New Jersey -- Alen Adler

My name is Alan and I am a practitioner from New Jersey. Before becoming a practitioner, I spent almost thirty years searching for the truth. Looking for answers in a combination of recreational drugs and eastern metaphysics, I tried almost every conceivable method for the first 10 years. When I read Master Li says to stick with one cultivation way I was relieved. I had tried so many ways and never gotten out of elementary school.

I practiced and played Tai Chi for over twenty years. Although the goal was not lofty, simply peace of mind, I was unable to attain it. Although I was able to be peaceful and content at the class I was unable to carry it over to my daily life. I behaved like a different person when I left the Tai Chi class, competing for fame and interest, not realizing, at the time, how this hindered my progress in Tai Chi and in life. This twenty year experience helped give me some insight into Master Li’s words about upgrading our Xingxing and the necessity of having no duality between our cultivation practice and our daily life.

Having found little peace of mind I settled into a suburban American lifestyle. I moved to New Jersey in 1993 bought a house and resigned myself to growing old with all the trappings of success and yet no real happiness. My mind was always blindly on my work and making money and a future for my family. I felt bitter and tired. My mind was not balanced, and I could not eat or sleep well, feeling disappointed.

To relieve this very empty feeling and anxiety I began seeing a psychiatrist three times a week. The doctor had prescribed for me medicine to make me feel better. It relieved the symptoms but I was uncomfortable. There had to be something wrong with having to take medication just to relieve the depression from everyday life. I was also seeing a cardiologist because my cholesterol level hovered around 350, a very dangerous level, especially for someone with a family history of heart disease. He also prescribed medicine for me. I would visit the gym almost every day an run. I was dependent on drugs, alcohol and prescription medicine to get through my daily life. And although it worked it didn’t work that well.

I did not think that the above precluded me from still searching for the answers in eastern ways so whenever a famous Qigong master came to the States I would pack my bag, and along with a friend, a man who was in his nineties and taught Tai Chi for forty years, went off to find the answers. It did not matter what city, or what time.

I always felt good about my experience after attending the Qigong workshops, however any benefits were very temporary. These experiences have made it very easy for me to relate to the passages in Zhuan Falun about sham qigong, bigu and to the practitioners of these qigong who have no Dafa to follow.

When my friend phoned me to tell me in March of 1997 that yet another famous Qigong master was in town, I decide enough was enough. I was going to give Western medicine and Western ways a chance and another Qigong master was very low on my list of priorities. This appears to have been a mistake.

My friend continued to practice and one day that summer I joined him in Manhattan and learned the exercises. It was at that time, I discovered that there was a place to practice Qigong in New Jersey and only about 15 minutes from my home. Coming form Manhattan, New Jersey seemed like a barren wasteland of spirituality. What did I have to loose? It was convenient and I needed something to get me through my daily life. Maybe this could help.

I went to the practice site every Saturday and Sunday. I continued to attend these classes throughout the fall. I do remember it got cold. New people always came and went. The group was always very small. After practicing the first four exercises we would sit huddled in the cold, crossing our legs in pain. I wasn’t too thrilled with the fifth exercise. Pain was not really what I had in mind. At that time, I thought maybe I could get enlightenment, or partial enlightenment, from just the first four exercises.

Then the Fudao Yuan would want to sit in the cold and read a book. I thought perhaps she just didn’t get it. After all I had a whole library full of martial Arts and Qigong books, that had helped very little. After all, Qigong was not reading books.

The practice moved indoors and we read after the exercises and I began to read and began to understand. I am not a good reader and am easily distracted but slowly but surely I began to enjoy the book and the time after the practice when we would read from the book and the discussion afterwards. I still had no idea of the power of this book or the impact it would have on my life. But, interestingly, the more I read the book, Zhuan Falun, the more often I would come to the practice site to read again. I found reading with the group out loud very beneficial. The more I read the better I felt and the more faith I had in the book.

There was a dearth of English speaking people in my area and I was asked to help voice over a tape of a nine-day lecture. I accepted the request and it was in this way that I got to see the nine-day lecture. When an opportunity came in March of 1998 to see master Li in NYC I made sure to be there. I was in awe of the master that day in the Javits Center and could not wait to come back the next day.

As I left the Javits Center my cell phone was ringing. It seems my sister in law was in a near fatal car crash that evening directly after Master Li’s lectures. I spent the entire night and the following day at the hospital. I couldn’t help but go see master Li in Flushing Sunday evening. My level must have been very low and even with veteran practitioners intimating that these events were somehow arranged I could still not understand what was going on. A life was in the balance, the master was talking about sentimentality, attachment, karma, pain and suffering. And I knew I had a seminar to attend while all the people close to me in my life were worrying and crying. My normal nature is to be fatalistic and unattached but this event and the life and death atmosphere that surrounded it seemed very surreal.

