[Falun Dafa] Barbara Gay – Defying CCP’s Intimidation

I had been sick for many years with lupus and I didn't expect to live a long time. I was disabled for about 10 years. It was actually February 6, 2000 and I was at my local library and I had been sick for many years with lupus and I didn't expect to live a long time. I was disabled for about 10 years and so at that time they didn't have a lot of treatments for it and the way that my disease was progressing it looked like, you know, I just wasn't gonna have a long life. So I was kind of frustrated by the fact that I felt like I needed to know why I had even been here and so when I went to my library and saw the flyer with the three characters of Zhen Shan Ren, I knew them. I don't know how to explain it other than that. I just knew them and I so I contacted the people in the flyer and I started practicing and within just a few weeks time, like about three weeks, I started feeling really good and that wasn't what I expected. I I was just so grateful for the philosophy, for the teachings. It made everything seems, it made sense to me and then and then what happened was is I started getting better physically and all of a sudden I realized, wow, I feel better than I have ever felt even before I was sick. I stopped taking all my medication. My husband was worried because he thought he thought the lupus had gone into my central nervous system which can cause dementia and so he made me go to the doctor right away and go see a psychiatrist too and both of them said, you're fine. We don't know why or how but, you know, you're fine and Social Security actually was kind of amazed because no one had ever asked them to like stop getting benefits and so they were pretty shocked that that happened and so they were kind of concerned at first too but once they examined me physically and emotionally and mentally they said, this seems like something good, right? And so that was the beginning of my cultivation in Falun Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition. Falun Gong combines meditation and gentle exercises similar to yoga or Tai Chi with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance or in Chinese, Zhen Shan Ren. Falun Gong practitioners aspire to live by these principles in their daily lives. In traditional Chinese culture, the process of perfecting and refining the mind and body is called cultivation. Our modern language uses the word Qi Gong to describe this. What differentiates Falun Gong from other forms of Qi Gong is its emphasis on one's morality, character and the cultivation of virtue. As we get to show the wonderfulness of Dafa to the Chinese people in the area and I know that, you know, some of them have probably, you know, been influenced negatively by the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda against everything good including Falun Dafa. So it's an opportunity, I think, to really let them know that, yes, there are people all over the world practicing Falun Dafa and it's not what the CCP wants you to believe it is. So to me it's a very significant in that regard. So in my community where I was first practicing, which was Kansas City, there were some CCP members there that I think took it seriously that they, you know, needed to kind of intimidate us. And so over the years, yes, I feel like I have been intimidated, followed, harassed, and had my car vandalized. Do not be intimidated. Stand your ground. Tell more people. Every time that they try to do something, use that as an opportunity. And that's what I've done. When the CCP had some of their events, I went to them sometimes, just because I knew that they knew who I was, and they knew that I was there to talk to some of their people about Falun Dafa, which of course they didn't like. But I felt like it was my responsibility as a Falun Dafa practitioner. I live in a free country. I don't feel like I should bow down to anybody. And I also want to encourage my fellow Chinese Americans to not bow down. These people have no authority here, and they should never be allowed to think that they do. Unfortunately, they have been made to feel that they do because they've influenced some people here. So that makes them emboldened. But we still have to just keep talking, keep telling, keep letting people know everywhere and all the time. Although Congress has adopted multiple resolutions condemning these abuses, the Falun Gong Protection Act, S. 817, if enacted, will mark the first binding US legislation to hold perpetrators accountable. This bill requires the president to impose visa and property blocking sanctions on foreign persons that have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated the involuntary harvesting of organs in China.