(Minghui.org) Falun Dafa practitioners live in a society that is filled with corrupt information, which can cause interference in our cultivation practice. Such interference must be eliminated so that we can maintain a clear and righteous mind and do the three things well.
We live in the electronic information age. When you turn on your smartphone, all kinds of adulterated information will pop up, including sexual content, vapid entertainment, gambling or pure gossip. This is all corrupt.
Two Kinds of Corrupt Information
There are two kinds of corrupt information. One kind enters the mind from the outside and the other is already entrenched in our minds. To avoid further pollution of the mind, we must reject such interference. We should not read, listen or watch anything impure or that is not related to our cultivation.
I use WeChat, a popular Chinese instant messaging application. I can set the preferences to block out any incoming polluted data and use the application as a pure communication tool.
I used to receive and read the incoming garbage on my phone. This polluted my mind and kept me from waking up on time to send forth righteous thoughts in the morning. Even if I managed to wake up, I would remain sleepy and go back to sleep shortly after.
Once I noticed the interference from the digital information, I avoided reading any of it and sent forth righteous thoughts at different times to clean out the interference already in my mind.
The result is that I no longer need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning and I don't need to get more sleep after sending forth righteous thoughts.
Attachments Are the Root Cause
However, when I read something that I am not supposed to read, the interference would return. It was a cycle, and I realized that I had to find the attachment that pushed me into reading things that were not good for my cultivation. I looked inward and found several attachments – curiosity, pride and greed.
I was curious about certain people and things and wanted to explore them deeper. So, I became attached to those people and was hooked on what they were up to. When it came to certain subjects, I wanted to be my own judge and needed to see if I was correct. Was I attached to self-pride?
A divine being is never greedy and I learned a lesson from being greedy. I was very attracted to the 11% and 12% double discounts on a popular shopping website.
I used to be quite attached to skin care products. I knew that it was an attachment to appearance on the surface, and an attachment to lust deep down.
My initial thought was to buy one year of skin care products during the discount period to save some money. However, I got caught up in the excitement and ended up buying products for two years.
Master gave me some hints, but I was greedy and could not stop my treasure hunt. Suddenly, I began to cough badly and I almost threw up.
At that moment, I realized that I was dragged again into my old self and I immediately stopped. I let go of my attachment to greed, and the cough stopped.
This lesson taught me that cultivation practice is very serious. A small matter often actually connects to an attachment and demon nature.
Even most of the famous artwork in the world is not pure art, and contains tainted information, too. Once, a relative brought home a lot of photos of artwork exhibited in the Louvre. Most of them were famous artworks, so I looked at the photos for about an hour.
I had a dream the next morning about the sentient beings in my world. Some were close to me and some were far from me, but they all told me one thing – there are ghosts! I woke up and realized that I had done something wrong.
Constantly Purify the Mind
A cultivator must purify their mind and his or her world constantly. If we passively bring in some corrupt information, our daily Fa study and exercises will purge them. But if we actively accept such information, it is as if we are seeking it, and it is then a different issue. The old forces will likely take advantage of the loophole.
Some fellow practitioners told me that they knew they should not watch or read certain things, but they could not control themselves and would watch or read it anyway. I said that most likely their thought karma was strong and the attachment connected to the thought karma had not been discovered yet.
Since we had talked about artwork, I suggested that fellow practitioners look around their home and clear out any inappropriate modern artwork, whether it is a photo, statue or painting. They are all living beings in other dimensions.
Being a practitioner, we want to eliminate karma and be diligent, and we must not allow these things to emit karma into our world.
We are Falun Dafa practitioners. Our hearts must be with Master and our thoughts should be based on the Fa. We certainly cannot remain on the level of ordinary people and become polluted and pulled down by corrupt information.
Category: Improving Oneself
