(Minghui.org) Greetings, compassionate and great Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I am a young Dafa disciple from Croatia. I was born in China, and from a young age I cultivated Falun Dafa together with my parents.
Looking back over my cultivation journey, it has been full of joy, bitterness, pain, and moments that moved me. I know that all of this resulted from human sentiment, human notions, and human thinking, entangled with many attachments. Yet at the same time, when casting off these degenerate substances (which are not part of our true selves and assimilating to the Fa), every cell in the body seems to cheer and leap for joy, all of them celebrating and reveling in that wonderful moment together. At such times I cannot help but marvel at how truly fortunate I am to have obtained the Fa in this lifetime and followed Master. I am surely the most fortunate being in this vast cosmos. In those moments, something cries out in my heart, and I can hardly stop myself from telling everyone I meet how wonderful Dafa is.
It has been a rocky road. I have been like a child learning to walk, feeling my way forward one step at a time, under Master’s guidance. Sometimes a test was extremely hard to pass. Before I had fully gotten through a test, the next would arrive, until I could hardly breathe. At moments when I felt I was about to be crushed, a line of Master’s Fa would appear in my mind, “Each and every barrier must be broken through, … ” (“Tempering the Will,” Hong Yin), and it seemed to give me strength, so that I could stand up again and grit my teeth and carry on. Stumbling and picking myself up, day after day, I have made it through to today. The one thing that has never changed is my heart to follow Master, and to cultivate to the very end. And with each passing day, that heart has grown more steadfast.
When a test was hard to pass, thought karma would also try to interfere with me and shake my resolve. But in an instant, Master’s Fa would appear in my mind,
“Whether it is a Buddha, a Tao, an immortal, or a demon, they should not move your heart. In conducting yourself this way, success is bound to be in sight.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun).
With Master’s strengthening, I was able to stay calm, hold firm to my righteous thoughts, and differentiate my true self.
Below are some of my experiences and understandings from making my way through these tests. I am writing them down for the European Fa conference to report to Master and to share with fellow practitioners. If there is anything not in line with the Fa, please kindly point it out.
Tribulation
After a painful lesson, I came to understand that if I am not walking the path Master has arranged, then I am walking the path the old forces have arranged. Before I began my postgraduate studies, almost everything in my life had gone smoothly, and every step seemed easy. Even things that looked difficult I passed through without trouble under Master’s compassionate care and protection. Even something as major as going abroad to study seemed to happen by chance, and within a week or two I had made my decision and prepared all the paperwork. So I looked forward to a happy and beautiful life. Eighteen years passed smoothly, and I simply took it for granted that things would go on like that.
After graduating, I wanted to stay in the country where I had been studying. So I continued to send my CV to look for work. I sought help from my professors and friends, and applied to relevant organization I could think of. Even so, my applications sank without a trace. I often did not get a reply, and interviews were pitifully few.
I was not willing to accept it. I stubbornly believed that it was Master who had arranged for me to be here, and that since I had not yet done anything, how could I leave? So all of this must be a test for me. At that time I could not take in any advice from fellow practitioners, least of all the advice to leave and go to another country. I always brushed it aside with excuses such as “that place doesn’t suit me,” and I remained convinced that the path Master had arranged for me was right here, and that everything would unfold just as I pictured it.
And so, from that point on, my road was bound to be rough. Things did not develop as I had imagined. They only got worse and worse, until there was nowhere left to turn. I made a complete mess of things, yet right up to the last moment I still did not wake up. In the end, I was forced to leave that country. I began to feel lost, as though I had wandered deep into a forest and could see no direction through the fog. I grew anxious, weighed down every day until I could hardly breathe, and my conflicts with the practitioners I was working with grew sharper because of the distance between us. By then I had long since fallen into the old forces’ trap without realizing it.
I began to doubt whether Master was still looking after me, and wondered whether I had let Master down. I did not dare ask Master what had gone wrong, and I did not have the courage to look at Master’s photograph. I just held on with what little strength I had left. Then one day, in a daze, a voice suddenly sounded in my ear, “Cultivation is this hard. Why not just give it up and stop cultivating.” I was shocked. Where had that thought come from? It was terrifying! I was instantly on guard and realized at once that this was not me: it was the old forces trying to destroy me.
At that same moment, Master’s Fa appeared in my mind:
“Human beings suffer a lot. The enlightened beings think that the more one suffers, the better, as one should speed up repaying one’s debts. This is what they think. Some people do not understand and begin to complain to the Buddha if their praying does not work, “Why don’t you help me? I burn incense and kowtow to you every day.” Some people will throw the Buddha statue to the ground because of this and start to condemn Buddha thereafter.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
A powerful current of heat rushed into my head with a roar, like an alarm bell struck right above me, and the shock left my scalp tingling. I immediately sent out a powerful thought to try to destroy it, and I told it, “Old forces, don’t even think of dragging me down. I am a Dafa disciple. I am going to cultivate with Master to the very end, and you cannot treat me like this!”
When I came back to myself, I was completely awake, and only then did I realize how far I had veered off course, and how the old forces had exploited my gaps and nearly destroyed me. At the same time I quietly counted myself lucky that at that critical moment I had remembered Master’s Fa.
I began to study the Fa a great deal and to send forth righteous thoughts intensively. Gradually I felt my righteous thoughts growing stronger and stronger, and when I held my palm erect I could feel what seemed like fire pouring out from my fingertips. I knew this was enormous energy, and that it was Master strengthening me, his disciple.
For some time afterwards, I would cry every day when I read Master’s scriptures, and I could not hold back the tears. Sometimes it was because I felt I had not done well and had let Master down. Sometimes I knew that somewhere I could not see, compassionate Master was again silently giving and enduring for a disciple who had failed to live up to expectations.
