(Minghui.org) I have practiced Falun Gong for 14 years. Although I have endured persecution, I am still walking on the path of cultivation, full of joy every day. The universal principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, the basis of Dafa, illuminates my sorrowful heart and makes me the happiest person in the world. During these years, many fellow practitioners and I have been telling others about the wonderfulness of Falun Gong. However, they still doubt and resist the facts about Falun Gong. I would like to share a few cultivation stories in order to inspire all kindhearted people to understand Falun Gong and perhaps begin to practice.

1. A 610 Office Staff Member Helped His Friend Find Falun Dafa

The 610 Office specializes in the persecution of Falun Gong, with powers far above and beyond the public security, procuratorial and judicial systems. 610 Office personnel directly participate in the persecution of Falun Gong. All around, there are cases of ill people who were cured miraculously while cultivating their heart and improving their morality by following the principles of Falun Gong. Through their contact with practitioners, some of those that work for the 610 Office have eventually understood the truth.

On the morning of May 13, 2011, four missed calls showed up on my cellphone, all from one unknown caller. In the afternoon, the same person called me again and I answered it. The other party said he was Xinming (an alias), a former colleague, who wanted to ask me something. We made an appointment. After we met, we exchanged a few words, but Xinming soon brought up his concern. He said he was suffering from an incurable illness, so he had no faith in hospitals. I immediately recommended that he practice Falun Gong and told him, "As long as you follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, cultivate your mind, and improve your character, a miracle will occur." Xinming said that he called just to learn Falun Gong from me but he was afraid that I would refuse to teach him. I told him to come to my home for the Falun Gong books and to learn the five exercises the next day.

During the evening, many doubts arose in my mind: How strange that one would come to learn the exercises on World Falun Dafa Day! Does Xinming really have a deep predestined relationship with Dafa? Is it possible that he is a spy sent by the 610 Office? And so on. The next day, May 14, Xinming came to my home. I told him frankly about my doubts. He then sincerely spoke about the whole process of his determination to learn Falun Gong.

According to Xinming, he had suffered from various diseases for eight years. He was first plagued with cholecystitis. Later, he developed problems with his liver, lungs, and stomach. After that, he suffered from hypertension. He said all his organs seemed to be failing. Although he was only in his 40s, he was in poor physical condition. Later, he again suffered from a syndrome which doctors could not diagnose. They could only conclude that, according to the x-rays, the condition was quite bad. After he took hormone treatment for 17 days, the illness was not alleviated at all. The doctors were puzzled. They had to advise him to immediately transfer to a large hospital in Beijing for treatment.

Xinming said that the agonizing pain plagued him every moment. Furthermore, he experience different kinds of pain. For example, he felt that his heart was sometimes suffocated so badly that he seemed to be nearing death. Sometimes, the pain in his waist and back was like knives stabbing into and cutting him. The pain elsewhere was like spasms and as if his bones were being pulled out. When he could not endure the pain, he wanted to stab himself to death in hopes of ending the pain once and for all.

The illnesses bore down on him relentlessly, the pain penetrating even into his marrow. The local municipal hospital also urged him to transfer to another hospital. He thought it was a bad omen. When he was in extreme pain, he could not sleep all night. Even if he slept a little bit, he dreamt about drinking wine, chatting and working with his late father. Everything made Xinming feel that the God of Death was approaching and that he was nearing the end of his life. So he went to see his friend Liming (an alias) and told him about his funeral affairs. He pleaded repeatedly with Liming to take care of his wife and children after his death. Both Xinming and Liming were so grieved that they cried bitterly.

Finally Liming advised Xinming to practice Falun Gong and gave a few examples of miraculous recoveries. Xinming asked whom he should learn from. Liming promised he would help Xinming. On the morning of May 13, 2012, Liming took Xinming everywhere but could not find me. They continued to ask about me in the afternoon. Later, Xinming also searched on his own and finally found me.

