No, it was not me'. The lady, on the other hand, said, “I really would like to distribute leaflets across the whole world, telling everybody about Falun Gong. It’s a shame that my means are limited.”

He told me that the book talks about a lot of good things and to follow the principles of the book, he shouldn’t allow a divorce to happen and should instead work on improving his character. He asked me to give him a three year chance to improve his character and be a better person. How could I refuse an opportunity to save our marriage? For him to have the confidence that he would change and to make the effort, Falun Dafa must be good.

The Chinese Consulate in Edinburgh has tried to pressure the Cavalcade organisers to refuse our entry for the last five years. Although the current Organiser has not given in to the Consulate’s demands, we have not been allowed to hand out leaflets with information about the persecution of Falun Gong for the last two years. Also the Edinburgh Chinese Community, which is backed by the Chinese Consulate, has taken part in the Cavalcade this year and last year.

This evil persecution against Falun Gong should have never begun. But there hasn't been a day that has gone by in the past eight years that Falun Gong practitioners have not been persecuted to death. To this day we are paying a dear price to resist the wicked persecution of Falun Gong. It has been eight long years. Each of us should ask ourselves, "Why? What have I done to completely end this persecution? What have I been doing?"

On the surface, I am able to endure hardships when doing truth-clarification projects. Sometimes when fellow practitioners treated me unfairly, I controlled myself well. But after digging deeper, I realized that whenever I had disagreements with our local coordinator, I always thought of complaining about it to Teacher. Isn't this thought of mine the same as that of the kids complaining to their mother?

After some time, practitioners started to have disagreements about this and divided into two factions. With the differences growing larger, intense arguments followed. Practitioners who like to listen to these stories said that it helps them to understand their own attachments and let go of those attachments. Practitioners who refuse to listen think this is a kind of interference, specifically an attachment to previous lives. During this time, the practitioner who likes to recount such stories has been keeping quiet.

His words reminded me of what Teacher said, "...good or evil comes from a person's spontaneous thought..." I gritted my teeth and stood up, saying I was fine. Actually, I was in a lot of pain at that moment. I thought all of my organs must be injured. But then I remembered what Teacher said, and I did not think that way nor express my thoughts out loud. I prepared to go back to work by patting the dirt off my clothes. As I patted, all of the pain disappeared! There wasn't any pain left and I also felt very light. I was surprised and happy.

However, we have sometimes failed to pay attention to this, and we have lost a lot of opportunities to upgrade our characters and temper our hearts. I have come to realise that it is often these little things that touch upon our fundamental attachments.

Previously, I did not work as hard and yet no one found fault with me. Funnily enough it was when I began to make changes in myself that people started to find fault with me. As the conflicts escalated, I remembered that Teacher told us to look inward. I wondered if I needed to let go of my strong attachments to competitiveness. Amazingly as soon as I enlightened to this, the people who had problems with me seemed to have forgotten what happened and started to act nicely toward me

I have been translating and polishing articles for about two years, and during that period have been able to make some real advancements in my cultivation. At first I did not realise it but much later I recognised the fact that most of the articles I received contained something that directly related to my attachments or the current issues I had been dealing with.

After cultivating for one year, I came to truly understand the founder of the practice and also my Master, Mr. Li Hongzhi's benevolent care for us, which helped me to overcome difficulty after difficulty. I started to studiously read the precious book Zhuan Falun, and I was convinced by the principles laid out in the book. I saw how attached I was to ordinary people's fame, self-interest and emotions and also how lucky I am to have come to understand Teacher's great benevolence at a deeper level.

Today, I would like to share with you my experiences in Fa rectification cultivation. It was in June of 2004 that I moved to London with the thought of participating in the twenty four hour peaceful protest in front of the Chinese Embassy, in addition to helping distribute the Chinese Epoch Times newspaper. At that time, we did not have as many newspapers as we do today. By using knapsacks and a cart, several practitioners could manage to take the newspapers to China Town.

Like other practitioners, I have understood the principle of letting go of oneself for a few years, but at the moment when a tribulation occurs, I might at times deal with it like a person who doesn’t understand this principle. After struggling through the tribulation, and looking back for some enlightenment, it is interesting that often what I got enlightened to was the same principle of letting go of oneself, known many years ago. Maybe this is because we cultivate layer by layer, and the layer that is cultivated and clear-minded will be separated from this human side and whatever that is left is again not clear and needs to cultivate anew.

I first read Zhuan Falun when I was about 10 years old. I did not read it in one go, and I hardly understood the content, but I did not doubt a word of what was written. My mother also did the exercises, but due to her language barrier did not read the books so much. The main thing that held back my mother was fear. Recently, I have seen this in myself, which I had never thought of before. I found it could be categorized into two types which are 1. Fear of what people may think of you, this is the attachment of reputation 2. Trying to protect oneself and not thinking of others. I often got scared for no reason, but then came a stage when I realized that “fear” itself is not a part of me.

I can clearly see and interpret the bird's foolish attempts to defend his imagined territory against an imagined enemy (actually himself). Blinded by the reflection of the woods in the window glass, the bird cannot look beyond the window into my world--to him, the world of the enlightened beings. I know that if the bird only had a better level of understanding and stopped to think and look inward, he would quickly recognise himself in the reflection.

"I’d like to share today three experiences I had that I hope will be helpful to fellow practitioners on their path of cultivation and saving sentient beings. The first is about finding a fundamental attachment, the second is about trying to validate the Fa through academic research, and the third is about coordinating a small truth clarification project."

Where before I was afraid, I can now feel Master is taking care of things, and if I can have faith in Dafa and just do my best in all situations, the true purpose will be revealed. Ultimately, coming to the UK has given us the opportunity to really step forward rather than just following others. I will try my best to catch up with exercises and Fa study and become truly diligent.