I Will Walk Only the Path Master Arranged
After I settled down in a new country, my life and my cultivation environment gradually began to steady. And just as I was starting to relax and long for comfort, another test arrived. A year into the job, changes within staff and in the wider situation meant my work began to shift, and I lost my job. I started looking for opportunities again and began applying online, and once more there were no replies. However, this time I was calm. I firmly believed there was a path waiting for me, even though I did not know where it was.
There were many voices around me: worried ones, complaining ones, anxious ones, concerned ones. None of them moved me. When I received good advice, I took it, thinking that this must be Master speaking to me through a fellow practitioner, then I would act on it. I was no longer attached to what kind of work I did or which country I stayed in. Even if I did not like it or had no interest in it, I thought that as long as it was what Master wanted me to do, I would do it, letting go of my own attachments and preferences, and letting go of the heart that always wanted to arrange a path for myself. I told myself: this time, I am going to listen to Master. I will walk only the path Master arranges.
Two months later, through Master’s compassionate arrangement and the help of fellow practitioners, I found a new job. Because of the language, the work was in a completely new field for me. At first my boss did not think much of my chances and was unwilling to take me on, nor was I confident it my ability to do it well. Remarkably, though, after a fellow practitioner talked to her, she agreed to let me try.
My boss had a rather short temper, and she would often lose it when the workplace was busy and I could not understand what the customers were saying. At the moment she lost her temper, I would be at even more of a loss and would make more mistakes. Once she even shouted at me in front of everyone, “If you still can’t learn the language and can’t understand, we’ll be saying goodbye next month.”
I was mortified, and although the people around me spoke up for me, I worried that I might lose my job again. But once I calmed down, I thought: “This job was given to me by Master, so what anyone else says does not count. Then why was she treating me like this? Ah! it was because I had attachments to be cultivated away. I wanted to save face; I did not want to be criticized; I was afraid of making mistakes; I cared about how others looked at me; I liked to hear pleasant words. So that was it. She was actually helping me.”
After that she never said anything of the kind again, and she even praised me for learning quickly. Numbers that the other staff found hard to remember I memorized within a few short days, without ever setting out to learn them by heart. They simply lodged in my mind bit by bit in the course of ordinary work. I know that all of this was given to me by compassionate Master. And I firmly believe that a true cultivator can do well at any task.
Everything Master Arranges Is the Best
I live in a very small place where the communal areas are shared with several other people. Given how much my working situation had changed, I felt that simply having somewhere to settle was good enough. And I never minded how big a space was or what facilities it had.
I was often surrounded by voices that did not understand: “Why are you living in such a small room and paying so much for it?” “How can you sleep with a window that tiny?” “How will you get through the summer without air conditioning?” At first, I did not really mind. Then one day I noticed the bathroom had become very dirty, a flatmate was washing shoes in the shared washing machine, a male flatmate had helped himself to the clothes I had left in it, and cockroaches were appearing in the corridor. I felt desperate. I wanted to have it out with them. Why should I have to suffer in an environment like this? Should I move somewhere else?
So I put the question to myself: “Why do you want to move?” Answer: “I can’t stand this environment any more. I want to find somewhere quiet and comfortable.” Question: “Once you have moved, will these problems stop happening?” Answer: “Of course not. As long as these attachments are still there, if it isn’t these problems it will be others.”
I understood then that all of this had been brought about by my own attachments, and that the matters themselves did not really matter at all. If I made solving the problem my starting point, thinking about it from an ordinary person’s angle, new problems would keep coming. It would treat the symptoms and not the root, and it would waste the arrangement Master had made.
Next question: “So is it a bad thing when you run into these things? Why do you always want to run away? Can running away solve anything?” Answer: “I know it is a good thing. It has come so that I can remove my attachments.” And again: “What did you come to this world for? Did you come for comfort and an easy life?” Answer: “No. I came to cultivate, and to assist Master in Fa-rectification.” “Then what are you doing wanting comfort?”
Having reached that answer, I felt ashamed. After cultivating for such a long time, my first instinct when I ran into a conflict was to still look outward, and to view things with human notions, human thinking and human sentiment.
Immediately Master’s Fa appeared in my mind:
“The complicated environment, in my view, is instead a good thing. The more complicated it is, the greater the individuals it will produce. If one can elevate oneself above and beyond it, one’s cultivation will be the most solid.” “Only by being among the most complicated group of people and in the most complicated environment can one cultivate high-level gong …” (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun).
I asked myself whether I still wanted to move. I answered myself lightly: Everything Master has arranged for me is the best, and it is the same wherever I am. Thank you, Master, for the painstaking arrangements you have made for a disciple like me. Heshi!
Final Remarks
Writing this sharing article was extraordinarily hard. Several times I wanted to give up, and in the end I finished it with Master’s strengthening and the encouragement of fellow practitioners. Even after clearing away much interference, I still found, as I typed, that at times I could not carry on, and didn’t know what to write, my mind was blank, and sentences would not connect. All I could do was write, delete, and write again.
By holding firm to my righteous thoughts, I finally finished it. Thank you, Master, for your strengthening and for watching over me at every moment. And thank you, Master, for giving me the chance to complete this sharing.
May we all walk steadfastly on the divine path Master has arranged, assist Master in Fa-rectification, and reach consummation and return with Master!
(Presented at the 2026 European Fa Conference)
Articles in which cultivators share their understandings typically reflect an individual's perception at a point in time based on their cultivation state, and they are offered in the spirit of enabling mutual elevation.
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Category: Cultivation Insights
