(Minghui.org) Greetings Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
I obtained the Fa in March 2021, in Paris, France.
I moved to Montreal in June 2022, and I participated in Shen Yun promotion in Montreal last year. Today, I am taking this opportunity to share with fellow practitioners some of the stories and my cultivation experiences during this process.
Cultivating While Promoting Shen Yun Door to Door by Hanging Pamphlets on Door Handles
When I came to Montreal, I started to drive. The streets in Paris are narrow and parking spaces are scarce, so my husband was the only one driving at that time. In Canada, I needed to drive myself to the supermarket and to pick up my son. I got my driver’s license a long time ago, but I never drove. I didn’t understand at the time why I had to get a license if I didn’t drive, but now I know that it was arranged by Master to come in handy when needed.
There are many things you can do to promote Shen Yun, such as hanging pamphlets on door handles, putting up posters, or promoting it at exhibition booths. I chose to participate in hanging pamphlets on door handles, because that job requires a lot of manpower, and since I have a car and don’t have to work I have a lot of time. To be efficient, I scheduled my other projects to be done four days of the week so that I could go door-to-door on the remaining three days. But then I realized that I could do my other project communications in the evenings, which would just shorten my time for sleep. I also realized that I could have made better use of my time and could have uninstalled the social apps on my phone, an attachment I had been trying to remove for a long time but lacked the determination to do so.
Master gave me an environment that allowed me to eliminate this attachment. As a result, I was able to arrange all my daytime hours of the week to go door-to-door. My husband was amazed to see that I was able to finish all the other projects in a very short time at night.
When we truly have the heart to save people, Master gives us the time to accomplish the necessary things.
In addition to making more time available, Master also arranged for fellow practitioners to join me every day. In the beginning, I handed out pamphlets alone and encouraged myself. When Canada lifted the rule that vaccinations were required for entry into the country, I asked my mother if she would come to Montreal to hang door handles with me. Since Shen Yun had not yet come to Vietnam, this would be a great opportunity for her to cultivate, but I was concerned that it would take too long to apply for a Canadian tourist visa. My mother immediately agreed, and surprisingly, she had actually got a visa in 2017 but never used it. The visa had been ready for this moment years prior.
Better still, the coordinator helped me get in touch with another practitioner. She lived not far from me and could hand out pamphlets with us every day, but she did not have transportation. The three of us formed a door-to-door distribution team and did it together for a few months.
Awareness of the Innermost Attachment
Shortly after the Shen Yun promotion season began, my husband lost his job. He told me that he just needed to focus on his job interviews, because it was very easy to find a job in his field of expertise. I didn’t think much of it, because I thought that was the test he was experiencing. But several months passed, and despite several interviews he still hadn’t found a job. I started to worry. We had a house with a monthly mortgage payment, our son was attending an expensive private school, and in addition to food, we had daily expenses such as gasoline for our car. The two of us discussed these concerns often. I said to myself that I had to believe in Master and the Fa and not have fear or negative thoughts, such as having to sell the house or the car, because we still needed to use the house for the Zhen Shan Ren Art Exhibition and use the car to go door to door. This was the old forces interfering with us financially, and it was certainly not Master’s arrangement. But why were we being interfered with? We might have a loophole somewhere.
By looking inward, I realized that financial issues were often a topic of discussion in our family. Before I started cultivating, sometimes my husband suggested that I go out and get a job instead of staying at home. At that time, we spoke loudly because I rejected the idea and was angry at my husband. After cultivating, we agreed that he would take care of the financial expenses so that I would have time to do Dafa-related work, and that problem was solved.
I have pondered the question of why I avoided going out to work. On the surface it was due to my laziness, my preference for a quiet life, and my dependence on others to take care of me. But on a deeper level, I knew I had a grudge against my husband. I complained that he often told me to go out and work like an independent woman. To make matters worse, I lacked respect for my husband. I thought he was incapable of providing for our family, so I was asked to work in order to get more income to support the family.
I remember that as we were preparing to move to Canada, it coincided with the Shen Yun promotion period in France. During that time, there were very few practitioners from cities outside of Paris, and they were in great need of help. My husband was out of town and I had to do all the packing and moving alone. Even though I had a few friends to help, it was too much for me to do alone. During that month, I had little time to study the Fa and do the exercises, and my resentment often came up. I was upset because my husband could go and help Shen Yun while I was required to do the ordinary people’s work by myself.
Because I felt I was being treated unfairly, I developed resentment toward my husband. Due to selfishness, I became lazy and just wanted to take it easy and didn’t want to do any physical labor. There was also jealousy. I acted like a bad person, and I did not do like a true disciple should, so how could I develop compassion to save sentient beings? The things I did every day also weren’t effective.
When I realized my bad thoughts, my husband told me that he had started receiving unemployment benefits from the government and that our family’s application for permanent residency had been approved. This means that the bank would unfreeze a “security deposit” that we had made, because we were not permanent residents when we bought the house and got the loan. Our economic crisis was lifted.
