(Minghui.org) Master said in Zhuan Falun,

“Throughout history, or from the perspective of higher dimensions, the issues of one’s desire and lust have been very critical in determining whether one can practice cultivation.”

I have experienced the difficulties in overcoming this attachment and would like to share with you the process I went through in abandoning it. Over two years ago, I finally broke through. It took me 11 years.

Mine is a personal cultivation sharing, but the consequences of lust are so great that it severely impacts a practitioner’s ability and the one body’s ability to save beings. So, I feel it is important to share this.

When I started cultivation, I considered myself to be a good person. I knew that I had the attachment to lust, but thought that, like other attachments, it would be removed quickly through studying the Fa and cultivating. But after a few years, I noticed that I had still not been able to put down the attachment.

This became more apparent after moving away from the comfort of home, where I had cultivated alone, to another province, where there was a group of practitioners. In this environment, where I could not as easily escape my shortcomings, I learned how strongly I was attached—I regularly gave in to lust and looked at bad things. I could not understand why after a few years, I still could not seem to control my actions.

The pressure was compounded by the fact that I had recently stopped taking the antidepressant medication that I had been placed on before obtaining the Fa. I came to a clear understanding that I was not depressed, but instead it was the attachment to lust carried over from a previous life that was manifesting as thought karma. It had taken long enough to make that breakthrough, but it did not make my cultivation any easier. Things were about to get worse.

I started going through something that I understood to be thought karma attacks. Often, after giving into lust or at other times, I would experience extreme mental pressure—so much so that I would end up lying on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, and turning back and forth, similar to an epileptic seizure. Early on, the attacks were even more severe than this.

Sometimes I would have a moment of clarity to ask Master for help, and the pressure would immediately subside. But generally, when these attacks happened, I could not summon any righteous thoughts. I was completely clouded by the thought karma and could not find myself.

My wife, also a practitioner, had to put up with these attacks. I could tell whenever she sent forth righteous thoughts, as the pressure would suddenly alleviate and I could think clearly again. One time, when I was in another room dealing with a thought karma attack, I could sense high-pitched sounds and an atmospheric change in my head, and the pressure suddenly alleviated. I figured that my wife had just sent forth righteous thoughts. When I went over, I found her reading Zhuan Falun. This is to say, both sending forth righteous thoughts and reading Zhuan Falun are powerful in eliminating interference.

I was doing the three things, and to anyone else, my life appeared seemingly normal. Yet the interference continued, and the attachment remained. After one particularly bad thought karma attack, my wife wrote on a sheet of paper, “Don’t ever give up—there is too much good in you worth saving.”

I knew that there was perhaps a greater reason I was dealing with this, that it wasn’t simply the matter of the attachment. I wondered, “As a Fa-rectification Dafa disciple, if I can’t overcome this, how will the cultivators of the future, or those who are attached more strongly, be able to overcome it?” And so, even though I strongly believed at times that I could never break through, I held onto that righteous thought—“Don’t ever give up.”

Another practitioner shared with me his experience. He said that he had been dating someone when he obtained the Fa. Within a short time, before he had a solid understanding on the issue of lust and the proper relationship between members of the opposite sex, his girlfriend became pregnant. She had an abortion against his will, and the relationship ended. He said that after going through that situation, he would never again give in to that attachment. It had destroyed a human life. The consequence is that serious.

I stood in the rain listening to him, tears rolling down my face. I resolved right there and then to stop giving in to lust. My resolve lasted three weeks. After I had failed again, I couldn’t believe it. It seemed that I had summoned all of my mental strength, and yet I still couldn’t control my actions. And so, while I didn't give up trying, I did give up hope.

Around this time I experienced something supernormal. I visited the Falundafa.org homepage, the original version with the white background. Near the bottom of the page was a picture of a lotus flower. As I scrolled down, the lotus flower was replaced by an animated GIF of three monkeys—one covering its eyes, one its ears, and one its mouth: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” My first thought was that someone must have hacked into the website. But when I reloaded the page, the lotus flower returned, and the page was back to normal.

The message was clear, and it was for me. I understood, but was unable to make any progress.

Later that year, I developed a severe skin rash. On the surface, it was eczema. It was present behind my ears and armpits. I knew it was directly related to lust because the rash would fester after giving into the attachment. I ended up having to use ordinary means on the parts that were visible, in order to not give others in society a bad impression. This is to say, the attachment started affecting my life in ordinary society.

I also experienced sustained thought karma that made it difficult to read Zhuan Falun. Often I would just go through the motions. At the beginning of 2006, in order to assimilate to the Fa, I started memorizing the book. The progress was slow, but I started to notice changes.

Then, at the 2007 Canada Fahui, a practitioner shared his experience with dealing with lust and desire (Western Practitioner: How I Finally Started to Break Through Lust and Desire After Seven Years). After reading the Minghui editorial from 2004, “On the Relationship Between Members of the Opposite Sex and the Issue of Marriage,” he came to an understanding that he needed to memorize all of the relevant passages of the Fa related to lust, in order to have a deep understanding of this issue. After memorizing, he noticed improvement. His process of dealing with the attachment was so agonizing that during his sharing, he cried. I cried, too. The practitioners around me were also crying. It was very moving.

