Eliminating Negative Thoughts Requires Focused Effort, Like Removing Lice and Nits

(Minghui.org) I had done the first exercise in the morning, and by late evening, I still hadn’t done the rest, and almost just didn’t do them. Then I chose to listen to my righteous thought and remembered how important it is for me to break through complacency, and I did the rest before bed. It was only after I had finished and truly reflected did I enlighten as to how doing the exercises helped eliminate my negative thoughts. 

While I did the exercises, many negative thoughts came up about various practitioners. I’d say, “no” to one and block it out, and then another negative thought about someone else would start “talking.” I realized it is not me but rather a negative being taking residence in my thoughts and realm, and I needed to remember who I truly am. I am much more magnanimous and divine, and those thoughts were low level and bad, and truly not my thoughts. So, it wasn’t a “peaceful” experience, but very cleansing.

It is not uncommon for me to have a terrible, noisy meditation, as my mind is not yet a pure land. Sometimes during or after the sitting meditation, I feel upset and frustrated that I am so far off from tranquility. It almost makes me not want to do it.

But now I remember–because the exercises are actually a time of cleansing and purging, it is no surprise that the bad stuff gets pushed up. Then I can identify them and clear them out.

A couple of days ago, a few girls at the school where I work got head lice. My daughter was one of them. I had to take the whole day off school and spent hours carefully treating her hair, washing it, combing it through, and picking out the lice and nits. It was a long and carefully focused job. I would look through and find a tiny egg attached and pull it off, one by one. If one is not careful and leaves some behind, they will quickly hatch and breed more and more. Then those can spread to others close to us.

I really feel that the exercises can be similar to that process. The energy pushes the “head lice” (bad thoughts and attachments) up, and we have to notice and eliminate them. So, it is more involved than I have been willing to accept. Often I don’t try hard enough during my exercises and let thoughts get out of control (I have a similar problem sometimes while sending forth righteous thoughts). If we’re not careful, the bad attachments and thoughts will breed more and more until it is too overwhelming to resolve. As a result, we will affect others negatively too.

There is a poem by Master that mentions clearing out lice and nits. I am definitely taking this as a helpful hint from Master about putting in the work to cultivate myself in a more focused and conscious way. It is a process of hard work. But with the tools Master has given us, it is possible to achieve higher and higher levels and overcome all the nits and lice of our mind. I believe that if we sincerely put in the work, Master will also make miracles happen for us.

Master is the perfect example of the intense hard work we should put into our cultivation to rectify ourselves with the Fa.

His poem gives us a vivid image:

The Final Reckoning Approaches

In the churning, turgid wavestraces of twilight can be seenCalamities of every sort approach,the final reckoning at handThe vast firmament, rectified by Fa,the cosmos resettledI return to the human worldand nip off the lice and nits(Hong Yin II)