I'm Li Guanglian, 38 years old, primary school teacher in Yishui County, Shandong Province. I gave up Falun Gong six years ago, as for the miserable experience of practicing Falun Gong; I don't want to recall it all these years. Finding so many practitioners without any knowledge about the truth and sticking to the old road I was on in the past, however, I feel uneasy and decide not to sit there doing nothing at all. With the help of Kaiwind.com, I want to tell those still being obsessed by Falun Gong the lessons I had learned and the stories on how Falun Gong cult ruined my family so as to give a warning to all practitioners.
Before I started to practice Falun Gong, I used to have a happy family. Both my husband and I had a good job. Although the family income was not very high, yet we lived a happy life, with a hardworking and caring husband and a lovely daughter, my family was in harmony, joy, and happiness.
Accordingly, after I gave birth to my daughter, I felt so carefree and started to gain weight.
But, everything changed gradually after I started to practice Falun Gong, and I destroyed my family due to being obsessed with the cult.
Back in 1998, since I'd always wanted to be beautiful, I tried all means to lose weight, but the results were unsatisfactory. Just at that time, one of my neighbors told me: "To practice Falun Gong can not only help you to lose weight, but also make you more beautiful and young forever." So I decided to give it a try and started to learn the exercises of Falun Gong from several fellow practitioners. According to the rules of Falun Gong, I got up early in the morning and stayed up late in the evening to practice for two hours everyday. Several months later, I really lost some weight. Then my fellow practitioners told me that if I wanted to keep it that way, I'd got to read Zhuan Falun by Master Li. So I started to "study Fa" besides doing exercises.
I read Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi and it said: "After our Falun Dafa students cultivate a while the way they look changes a lot. Their skin becomes delicate and fair, it glows with health, which is all common. You truly do a dual practice of nature and longevity you'll naturally get that, and I can guarantee you won't need to do facials." I wanted to be more beautiful and kept that way, so I started to grow admiration toward Li Hongzhi, for I believed that Falun Gong he founded was just amazing. Gradually, I lost the normal thinking pattern as an ordinary human being; as an intellectual, I didn't know that my losing weight was actually the result of physical exercises. Anyway, I started to believe in Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong against all logical thinking.
Before I realized it, I've read most books of Li Hongzhi, Zhuan Falun, Explaining the Content of Falun Dafa, Falun Buddhism on Reaching Consummation, and Fa Teaching in Singapore, etc., finding that some of its theories including "Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance," "not to participate in political affairs," "to look inward for the cause within when things happen" match with my own principles and life philosophy. I believed that to practice Falun Gong could not only make me more beautiful but also improve my character, and it was worth doing. From then on, I started to give top priority to the practicing of Falun Gong in my life, spending all my spare time in Fa study and in practicing. As a result, I didn't treat my students so seriously as I had been before, I was no longer be so patient with my girl. At the sight of a toddler crying for mother, I would feel so uneasy and vexed.
At the same time, I gradually felt that I was not in line with the environment of "ordinary people." Whenever I saw my colleagues worked actively and hard, I would discard them for "being involved in vanity fair" and for being so vulgar. As for my husband, all he did was working, taking care of daughter, doing household chores, so I felt he was so pathetic for being an "ordinary man." For Li Hongzhi once said that: "The human beings are those fall downwards from the universe, while the Earth is but the garbage dump … the entire process of cultivation is to continuously get rid of the attachments of human beings." Later on, my family that used to be so warm to me gradually became an obstacle on my way of cultivation. One day, my daughter had a hyperpyrexia, in order to practice as usual, I did nothing but to give her some medicine for adults. Two days later when my husband went back, our daughter became dazed. My husband was so angry that he criticized me: "The kid is so ill and how can you still study Fa and practice it, are you the mother of this girl?" At these words, I argued confidently: "A practitioner will benefit the entire family, our girl will be just fine!" Ever since, our quarrels have never stopped and my husband proposed divorce several times out of anger.
Then the government announced that Falun Gong was banned as a cult, and at that time, with the regulation of the law and the attitude of my families, I should have wakened up. But I didn't see through the nature and danger of Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong, holding that the order of banning was unfair to both Master Li and Falun Gong. I thought to myself: how could it be wrong to "improve one's health" and to "be a better person"? As a result, I was on the illegal road and committed crimes. Being encouraged by the lies of Li Hongzhi that "those practicing at home will get evil enlightenment," while "those stepping out of the home are great," I had been to Beijing for three times leaving my 2-year-old daughter at home.
Due to my performance, I was appointed as the Falun Gong counselor in my county. But it was a dilemma for me with the disciplinary restriction of my school and the emotional attachment to my family. After several days of hesitation, I went back to work at school. Taking into consideration of the fact that my daughter was still very young, the school leaders let me submit a written promise on not practicing Falun Gong anymore in future. But I didn't change my mind to return the kindness of school leaders; on the contrary, I started to work for Falun Gong in secret.
