Since the persecution started, the forced labour camps have used force-feeding of practitioners as a brutal form of torture. This form of torture has caused severe physical damage and even death to many practitioners. However, a Falun Dafa practitioner from Henan, after a hunger strike of 20 days, didn't become sick and thin. Instead her face was glowing with health. Although she is a mother of two children, she looks younger, more like a 20-year-old. How did she do it? How did she perceive or mentally respond to the persecution? Here is her story

The police arrested me in Tiananmen Square. I was sent to a security office in Beijing. I saw an over sixty-year-old grandmother whose life was in danger as a result of a beating by police. She said that her husband was the bodyguard for Li Xiannian, former Chinese president. She had served as a guard for the Red Army since she was thirteen years old. She did not expect to be beaten just for following Falun Dafa's principles of "Truth, Compassion, Forbearance." She just wanted to be a good person. Aren't the police supposed to serve the people?

It was precisely because I was obedient that some of the leaders in my work unit thought highly of me. Two years after I started work, I was appointed to a position taking charge of the so-called "education of political ideology" and "management of cadres." I therefore became a full-time member of the CCP administration. Not only was I deluded by it, I also devotedly educated other people, and filled them with the CCP's evil principles.

Frank advice is sometimes painful to hear. However, if practitioners accept and cherish the opinions of other practitioners, they will benefit from it. Certainly, the practitioners who make such critical remarks must cultivate themselves, and they shouldn't think too highly of themselves when their opinion turns out to be right. Another thing to consider is that all of this practitioner's opinions may not be correct, and one has to look at each thing on its own.

We Falun Gong practitioners in China are supposed to use every opportunity to help more people understand and accept the truth about Falun Gong and to do the three things well so as to help Teacher save more people in China. Unfortunately, we have seen that many fellow practitioners in some areas of China have become less rational and have even compromised their attention to security because of their attachments. Some practitioners have radically interpreted Teacher's lectures to meet their attachments.

When I started to practise Falun Gong in 1997, I could not sit in the lotus position (both legs crossed). I could only sit in "half-lotus" with one leg crossed, and my knee was high in the air. I admired those veteran practitioners sitting with both legs crossed. My younger brother was practising Falun Dafa too. Whenever he came to see me, I asked him to sit on the knee that was sticking up. However, once he sat on my knee, my body leaned to the left.

The next phone call was picked up by the family of a labour camp’s prison officer . When I told the person at the other end that “Falun Gong teaches people to be better people, the persecution is wrong and sinful and the ban will certainly be lifted in future”, she said: “The people who practise Falun Gong whom I have see are all very good. I just wonder why good people get locked up.” This relative promised to tell the truth to her family and also that “persecuting good people is a thing which we must never do!”

Whenever we travelled to America, we always expected to bring some materials back to Europe. Although it is quite hard to take them, this method enabled us to save a lot of money that could be used to mail those packages and to buy more material. Whilst we we packed those cardboard boxes, we always made sure that we packed them prudently and tightly. This was not because we got them with our own money which had been saved in daily life, but we would use these materials to tell the truth about Falun Gong.

There are numerous people practising it because people benefit from it. This made China’s despotic dictatorship, the Communist Party very jealous. To insure people’s absolute obedience to the Chinese Communist Party, they never allow the existence of any viewpoint and belief that are not controlled by them. Therefore the Chinese Communist Party banned Falun Gong, and furthermore used insidious methods to force all Chinese people to keep away from Falun Gong.

After sharing with fellow practitioners, I enlightened to the understanding that I needed to reveal the facts of the persecution to my family in a dignified manner and rectify my surrounding environment. I placed materials detailing the true facts about Falun Gong and VCDs on my neighbours' doors so that they could all see the truth of Falun Gong and the persecution. I told them about the spread of Falun Dafa all around the world and about the torture the practitioners suffered in detention.

I found that the passengers across the aisle and the one before him were staring at me folding the paper lotus flowers. Thereby, I presented each of them with a paper-folded lotus flower, and told them that in Chinese people’s eyes, lotus flowers are symbolic of a pure and noble nature because they grow out of the dirty mud, without being polluted. By talking about lotus flowers, our topics were extended to self cultivation, Falun Gong, and the physical and spiritual well-being I have benefited from practising Falun Gong.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has committed enormous, unforgivable crimes against Falun Dafa and all the beings in the cosmos. Although not all CCP members have directly participated in the persecution of Dafa and Dafa disciples, they have added fuel to the flame as members of the CCP. In the end, they will also have to bear the consequences of the evil deeds perpetrated by the CCP.

