Kay Harmon

Orlando

My name is Kay Harmon and I have practiced Falun Dafa for about four months. I work full time in the parts department of a Pontiac car dealership in central Florida. For the past twenty years I have studied and taught a family style of cultivation from China. My teacher was the last grandmaster of their family's system one with a history and heritage going back possibly 1500 years he shared. When he first introduced it to non-asian practitioners I thought heaven had smiled upon me. After my teacher passed away, I started to teach Tai Chi five nights a week. I enjoyed teaching and helping others with their lives. I imagined myself doing this for the rest of my life and saw success at hand.

I thought I was on top of my life, but it all changed when a student brought a book to my Tai Chi class. He called it Zhuan Falun. The book was a beautiful shade of blue with gold letters. It was only ink and paper then to my mind. As I opened its pages that first time I didn't realize that I was really drawing a sword out of its scabbard. The words were like metal, they cut deep into my life, and it was razor sharp. The words asked me to step away from twenty years of memories, relationships and accomplishments, to let go of the things I loved best. My world spun out of control. How could I accomplish this simply with the master's words required in that book called Zhuan Falun? It was no longer ink and paper, it was my life, my future. I would have to learn to eat bitter and make it taste sweet. That's when I met the assistant and the other practitioners at a Saturday Falun Gong class. I needed to know more about this book and think less about the past.

Slowly, I learned the exercises and set aside time to eventually go to five different exercise sites a week. I realized major changes in my life were about to happen. My fifteen years of teaching and practice of Tai Chi came into question as I thought of the requirements of single cultivation. I decided to quite teaching Tai Chi, feeling a new sense of freedom coming into my life as I read that blue book with gold letters.

Like the Zhuan Falun said, a revolution was taking place in my mind; my thought patterns were changing. The anxiety was dissolving; I believed I could let go of my past. The words lifted me up and above my emotional attachment to Tai Chi. They filled me with joy and the master's promise to all the practitioners of something better. So many challenges were presented to the reader, so many things to change in my life. My thoughts raced in every direction. My mind did eventually start to settle down and a sense of direction came to guide me.

Much faster than the seasons change in Florida, numerous changes came into my life as I read the Dafa. From the first reading of the lectures in New York, I learned of the relationship between karma and sickness and the role medicine can or cannot play in the practitioner's life. The day I read the article I got what I could only describe as the flu. For a while I struggled to allow the karma being pushed out of my body to leave without interference. This was to me a new concept. Many times I picked up and put down the medicine that New Year's eve. A difficult lesson for myself, but a valuable one. I learned to take a small step forward that day.

Other lessons came to me. Small but important experiences filled my week, I believed the master was taking me slowly into Dafa. One day at my job a unique situation occurred. In my warehouse many workers withdraw parts from their original location and never return them, leaving them in the stairs and scattered throughout the aisle. Initially I ignored them, feeling that they left them and they should return them, until I heard a voice in my consciousness. It said, "Even an ordinary person would pick them up and you are a practitioner." It got my attention. I retrieved the parts and placed them in their proper place. The voice followed as I walked, feeling somewhat embraced by my shortcomings. The voice explained that if I could not handle myself in small situations how could I handle bigger things. The weight of the words illuminated my darkness and somehow assured me that they were true. My heart tried to listen. Later that same day a bigger lesson developed. I was required to deliver a package within the dealership to a particular lady in finance department, which I did. Arriving at her workspace, I left the package there but didn't see her. After what I had heard and experienced earlier in the day, I thought it best to locate her to go the extra mile. After all, I was supposed to be a practitioner. When I did find her, she was in a conversation with one of the owners. I politely interrupted them and provided her with the necessary information, ready to return to my job. She exploded on the spot. This lady launched a verbal barrage of anger and displeasure at my actions. I only left a package for her and her conduct seemed to reflect some greater dissatisfaction with me. I remembered those words from earlier that day. This was some thing much bigger, a Xinxing conflict with a department head in front of the owner. I remained calm, how I am not sure, and walked back to retrieve the package. She followed me there and realized the package was something she did need. As I pressed the door to leave she started to apologize for her actions. My head spun around; this Dafa is something. How would I keep up, how would I stay awake?

Its lessons seem to filter in to the most ordinary of daily activities, like my car being repaired. I dislike car repair places and I hate to wait for the repairs to be done. I really dread it. I found my car needing a look at by the mechanic on a Saturday before class. I dropped the car off and the owner of the business told me to get breakfast and relax. I took my Zhuan Falun book and headed off for a morning snack. After breakfast, I didn't see my car had moved from its original spot. I was determined not to get upset so I read and read, and I walked trying to focus my thoughts in better places. My thoughts finally won out and my patience wore down; I would talk to the mechanic and ask why so much delay. I was there early, of course the repairs should have been started. I reached the office, went inside, asked how thing was going and he told me, to my surprise, that my car was done. I didn't even see it go in for repair. Happy could not describe the feeling. I left for class on a cloud.

My eyesight is improving, my allergies have disappeared and I have lost some weight. I realize everything, and I mean everything seems to be a kind of challenge. As I read the book Zhuan Falun I believe it's like a rebirth. Everything is the same, yet everything is different. I am awakening to a new world and words really fall short of explaining it. I see my job that I go to each morning as one big Xinxing factory. Some days opportunity races by me so quickly it makes me dizzy just trying to keep focused and I usually fall short in some area. Other days I can really latch on to an opportunity to raise my Xinxing and ride it to the end feeling good that I learned something or that I changed some how.

Four months later I don't know how I make it this far but I believe I have very small and fine roots in this topsoil of Dafa. I believe the deep rich soil of the master's teachings can nourish me to completion. I have experienced many losses like you all. I am still trying to cultivate in this most complicated environment. I am starting to believe that the losses I now experience will be gains, truly gains to help me return home. When I read the book, it helps me to have no regrets about my past decisions, especially regarding Tai Chi.

This Dafa is more than I wished for and probably more than I deserve. I am happy with myself again and with this new direction in my life. Like an inexperienced sailor, I am learning to explore the deep and profound waters of this message trying to sail back to that original particle. To follow in the footsteps of others is hard. It's quite a journey. We all need help and I

found it here in Orlando. I look forward to meeting you all and learning from you, too. The answers I believe are there, the master has left plenty of help in that blue book that I thought was only ink and paper. How wrong I was. It's like an airline ticket home. His generosity is like a boat to take us across the troubled waters of our own karma. You just have to get in and get wet.

The losses I encountered in my past I treated as losses and suffered them as such. I am sure they played a role in bringing me here. I do know, now that the losses I experience today will most certainly be gains, and I will treasure them and maybe one day share them in paradise.