After reading the Minghui editorial and understanding its seriousness, I decided that this was what I needed to do, too. I found all of the Fa quotes on lust and memorized them, paragraph after paragraph. This took a number of months, but after completing it, I felt more calm. I felt that some of the pressure had been alleviated and that I had a deeper understanding from a cultivation perspective. While I was still unable to remove the attachment, it was reduced and I stopped looking at images. The rash behind my ears shifted, but now it covered my entire back.

Over the next few years, I felt that my Fa study was not enough. I couldn’t enlighten to why I was still struggling. I then tried sending forth righteous thoughts for extended periods of time to eliminate lust. While the pressure would be eased temporarily, it would return a short while later. I tried distinguishing which thoughts were me and which ones were not—when dealing with the thought karma, I would say, “That’s not me.” But eventually my willpower would crack.

One time, I sat down to send forth righteous thoughts to actively eliminate the thought karma. Instead of the pressure lessening, it actually increased to the point where I got up and gave in to the attachment. I was dumbfounded. A decade into my cultivation, I still had not passed the first test. Looking back, I see that my righteous thoughts were weak due to a lack of being grounded in the Fa. But at the time, it made me feel inferior, and made me question my ability to cultivate in Dafa and save people.

The turning point came a few months later, when I read a draft of an article from a practitioner in May 2011. This practitioner ended up sharing at last year’s Fahui, but I would like to share a revised excerpt from the original draft (with the practitioner’s permission), as the wording had a particular effect on me:

“One day I received a call out of the blue from a practitioner I had never met, who wanted to ask me for some advice on a project he was working on. At the end of the topic, he started talking about lust and his path to eliminate it. … The practitioner explained that, in his understanding, genuine cultivation starts when we give up the attachment of lust. Not before that. In the Fa, Master actually says, ‘The first step is this test’ (Zhuan Falun).

“This practitioner shared that he had lost his Falun and all of his gong mechanisms by viewing pornography very briefly. He felt the Falun actually break in his body. He felt so bad that he was determined to get it back. It took him over one year of arduous and diligent cultivation and abstinence from all sexual behavior and bad thoughts to get it back.

“He had been very diligent in eliminating his attachment to lust for over a year, and finally he felt that he was once again back on track. Then, two weeks prior to a Dafa event, he slipped and viewed something filthy again. Two weeks later, he happened to see Teacher. He felt that Teacher shook his head at him, as if knowing exactly what had happened. This practitioner then experienced Teacher's compassion.

“Later that year, Shen Yun came to his city. He explained that as the curtain was about to go up, he sat down and started to send forth righteous thoughts to help guide the audience and eliminate interference during the show. He saw that in other dimensions, no one else could see him, but Teacher could.

“The practitioner could see that his righteous thoughts were real particles that went out toward the audience. He then saw that intertwined with his thoughts were black sticky particles—some were in the image of a woman’s body parts and filthy images too disgusting to mention. He also saw that Teacher was seeing these dirty particles being sent out to the audience as well.

“The practitioner then felt that Teacher started sending strong energy to help clean up the practitioner and his thoughts. The practitioner said it took four days for all of it to finally be eliminated from his body and mind. On the fourth day, when Shen Yun was leaving, he felt that Teacher forgave him. Once that happened, everything in his body and all of his gong mechanisms were fixed and spinning again.

“He felt so grateful, because just from viewing something filthy once before, he had lost his Falun and all of his gong mechanisms, and it took him one year of arduous and diligent cultivation and abstinence to get it back.

“Six months later, he failed again. When he saw Teacher the next time, Teacher would not even look at him.”

I stared at the last sentence: Teacher would not even look at him.

I sat there, my mind blank for a few moments. My first thought was: “I need to get rid of this, now.”

I thought to myself: “Why was this still happening? Why, despite all of my efforts, was I still giving in to this attachment?”

At that moment, I recalled the following Fa quote:

“Question: Master, I feel that some students put a lot of emphasis on 'righteous thoughts' but overlook 'righteous action' somewhat, and when sharing experiences they almost never discuss how to have righteous actions. Please tell us how to handle the relationship between righteous thoughts and righteous actions.

“Teacher: That's not how to describe it. When you see someone not having righteous actions, in fact it's that he doesn't have enough righteous thoughts, since a person's mind guides his actions. When your righteous thoughts are strong enough your actions will definitely be righteous, and when the righteous thoughts aren't strong enough the actions won't be righteous.” (“Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference” April 20, 2003)

I realized that the reason I was failing this test was because I was trying to stop the action, not the thought. My sending forth righteous thoughts had been ineffective because I was trying to stop myself from taking inappropriate action. My efforts were aimed at trying to eliminate the attachment, rather than forming righteous thoughts. Where do righteous thoughts come from? The Fa.

