(Clearwisdom.net) Since Jiang Zemin and his followers started to persecute Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999, many local practitioners have stepped forward to validate Falun Dafa, powerfully shocking the evil, and offering salvation to many sentient beings who had been deceived by the negative propaganda. During the persecution, innumerable practitioners were incarcerated in prisons and forced labor camps. Before 2002, practitioners had powerfully restrained the evildoers in the prisons and forced labor camps with their diamond-solid, righteous thoughts. Even a few so-called "reformed" practitioners did not voluntarily accept the brainwashing, as they knew in their hearts they had made a mistake.

After the Chinese Department of Justice held the "Haikou Conference" on November 23, 2001, the prisons and forced labor camps escalated their persecution of the incarcerated practitioners. They openly vowed that they would "reform" Falun Gong practitioners by any and all means. They brazenly incited and even forced the criminal detainees and drug addicts in these labor camps to persecute Dafa practitioners.

For a long time, these detainees, influenced by the police and lured with promises of sentence reductions, kept cruelly torturing Dafa practitioners. Some practitioners were tortured to death, while others were beaten to the point of becoming disabled. Even so, Dafa practitioners were still very firm in their belief in Dafa. However, in April and May 2002, many were brainwashed, and even many practitioners who had been regarded to be the most steadfast were "reformed." They even cooperated with the evildoers and persecuted the "unreformed" practitioners. As these people had been somewhat influential in the past and could create a set of lies to deceive others, the persecution became aggravated and more practitioners were deceived. The "reformed" practitioners played a role that the evildoers could not play, and the terrible effects of this situation have extended to this day and are still very bad, causing the practitioners in the prisons and forced labor camps to suffer cruel persecution.

At the moment when the Fa rectification is in the last stage, we cannot tolerate such a situation to continue to exist. While exposing the evildoers' persecution, we need to seriously learn from this lesson and let go of our human attachments. Only then can we thoroughly deny the persecution of the old forces and offer sentient beings salvation with righteous thoughts.

Lesson One: When Dafa practitioners make significant achievements in validating Dafa, we must not treat the evil lightly.

In the first half of 2001, the authorities attempted to separate practitioners in the prisons and forced labor camps. They moved some practitioners to other teams or forced labor camps for brainwashing. Some were beaten to death, some were tortured to disability, some were not released when their terms were due. Instead, their terms were prolonged. Facing the persecution, Dafa practitioners resisted by refusing to submit to the orders of the evildoers, refusing to answer at roll call and refusing to wear the labor camp uniform. They practiced the Falun Gong exercises in a group, and staged hunger strikes to protest the illegal prolonging of the detention terms, and requested their unconditional release.

Dafa practitioners' actions threw the authorities into confusion. They released those practitioners whose terms were due, and no longer came to interfere with practitioners' actions. They no longer forcibly transferred practitioners to other teams or held brainwashing classes; some policemen started to think it over, and the situation became relatively more relaxed.

Encountering this, many practitioners slacked off and did not make use of this opportunity to take the initiative to clarify the truth to the deceived policemen and eliminate the remaining evil elements. They did not take advantage of this opportunity to clarify the truth to the deceived criminal prisoners and to the forced labor camp detainees, nor did they make use of this opportunity to share, study the Fa and improve. They did not continue to diligently send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil in other dimensions. Therefore, when the evil staged a comeback, it became even more relentless and violent.

Actually, what problems have been exposed through this? It is the insufficient faith in the mighty power of Master and Dafa. The practitioners only wanted to protest to get a relatively relaxed environment instead of fundamentally denying the persecution by the evil old forces. They did not maintain their upright requests for their release, which they had raised at the very beginning, and in some sense this amounted to an acknowledgement of the persecution by the old forces.

Lesson Two: Dafa practitioners should be one body at all times.

Before 2002, when the evil persecuted Dafa practitioners, all other practitioners would step forward as one body to protest, and this powerfully restrained the evil. When the persecution was very serious during 2002, the practitioners in the prisons and forced labor camps, however, were not in a very good state. When one individual practitioner was being persecuted, other practitioners were silent. Furthermore, those who had enlightened on an evil path even offered ideas to the evildoers, inciting the prison guards and inmates to beat practitioners, telling the authorities, "as long as Mr. ... is 'reformed,' some others will also be influenced." They also helped to spread rumors to shake Dafa practitioners' righteous belief. The most malicious acts were to report practitioners' information to the authorities, which worsened the persecution.