Due to his eloquence, Liming was selected to work for the 610 Office by the local Political and Legal Committee within the Chinese Communist Party a dozen years ago. He held brainwashing sessions many times. Once, I was seized and taken to a brainwashing session. He served as a cadre of those trying to force me to give up Falun Gong. At that time, I clarified the facts about Falun Gong to him in detail. Later, he again contacted many other practitioners, which furthered his understanding. He advised Xinming to learn Falun Gong and helped him to seek it during his great trouble. As a member of the 610 Office, Liming's phone number was published on the Minghui website. According to Xinming, Liming received truth-clarification calls from overseas every day. He listened to the callers and thanked them each time.

After Xinming practiced Falun Gong for less than one month, his grave illnesses and former diseases were cured. In his joy and surprise, he wrote a poem:

Eight years of grave illnesses beyond cure harrowed me with desperation
and my last will almost made me depart this world.
Unforeseeable and doomed was my destiny,
void and meaningless was my worldly pursuit for fame and gain.
Blessed and fortunate was I
when the Master Buddha bestowed upon me the holy Dafa and miraculous cure.
Gone are misfortunes, clear and pure are heaven and earth
Diligent I will be in my path of cultivating Righteous Fruit.

Xinming's wife also came to cultivate Dafa with him. At the beginning of Fa study, she felt Falun rotating and her celestial eye was also opened. Now Xinming's whole family of three are into Dafa cultivation.

I also led another member of the 610 Office to cultivate in the spring of 2006. She suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, which had also resulted in her mother's death. Facing a choice between life and death, she chose to practice Falun Gong. After she started to cultivate Dafa, her illness was completely cured and she has not taken any medicine since. Witnessing the miraculous changes in her, her whole family also started to practice Falun Gong.

2. My Husband Underwent a Complete Change of Heart

Before cultivating Dafa, my husband was an alcoholic who could not live without alcohol and got drunk every day. He would be mad and troublesome when he was drunk, and beat me after coming home very late every night. Such irrational behavior not only disturbed my son and me all day long but also the neighbors.

I had to endure his blows and strife every day. He would rough me up, kick and slap me in the face, pull my hair, brandish a kitchen knife, throw things, badmouth my parents, and do anything else he wanted. At those times, he looked the same as an evil policeman or a demon with no human conscience.

Whenever my husband came home in the middle of the night, he would wake up our son, who was sleeping underneath his quilt. He would order him to stand still, making him shiver with cold. Then my husband turned against me. Sometimes our son knelt down to beg for mercy, saying, ''Daddy, please stop. The one you intend to beat is my dear mother.'' I do not remember how many winter nights he drove me out of our home.

He drank at least twice every day. Sometimes he started to drink in the early morning and drank again with his companions who smoke marijuana until noontime. About 3 or 4 p.m., before they had sobered up, the next round was underway. Where my husband worked was referred to by the common Chinese as the ''lawless gangsters' office,'' where he was often invited to wine and dine. When he was not invited, he spent his wages feasting the others. His monthly wages of thousands of yuan ran out very quickly. Then he demanded my money. Two or three hundred yuan was nothing to him. Many times he threw the two or three hundred yuan I gave him on the ground and verbally abused me about being poor and mean as a beggar.

My husband also swore at and insulted his colleagues and friends from time to time. As a result, several of his old friends had distanced themselves from him. Seeing his insane behavior, I wondered if the man could really be a human being. I was convinced his body was possessed by spirits that directed his every word and act. Otherwise, how could he torment his own biological child as he did? Many people said that my husband ruined his life with alcohol.

My relatives and friends encouraged me to divorce him. Some of my friends complained that I did not have the courage to do it and asked, ''You are still very young, yet you obstinately live with such a madman. When will your ordeals be over? '' Thus, I decided to divorce him. After hearing about this, a friend of mine said joyfully, ''That's great! The day the divorce is final, I will congratulate you by hanging up and setting off firecrackers at the top of the city wall.''