Fellow practitioners spent tremendous amounts of time, effort and money to obtain my release. After learning about this, I could not hold back my tears. I blamed myself for causing practitioners to spend so much time in coordinating my rescue, from their busy schedules, that could have been used to save the world's people and sentient beings. Indeed, anything that goes wrong with one person can bring losses to all of us.

In October of 2004, there were police cars and policemen all over the streets. My phone was tapped and my home was watched by plain-clothes policemen. When I went out of the house my surroundings seemed gloomy and I always felt someone was following and watching me. I was afraid and the attachment of fear was very strong. I said to myself, "Stay home for a few days and avoid the current harsh situation. Do not go out now to clarify the truth. As long as I do not go out, what can the police do about me?"

Then I walked into the building. When I finished distributing the materials and as I started to leave the building, I saw that the person was still keeping watch at the entrance. I thus walked on ahead until the end of the corridor, where there was a turn. I looked to left and saw that there was a big door, which was about 5 to 6 meters tall and it was wide open. Thus, I successfully walked out the door and returned home.

When Master's new article "New Year's Greetings" was published on the Falun Gong website Clearwisdom.net and disseminated among practitioners, some fellow practitioners around me once again studied the Fa (law or principle, the teachings in Falun Gong) with a human mentality. They claimed they had come to understand when the "conclusion" time would occur and they began to spread their understandings about the "ending time."

My spine always felt unbelievably painful, and I often needed someone to give me a massage. I tried physical therapy and heat treatments, but neither was successful. Not until after I started to practise Falun Gong did I ever think for a second that I could heal this illness, but I became completely healthy in a very short time and haven't seen a doctor in three years.

As an example, a practitioner told a story of "saving sentient beings with one thought." One time a female practitioner was studying the Falun Gong teachings at home, when she saw an elderly woman outside. She had one thought, to let her come in and to tell her the truth about Falun Dafa. As anticipated, the elderly woman came in and said, "I have heart disease. Could I come in to take a rest?" The practitioner warmly gave her a chair to sit in, and then revealed the true facts about Falun Dafa and the persecution to her. The elderly woman thanked the practitioner and stated that she and her husband would recite, "Falun Dafa is good."

I told her, "Ambassadress, you have also read the book and practised the exercises. Please frankly tell me, is the practise good?" She said, "Of course it is good! My health improved a lot after practising the exercises. However, since the government doesn't permit us to practise, you must stop it. Moreover, it will have a tremendous impact on your husband's business with China if you persist in it." I answered, "You clearly know it is good, yet you will still give it up. Falun Gong is the cultivation method I have been looking for all my life. I shall persist in it."

My father, my wife and my sister-in-law went to the labour camp to request my release. They told the guard that they would bring me home. The guard immediately agreed. At 7:30 a.m. that morning, the instructor in the prison told me that at he couldn't release me because the doctor said I was ok. However, at 9 a.m., he suddenly told me to collect my things and leave. I only understood why after I met with my family. The police car took my family members and me all the way back home.

Studying the Falun Gong teachings has made me realise that, in this final moment of Fa-rectification, Falun Dafa practitioners, besides doing the three things well that Teacher asks us to do, also need to balance the relationship between cultivation and family, and abandon the attachment of selfishness. In this final moment of Fa-rectification, we must not exhibit extreme behaviour such as just taking part in Falun Gong activities, while ignoring our family responsibilities. If this path of cultivation is to be left for the future human beings, it must be followed in a righteous manner.

I would like to remind our fellow practitioners: When teaching new practitioners the Falun Gong exercises, please pay attention to the accuracy of the movements. I noticed that the number of new practitioners has gradually increased, but many new practitioners' movements are not accurate. We all know that once the energy mechanism establishes itself, it is quite hard to correct.

For the past five years, under the protection and care of our compassionate Master, our Fa-study group has not stopped studying the Fa in my home. When the evil launched its worst wave of persecution, we withstood the pressure from outside and have overcome all the difficulties. We do many things to expose the persecution and to give people a chance to find out the truth about Falun Gong. Gradually, we have formed a harmonious body; we upgrade and improve ourselves as a whole body.

We should not be discouraged if someone does not accept the facts we tell him, neither should we lose confidence in our efforts. When someone learns the truth from us, even if he probably could not accept it at first, he would look for other opportunities to find out more. When he truly understood the truth, he would tell others. Those who truly understand us will care about us and support us. Such righteous forces will irresistibly spread from one person to another and reach people's hearts.

Last autumn I returned to my hometown. While clearing out old books, I found a book that was a collection of quotes from CCP leaders. I was going to destroy it. To my surprise, my parents were strongly against it, "We have to keep this! We may need it in the future!" There was a terrible row, "You are not our son, and we are not your parents! We disown you!" My parents are both practitioners. How could this be happening? They did not sound like practitioners. It was all because my mother is a CCP member.