Since then, when it was getting dark, I would go out to distribute Falun Gong materials and communicate with other fellow practitioners in the name of taking the kid out to play around. I did all these very carefully, but still, my husband found about the truth. In order to stop me, he sent the kid to his parents while he managed to go back home early everyday to keep me company. Being house arrested, I had another plan of doing all these at work. Finally, the school was going to send me to the Study Group, at the hearing of which, I ran away from home on that very night and started my four-year journey of being a professional Falun Gong practitioner.
In order to gain "Consummation" advocated by Falun Gong, I really did what Li Hongzhi taught us to do, "to bear what no ordinary human being can bear." But in real life, what I really got is injuries and hurts instead of so-called "Consummation."
When I was on the run, the only support I got was from the fellow practitioners, and I was no longer a respectable teacher in both appearances and behaviors. Although I always comforted myself: "I'm the sacred Dafa disciple," yet the real life full of hardships of living in the open had turned me into a beggar. When life was hard, I couldn't stop missing my girl. In order to have a look at her, I sneaked back home at night several times, taking a look at her outside the window of her bedroom. One day at the end of 2000, the only I wanted to do was to give her a hug and so I opened the door and stole away the girl still soundly asleep. With her around, I started to know what the word "hardship" really meant. Back then, she had fresh fruits everyday at home; but during two months with me, I could hardly get enough food for her. I remember it clearly till now that she once took quiet a while eating half an apple picked up from garbage can and really enjoyed it very much, I felt so painful at the sight: my child, a princess loved by all in a family, now became a little beggar because of my practicing Falun Gong! I used to double on what benefits Falun Gong really brought to me. But then I recalled what Li Hongzhi said: "Gong cultivation has a way, the heart is the path, Dafa has no bounds, hardship serves as the ferry." So I didn't give it up. In a cold winter, I couldn't afford a hotel room and had to take my daughter to a pile of corn stalk at night. Both of us were frozen. If it were not a kind old man who managed to warm us up, it's probable that we would end up like Liu Chunling and her daughter, reaching "Consummation" in the paradise created by Li Hongzhi. But this didn't make me change my mind either
I stole my baby, which was the last straw breaking the back of my exhausted husband. At the news that he fell ill, I felt a little uneasy and went back home at midnight with our daughter. At the sight of us, my weak husband knelt down in front of me, begging me to give up Falun Gong. But at the thought of the teachings by Li Hongzhi that "you won't cultivate if you don't give up emotions … to give up fame, interest, and emotion is the only way to reach Consummation and to go up to heaven," I told my husband resolutely: "I'd rather lose everything than giving up Falun Gong."
Being homeless and wandering from place to place, home became nothing for me, especially being controlled by the spirit advocated by Li Hongzhi, I believed that: "Who are your real relatives? Nobody when you close your eyes … How many parents have you had in so many lives? No one is able to count them." Just like that, I have been full-time practitioners for three years. At that time, I heard that, in order to take care of our young daughter, my husband had to take the responsibilities as both a mother and a father. Besides, he had to work to support the family and his weight reduced quickly from 90kg to 65kg. As a wife, I didn't feel guilty for that but complacent for being able to "pass the test of emotions." I even showed it off to others: "When I finally make it, my husband must be the one benefiting the most from it." Just like that, I deserted, dragged, and hurt my husband, who had to bear all the pressures. He was exhausted and couldn't stand the torture brought by me, an obsessed Falun Gong practitioner. Finally, on the third year I got away from home, he made up his mind to give me up, to give up the wife that he used to love so much. So that's the benefit Li Hongzhi promised to his loyal followers, a broken marriage and a broken family.
Many others "benefited" from my cultivation too, especially my parents and parents-in-law, among which the one "benefiting" the most is my mother, who missed her only daughter so much that she had an acute cerebral haemorrhage and been bed-ridden ever since, being this close to death at one time.
Such an experience of cultivation that I find unbearable to recall! Going through all these, I conclude that what's behind the propagation of "one practitioner benefiting the entire family" advocated by Li Hongzhi is actually the real scenes of frightened and tortured families and even a broken marriage, a broken family.
Thank the Communist Party and the government for not giving me up so that I had a chance to start all over again and to have a new family. But I have paid such a big price for the happy life today. Look what I have got in return for what I have sacrificed so much! Brothers and sisters, if you are still obsessed with Falun Gong, wake up right now! What Li Hongzhi said that "one practitioner will benefit the entire family" is a poisonous sword; don't let it hurt our relatives again!
(Kaiwind.com, February 5, 2008)
