Master said, "If a cultivator can let go of the thought of life and death under any circumstances, evil is bound to be afraid of him. If every practitioner is able to do this, evil will of itself no longer exist. All of you are already aware of the principle of mutual-generation and mutual-inhibition. If you are not afraid, the factor that would make you afraid will become non-existent. This is not to be self-imposed, but is achieved by calmly and truly letting go of it." ("Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s)")
What follows is my understanding of this point based on some of my recent reflections and experiences. Lately, I have come to realize that during our validating the Fa, spreading the Fa and clarifying the truth to the world's people through various approaches, whether or not ordinary people can understand the truth is ultimately determined by our thoughts. When we work on something, the notions, misgivings and ideas in our minds have already dictated the tribulations and the results that will materialize; actually, the outcome will correspond directly with whatever types of notions, misgivings and concerns we have. Since everyone has different attachments, everyone's concerns also differ.
I understood this before but it was not until recently that this knowledge became so much more distinct. Now I also understand the reason for this from the perspective of the Fa's principles. To me, all matter's existence is sustained by a field that supports it, and which provides the nourishment that enables it to live. Whenever concerns or misgivings surface in our minds, such matters have already been generated in other dimensions. The more concerned we are, the stronger the field of those matters. In other words, our thoughts equate to fostering them and supplying them the conditions that allow them to emerge. Conversely, if we have no concerns at all, those things of which we don't have conception or have never thought about will never happen to us, because they cannot remain in our field without any nourishment to sustain them. This is my personal understanding of Master's statement, "If you are not afraid, the factor that would make you afraid will become non-existent." (from "Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s)") From this, I also understand why we should first eliminate bad thoughts and notions from our minds before sending forth righteous thoughts.
I believe the most crucial and most important inner meaning of Fa-rectification is to rectify our own notions. Master says the human body is like a universe. This leads me to believe that the current rectification of the universe surrounding us and the rectification of the "small" universe within us are progressing simultaneously. The evil outside exists in correspondence with the unrighteous elements in our bodies, based on the principle of "mutual-generation and mutual-inhibition."
I found there were many warped and deeply entrenched notions in my mind that were greatly hampering Fa-rectification. As a result, I tended to make judgments based on human principles, human thoughts and human emotions. These were all obstacles I set for myself, and they have all become tribulations in the drive to clarify the truth. They sometimes left my truth-clarifying efforts without a clear message, and made me miss opportunities to tell others the truths they would have heard had it not been for my misgivings. For example, I always worried that others could not understand me if I told them the truth or that they would not show interest in it. Sometimes, I was concerned that others would see me as reckless or weird, as being annoying or aggressive, and so on and so forth. All these concerns seemed sensible. However, they made me think that truth-clarifying was something very difficult, something I had to do reluctantly. Therefore, in clarifying the truth, I have been passive and have experienced many obstacles. Judged according to Dafa principles, this kind of mental state isn't correct. How can a magnificent god have such a mental state in his salvation of people? How far away is this from Master's statements, "one unmoved mind can dictate thousands of minds," "Dafa disciples' righteous thoughts are powerful," and "[we should] spread the Fa and offer people salvation with benevolence"? If we stick to this mindset, however many things we have done, can we be considered to be keeping up with the progress of Fa-rectification?
I had held that it should be all right as long as we completely apply ourselves to Dafa work, because our own attachments and unrighteous notions would naturally be eliminated through cultivation during the process of our working for Dafa. Now, I have found this idea to be incorrect, as rectifying all those unrighteous elements in our small universes requires a sometimes extremely painful process, which invariably involves taking the initiative to identify the unrighteous elements, to eliminate them and to resist them forcefully. We shouldn't wait, nor should we pin our hopes on outside changes. Instead, we should take full command of our ever-changing thoughts, making each and every tick of the clock a good opportunity for Fa-rectification. I found that when I was truly capable of overcoming those warped notions in my mind--which were not mine, but which were so deep-seated that they seemed to have taken root there--and eliminated them, however painful it was at the time, I made remarkable progress. I would slip down precipitously, however, once I nurtured them through either my aversion to hardships or slacking off. When I awakened to this inner meaning of Fa-rectification, a different realm for cultivation unfolded, where each and every second is spent on Fa-rectification. We, as Fa-rectification disciples, should always be open and dignified, like pillars propping up the heavens and like gods constantly overlooking the world's people and extending compassion to them. Such a mentality can't be attained if we wait and hope we will naturally reach it during cultivation. Actually, it is attained only through our elimination of the evil with righteous thoughts anytime and anywhere. There is no such thing as "natural"--everything depends on how much we can endure suffering and make sacrifices in our normal lives.
