(Clearwisdom.net)
I met with an acquaintance of mine last Saturday afternoon as I was leaving the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular. I asked her what she thought about the show, and she answered with a smile, "Very good!" Then she pointed toward the crowd of people leaving the show and said in a surprised voice, "Wow! So many people came here to watch the show!" For me, getting these people here to watch the show was a very good process of cultivation.
When I first began to promote the tickets for the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular, I felt a little bit reluctant in my heart, and I had no idea how to do it. I thought that promoting the tickets for the show had nothing to do with my own agenda, which was to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to government agencies. Besides, why couldn't the New Tang Dynasty TV staff sell the tickets by themselves? Another thing that blocked me was that I regarded myself as having no ability to sell things. I had never tried to sell one single ticket, so how could I sell tickets to a large number of people? My whole mind was occupied by one word--"I."
Later on, after I realized the importance of the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular, my mental obstacles were broken through. But how should I go about selling tickets? I asked my boss for a few days off. Another practitioner and I spent three days promoting tickets to specific groups of people, but we failed to get good results. I even tried visiting many luxury apartments, and all I could do was leave some flyers advertising the show. I tried many other methods, yet they all seemed to have no obvious effects. Things went on like this for a month, and I never sold even one single ticket, while several fellow practitioners had sold many tickets for groups of people.
Soon after that, the Toronto elections were upon us. I wanted to seize this opportunity to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to our candidates. Yet, tickets-sales for the 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular couldn't be interfered with, so what should I do to balance well the relationship between clarifying the truth and selling tickets for the show? Then I wondered: "Why shouldn't I combine these two different truth-clarification forms? That is, I should do both of them." When I realized this point, I suddenly sold two tickets to a candidate. I was so glad. Later on, two elderly fellow practitioners and I went to the local Chinese communities to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to candidates of Chinese origin and thus build good relationships with them. As a result, some relatives and good friends of one of the candidates from the Chinese community brought 94 tickets from me at once.
Preliminary period for ticket sales for the Spectacular shows in Toronto was off to a slow start, and this made everyone who was participating very anxious. Many fellow practitioners from other truth-clarification programs contributed their own wisdom and great efforts to help us out, and this moved us inside as well. At the same time, we also felt very ashamed about not doing so well and decided to try our best to do better. All of us shared experiences and understandings together and encouraged each other with a strong belief that we definitely could make it. Later on we found some effective ways to promote the tickets. Some of us went out to contact different businesses, some of us worked on the details of ticket-selling, some practitioners danced in the show costumes after they were off from their night shifts, and someone even came from a far away city on weekends to help us. He slept in his car even though the nights were cold.
I volunteered to be a coordinator for the sold tickets. At that time, I was working with two other colleagues in my company to do my job, but one of them was resigning, while the other was leaving for vacation, so I had to do the work of three people while I was busy coordinating ticket-selling. My cellphone rang constantly for days. Moreover, we didn't have sufficient resources of manpower, drivers, delivery vehicles, or instruments, especially instruments. Sometimes there were four showcases at four different locations in one day, and we didn't have enough instruments to do them all. I had to coordinate from morning to night and make decisions about how to allocate and move devices and people from here to there. Sometimes I laughingly joked that I was going to feel dizzy if I heard my cellphone ring again.
As a result of all our arduous and great efforts, many of the tickets were sold out before Christmas, but there were still about 2,000 tickets left. I worried about the situation again, since people tend to buy less after Christmas. How should we sell the remaining tickets? After experience sharing with fellow practitioners, I realized that this was my human notion, and I shouldn't have this negative thought at all. Instead, I should think that there will be opportunities for selling tickets in every following new day.
There were still about 1,200 tickets left 10 days before the shows began. Some practitioners encouraged all of us to buy the tickets for ourselves to "fill the seats." Was this thought right? We gathered together and shared our understandings toward this thought and realized that we shouldn't have this kind of thought at all. With the current of Fa-rectification moving quickly and powerfully forward, with our various ticket-promotion methods, with the great efforts and strong righteous thoughts from all of our fellow practitioners, we definitely would sell all the tickets!
We remained calm and did what we should do every day. When there were only eight days left before the shows began, surprisingly, the climate shifted into a ticket-buying frenzy. Tickets were selling like hotcakes. Even Ticketmaster, where ticket sales were normally not good, sold more than 100 high priced tickets. There were tickets that needed to be exchanged and coordinated among every ticket venue, store, and promotion and reception office inside businesses. Without even asking the chief coordinator for tickets, I knew there were not many left. When a Chinese man came with a Westerner to the promotion site at a business to buy tickets, a practitioner told them regretfully that there were no tickets left and reminded them to buy tickets early for next year. He asked, "Can I order the ticket right now for next year?"
When my colleague came back from vacation a week before the show, I was in a hurry to ask my boss for leave in order to participate in the final ticket promotion. Just as I was about to leave for vacation, my boss suddenly called me and told me that I had been promoted to be an advanced systems analyst. I was very happy. Thank you, Master, from my heart for this encouragement.
Ticket promotion in Toronto this year has already come to a successful end. My deepest cultivation experience during this process is that the more difficult the task is, the firmer we should believe in Teacher and believe in the Fa.
January 27, 2007