Edward W.

Greetings revered Master!
Greetings fellow practitioners!

I obtained Falun Dafa while studying in a U.S. university in March 1999. For the 18 years since then, I had experienced body cleansing, higher moral standard, and evolved from personal cultivation at the beginning to a Fa-Rectification period disciple and assisting Master in saving sentient beings. However, it has not been a smooth path at all.

Master had enlightened me many times in dreams at the beginning. Once in a dream, I saw Master’s Law Body came to my apartment. I hurried to fetch a cup of hot water for Master. But the cup was small and hot water spilled. Later when I shared the dream with fellow practitioners, they told me that the volume of my heart was too small. It was time for me to increase the volume. They also told me to study the Fa more and improve Xinxing.

In another dream, I saw myself as a student to a Taoist master living in a beautiful and spacious place. I was saying goodbye to the Taoist master and then I jumped off from the edge of the cave high up on a cliff. I flew down the valley and entered a small village where I could see houses and narrow streets vividly but my view was limited to a narrow angle.

In other dreams, Master showed me that the practitioners around me had relations with me in previous lives. One had saved my life and one had promised to marry me in this life.
Then, in many years, I felt lost. I didn’t see any new meaning while studying the Fa. I participated in several Dafa projects but they gradually turned into numb repetitions without Xinxing improvement. Every year before the Fahui, I found nothing of my cultivation worth to be written down.

I was troubled to find a way to improve. When I read Minghui website, sharing from diligent practitioners was like a mirror that showed my slackness. Some articles shared their experiences of letting go of attachments of this or that. However, I could always find some excuses for myself, such as, I don’t have this attachment or I don’t have this problem. During the experience sharing conferences on the east or west coast, I was often moved to tears by fellow practitioners’ sharing and vowed to be diligent again. But the commitment faded after returning home.

This changed when we started to host Shen Yun shows. During the promotions, many human notions and attachments were recognized and they were gradually eliminated. Please be noted that the following stories don’t follow any timeline and some of the understandings came only when I was writing and revising this sharing.

Letting go the attachment of fame and self-interest

When Shen Yun show started in New York City in 2006, I refused the proposal to host shows in our city. I was afraid of not being able to sell the tickets and also afraid that the busy promotion work would further stress my already busy life. So I found many excuses to shoot down the idea, such as our city has a low average household income; we had a small middle-class population; or Shen Yun is so important that we must have a fair certainty to sell a full-house before we invite Shen Yun to our city.

It took a few years until I was outnumbered in a vote to host one Shen Yun show. Since then, we have been hosting Shen Yun shows for 8 years. And these 8 years had plenty of opportunities to expose my human notions.

It was quite smooth for the first year. A practitioner from another state came to our city to help with our promotions. We contacted local media, downloaded advertisement templates and added local show information. We started from scratch with no experience. Because we were moderately successful, I developed an attachment of excitement.

But the second year became much harder. We doubled our efforts with the promotion channels we used in the first year but the outcome was not good. Seeing the difficulties, I switched from excitement to fear. The third year proved to be even harder.

When we started to prepare for the 3rd year’s promotion, I said that I personally didn’t support to host the show again. However, I didn’t forget I was a practitioner and Shen Yun was a project led by Master himself. So I added that if the majority decided to host the show, I would participate and do my best.

Looking back, I realize that both excitement and fear originated from the attachment to fame. I would feel pride when we promoted the show successfully and felt ashamed otherwise. It took many years to expose this attachment and let it go. The reason to host Shen Yun was not for pride or to prove we were capable. The reason is simple. We are assisting Master to save sentient beings. So all human notions of pride, fame or fear shall be let go.

Improving the skill of selling tickets

Several female practitioners had come to our city to help with ticket sales. When they attended the booth inside the shopping malls, they could sell more tickets than me and other local practitioners. I had been at the same ticket booth but could sell very few tickets.

I told with fellow practitioners that selling tickets was a job for female practitioners only, so they should not assign me to attend the booth. Later I heard a couple in New York could sell more than 100 tickets a day at a shopping center. It directly refuted my assertion.

Why the ticket selling performance can vary so much? Then the local coordinator began to require those who would sell tickets to prepare and pass a test first. To pass the test, I began to memorize the paragraphs introducing Shen Yun. Then I found it was very helpful. Now when a potential customer stopped in front of me, I could introduce Shen Yun naturally with many details such as the dance, music, costumes and the animated backdrop.

After a while, through repeated reciting of these paragraphs, I could freely start from any point following the scene in promotion video and I also began to make sales. My fluent introduction may contributed a little to the ticket sales. But the major factor is attributable to the videos and other advertisements that had improved in years. It is the overall promotion became more effective.

I noticed that Shen Yun photo book was also a good promotion tool. If a customer had the interest, I’d let them browse the photo book. The beautiful photos will ignite more desire to watch the show in theater.

Now I have so many materials to introduce Shen Yun, I no longer fear to face the customers. Though it might still be a tiresome day to stand in the mall and keep smiling for hours, I was happy to participate in a project to assist Master in saving more sentient beings.

When opportunity appeared and time allowed, I had been to another city to help with their ticket sales. It was always happy to promote Shen Yun and meet customers.