I want to discuss the issue from the perspective of cultivation. What are the elements behind the harassment? As practitioners we know that all of the interference and persecution in human society actually target our attachments. From the human perspective, the harassment is the result of the deceitful nature of the evil hoodlums; from the perspective of a cultivator, it is practitioners' attachments that cause and allow the harassment to occur.

We had always thought that we were good people and that it would be easy to give up the few attachments that we thought we had. We had not realised that as we had grown up and started our independent lives, we had imperceptibly drifted further away from Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance, unaware of what we were losing.

One woman in her 40s' used to be ill all year long and could not do any work and required others to take care of her. By practicing Falun Gong she got rid of all her illnesses and totally recovered. Her whole family was very supportive of her practice. After the persecution she gave up practicing and all her old illnesses returned. Others who had given up practicing are all experiencing similar problems. The Communist Party Secretary of my village told me: "Look, they gave up practicing and fell ill again. You should continue practicing!"

In 2002 and 2003, if someone yelled, "Falun Dafa is Great," no matter where they were, there a dozen people would attack him or her. Some would try to cover his mouth and some would grab hold of his body while others beat him. Now, this situation has reversed. Yesterday, a practitioner yelled, "Falun Dafa is Great!" in the dining hall. One or two dozen people echoed the words. It was a long time before the police came, and two of them tried to pull the practitioner out. However, before they reached him, a dozen or so practitioners stood up, and the police decided to give up and did nothing.

At the start, many of the Chinese people weren’t willing to take the materials we were distributing due to their being deceived by the former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin and his group. They even looked at the materials we were distributing with strange expressions in their eyes. Soon after they received the materials they would just throw them away. It was as if they didn’t want to know anything about Falun Gong. Initially, it was hard for us to part with the materials because the Chinese people refused to listen to us. They didn’t want to understand or know about the facts regarding the persecution taking place in their own country.

After reading the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," I suddenly realised the root cause of my problem. For the past several dozen years, people who live in China have been instilled with many evil substances by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We all live in the field covered by the CCP, so we cannot realise that there are evil substances in our minds.

At the time the finance bureau was going through test reforms, and only 40% of those taking the new tests passed. I was scheduled to take the last offering of the new test. Because of the low passing rate, the test format was eventually changed. I was the eldest student in the class, and the lecturer breezed through the materials. I was busy taking notes without any time to think. I had never touched a PC and have not taken any classes for tens of years. My husband was waiting for me to pass the test, and he was also weighing my ability

I felt that the fellow practitioner was ignoring me. However, I did know clearly in my mind that definitely I had some problem myself. Then what was the root cause of it all? Finally, I desperately tried my best to repeatedly tell myself, "This is a trick to separate me and fellow practitioners. I do not agree to it!" But the effectiveness of this way only lasted briefly. I knew that problems need to be resolved and not avoided.

On the path of cultivating, I have come to understand that the goal of cultivation is to save sentient beings. This is a major difference between Falun Dafa cultivation and other types of cultivation practises. To save sentient beings, we need to meet with everyday people, and live among them with a similar lifestyle. Therefore, we should not quit our jobs, but rather, we should do well at our work. I also realise that there is no fixed answer as to how we carry out our daily work in ordinary society. In other words, there is no "fixed" or "concrete" answer, but our own cultivation levels determine what we should do.

Teacher clearly pointed out my existing problem. I was truly ashamed of myself and my cultivation state. I not only had attachments of "selfishness" and "egotism" but was also pursuing consummation, had a self-satisfied heart, thought myself good, and so on. I now understand and realise that I was in danger. Teacher always leads us and reminds us to walk righteously at all times. After clearing away interference and attachments, I was able to pay more attention to Fa study and gradually the bad state disappeared.

In 1991, after Master returned from his visit to Thailand, we went to the Jietai Temple in Beijing with Master. At lunchtime, we ate at a small roadside restaurant. We all tried to pay for the meals after we finished eating, but Master told us to stay put and he went to pay for the meals for all of us. This touched us deeply because we all knew that it had always been customary for the disciple to provide for their masters in other qigong practices; this was the first time for us to experience seeing a master paying for his disciples' meals. Over a dozen of years have passed, but the scene of that moment still leaps before my eyes.

We could not hear clearly the questions raised by people viewing the exhibit, and they could not hear our replies, either. I tried to talk to people as loud as I could, but to no avail. At that moment I felt really annoyed. I knew this was interference and that it must be eliminated by sending forth righteous thoughts. However, I also immediately saw my own frustration and irritation. I adjusted my state of mind and made myself settle down and not pay attention to it. Right away I noticed that things changed for the better and my interaction with people improved significantly.

