My cultivation path – My understandings from taking part in the Zhen Shan Ren Art Exhibition

My name is Christina. In Easter of 1995, Master Li came to Gothenburg to hold a Falun Gong study class, and I was very honoured to attend this class.

This was an excellent experience. I saw a magnificent Master, who was open, clean and honest like crystal, and answered our questions one by one patiently.

When I was in my twenties, I was continuously seeking for the meaning of life. Later when I married and gave birth to children, caring for the family and looking after the children occupied my thinking more and more. Following the growing up of my children, my thirst for the inner and spiritual world became more and more evident. I cherished a secret dream: “I would like to become an enlightened being.” I didn’t ever dare to speak of it, because I felt that other people would feel that this was completely opinionated and not achievable.

In my mind I always had a clear picture, namely the scene of having lived in a dimension where people were in harmony with heaven.

When my daughter became pregnant, when she was carrying my first granddaughter she came into contact with a Falun Gong practitioner. This practitioner told everyone that Teacher Li would come to Gothenburg in the Easter period of 1995. My daughter phoned me to ask me whether I would also like to attend, and I promptly answered “yes”.

Prior to this, I had a strong feeling, as if someone had told me “If a great Master comes to look for you, you should follow him.”
In the week before Teacher Li came to Gothenburg, I injured my waist, and moving was very inconvenient. What was I to do? I asked my daughter, and she replied: “Then you should come.”

I asked my mother if I could borrow her car. That car was very low, so I could lean the driving seat backwards. In this way I drove 15 miles in a half lying down posture. I drove all the way to Gothenburg. That Easter day in 1995, I spent a week that was surging like a tidal wave. At the time I still hadn’t yet truly understood how miraculous and how hard to come by this experience was.

I was the only Falun Gong practitioner in that area. Even so, my daughter brought me to different parts of the world to attend Fa conferences, and moreover reminded me to be diligent in cultivation practice. For this, I was very thankful to her.

Within several years, Master also sent some fellow practitioners to come to an area not far from me. This also enabled me to have an environment for studying the Fa and practicing the exercises. We organized some Fa spreading activities, and established a practice site, and clarified the truth during activities at a cultural week in the city. This enabled me to become a more and more mature Falun Gong practitioner.

Assisting Shen Yun

In 2008 when Shen Yun came to Sweden for the first time, they needed help from practitioners. I joined in, and this was an honour that no language can express and was a great mission.
The performers in Shen Yun performing arts group were all amazing, and they used miraculous means to rejuvenate Chinese traditional culture.

I as a person like to do things quietly, am very flexible, very quick, and diligent and conscientious. During the time of assisting Shen Yun, there would always be something unexpected and also the possibility that we would immediately be assigned another job. Although I by and large knew that I wanted a responsible job, however often there would be new situations and tests occurring. This required us to rapidly look for plans to resolve them. Working backstage, required us to let go of self, and we couldn’t obstruct the performers, and we couldn’t speak out of turn, and to constantly await orders. The most important thing was to give Shen Yun a peaceful environment, enabling the performers to concentrate their efforts to complete what they needed to complete.

One day, when it had concluded, we only had some time to rest and eat something after the performance finished, but often at that time there wasn’t anything left to eat.

During the period of the performance, I also took part in the work of washing the clothes. Before washing them, we had to come well in advance to the theatre to iron the performers clothes, because after the performances in the previous cities concluded, these clothes had all been packed into large sacks. In recent years, these clothes had all been packed in wardrobes on wheels. This way we economized on manpower, and some clothes probably didn’t need ironing. However, we still needed to inspect the performers clothes. If we discovered some damaged or dirty clothes, we had to repair and wash them on time.

In addition, I and another Swedish practitioner were responsible for washing performers individual clothes. We would wash separately male and female performers clothes, and wash separately the orchestra members, instrumental soloists and lead soloists’ clothes. Because Sweden had done so well at this, we were praised many times.

The intensity of the work of washing clothes to a great extent depended upon the facilities of each theatre. Some theatres would provide washing machines, which we could borrow, however some theatres didn’t have washing machines or otherwise their laundry rooms were very small, and it was that much dissimilar to basic cleaning. In March this year during the period of the performances in Denmark this was the situation. Later we used the laundry room in the hotel, and smoothly finished our washing assignment.

Our clothing team cooperated very well, and moreover already came to be very familiar with each process of completing the tasks, and we were all very diligent. Everybody mutually solved problems and mutually helped each other, as well as guaranteeing that our tasks were smoothly completed. This was such a meaningful job.

Working with security was also like this. Guarding a door might look like just a small matter, however we all treated it as something very important, and took seriously doing it well, because this was related to the safety of the performers and how smoothly the performance went.

I remember during one performance many years ago, I was responsible for guarding the door outside the orchestra pit. As I was listening to the orchestral music, suddenly I saw the performers dancing unfold in front of me, but at the time all I heard was the music. This was a miraculous experience, which enabled me to experience the might of the Shen Yun orchestra performance in a way that I had never experienced before.

Before when I was sitting in the audience watching Shen Yun performances, my eyes had already experienced the beauty of Shen Yun. Now, through my ears, amazingly, the orchestral music entered my entire body.

Often, before the performances, the dancers, singers and musicians carried out rehearsals and warm-ups in each nook that could be used in the theatre. For a while, it was just like magic, and each one of them quickly played their own role, and worked together perfectly, and performed these programs which cause one to exclaim with admiration. This really made people respect them very much. On each day that there was a Shen Yun performance, they were the most miraculous days of my life.

During the period of promoting Shen Yun, I was also fortunate to become a member of the telephone hotline. I had many wonderful conversations on the phone. I also felt that it was the greatest honour to be able to help people see the Shen Yun performances.

Zhen Shan Ren (“Truthfulness, compassion, tolerance”) art exhibition

For some recent years, I took part in the Swedish cultural and arts society project of the art exhibition of the “Zhen Shan Ren art exhibition”. The artists’ works made people exclaim with admiration, and each painting in itself was like a story. During the period of holding the exhibition, I witnessed how people, whether old or young, were completely drawn in by these paintings. When many children saw these paintings, they did not want to leave. They dragged their parents, because they wanted to stay to see these paintings.

The Swedish culture and arts association is a small team of between 10 and 20 artists. Every week they would meet on Sonant. We would study the Fa together and would plan together and discuss holding an art exhibition in a new place.

Within the 12 months that passed, we held seven art exhibitions. The latest was at the Gothenburg book fair, where we were allotted a very strategically meaningful location. This year there were over 650 participants in the book fair, which attracted more than 82,000 visitors.

Dafa has enabled me to strengthen my understanding of the interrelatedness of Heaven, Earth and Man. In comparison, all the seeking for the meaning of life back then seems so petty. I have found in my inner heart and mind more tranquility. This kind of happiness is expanding from inside to outside, and is not like I used to think, something that comes inside from outside.

During my cultivation practice, looking within is a miraculous tool. I am very grateful that I have finally found the path to return home. Of course, I still have times when I don’t pass well different tests, but this sort of thing happens less and less now.

I sincerely thank Master. Thank you, dear Master!
Thank you fellow practitioners!

(2022 Nordic Fa-Conference)

Original article:
https://www.clearharmony.net/articles/a113114-.html