(Minghui.org) We often discuss the issue of lack of coordination and how we can coordinate better during our sharings. Every time I heard such conversations, I thought: “My involvement is to email fellow practitioners my work after I’m done, so these coordination issues have nothing to do with me.” However, one day, when I looked inward, I suddenly discovered my selfish thoughts and the invisible poor coordination as a result.
It happened like this:
I faced a lot of difficulties at home. I tried to look for reasons. In the end, I concluded that it was because my husband had a very negative mentality. I certainly couldn’t do any better. One day, after I complained to my husband, I realized that my thoughts were more negative than his!
Every day, once my husband returned home, I started looking at his shortcomings and making negative comments. I asked myself, “Why can't I see his strengths?” When I started complimenting him in my heart, I felt a heavy burden disappear from my mind. I was relieved.
The next day, I sat in my office and looked at my colleagues around me. When I saw them pass by, I was thinking: “This person has bullied me. He is very sneaky. That person is untrustworthy. This person only cares about his own career. That person likes to take advantage of others. This person is quite talented and a nice man, but he has become weird since he was promoted and started suppressing his subordinates. This person is too emotional and unpredictable. That person is indecisive. That supervisor has no talent but is pretentious. That person…” When I realized that my brain was just full of such negative comments about others, I was shocked that I was able to live with such thoughts every day!
Several days later, I went to a Fa study group. A fellow practitioner spoke. My thoughts emerged: “This fellow practitioner has been looking outward during her recent sharing. What’s wrong with her cultivation?” When a member of the Dafa Association spoke, I had negative thoughts again: “She never looks inward. Sometimes she is rather harsh. She often talks about the importance of projects as if she’s the only one who knows about it. Who doesn’t know it?”
In this sacred cultivation group, my mind held only negative comments towards fellow practitioners. I came to see the invisible poor coordination. It is horrible and hard to sense. I had gaps deep in my heart that rejected many fellow practitioners. Just as Master said in the “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching:”
“Another cause is the attachments that come from one’s human mindset. Especially notable are the notions that one forms, or habits of thought that one forms, which make it very hard for a person to recognize when human thinking is unconsciously at work. And if one can’t recognize it, how is one to get rid of it?”
I obtained the Fa in 2004 and started genuine cultivation in 2006. I have just realized my human thinking after cultivating for so many years. The thinking is selfish and places self above everything else. My notions are the standards with which I judge others. I talk down to others to validate myself, promote myself, fulfill myself, and therefore protect myself. The satisfaction of talking down to others is the inner desire of human beings. Human thinking is immersed in feelings and the emotions of self-satisfaction.
I knew I must change my thinking. I thought of what Master said in “Who’s Right Who’s Wrong” in Hong Yin volume III: “He’s right, and I’m wrong.”
I made myself look at others’ strengths and look inward and find my shortcomings. I started with my company. First, I thought of a certain colleague's strengths and smiled at him even though I had some grievances towards him. Interestingly, he then transferred to my area. We worked well together for a few months. After I saw his many strong points, he was promoted to another department. I understood that everything was Master’s arrangement. Master provided me an environment to relinquish my attachments as soon as I enlightened to the issue.
Later, Master arranged another opportunity for me to change my self-validating thinking. Once, about 20 Chinese colleagues had a meeting. For every topic we discussed, I offered my opinions. I thought I was being responsible to my work. However, I saw that others were impatient. After the meeting was over, I thought I should stop speaking at meetings to avoid troubles.
On second thought, I knew my solution was just the slyness of an ordinary person. As a cultivator, I shouldn’t think this way. What should I do? On the bus, Master’s Fa lecture suddenly played in my ears. I understood. After I obtained more wisdom via cultivation, I could see the key issues of ordinary work. However, no matter how good my opinions were, it was still ordinary work at the level of Qi and particles. It was nothing.
I changed my notions and no longer thought so highly of myself. In the following meetings, I spoke again, but I didn’t speak with my attachment of validating myself. Therefore, my tone was rather calm. A colleague who was formerly frustrated by what I said praised me for offering concise, valuable input.
I made myself remain clearheaded no matter what I enlightened to through my cultivation or how many compliments I received. I should always treat my enlightenment as merely very tiny particles in the immense universe.
Master said in “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching:”
“I previously explained to you the concept of the universe, and how multiple Milky Ways make up one expanse of it. That expanse is what we refer to as a small universe. It takes hundreds of millions of universes such as this to make up a universe of the second layer. As for how massive the cosmos ultimately is, suppose we considered a massive universe that consists of a trillion layers to be one domain, and then grouped a trillion of these one-trillion-layer domains together—we could then call this trillion one-trillion-layered domains a particle of air. Such particles permeate the conference hall here. Although that amounts to a massive number of universes, this is still but a small, insignificant particle in just one dimension of the universe. When I arrived at the end while doing Fa-rectification, I saw that the form of beings was not something the beings below would be capable of understanding anymore; as the Fa’s principles ascended, there would be simply no way for gods at lower planes to understand them. When I arrived at that realm and its state, I ultimately discovered that it too was but one particle of dust in the cosmos.”
I further thought about the origin of my negative thoughts. Master said in “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching:”
“This is particularly challenging in the setting of China, where the evil Party has destroyed traditional Chinese culture and rigged up its own evil Party stuff instead—what we refer to as “the culture of the Party.” It’s indeed going to be hard to recognize the Truth of the cosmos when one uses the habits of thought bred by that culture. And one won’t even be able to recognize that certain bad thinking and behavior are at odds with universal values. If one can’t recognize bad thinking for what it is, then what can be done? There is no other way but to act according to Dafa.”
I knew that a lot of my notions came from the evil CCP culture. The CCP language was full of negativity, ferocity, evilness, and violence.
When I introduce Shen Yun, I often run out of complimentary words. However, Western audience’s praises are so abundant. In a country with faith, words that praise the divine permeate their culture and daily life. They can easily sense that Shen Yun is an art that surpasses the human level and that it has a divine power and its art form is divine. They can very naturally find many words to express their feelings.
And for us from Mainland China? We haven’t learned such words to glorify the divine. Our minds are blank in this regard. Therefore, we cannot describe the beauty of Shen Yun with vivid words. The Shen Yun coordination team in Japan asked us to read the “Learn” section of Shen Yun’s official web site. This was great learning. In addition, memorizing the lyrics published in Master’s Hong Yin Volume III helps us to address this void.
Once I opened my mind, I came to realize more. I see now more meaning of what Master said in Zhuan Falun, “To tell you the truth, the entire cultivation process for a practitioner is one of constantly giving up human attachments.”