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Chris Jasurek
My experiences with Falun Gong began in December of 1999. At that time, I was teaching a qigong variation of Tai Chi, apprenticing to teach Hatha Yoga, and studying several forms of traditional Tai Chi and qigong. My life seemed almost perfect. It seemed that everything I wanted came into my life. I had never been happier. The only thing that bothered me was that I really didn’t feel wise enough to use the power I had to guide my own life. I started to wonder what the universe wanted for me, as opposed to what I wanted for myself. Then, someone visited to one of my Tai Chi classes and gave my teacher a strange blue book with some Chinese title. I thought nothing of it. My teacher, however, called the number on the back of the book, attended a few classes, and said, “This is the real thing. You ought to check it out.” I went to the class and did the exercises. I didn’t find the exercises as energizing as Tai Chi, but I liked them well enough. Then we all sat down to read the book. I can’t say for sure if it was the first time or the second time, but almost immediately upon reading the book I realized that this was the highest, truest path that I yet discovered. I knew that I had found the way that I had to follow. I liked to think I was free, and had lots of options. I was one of those people who chose what I liked from every cultivation school, and skipped the parts I didn’t like. Even before I had finished the first chapter, I knew that I couldn’t do that with Falun Gong. Through my Tai Chi and yoga practice, I had learned to project a calm exterior. I knew that students would respect me more, and respect the art more, if I was always relaxed and at peace. Once I started practicing Falun Gong, all of the attachments I had buried came bursting through my calm exterior. I can recall two occasions- once when an impatient driver honked and yelled at me while I was crossing a street, and once while trying to resolve a business dispute on the telephone- where I erupted into a screaming rage, literally screaming at the other people involved. I was shocked by my own behavior. However, I was so hardheaded that I didn’t understand it. I read Zhuan Falun, but I read it analytically. Even though I believed in higher energy and supernormal powers, I had still been trained to think with the Western, empirical science viewpoint- seeing is believing, question everything, analyze everything. So I analyzed Zhuan Falun Instead of accepting it, and I missed these first big tests. I practiced, I studied, I continued as usual until all the tests I had been refusing to accept piled up too high to ignore. My Tai Chi teacher decided to stop teaching Tai Chi. For six weeks I practiced Falun Gong and also practiced Tai Chi and yoga. At that time my teacher certification test in the qigong class that I was teaching was a week away. My yoga teacher wanted me to take the test so that we could open a yoga/ Tai Chi/ qigong school. I had a beautiful life planned, teaching yoga and Tai Chi and qigong, making money doing the things I loved. I had never found a career that interested me, and now this perfect opportunity for the perfect career was right in front of me. However Zhuan Falun said that I could only study one cultivation way. I had to choose to pursue my career or to practice Falun Gong. I felt that thirty-eight years of my life had pointed me at a career as a Tai Chi/ Yoga/ Qigong teacher; I really thought that it was what I was supposed to do. But here was Falun Gong, which didn’t make me feel as good physically as yoga or Tai Chi, wasn’t as much fun to practice…in fact, it was no fun at all. Furthermore, to practice Falun Gong, I had to give up having fun, give it up as a human attachment. On top of all that, Falun Gong hurt. I had spent so long learning to heal and prevent pain, and now the book was telling me that pain is good? I say without exaggeration that this was the hardest choice of my life to go through, because it felt like I was giving so much up. It wasn’t one of the hardest choices to make, because some part of me deep inside would not let me make the wrong choice. I gave up Tai Chi, yoga, teaching qigong, my career, and I started going to Falun Gong classes every chance I could. I studied Falun Gong for six months. I learned to give up some of my skepticism; I learned that a lot of the things I learned before Falun Gong were incomplete, or just wrong. I learned to sit in lotus position, and I even learned to cope with the pain- somewhat. All in all, I thought I was doing pretty well. Then I left Orlando to go on a three-month vacation with my girlfriend. Before we left, I talked to my girlfriend about how important Falun gong was to me. She had been to a few classes, and assured me that she and I could practice together four days a week, just as I had been attending four classes a week in Orlando. As soon as we left Orlando, my girlfriend totally changed. She not only didn’t want to practice with me, she didn’t want to make time for me to practice. She didn’t even want us to be together when other people were around. She told me to stay away from her unless we were alone, because I was too weird, always going off to meditate whenever I had time. I tried to find time for at least the sitting meditation every day, and also tried to read the book some. Still, I was coming from the low-level-cultivation-way mind-set, where the physical exercise is more important. I didn’t understand, or couldn’t accept, that reading the book was what really mattered. So I got worse and worse as the trip went on and my xinxing fell, and my girlfriend got worse as I got worse. On top of all that, I spent much precious energy trying to make my girlfriend understand why