About the Feeling of Guilt and Self-Deprecation

(Minghui.org) Greetings, venerable Master. Greetings, fellow practitioners.

I have practiced cultivation in Falun Dafa for six years. During this period of time, I had access to many experiences shared by fellow practitioners. I would like to share some of my understandings about the guilt, fear, and self-deprecation that have affected many cultivators at this stage of the Fa-rectification.

As cultivators of Dafa, we are aware of the immense grace that we have been granted. This gift should fill our hearts with hope, happiness, and tranquility. Obviously, this gift involves responsibility and solemnity, but at this point I realize that many fellow practitioners are imbalanced in their hearts, giving way to anxiety, fear, guilt, and self-deprecation.

When our compassion for ourselves is affected, negative feelings can emerge, contaminating our energy field and the perception of the people around us, including our fellow practitioners' situations. As Master explained in Zhuan Falun, I understand that we don't see through our physical eyes, which are just instruments. Our yuanshen (true spirit) is what actually sees, but it interprets the phenomena according to our thoughts and notions, and may even generate transformations according to mind intent. Thus, the world may not actually be the way we see and evaluate it.

Some experience sharing articles are full of guilt, and some discuss involvement in projects as if that is a measure of cultivating well. Cultivation is focused inwardly, but it manifests externally in how we behave. Our mental state directly affects the quality of what we are doing. How can we talk about saving people with an anxious, fearful, or guilty heart? We are not the ones who save people. Master is the one who saves people! We just clarify the truth, enabling people to know about the persecution and what Falun Dafa is. For those interested in learning Dafa, we teach them the exercises and provide access to Master’s teachings. Saving a life, in my understanding, is helping someone to transform his/her mind to recognize the truth. If we're eager for numbers, be it the viewer numbers of our media project or the number of pamphlets we distribute, this mentality will not produce a good result.

Sometimes practitioners reveal feelings of guilt based on their dreams and visions, but don't seem to evaluate them from the perspective of the Fa. Some report that cultivators who do not reach the standard will be completely eliminated. I believe that every practitioner or non-practitioner will receive whatever he or she deserves, and that they will go to where they are assimilated. This should not be converted into an attachment, fear, complacency, or desire.

Would a Fa so great and merciful destroy a cultivator who doesn’t reach the standard? If an everyday person can be saved by a simple talk or an article, why would a cultivator be destroyed, if he or she devoted his or her life to cultivation but only fails to reach the level he or she should? Isn't this thought precisely how the old forces would evaluate things?

In “Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference,” Master said that if we have loopholes in cultivation, we could be persecuted by the old forces, and that they can eliminate these cultivators. I feel that practitioners should try not to focus on or acknowledge the old forces, but simply strive to do well and remain diligent, so as not to invite trouble or hinder their progress in cultivation.

Master said:

“If you can all manage to do the three things well, divine beings will look after you even if you are off in a remote corner of the world, and so will Master’s law bodies. Any human thoughts or attachments you have will make it hard for you to improve and elevate, and at the same time, will be seized upon by the old forces and evil factors, for sure. From the perspective of a high plane, the old forces only aim to get things done according to their designs for this affair. They don’t care whether you are diligent, what interference demons cause, or whether the impact of the trouble brought upon the world’s people is appropriate. Then there are those middle-level beings who are carrying out the specifics [of the old forces’ designs], just mechanically completing their tasks, maintaining the balance between the evil and Dafa disciples. Those that are directly involved and playing a negative role don’t intend for you to cultivate. Each instance of human thinking during a test, each instance of inadequate righteous thoughts, and each attachment that a cultivator has will be seized upon by them as an excuse to drag you down and take you out from among the ranks of cultivating Dafa disciples. This results in our paths of cultivation being full of tribulations as well as danger.

Each of your attachments could cause your cultivation to fail. Each of your attachments could result in physical issues, and lead your once-firm faith in Dafa to waver. In other words, to tell you the truth, no one intends for your cultivation to be a success and no one is giving thought to how your cultivation goes. The old forces want only to complete what they want to see completed, and that’s it.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference”)

In some experience sharing articles, practitioners make comments about Dafa cultivators who fail tests of sickness karma, lust, diligence in cultivation; they talk about practitioners who passed away as if they understand the ultimate truth about the facts, and don't realize that they are judging others according to their own understandings, which can be far from the truth.

Our hearts should harbor Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance; we should not judge fellow practitioners, because we see only the external manifestations. We don’t know their thoughts and their true situations, even if we have seen scenes of other dimensions in dreams or visions.

Fellow practitioners, we should have compassion for ourselves, for our colleagues, and for all sentient beings. We can only give to others what we have ourselves. If we want to save people, we must maintain a serene and confident state of mind in the same way that we act when we send forth righteous thoughts.

I hope that our hearts will radiate the light of Fa and rectify all within the range of our energy fields.

I hope that we can improve every day, that we can cultivate diligently, not by rites, by external pressure, or by any concept based on our attachments, but for the simple joy of practicing cultivation, the initial feeling that we had when first learning the practice.

These are just my personal understandings. Please point out any thought that is not aligned with the Fa.