The days thereafter my life appeared to be in total turmoil. The telephone kept ringing, decisions had to be made, people had to be taken care of. To an aware practitioner, it would have been a good time to take a step back and reevaluate but I was not so aware. I was advised to keep reading the book. I did the best I could but, although I did not understand it at the time, I was having severe interference which made the reading of the book and practicing of the exercises too difficult for me to do on a regular basis.

With the encouragement of the assistants in my group, along with the power of the Fa I finally prevailed, and with it came a slightly better understanding of the Fa. Afterwards I realized it had been a big tribulation and although I did not do too well, I did get by and with it came a new stronger resolve.

It became clear to me what to do. I said goodbye to my psychiatrist and his medication, goodbye to my cardiologist and his medication, and wholeheartedly embraced Falun Dafa. It is at this time I feel I really became a cultivator, not yet necessarily a good cultivator but a cultivator nonetheless, and I have not looked back since.

Now, I scrape myself out of bed before dawn in the mornings to be at the practice site, read the book and work on upgrading my Xingxing. It is still not enough, but from where I was, if is a beginning that I could not have imagined this time a year ago. The group continued to practice outdoors in the Fall and Winter. I have never liked the cold and when I had to practice I didn’t know how I was going to make it. Well, it made it through the Fall and the entire Winter and I now look forward to going to the park in the very cold weather.

Getting into the lotus position was very tough for me and keeping my heart quiet continues to be a battle. The tape has gone from one half of an hour to one hour. When in the lotus position and the pain comes I remember two of Masters sayings regarding Ren. "The endurance of hardships is the boat across the boundless see of the Great Law". & "Ren is the key to improve one’s Xinxing. To endure with detestation, grievances or tears is the Ren of the ordinary person who is attached to his misgiving. To bear without detestation or grievances at all is the Ren of a cultivator". I hear the words and slowly unclench my jaw and try to enjoy. I have found great comfort during my cultivation in Master Li’s words and it has made this journey easier for me. I am eternally grateful to Master Li.

I am not satisfied with my rate of progress, but neither am I blind to its existence. I find myself chasing the realistic and tangible interests within my reach only to be brought back to the true reality of the Fa. The decision whether to follow the Fa or the attachments of man was an easy one for me. The practical application of this decision has been another matter.

I have noticed a very subtle change in myself and my wants and desires as well as a very real change in how I spend the time in my daily life. I have always committed a lot of time to my wife, my three children and to my business. I didn’t realize how very much time I wasted on frivolous things like television and novels. Now I have used this spare time to study the Fa. I am trying to spend less time with my business and as unpleasant as I found much of my business in the past it appears to be a very fertile environment for upgrading my Xinxing. It is at work that I have found it most challenging and necessary to change my fundamental way of thinking and acting so as to be a good cultivator and do a good job simultaneously. I do find my time at work and with the family more rewording than in the past and both environments prefer me as a cultivator to the ordinary person of the past. When I first started practicing my wife became unhappy with my practice but as she watched my transformation she became an advocate of Falun Dafa, at least for me.

I miss none of my old "free time", and I continue to carve out time from my daily life to devote to my practice. It seems by constantly practicing and reading the book the Fa has infiltrated and permeated my entire being, or beings, and if I do not get in the way of the Fa, the power of the Fa will carry me to a very beautiful place that at present I cannot visualize.

Probably because of the way I was brought up and my strong desire for personal interest I see nothing. Whether in the waking state or the dream state – no Faluns, no Fashens, nothing. I see nothing with my third eye and trust nothing I see with my other two eyes. I do not care. I have started a journey and have found that at the beginning of my journey my biggest obstacle is myself. I will make it though, through persistent practice and special attention to my Xinxing.

I am very grateful for what I have received from Falun Dafa and if this were the highest level that I reach in my cultivation, and I am sure it is not I find it the most worthwhile endeavor in my life. If for no other reason than it has made me a better person and given me a righteous path to follow and a way to make sense of the circumstances that surround me, and a more civilized way to react to them. More civilized than in the past when I would usually, with my ordinary mentality, react with hurt or frustration, or more likely, anger.

Lao Tse said "A journey of one thousand miles starts with the first step." I don’t know how long the journey is but I have take my first step. I will keep practicing more diligently until I reach the perfection in my cultivation.