I did Falun Gong. She had some supernormal powers, so I thought she would understand it, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t break down her barriers. It was my sentimental and sexual attachment to her that made me try to bring her along with me. I wanted her to cultivate so that I would not have to give her up. Later I understood some of the attachments that made me want to make her understand. How could we be together if she didn’t cultivate I thought. If we stayed together and she didn’t cultivate, how could I cultivate in that hostile environment? I realize now that if I had let go of those attachments and put all that energy into my own cultivation, I wouldn’t have suffered as I did for the next several months. Even after that experience, I did not let go of all my sentimentality. When I tried unsuccessfully to get my few friends involved in Falun Gong, I learned again how deeply I was attached to my old friends. I thought that steadfast loyalty to those with whom I had shared important experiences was a virtue. I did not realize, until another practitioner mentioned that he saw himself doing it, that I was trying to involve my friends more for my good than theirs. Some part of me I wanted to bring those old friends, and those old feelings of friendship, along into my future. When I got back to Orlando, I was too ashamed of how far I had fallen to come back to class. I decided to practice on my own until I was back where I started- which was just my attachment, protecting the image I had of myself as a good cultivator, even when I knew I wasn’t. Well, I proved to be insufficiently diligent on my own. I spent too much time weightlifting and mountain biking, and not enough time cultivating. Finally, luckily, master stepped in. When he saw that I would rather ride my bike than cultivate, he let me have a tremendous bicycle accident that injured myself badly that I could not do anything but practice and study the Fa. I didn’t catch on right away, but after a few days I realized and I started reading and practicing nearly every day. After a while I started thinking that I was doing all right as a cultivator. My body healed also. So, I started mountain biking again, and entered a local mountain-bike race. This was all right, I thought, because I practiced and read the book before the race. When the race started and everyone dashed off, I didn’t fight to get ahead. I took a moment to think, ‘I am a practitioner of Falun Dafa. That is what really matters.” Then off I went to compete. Shortly after the start of the race, my bike broke. I tried to fix it three times, and it broke again each time. Then the tool I was using broke. At this point I realized that I was in the middle of a major tribulation. I realized later that I had to give up competition, with myself and with others, and that I had to give up mountain biking as a human attachment. After a few months of practicing on my own, I decided that I was ready to go back to class. A week later, on my way to somewhere else, I rode by a Falun Gong class that I didn’t know existed. My old Tai Chi teacher was leading it. I pulled up and joined the sitting meditation. When it was over, my old teacher told me that the next day was World Falun Gong Day, and he invited me to participate. I knew it was time for me to get back where I belonged. Even then I didn’t realize how important cultivation is. I only attended one class a week, and I actually started practicing less on my own, because now I was going to class, so I didn’t have to practice so much, right? Then Teacher’s article “Towards Consummation” came out. I felt like it was aimed right at me. After that, I started attending every class I could get to again. Around this time, Ii started to understand how important it is to read the book. I started to notice that I was a lot more helpful in discussion and experience-sharing when I spent a little more time reading the book before class. I also started noticing that I would be egotistical and self-important on the days that I skimped on reading. All the veteran practitioners repeated Teacher’s words, “Read the book.” Finally I began to listen. At this point the other organizers asked me to help organize some classes, telling me that this would help my cultivation. I found that they were right. I learned to teach for the benefit of others instead of doing it for myself. The only way to explain the principles and to respond to their questions was with an empty mind and a pure heart. Organizing taught me to listen better and answer more carefully because I was responsible for other people’s cultivation, not just my own. One incident in particular taught me to give people the help they needed, instead of supplying the highest truths that I myself had learned. A practitioner who continually interpreted Dafa in terms of his other learning asked me to define “the energy mechanism” mentioned in the book in terms of some “energy matrix” that he had heard about from some other source. Immediately I began to tell him that I had learned that I could grow faster by interpreting my old learning in terms of Dafa, instead of translating Dafa into the old, incomplete systems I had once studied. He immediately became defensive. I realized immediately that I had erred. I had told him the absolute truth, but not a truth that he could use. Even though what I said was right, I was wrong. I hadn’t listened and responded with my heart, but with my brain. I apologized profusely, and he quickly and accepted my apology. He still comes to class, and understands Dafa better than ever. I realized then that I was used to show him his attachment while he was used to show me mine. We are both better for it. Sentimentality.
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