After years of practice, I found very advanced Daoist techniques and was diligently practicing, though not entirely in the right way. I sincerely wanted to reach enlightenment, but I did not have a teacher to explain to me all the necessary details. Because of wrong practice, I started to feel weak. Initially, I just thought that I was tired from work and I continued the practices. However, after two or three years of such practices, I became so weak and tired that I couldn’t breathe properly; I sweated easily; I was fatigued and dizzy. This kept getting worse and worse. I would catch colds very easily and, as soon as I caught one, I would cough for three to five months.

Obviously, there was something very wrong, but I didn’t know what changes I should make in my practice. I had the idea that I was struggling for enlightenment, for achieving something good. Now, if I had been womanizing, drinking, cheating or stealing, then I could understand that Heaven would want to somehow ‘punish’ me or teach me a lesson. However, I thought, that I was doing something very noble; I was trying to become enlightened, so everything should then be okay. I simply couldn’t understand why I was getting more and more sick from the meditations and exercises I was doing for a noble cause.