By a Western practitioner in the U.S.

Shared at 2005 San Francisco Falun Dafa Conference

(Clearwisdom.net) I am a practitioner from northern California. I wanted to share with you how I obtained the Fa and, using the few words I know, about how much it means to me. I think that in order to explain this, I should first share with you about my life before Falun Dafa.

Growing up, I never stayed in one place for long. My parents were divorced and they both moved a lot. I never felt like any place was my home. Sometimes I lived in a house. Sometimes I lived in a car, sometimes in a trailer and sometimes in an apartment. I had a hard time making friends and I got into fights all the time.

I never acted right around my family and was kicked out to live with other family members on many occasions. When I was thirteen I started experimenting with drugs and I stopped going to school, so my family sent me to a survival rehab in the wilderness. I remember one day we were separated from our guide in the middle of a blizzard. I really felt like I was going to die and that made me think. "If I die right now, will I go to heaven?" After that I decided to find out all I could about the spiritual side of life. I read the Bible, some books on Buddhism, Daoism, books on paranormal activities, the occult, everything I could get my hands on. Instead of going to school I would study these books and do drugs wondering if I would ever find something that would be the one way above all the others.

In the years before I obtained the Fa, my uncle and my brother committed suicide, my grandma died of cancer and my mom drank herself to death. I became very depressed and was almost never sober. I stopped caring about many things and indulged myself in various sins. For some reason though, I did not stop my search for "the one way above all others." In March of 2003, at the age of 21, I walked into a bookstore to find a book on a new subject I was interested in, "qigong." In front of me was a book called Zhuan Falun. The cover said "Complete Teachings of Falun Gong." I thought to myself, "Falun Gong. That's like qigong." But when I read the table of contents I knew it was for attaining enlightenment. I had found the Fa, but my character had not been cultivated in the least. So with the book in hand, and not enough money to purchase it, I stole it.

After reading Zhuan Falun I stopped doing drugs, I was no longer depressed, I stopped fighting, I stopped swearing, and I stopped stealing. I realized that I was "just an elementary school student in college." I sold all my elementary school books and of course, I went back to the bookstore to confess and buy two other books to replace the one I took. I had obtained "the one way above all others."

I was no longer the black sheep in my family and we got along a lot better. One time when I was sending righteous thoughts one of my brothers made a face like I was being weird. My other brother saw this and said, "You shouldn't criticize him, Falun Gong has helped him and he is a better person now!" I played the first lecture for my dad in the car one time. If something is not practical, normal or with an ordinary logic, my dad will think it's weird. But he listened for a long time without talking. In the end he said. "Those are good principles!" To me it was a miracle.

My old friends look at me and admire the fact that I could quit those bad habits, they want to quit too now and they respect Falun Gong. One day a friend of mine dropped off some flowers from the store. They were still just buds and I put them in a vase in my living room. Shortly after a practitioner and I began to read the Fa there. We had just finished the lecture that talks about plants when I looked up to see that all the flowers had bloomed. I remembered a story from Buddhism about when Buddha preached, flowers would bloom.

Every day I would enlighten to something new and my gratefulness towards Master and the Fa was beyond words. Not just for my health, not just for releasing me from addiction and depression, and not just for helping me with my family, but because the Fa has saved someone like me • it turned me around when nothing else could. The Fa can save anyone.

When I first found out that people were being murdered and even tortured for practicing Falun Gong, I could not believe it. It was very clear to me that it was evil forces at work. Of all the unjust things to ever happen in history, that is the worst. To me, Dafa represents all that is good and pure, so when a practitioner informed me that Fa rectification was happening, I learned how to send righteous thoughts shortly after. I went to the Chinese Consulate and group study to meet other practitioners and pass out flyers. I do what I can where I live. For a long time I was the only practitioner in my area so I had to be responsible and clarify the truth any way I could think of. I hope I can do even more. Everyone should know the truth, even the beggars and the drug addicts. Everyone has hope.

I want to tell all of you that I think of you as family, even if I don't know your names. We study the Fa and each one of you knows me better than my relatives do. It is an honor to be here in this human world with you. I look forward to going back home...

Posting date: 3/7/2005
Original article date: 3/6/2005
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/3/3/96548.html

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