(Minghui.org) The book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World has been posted on Minghui.org as a series. The book not only educates the public on the persecution of Falun Gong but also serves as a wake-up call for practitioners, especially young practitioners. In this chaotic world of the Dharma-ending period, reading this book will help one to tell good from evil and walk righteously on the path of cultivation.

From kindergarten to elementary school, high school, college, and the workplace, young practitioners spend a considerable amount of time away from their parents. Inevitably, they are influenced by the things around them and online. If they don’t have a good Fa-study environment, they can easily be polluted by these things.

Many young people nowadays hold deviated notions and no longer value true culture, such as good manners, poetry and the traditional arts. Instead, they indulge themselves in drinking, parties, and drugs. They believe that they are living a real life. Girls believe that having a boy’s haircut, drinking, smoking, and cursing are progressive; boys, on the other hand, put on makeup, put a lot of effort into skin care, wear dresses and talk like girls. They believe those things are fashionable.

Homosexual relationships and getting pregnant out of wedlock can be seen everywhere. I also had these notions when I was a student because I didn’t study the Fa well and failed to recognize that these deviated notions are being used by the old forces to destroy people. When I learned that two girls in my class were a lesbian couple, my first thought was that they were on the front lines of fashion; one of them was very pretty, so the other girl liked her. I even envied them and believed that everybody in my class was jealous of them. The pursuit of fame and the deviated notions were woven together, which ruined my values and the righteous thoughts of a cultivator. 

Movies and TV shows are full of these things, too, accelerating the decline of society’s moral standards. Influenced by deviated notions, many people nowadays believe that living together before getting married is normal; otherwise, how can you know if the person is a good fit or not? Such a notion does not meet the standard that the divine set for human society.

I am a schoolteacher. Some of my young students talk about homosexual relationships in their writings and have put up gay posters in their bedrooms. A girl wrote pornographic fiction and circulated it among the class. Young students have no resistance to dirty content online.

Besides homosexuality and sexual freedom, the modern arts are also full of deviated things. People put up nude pictures and abstract paintings everywhere, in hotel rooms, restaurants, and even their own living rooms. They claim that the “artists” of these works follow their hearts and liberate their feelings. Song lyrics also have no constraints. The modern arts deviate from the standards set forth by the divine—art should be used to purify one’s heart and improve one’s morality.

The deviated notions affect not only everyday people but also cultivators, especially young practitioners. They grow up in such a society and are surrounded by the deviated things. If they don’t follow the trend, their peers would consider them antisocial and keep a distance from them.

Master said:

“Therefore, this present, objectively existing environment seriously interferes with our practitioners’ cultivation toward high levels.” (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun)

This generation of young children does not have a clear understanding of what human beings should be like and how they should live. If they don’t study the Fa intensively, they will think, act, and speak like everyday people, and easily be dragged down by the deviated notions.

They also would not be able eliminate the evil notions from their minds and repel them in daily life. If they cannot recognize that the evil notions are the tools used by the old forces to destroy people and cultivators, or if they just vaguely know these notions are bad but don’t know clearly why they are bad, they won’t be able to purify their hearts.

Thus, young practitioners should carefully read How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World several times so that they can recognize the evil nature of these notions, rectify their minds and behaviors, stay alert in the chaotic world, and “[put] a stop to its downward slide.” (“Illuminating All,” Hong Yin, Vol. II, Translation version A)