The longstanding indulgence in alcohol caused severe damage to my husband's health. His hands sometimes shook so badly that he was unable to hold anything securely. In addition, he vomited blood, had bloody stools, felt dizzy, and so on. A young acquaintance of his had died in a traffic accident, which he felt very emotional about. He perceived the fragility and uncertainty of human life. He thought if he continued to live this way, he would be abandoned by everyone, including his wife and son, and live in misery for the rest of his life.

One day, he said he wanted to practice cultivation and get rid of all his vicious habits. I certainly believed Falun Dafa could change a person fundamentally, no matter how bad he or she was. As long as one cultivates Dafa, one can become the best person in the world. Cultivating Falun Dafa is really convenient, as one does not have to enter the temple to become a monk or a nun. But Dafa cultivation is not easy. One must conduct oneself according to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and abandon bad habits such as smoking, drinking, and gambling as well as evil thoughts, lust, and so on. Only by doing these things can one really step into cultivation.

At the beginning, my husband read one lecture of Zhuan Falun and did the exercises in the morning or evening every day. He also often listened to the Chinese stories about the divinely inspired culture through the Minghui broadcast. As he cultivated, he gradually gave up his bad behavior and habits. He said, ''Master said in the Fa that 'drinking alcohol can make one irrational' (Zhuan Falun). I must quit drinking, according to the standards and requirements of Dafa.''

Those who knew my husband and heard about his intention to quit drinking kept quiet and did not believe he could give it up. Every person who knew him, especially his classmates, all thought his intention was nonsense. They simply thought it impossible for him to become a normal person again. One day he was invited to a dinner. His client served him wine, but he simply refused it with the excuse of needing to go to the toilet. His colleagues told the client that he was abstaining and that he had not drunk any alcohol for quite a long time. They had a discussion regarding how to make him drink again. Later, one of them told me what happened. When he returned to the dinner table, they began a new toast but he drank water. The client went over to him and cordially served a cup of wine with complimentary words while all the others urged him to drink it. But he still turned it down. The client pleaded, “Please give me the pleasure. Just take a sip.” He stood up, took the cup, and said, “Please do not make me feel bad. For me, taking a sip is not any different than boozing every day.” He poured the wine onto the ground. Everyone was convinced by his perseverance and stopped urging him to drink again. Many of his colleagues knew that his abstinence was due to practicing Falun Gong.

Dafa brought my husband a new life. He never accepted any gifts or money from his subordinate companies or clients. They developed high esteem for him, “Why are you so good? It is not easy to find people like you nowadays.” He treated my family and others with equal kindness and conducted himself according to the requirement of Dafa in his everyday life. When he was home, he cooked meals for my family, even early in the morning when our son needed to get up early to go to school.

The complete change in my husband convinced all my relatives of the power of Dafa. Moved by his story, my mother-in-law also began to practice Falun Gong. My younger sister told me, “After he began practicing Falun Gong, the ferocity in his eyes disappeared. Now, he looks younger and much better than before.” My nearly broken family was saved and became a happy family. My brother-in-law said heartily, “Falun Dafa is truly powerful! It is Falun Dafa that changed a helpless drunkard into a gentleman.”

In the maze of modern life, too many people have become blind to morality and traditional doctrines and indulge themselves in immoral sex, drugs, and alcohol. Many families have been destroyed and many children victimized by the casual dalliances of their parents. No Falun Gong practitioners would give themselves to such wildness or indulgence. Falun Gong is truly the only pure land in the world nowadays.

I hope people will reconsider what they have learned about Falun Gong from the vile Chinese Communist regime and see for themselves. Why have so many practitioners remained constant in their faith of Falun Gong, even when they are persecuted with a brutality that is unprecedented in human history? Falun Dafa represents the truth of the universe and the true meaning of life. Out of your conscience, please trust the universal value of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and its supremacy.

3. My Father Refrains from Quarreling

After I began to understand things, I noticed my father's irritable temper. He would unleash it whenever he was in a bad mood, which he became accustomed to over time. He would blame others before he talked with them. Even during normal discussions, he tended to blurt out his irrational arguments. He was so stirred up that his face turned red.