Letting Go of Laziness

We had the same problem that traditional media became less effective in promoting Shen Yun. The local coordinator wanted to add online promotion channels. She bought books and told me and some practitioners to study and test with it. However, I was lazy because I could sell tickets directly to customers and I was busy. So I let the books collect dust in a corner.

The coordinator also purchased audio books about closing deals and making sales, and wanted the practitioners who were directly selling tickets to learn the techniques. I didn’t listen at first. After the coordinator asked us a few times, I was embarrassed. So I asked myself why it was so difficult to learn these skills. I worked in a company. When the company implemented a new technology, I always learn the new technology.

It was the attachment of laziness. In a private company, if you don’t learn new technology, your job can be gone. So I was forced to learn to keep the job. I recognized it was laziness. I determined to use my righteous thoughts to overcome it. I forced myself to read the books and listen to the audio books. Actually, they were very helpful. Online promotion channel was later handled by a more experienced practitioner in another state, but the sales techniques helped the in-person sales.

One thing I learned from those proven successful sales techniques was that body language counts 70% of the information when you talk to a customer. The sentences you say only convey about 30% of the total information.

Another point is to thoroughly understand the product you are selling, including its benefits and value to the buyer. Applying the theory to our business, we are selling Shen Yun show tickets. Shen Yun can purify audience’s mind and body. They are blessed. We are selling a very beneficial and highly valuable product to them at a very small cost. They receive much more value than they pay for.

I became aware of my body language while introducing Shen Yun. If a customer showed some interest, I invited them to stand in front of the TV to watch the video. You gave them a polite, confident and clear instruction to come close, they mostly obeyed. Then I started to introduce Shen Yun dancing, music, animated backdrop and costumes along with the switching scenes.
A personal understanding is that the customer could feel that Shen Yun is a world premier show when my face and body language showed genuine excitement. I would rather speak slower, concise and more affirmative.

Of course, a successful presentation is based on memorizing the content. An ordinary people would prepare and practice before an important presentation. We certainly shall do the same or more before presenting Shen Yun to a customer.

Learning Chinese Traditional Culture and Eliminating Communist Party-Culture
Promoting Shen Yun also gave me a chance to learn Chinese traditional culture. I grew up in mainland China and had learned a lot of Communist party culture instead of traditional culture. I held negative viewpoints toward some historical figures because of what the Communist Party taught us in textbooks.

To learn traditional culture and Chinese history, I watched 2 history video programs by Professor Zhang Tian-Liang. One was about kingdoms of East Zhou Dynasty and the other was about Qing and Han Dynasties. They taught me a lot of history, geographic knowledge and correct viewpoints to historic events and figures. Because of the dancing clips in Shen Yun promotion video, I also looked up stories about The Three Kingdoms, the Red Cliff and Zhuge Liang. I also learned the years and stories about Qing Dynasty. To help western customers understand, I learned some European history and tried to find a well-known event in Europe at a similar time. These stories enabled me to engage customers and make the introduction more interesting.

I saw another place that I could improve. One practitioner of our city knows a lot about music and dance. She can play the piano, a Chinese music instrument called Gu-Qin and she also writes good Chinese calligraphy. When she talked to a customer, she could talk a lot about the uniqueness of Shen Yun music and the trainings and the fundamentals of classical Chinese dance. Many customers liked it and also developed a trust to her, who possessed the professional knowledge.

So I taught myself the content of traditional Chinese music, the resemblance between five tunes and five elements of the universe and five important human organs. There is also a relation between Chinese characters music and medicine. If a customer likes music or is a musician, we can talk about music, including the traditional Chinese music, the eastern music instruments, the healing effect, and so on.

Equipped with these knowledge and stories, I could engage more customers. Some people rarely went to a theater or listen to a symphony. But they saw a lot of Shen Yun advertisement and were curious what it was. So I told them stories. When the video showed Zhuge Liang, I told them the story of borrowing arrows from the enemy with straw men on boats. In other show clips, I told them stories about Monkey King, Emperor Kang Xi of the Qing Dynasty. The ancient wisdom intrigued the customers and some of them bought the tickets.

We had been selling tickets in a shopping club for many weeks. The general manager of the club purchased 3 tickets. Many customers purchased tickets from many practitioners attending the booth there. A few weeks later, some of the customers came to our booth and showed me the tickets that they carried in the purse with them. I noticed they truly liked Shen Yun, so I would use a few minutes to tell them a different story. If they came back again, I could tell them a new story. I believe these stories can let them learn some Chinese culture and may also help them to understand the show better. At the same time, I encouraged them to invite friends and families to the show.

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The process of writing a sharing article is also a good opportunity to improve my cultivation practice. There had been many things in the past years and a lot of attachments and human notions had been exposed. Today, writing down and revising the sharing article let me have a second chance to re-evaluate the matter and see a clearer direction for future advancement.
I am truly grateful that benevolent Master created Shen Yun to tour 5 continents. It gives practitioners outside of China an opportunity to save sentient beings.

The above are my personal understandings. Please correct me where it didn’t conform to Master’s teachings.

Thank you Master!
Thank you fellow practitioners!