After reading Master's new article "The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be," I arrived at some understandings that I would like to share with fellow practitioners.

"Going through hardship and suffering is an outstanding opportunity to remove karma, be cleansed of sin, purify the body, elevate your plane of thought, and rise in level--it's an extraordinarily good thing. This is a correct and upright Fa-truth." ("The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be")

I began cultivating a few years before the persecution began. At that time, personal cultivation was the normal cultivation state for practitioners. I have memories of many experiences during that time of suffering various hardships, and even though there were many difficult tests, I would often welcome these tribulations, constantly keeping the thought, "Let joy be found in hardship." ("Tempering the Will" from Hong Yin Version B)

In the early days of the persecution, I basically maintained the above-mentioned state, while doing truth clarification. Gradually though, I did not balance my individual cultivation well with resisting the persecution. This was due to an overemphasis on Fa-rectification work, and an under emphasis on cultivating myself. For example, if a problem arose, I would send righteous thoughts as we should in Fa-rectification, but I would often forget to look inward. I would frequently brush it off as interference and that I had no problems. I believe that it was from this point where I began to not balance suffering hardships and resisting persecution well, and that my despondent state set in.

To look at this situation a little deeper, if you are resisting the persecution, but you forget to cultivate yourself, then the notions and attachments that you should have gotten rid of at that point (as that was an opportunity to get rid of the attachments that came up), would then be further used by the old forces to worsen the persecution. Conducting oneself in this state for an extended period of time, not only do these attachments that should have been eliminated begin to pile up, but also build and grow off of each other, making a very complicated state. Due to these complicated attachments and notions piling up, and that you have not been following correct and upright truths, a state of despondency can easily set in. Master said,

"Of course, most disciples who are in this state are that way because, at the beginning, they didn't realize that they had subtle attachments or were being interfered with by their own notions, and so the evil has exploited this gap and magnified those factors." ("The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be")

Feelings of depression and failure, frustration with the surrounding environment, and muddle-headedness were some of the feelings that arose in me. These feelings can give oneself even more of an impression that it is difficult to do well.

Then how should we resolve these problems? I think we first need to clearly look at the reasons for cultivating, and what cultivation is. What are sufferings, and how should they be treated. Then we need to be able to balance Master's teachings on how one cultivates oneself, and the state one should be in during Fa-rectification. For example, if one sees everything bad that happens as interference and sends righteous thoughts, but forgets to look inward during this time of suffering to find one's attachments and notions, then we're not really achieving the state of a cultivator, and the results will not be great. On the other hand, if we take everything bad that happens as only a chance to improve ourselves, then we will not live up to our roles in Fa-rectification, and we will just be in the state of personal cultivation. I understand that during suffering hardships, while taking the opportunity to eliminate our attachments and notions, we are also clearly looking at the situation from the standpoint of Fa-rectification, and eliminating the interference, clarifying the facts, or taking whatever action is appropriate in any situation to meet the standard of Fa-rectification.

These are just some personal understandings to share with everyone.