As a Dafa disciple who came out of China, I had resisted pressures to do a lot of work for Dafa in the tough situation in China. At that time, I had considered the amount of time and energy committed to Dafa work to be the same as the amount of sacrifice for Fa-rectification. Not yet awakened to the inner meaning that "Fa-rectification must root out the warped notions in your minds," I was making little progress in Xinxing improvement and ascendance. Consequently, it always felt like an ordinary person, instead of a Dafa particle, was doing Dafa work. Upon discovering the implications of this concept, I realized that rectifying ourselves was not an easier task than rectifying the outside environment. Sometimes I felt it was even harder, because I would be reluctant to come face to face with those notions that seemed to have become part of my blood. Time and again, I let opportunities slip by because I was unable to endure that much suffering.
All this indicates that in the past, although I had managed to step forward into action, I had not yet stepped out of humanness. Once I started to use righteous thoughts in resolutely eliminating the evil in my small universe, I found that I had sloughed off layers upon layers of human "skin", and that both my xinxing and realm of thought were making rapid progress. As Fa-rectification disciples, shouldn't we strive to become new persons each passing day? Actually, the celestial bodies outside are being rectified at this speed. If we continue to be as slow as we have been in our progress, how can we catch up with the process of Fa-rectification and live up to the expectations of Master, who waits for us with great compassion?
Indeed, those unrighteous thoughts in our minds were installed there by old forces to interfere with Dafa. Sometimes, before I even take the action to tell the truth to a person, my mind has already been overwhelmed with concerns about various misunderstandings that person might have. I felt stuck by it, even as my mind was working on answers to that person's various inquiries and even on word selection. Ostensibly, I was making serious preparations in order to better clarify the truth. In actuality, I was maintaining a human mental state--because a god would never behave this way. Recently, I discovered that the obstacles lay precisely here, where those concerns are stored in my mind. It was as if I had already seen the assorted conflicts taking place in the process of clarifying the truth, even before I spoke. From the standpoint of cultivation practice, the tribulations domiciled in those thoughts were also substances existing in other dimensions. Thus, wasn't I increasing the tribulation myself? In the past, I rarely eliminated those thoughts dominated by my concerns, because they were concerns after all and thus bound to be something I would have thought sensible. Unfortunately, if there remained only one strand of the thought that this concern was sensible, it would be nurtured and continue to exist. Now, I try my best to eliminate it, because harboring the thought that the world's people cannot understand this great Fa of the universe is the same as indulging the evil. It results from the warped notions in our minds. If our minds don't have such bad things, we will not agree with such notions, and no concerns should ever exist.
Thoroughly denying our assorted bad notions and attachments constitutes an important dimension in denying the arrangements of the old forces. Although they tend to be neglected by us, they turn out to be especially important. Recently, I was able to search and identify the sources of those bad notions: most of them came from my mother. When I was very young, my mother imposed on me all the criteria based on her own life experiences which I later applied to judge people, my view of the world, and things important to me. I took them as part of myself, even though I believed my outlook on and understanding of life were quite different from those of my mother. Since my mother opposed Dafa, I argued with her and tried to turn her around. Nevertheless, it was only recently that I realized how similar we actually were in terms of many notions, which were all about selfish mentalities that were warped, tactful, and self-protecting. These notions could not be further away from "Truthfulness, Benevolence and Forbearance," the characteristics of the universe. Having rooted these out, I found it became much easier to eliminate others. I think there was also an arrangement by the evil forces in the cosmos to have my mother impose those notions on me; and my mother, in turn, had received those notions from people senior to her. Proceeding backward in this manner, we can trace it to the complicated human culture. Didn't the old forces arrange all this?
The many reflections I had recently about my experiences caused this article to become a bit cluttered. I wrote everything down as my personal views to solicit suggestions from readers. Your comments and corrections are welcome.