My mother began practicing Falun Gong in 1999. Many diseases, including cerebral thrombosis, were gone only two days after she began the practice. My father saw her miraculous recovery firsthand so he believed in Falun Gong very much. In 2005, he was diagnosed with hypertension and there was a big tumor found on one of his legs. To heal himself, he began to practice Falun Gong.

The first thing he did after practicing Falun Gong was abstain from alcohol. Then his bad temper was gone and he became gentle and polite. There is a saying, “You can change the look of a country, but you cannot change the characteristics of a man” or “a leopard can never change its spots.” But he sincerely changed himself for good and his life was completely renewed.

One year, my village was hit by a severe drought and the crops almost died. My fellow villagers tried to pump water from the wells but all the pumps failed to work because the wells had dried out. The people even found it difficult to collect enough water to survive. Fortunately, the wells belonging to my father and some other villagers still had water, so many neighbors came to my home to get water. As a result, he was further convinced of being blessed by divine beings due to practicing Falun Gong.

My mother told me that, prior to practicing Falun Gong, he would always quarrel with other villagers in competing for irrigation water during the early spring season. One day after he had begun to practice Falun Gong, a neighbor reminded him, “Big brother, irrigate your crops now! The water is running out.” He said, “If I irrigate my crops, the others may not get to irrigate theirs, right?” Before that, he would have lashed out at his fellow villagers without the need of a reminder.

During that year, the villagers competed for irrigation water. They waited all day and all night for their turn to irrigate their crops. My father did not join in the competition, saying “I will go after all the others have irrigated theirs.” Several days later, after all the villagers had irrigated their crops, a villager in charge of the water deployment informed him that he could get his water now. But my parents demurred, saying that it was already too late in the evening, that they would do it the next morning. But Heaven blessed them during the night when rain poured onto the soil so there was no need for the irrigation. My parents considered the good of others before themselves, but finally they were the ones that benefited the most.

Because of drought, our corn grew poorly. The stalks were very thin and less than one meter high. The experienced farmers knew that corn with slim and short stalks do not yield good ears. But during the harvest season, the kernels on our corn were big and plump. We had the top harvest in the village. The farmers thought it was strange, but they knew that my parents were blessed by Heaven for practicing Falun Gong. Now most of my fellow villagers have endorsed Falun Gong and withdrawn from the CCP and its affiliated organizations. They even spread truth clarification materials about Falun Gong among themselves.

Although already 69 years old, being a practitioner, my father was very healthy and energetic. He could do the farm work more efficiently than the younger people. When he finished his work, he went to help others with the same diligence as if he were working for himself.

My parents manage a farm product for wholesale. During the market season, they packed the product in paper cases that weighed 10 or 15 kilograms and transported them to the city for sale. Some companies and customers who bought their products praised them for the superior quality, “We have never bought such good fruit before. All the fruit in the case is superior in quality and they weigh exactly as stated on the label, no more and no less. We have bought the same item from the free market. The fruit was good on the top but rotten underneath.” One person asked, “Grandpa, why is your fruit in all the cases equally good in quality? They are all very satisfactory.” He replied with a warm smile, “I do not want to cheat anyone.” I added on the side, “My father is a Falun Gong practitioner.” The man understood what I meant and smiled, “Oh, then I understand.” In a low voice, he said to me, “All Falun Gong practitioners have a good heart like your father.”

He is right. Falun Gong practitioners value honesty, benevolence, tolerance, and generosity, which makes them people of good quality. Nowadays, no matter where in China, all the supervisors who understand the facts about Falun Gong are willing to hire people who practice Falun Gong. I hope that, out of your good nature, you will not let go of the precious chances to learn about the facts of Falun Gong. Read the truth clarification materials, because they bear the message of saving people. They will help you through catastrophes and bring you true peace.

From the Call for Submissions to Commemorate the Twentieth Anniversary of Falun Dafa’s Introduction