Western Practitioner: Some Thoughts on Gaining Right Fruit in Cultivation

I would like to share something that I enlightened to during an upgrade in my cultivation which I feel is relevant to our current stage following Teacher's latest article, "The Closer to the End the More Diligent You Should Be."

I recently re-read Teacher's book Explaining the Content of Falun Dafa, because as an assistant, I felt I was not helping others well and immediately decided to start memorizing Lunyu and to continue on to memorize the lectures, one word at a time if necessary. Memorizing the Fa is completely different than reading the Fa as I found I had gaps where the words disappeared and the paragraphs faded away in my mind. I also found that I did not have a clear understanding of what I was reading, although before I started to memorize "Lunyu," I previously thought I was reading well.

I had to do a lot more work than normal, both in society and for my Dafa projects. This started to take its toll as I got more and more tired. I Sent Forth Righteous Thoughts a lot more than usual, which helped, but something was still not fundamentally right in my mind and I felt under a dark cloud. Reciting what I had memorized so far when walking to work and during work time made me feel as though I had a grip on my situation but I knew I had to break through my blockage.

On the way home from a long day, I was rushing because I had to go out again as soon as I changed my clothes. I walked along my usual route and when near home saw a lot of pears lying in the gutter. Some were crushed and some were broken, but none were worth picking up. I looked up to see if they had fallen from a tree, and as I did so I had a recollection of a story from my childhood of the best fruit being on the furthest branches from the ground, where great effort had to be made to reach it. I saw that the pears represented cultivators who could not reach the standard of Right Fruit cultivation and had fallen back down, and I also knew that many beings would not make it as they were at the layers below the tree where they appeared to be dark like soil. The tree had a massive trunk and was very high, not like a normal pear tree, and the bark was very thick. I saw myself jumping up and down in a futile attempt to reach the fruit with no chance at all of doing so, as I was too limited. I knew that I had been given a big hint on what could happen if I did not fundamentally change my conventional thinking towards my cultivation, and I could appreciate the chance I had been given.

I almost ran home with a light heart, with thanks to the Teacher for giving me the hint.