It was how I interpreted the Fa (law or principles, the teachings in Falun Gong). The reason for that was that I didn’t think much about the deeper meaning of the word ‘interpretation.’ Only after Master gave us some hints did I check the meaning of the word in the dictionary. The dictionary identified the word interpretation as ‘explaining.’ Only now do I recognise my wrongdoing and understand that I sabotaged the Fa. In the meantime I had only a shallow understanding of Master’s words and could not see the deeper connotation.

I knew another young man who liked to browse the Internet. I thought he had strong notions and didn't know the truth about Falun Gong. When I mentioned Falun Gong to him, he immediately told me, "Falun Gong is actually pretty good. Many people practise it abroad. They have sent me some articles to read. Jiang suppressed it out of jealousy and has been sued abroad."

Righteous art can touch people's minds and hearts. Many people say, "It's shocking!" Others are moved to tears. Some practitioners have said that some issues are difficult to explain, and that during discussion, even when questions are clearly answered, people sometimes seem apathetic or disinterested. However, standing in front of the paintings, they immediately understand the message. This type of comprehensive visual information speaks deeply to peoples' minds, awakening their compassionate nature, and greatly shocking the factors that cause their apathy and lack of understanding.

I have understood from sharing on the Internet that the practitioners overseas are very busy on specific projects and practitioners in China are very busy working to produce factual materials about Falun Dafa. They hardly have time for studying the Falun Gong teachings, resting, etc. The practitioners working on the material production sites that I have contact with are also in a state of "being too busy." I realise that we urgently need to improve the whole body in order to change the state of "busy-ness."

Young Falun Dafa practitioner Haohao is less than five years old. He can do all five Falun Gong exercises and can recite all of the poems of Master's Hong Yin II. He also can sit in the full lotus position with his legs crossed on top of each other, and sends righteous thoughts together with his mother and his elder sister. Once when he saw his grandma mopping the floor, he took the mop from his grandma and cleaned the floor himself, saying in low voice to his mother, "Following [the Fa] in everything, compliance is cultivation." (Hong Yin).

Falun Dafa is a superior cultivation way within the Buddha School. In order to make sure that its practitioners will genuinely cultivate to higher levels, Falun Dafa has a very strict requirement that practitioners must never get involved in politics. Throughout human history, there have been numerous kings, princes and other royalty who abandoned their worldly power and wealth to live a life of cultivation.

My husband is a driver for a kindergarten run by his sister. One morning I asked his sister about his salary and then started a fight with him. I completely forgot that I was a practitioner. I even swore not to talk to him ever again. Three days later we were still not talking to each other. On the fourth day at 10:00 p.m. my husband still had not come home. I started to calm down and admitted to myself that I had done something wrong.

In one sentence, the plates that I had spent 5 to 6 hours to engrave became useless. I felt hurt. Seeing that my mind was affected, Xiaoli said, "My dear fellow practitioner, to tell you the truth, I felt that the plates you made were pretty good. But do you know why Xiaota did not want them? When we do work for Dafa, we need to use our hearts. Otherwise it would be like doing ordinary people's work. You should ask yourself, 'Did you use your heart to make the plates?'

Yielding under pressure from my family members who did not practice, I received an infusion at my brother's home. At that moment, I knew I did not have a disease, but a lack of righteous thoughts. I hoped it might provide temporary relief and help me break through this after studying the Falun Gong teachings more diligently. But it didn't help.

A local practitioner in charge has spent thousands of yuan (Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China) on materials containing the true facts about Falun Dafa over the past years. Recently she has been short of money and would like other capable fellow practitioners to take part of the responsibility. But she is afraid to give an impression of collecting fees. The work cannot be stopped, but she has a dilemma. I realized that the Jiang regime's policy of "bankrupting them financially" targets every practitioner.

Then I had a final exam. Since I did not do well in balancing the relationship between cultivation and work, I did not prepare for the final well and had to take the course over. Thus, my classmates formed negative opinions about me again. They think that I have kept running into trouble ever since I started cultivating, so they had some negative thoughts about Falun Dafa. Tests that I thought I had already passed showed up again.

One practitioner stated that she did not like a certain practitioner who spoke untruthfully and behaved as an ordinary person, and while mentioning mistakes made several years ago by others, she would still be very emotional. The practitioners who were criticised might sometimes react the same way. Thus, in certain areas, practitioners have become divided into various subgroups and are not interacting with one-another.

Clearharmony was to be a website to echo the righteous voice of Falun Dafa practitioners and the support from Europe, to reveal the evil nature of the persecution, to let the people in Europe know about Falun Gong and to provide them with a chance to position themselves well for their future.