(Minghui.org) I used to think that I was a broadminded person, but I was looking at things based on the standards of everyday people. Now that I am cultivating Falun Dafa, I need to raise my standards to measure myself.
I wasn’t aware that I had a temper, which caused me to easily get angry. My anger later resulted in big losses.
When I calmed down, I thought about my behavior and realized that whenever someone wasn't nice to me, said nasty words to me, or took advantage of me, I would easily get upset.
Especially this past year, I encountered more and more such situations. I could not pass this tribulation, and I felt as though a heavy load was pressing down on me.
Sometimes I got mad as soon as somebody said one sentence that did not please me, and then I wouldn't even want to talk to that person.
Especially when I was treated unfairly, I would get angrier. Then I would fight, argue, get mad, act hatefully, and have other negative thoughts.
When I searched inside I found competitiveness and jealousy mixed with the desire to be popular and thoughts of satisfying my self-interest. In addition, when I studied the Fa, one other thought popped out: Sentimentality.
Master said:
“Since human beings have sentimentality, being upset is sentimentality, so are happiness, love, hatred, enjoying doing one thing, resenting doing another thing, preferring one person to another, hobbies, and dislikes. Everything belongs to sentimentality, and everyday people just live for it.” (Lecture Six in Zhuan Falun)
In my cultivation, I realized that sentimentality shows up as follows: I like something, and I want others to treat me nicely, so I have desires.
With these pursuits and greed, I did not truly appreciate others from deep inside.
So, in this regard, sentimentality is not something good. The starting point of sentimentality is based on selfishness, on self-protection, on being out only for oneself.
My sentimentality manifests as: If I see something that I like, then I'm happy, otherwise I avoid it.
When I got upset, I would remain mad, would refuse to do something, and I didn’t care about others.
Then I had a deeper thought: Why did I get so mad in the first place? I realized that, whenever I got hurt physically or emotionally, the sentimentality would surface.
If a practitioner cannot bear this and pushes aside this suffering and the loss and pain, the conflict will grow even bigger. Then anger will turn into competitiveness, jealousy, and other negative thoughts.
Fights could even break out, and then the problems cannot be fixed rationally or peacefully.
Practicing Falun Dafa helped me realize that jealousy and competitiveness are connected with the bad side of human beings, which can manifest as sentimentality. If we overcome sentimentality, then the problems that we face will become simple and we'll see the consequences of these attachments.
Master said:
“A wicked person is born of jealousy.Out of selfishness and anger he complains about unfairness towards himself.”(“Realms” in Essentials For Further Advancement）
The old universe has the characteristic of selfishness and this characteristic becomes worse in lower dimensions. The person may even begin to feel he is above others.
I have now truly realized that the reason I don’t want others to tell me what to do is because, subconsciously, I have the attachments of competitiveness, jealousy, and self-protection.
If a practitioner isn’t willing to be directed by others, he may not be able to cooperate with others on the team while working on a Dafa project.
Then it will be hard for him to cultivate himself in line with Dafa. Without getting rid of the mentality of competitiveness, a person may not have a humble mindset and may not be able to coordinate with others.
It's my understanding that selfishness causes anger. Let’s get rid of it.