Getting Rid of Attachments While Working With Others as One Body
The ticket sales in Montreal were not as good as they should have been. We all encouraged each other to look inward, to improve in our personal cultivation, and to strengthen sending righteous thoughts. Master has also said many times that Shen Yun’s ticket sales situation reflects the overall cultivation state in a region. In my personal cultivation, what attachments of mine had been exploited by the evil and affected forming one body?
Regarding Montreal’s practitioners forming a whole body, I remember being impressed by how many fellow practitioners there are here. There is only one Tian Guo Marching Band in all of Europe, and Montreal has one of its own. I always felt that Montreal as a whole was already very good, and our inclusion seemed superfluous. This impure thought inadvertently created a heavy burden on the whole.
I also think that door-to-door promotion seemed to be reserved for Chinese practitioners who don’t speak the language, and that most Western practitioners are focused on other tasks that require language skills. This seems to make sense on the surface, with everyone doing their best for a common goal. But digging deeper reveals a competitive mindset, the attachment of showing off, and treating practitioners differently.
Master said:
“Owing to the fact that they practice in the secular world, a number of practitioners have a hard time breaking many attachments, which have become second nature and aren’t detectable.” (The Sixth Talk, Zhuan Falun).
It really was jealousy hidden deep down that was not easy to find.
In addition to the door-to-door promotion, I tried to participate in other promotions such as going to merchants to promote Shen Yun, and put up posters. But when I went to a store to promote Shen Yun, we didn’t sell any tickets. I felt a little discouraged. Looking inward, I found that I have the attachment to pursue success. I only wanted to do my job well, but I didn’t think about others.
When I introduced Shen Yun, I just presented the beauty of Shen Yun without paying attention to what the guests were thinking or what they wanted. I thought they just needed to go see Shen Yun and they would be saved. So my words lacked the power of compassion and truth, and completely lacked listening to the other party.
I realized that the people who bought the tickets were predestined. If I had the attachment of pursuit when I presented the show to them, the outcome probably wouldn’t turn out well.
The ticketing situation in Montreal eventually improved and I looked at it [the ticketing information] every day. Then I stopped looking at the daily updates because if I focused too much on the numbers, it could lead to complacency and I would get myself tied up in the progress of the numbers. I knew that if I cultivated well, Master had it all planned. I realized that this was Master’s infinite compassion for sentient beings in Montreal.
Some Short Stories and What I Learned After the Shen Yun Promotion
The first story is about the “no solicitation” signs on doors. Practitioners advised me not to distribute door hangers to these households. I accepted the advice, but I was wondering how to save the people in these houses. It was arranged by the old forces for them to put the rejection signs on the doors. On the one hand, I sent righteous thoughts, but on the other hand, I didn’t know how I could give them the information.
I later noticed people waiting for me as I passed by these houses, sometimes they opened the door and came out to take out the trash, sometimes they happened to have just come home, sometimes they came out to look for something they forgot outside, sometimes they opened the garage door, sometimes they were getting ready to take the kids out for a walk.
Once I met a dog walker and I gave her a flyer and introduced Shen Yun. The lady listened to me, but told me that her house was nearby and she might have received a pamphlet. I suddenly asked if she had a “no solicitation” sign on her door, and she looked at me and nodded. Then she accepted the flyer, and I realized that this was probably why I met her there. So, when I saw houses with no solicitation signs again, I didn’t get too concerned because if these people were predestined, they might have met me or other fellow practitioners on the street and receive a flyer.
The next thing I want to share is my experience of being involved in the Shen Yun kitchen work. When the coordinator of the kitchen was looking for someone to help, my first thought was that I wanted to participate, but my husband had already agreed to be in charge of transporting the food and I had to take care of the children. But then I thought that my mother is living with us, and she could take care of the children so that my husband and I could both help with Shen Yun. I immediately promised the coordinator that I would help in the kitchen and that I could do any job.
On the first day, I didn’t know what I would be responsible for, everyone had their own job and each step was taken care of by a fellow practitioner. I thought to myself, “I am here to help, not to kill time. If someone needs help, or if no one asks for help, I have to offer to help when I see that others are too busy. For example, emptying a full trash can and putting in a new trash bag, picking up the residue from the sink, packing the ready-to-go food, or washing the vegetables.”
I didn’t wait for someone to come to me for help, I took the initiative and asked if I could do something. When others saw me packing the ready-to-go food, they automatically handed me the cooked food to pack, so I had my job.
I realized that if I changed my attitude from waiting for someone to give me a task to actively looking for work to do, then I would be more productive and things would go more smoothly. Therefore, I am practicing Master’s teaching of thinking of others.
The above is a little bit of my cultivation sharing at my current level, if there is something that diverges from the Fa, please kindly correct me.
Thank you Master ! Thank you fellow practitioners !
(Presented at 2023 Canada Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference)
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