I told myself, "Here is what I am going to do: I am going to put everything aside and re-memorize the entire section about lust in Zhuan Falun. When I start having lustful thoughts or negative thoughts, I will recite this Fa, and will not stop until the thoughts are eliminated. I will not stop until I understand this Fa from the depth of my being."

I spent the next week re-memorizing this section. When thought karma came up, I would immediately stop what I was doing and start reciting the Fa. Eventually the pressure would lessen, I would continue my day, and the process would repeat itself. Sometimes the waves of thought karma were enormous, and it would take me half an hour to recite the passage in its entirety twice. But I did not waver. Even if it was just one tiny thought, I would start reciting at least a paragraph. The next time, I would continue where I left off. I did this over, and over, and over.

And then something happened: I started passing the test. After two months of consistently reciting the Fa without fail, I finally felt that my cultivation was on solid footing. The benefits were immediate: About 80% of the thought karma that I had experienced since the beginning of my cultivation was removed. The thought karma attacks stopped, and have never happened again. I looked in the mirror and discovered that two-thirds of the rash on my back had cleared up. I experienced the freedom from this attachment, something which I had not felt since childhood. It is a wonderful thing.

Most importantly, reciting the Fa brought about great improvements for me from the standpoint of Fa-rectification. Specifically, I’ve found that my approach to all matters has become much more rational. When working on truth-clarification projects in the past, I could not mentally commit to them. A practitioner even told me directly, “You’re not committed.” I was aware, but I had too many distracting and conflicting thoughts. A few months after reciting the Fa, I suddenly became more clear and decided to commit to what I was working on.

Within a few months, the path opened up and I was hired at a practitioner-run company, where I was able to assist with the skills that I had developed much earlier than anticipated. Recently the path opened up again when I was given another opportunity that I could not have planned for.

I’ve also been able to cooperate much better in the practitioner environment, considering what the group needs rather than my own needs. This is to say, removing the attachment helped remove the distracting thoughts that were preventing me from having the maximum effect in truth-clarification work.

I still experience occasional thought karma, but it is very different now. I’ll go through periods where there is not much and other periods where there is more of it. Through reciting the Fa, I have developed a righteous field around me, so that if any lustful thought enters this field, it immediately feels foreign. I can recognize it right away, and if it is strong, I start reciting. If it is weak, I can simply recognize that it is not me, and it is eliminated. This wasn’t possible before, but through reciting the Fa, my awareness of what is me and what is not has increased.

I have seen practitioners give up their cultivation, leave the group environment, and struggle in their cultivation, all because of the attachment to lust. It is dangerous. For practitioners in China, we know that holding onto this attachment can lead to arrest, imprisonment, and persecution. For practitioners outside of China, the attachment manifests as other tribulations—for me it was severe mental pressure and thought karma attacks. But it can be overcome.

I now have a deeper understanding of what it means to remove an attachment. It is a thought. It is a substance. Determination and righteous thoughts grounded in the Fa remove this substance. I now truly believe that it is possible to overcome any attachment.

I would like to briefly share how I’ve been able to memorize the Fa. I use a particular “musician’s approach.” Rather than start from the beginning of a paragraph and go to the end, I’ll start with the last sentence of a paragraph. Once I have that memorized, I go to the second-to-last sentence and recite to the end. Then I’ll go to the third-to-last sentence and recite to the end, repeating until the entire paragraph is memorized.

Using this method, each time a new sentence is memorized, the passage becomes more and more familiar as one approaches the end of the paragraph. This helps to build confidence. I share this to encourage others, because I originally had trouble with memorizing.

Actually, any method of memorization is a good one. In addition to the section about lust, I’ve memorized by heart “Your Main Consciousness Should Predominate,” the two paragraphs on overcoming the addiction to smoking, and the first few paragraphs of “Why Doesn’t Your Gong Increase With Your Practice?”—totaling over a dozen pages of Zhuan Falun. I know these as well as I know Lunyu.

I’ve found that this has been highly beneficial, as there are times when I don’t have access to the book, but I am still able to recite the Fa. In addition to removing lust, I’ve been able to reduce attachments to comfort and entertainment, such as reading the news, browsing the Web, etc., to the point where I am spending the majority of my time on the three things.

It has been two and a half years since breaking through this tribulation. For me, reciting the Fa has made all the difference. Had I known how effective this would be, I would have put everything aside and worked on this years ago. It has been worth every second. I know the goal is to emerge from our attachments to become completely altruistic and selfless. But it takes a process, and this is what it took for me to get past this important step.

I will end with a passage of Fa that we are all familiar with:

“The Fa can break all attachments, the Fa can destroy all evil, the Fa can shatter

all lies, and the Fa can strengthen righteous thoughts.” (“Drive Out Interference” from Essentials for Further Advancement II)

Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.

Heshi.