(Clearwisdom.net) Master's scripture "Thoroughly Dissolve the Evil" has been published for some time now. I have read and recited it several times and came to understand that the Fa-rectification has reached a new stage. I feel that there are some things which, if we do not do them now, we will lose the chance to do at all. Recently, I read fellow practitioners' articles from the Third Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference for Practitioners in Mainland China. I saw there the enormous differences between my fellow practitioners and me. I felt that I had fallen behind the progress of the Fa rectification, and I felt that I was not worthy of Master's benevolent salvation. I calmed down and carefully re-examined myself. I made a decision that I wanted to make up for the things I did not do right. Below is my sharing with fellow practitioners about some of my problems, together with some situations and phenomena from our local areas.
It is the Fa that saves lives and it is the Fa that awakens people
Some time ago a situation occurred while I was clarifying the truth. Not only did I fail to enable the person to understand the truth, I also made him feel rejected. This situation also happened to some other fellow practitioners. Some people even told me, "Don't talk about this all over the place. If you feel good, then do it at home. Nobody will believe you even if you talk about it." I felt bad after hearing this and I looked inside for the cause, "Where is the problem? Why are other fellow practitioners doing better and better and why am I not doing so well? Is it true that those people cannot be saved?" I felt this way until one day when I was doing the exercises, Master's words suddenly appeared in my mind:
"If you put Dafa in a secondary place and put your supernatural powers in the primary place, or as an enlightened person you believe that what you understand one way or another is correct, or if you even regard yourself as being great and beyond Dafa, I would say that you have already started to stumble. It would be dangerous and you would become ever worse." ("The Mentality of Showing Off" in Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun, March 2000 translation version)
Master's Fa awakened me about the reason I was not doing well! Because I did things to validate Dafa during the years of evil persecution and am seen as a well known "character" in my local area, I often heard praises about myself and unknowingly developed attachments to self-satisfaction, hearing praise, showing off, and being self-centered. These attachments became enlarged and the attachment of self-validation was formed. These factors showed up during my contact with fellow practitioners and during the process of clarifying the truth. The most obvious manifestation was my tendency to disagree with fellow practitioners, wanting to look for fellow practitioners' insufficiencies, and emphasizing my being correct. When clarifying the truth, I had always said, "I did this thing this way and that thing that way." I only talked about things that I had done. Sometimes when I talked for a while, I would get excited and speak with strong words and with an attitude of "Look, I am good and you should listen to me", trying to change the other party. If the other party said some good words about me, I would feel really good. But if the other side did not believe me, I would not feel good and was sometimes even dejected. In fact, this was an ordinary person's mentality. How can I save people with this kind of mentality? Master said:
"You have qi, and the other person has qi as well. How can you treat him with your qi? Perhaps his qi will overpower yours! There is no constraint between this qi and that qi." ("The Issue of Treating Illness" in Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)
It is because I did not pay attention to cultivating myself during my daily life that I was not able to clarify the truth and save lives properly. Today, no matter how well I do, doesn't that all come from Dafa? Isn't it all endowed by Master? Without the boundless Fa, what am I? Am I not just like the person to whom I am clarifying the truth?
Now I clearly understand that it is the Fa that saves lives and it is the Fa that awakens people. What we are doing is what we should do as Dafa practitioners. It is our responsibility to do the three things well. Only by doing these things well can we be worthy of the title "Dafa practitioner during the Fa rectification period" as entrusted to us by Master.
Only by cultivating well can we truly do the three things well
Recently, a painful situation occurred. Because a certain practitioner persistently cultivated in Dafa and did not cooperate with the evil, his employer fired him. At the same time, the employer also persecuted other practitioners working there and even made rules forbidding practitioners from communicating with or talking to each other. The employer also tried to force practitioners to sign agreements accepting the persecution by threatening to jeopardize their family members' jobs and incomes. After this happened, one practitioner said, "Fellow practitioners are persecuted mainly because they themselves have some problems. We have helped by sending forth righteous thoughts, but it has made little difference." These words revealed factors of negative attitudes and helplessness. Also, some practitioners simply complained that the employer was too evil and completely regarded this as a persecution of ordinary people against ordinary people. Some other practitioners thought that the people there could not be saved and suggested not to clarify the truth to them anymore. Some people even chose to give in to the evil.
With the Fa rectification having progressed to the final stage and with the evil becoming less and less before being eliminated, the occurrence of this situation is really pitiful. Furthermore, some conditions appearing among practitioners are even more distressing. What is painful is that we have not elevated ourselves as an integrated whole in our area, that we have not formed a harmonious and unbreakable integrated body, and have not let go of many ordinary people's mentalities and thoughts. I feel that every fellow practitioner who has seen and heard the persecution or has been affected by the persecution should think deeply, "Does the occurrence of the persecution have anything to do with me?" During the several years of persecution, everybody has been doing the three things and has been cultivating. But why do we fail to meet the requirement of the Fa and why do we fail to uphold our righteous thoughts when encountering situations? My personal understanding is that we have not truly cultivated ourselves, have not integrated cultivation with doing the three things, and have not followed the standard taught by Master. We were doing Dafa work as ordinary people while we should be doing Dafa work as Dafa practitioners. It is because we did not correctly set our foundation that the persecution, which should not have happened, occurred. Even today there are still some practitioners who have not recognized the seriousness of the problem and are still satisfied with the understanding that as long as one does the three things well he is cultivating well. They are doing the three things as ordinary people; they are doing things unknowingly.
Master taught us:
"Cultivation is about cultivating one’s self. No matter what kind of state emerges, you need to take a hard look at yourself." ("Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital" on July 22, 2006)
I have come to realize that only talking about understandings is not enough. We must completely discard our insufficiencies and only then can we be considered as truly cultivating ourselves, only then can we be counted as Dafa practitioners, and only then can we truly do the three things well. If we can set our foundations for doing things right and set our minds right, we will be able to truly absorb ourselves into the Fa and the power of Dafa will be manifested. Then all the evil elements that are interfering with, suppressing, and controlling people will be disintegrated.
I wrote this sharing with a hope that fellow practitioners will realize the seriousness of the problem. Let us start cultivating ourselves well, completely disintegrate the evil elements in our area, rectify the environment, and follow along with Master's Fa rectification progress.