(Minghui.org) As I continued to study the Fa and cultivate, I kept finding my attachments and shortcomings. As my understanding of the Fa improved, I realized that my previous understanding was not thorough, or was wrong. The following are my personal experiences of how I erroneously viewed family members and how my improvement in Fa study and cultivation helped me resolve the issues between us.

For a long time, I felt that my family members were not as supportive as those of other practitioners. My fellow practitioners’ family members were non-practitioners, yet they were understanding and considerate of the practitioners. For example, one practitioner’s husband took over all the household chores, and helped her with Dafa projects. This gave her more time to study the Fa, and she was able to fully devote herself to helping Master save people without family distractions.

The most difficult thing for me was that I simply didn’t have time to go out to clarify the truth. My wife, a non-practitioner, is afraid that I’ll be persecuted. Whenever I went out, she was very anxious. When I got home slightly late, she’d argue, making a scene—sometimes even resorting to extreme behavior. As a practitioner I knew I couldn’t behave as she did. I tried to be considerate of her feelings, so I did all the housework, yet she still didn’t want me to go out to clarify the truth. Then I felt she was making things difficult for me and interfering with my efforts to save people.

I know from studying the Fa that the problem is with my cultivation, and I should look within. However, I looked within again and again, and couldn’t find my problem. Because there was no significant change in this situation, I rarely had opportunities to talk to people about Dafa.

I later stayed at this practitioner’s home for two years to avoid persecution. During that time, I saw her husband’s constant fear, pressure, and selfishness, which was quite similar to my wife’s. That was when I realized I had only seen the positive side of the practitioner’s spouse, and not the whole picture. I used to think my wife lacked righteous thoughts, that she was irrational and often made a fuss over nothing. I realized my understanding of her was wrong. I was comparing her to the standards for a practitioner. My doing that was not aligned with the Fa.

After thinking more about it, I realized that my wife had a positive side as well. She always had a positive view of Dafa. When I was held in a brainwashing center, she went there and demanded my release. And as a result I was released, which of course was Master’s arrangement. Yet, as she faced constant harassment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, she still supported Dafa. Even when she was making a fuss and criticizing me, she never said anything disrespectful to Dafa or Master.

After looking within and thinking about all of this, I saw my wife differently, and she changed too. Although she still did not want me to go out to clarify the truth, she made less of a fuss than before, and sometimes pretended not to know I went out. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of my truth clarification improved a lot. It was much easier than before. Sometimes I helped people quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations by saying only a couple of sentences and within a couple of minutes.

Let me also talk about my daughter. For a long time, her relationship with me had been neither close nor distant. After the persecution began, as she grew older, her personal interests strengthened, and she was more polluted by the downward spiral of society, especially living under the shadow of the evil persecution. She gradually drifted further and further away from me. I often felt that she was becoming increasingly disrespectful to her elders, selfish, lazy, and so on. I tried to educate her with Dafa’s principles, but she did not change much, and sometimes she lost patience with me if I said too much.

Not long ago, my daughter had some health issues and required my care. I took the opportunity to tell her why people get sick and why people should believe in Dafa. After talking and spending some time together, we understood each other better. She saw that her father, a Falun Dafa practitioner, was a good person and became an even better person. She felt secure knowing she had someone to rely on. So she never tried to stop me from practicing Dafa or doing the three things practitioners should do. I also learned that she had been shouldering a burden.

When she was set up with potential boyfriends, she turned down several men with highly desirable profiles—such as pilots, police officers, and military officers. Apparently, due to their professions, they would require a background check on the woman’s family before dating them. My daughter thought she wouldn’t pass such checks because her father practiced Falun Dafa, so she simply declined those opportunities. However, because she missed out, she had resentment toward the CCP for its persecution of Dafa, which she kept inside for so many years. Because she harbored this resentment for which she had no outlet, when things didn’t go her way she vented her disgust for the CCP. Yet, because she never articulated this explicitly, I had the impression that she would, from time to time, sulk or lose her temper. I misunderstood my daughter, wrongly perceiving her as disobedient, ill-mannered, and unfilial. I truly misjudged her!

Once I changed how I viewed my daughter, she changed and became more positive, lively, and filial.

For the past 20-plus years of cultivating Dafa, the family environment was where many of my attachments were exposed and eliminated. Sometimes, I did not study the Fa well and did not view things from the standpoint of the Fa. I viewed them with emotional and preconceived notions. As a result, I did not correctly handle my relationship with a non-practitioner. When I did not study the Fa well, and a conflict occurred, it rushed straight to my head and I failed the test. This was a firsthand realization born of many hard lessons.

Master said:

“You must study the Fa well. In the process of studying the Fa you’ll be able to keep clearing away bad elements in yourself, changing the last bit of stuff you have that hasn’t yet been changed.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Vol. III)

Nowadays, I make sure that every day I, like many other practitioners, read the Fa, memorize the Fa, or hand-copy the Fa.

Thank you, Master, for your compassionate salvation!

Thank you, fellow practitioners, for your selfless help!