For these reasons and others, the authorities made mischief and created conflicts among practitioners. Furthermore, the Dafa practitioners had an insufficient understanding of Fa rectification. They regarded the persecution as tribulations that one should endure and karma one should repay during individual cultivation, and therefore they passively endured. Another main reason for the accelerated persecution is the attachment of fear: fear of the escalation of the persecution. This has created loopholes for the evil to take advantage of, dissolved the unity of practitioners and made the persecution worse and worse. The practitioners did not stop the criminal behavior of the evildoers with righteous thoughts, so the evil became more and more rampant.

Lesson Three: Dafa practitioners should be upright under any circumstances and should never display any extreme behavior.

Faced with such severe and long-lasting persecution, a few practitioners protested in some extreme ways, such as jumping off a building, ramming themselves into walls and swallowing metal materials. As a result, this offered the authorities the excuse to intensify the persecution. They used the excuse of "ensuring security," and assembled criminal prisoners and drug addicts who had been incarcerated many times, whose bad behaviour was habitual, and who enjoyed beating others, and made them the monitors of practitioners. The prison guards and these prisoners would tie up the practitioners at will, or several of them would push one practitioner on the floor for a savage beating, or handcuff and hang the practitioner up, or limit the movement of Dafa practitioners at will. They called doing all these things "ensuring safety."

Master has taught on many different occasions that Dafa practitioners must cultivate in an open and noble way.

This is a very serious lesson.

Lesson Four: Under no circumstances should Dafa disciples have attachments to supernormal abilities

Some Dafa practitioners' supernormal abilities are not locked, so they can see things in other dimensions that happen during the process of Fa-rectification and elimination of the evil. Initially, these practitioners could correctly understand the relationship between Dafa and these supernormal abilities, but with interference from the old cosmic forces, some of these practitioners could no longer control themselves properly in the long-term process of continuously eliminating the evils. Some of them thought that they had finished their mission, because they had seen that they had done everything that had been arranged for their cultivation; some incurred demonic interference from their own minds, thinking that they were extraordinary. Some even developed attachments to low-level spirits and believed whatever these spirits told them, and some could not control themselves properly and casually told ordinary people what they had seen during their cultivation, which the evil capitalized on to attack Dafa. This had some negative impact on the reputation of Dafa. Some of these practitioners have already realized their mistakes, while some are still stubbornly clinging to their wrong views and even go everywhere to spread their gossip and rumors, which has caused a severe and negative impact on Dafa's reputation.

Lesson Five: Dafa disciples must always and at all times take Dafa as their guide and should not follow any persons, nor let those who have enlightened on an evil path speak their fallacies at will.

In 2002, some practitioners who "appeared to have cultivated themselves very well" were brainwashed. Furthermore, these practitioners were those who had done very well amid their past tribulations, or who had previously served as Falun Gong practice site coordinators. Their acceptance of brainwashing should have only affected themselves, but they went as far as to conjure up some lies and use these lies to deceive other Dafa practitioners who had not studied the Fa well and still had strong human attachments. They claimed, "Accepting the reform is what the Fa rectification process requires;" "The present acceptance of reform constitutes the genuine safeguarding of Dafa;" "Reform means cultivation by conforming to the human society to the maximum degree;" "This Fa is too huge to be transmitted in the human society in such a way; otherwise, some problems will arise for sure," and other such sayings. For those practitioners who were no longer able to endure the persecution and thus reluctantly accepted brainwashing, the dark minions of the old forces would create some false scenes of "reaching consummation" for them to see and use all kinds of methods to interfere with the practitioners' righteous faith. These scenes are, in fact, all fake. In this way, many practitioners have made huge mistakes.

Master has pointed out for a long time,

The above fallacies are manifestations with which those whom the evildoers have brainwashed try to cover their own human notions and selfishness. They use these to show themselves off and "prove" they have done better than the others, despite the crimes they have committed against Dafa. On the contrary, they placed the others in a position that should be corrected. Isn't this precisely the manifestation of people's minds having been poisoned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) culture and their false logic? Isn't this an indulgence of their demonic nature?

Lesson Six: Dafa disciples must let go of any of their attachments and should not cooperate with the evildoers under any circumstances.

One of the important methods the evildoers have utilized to persecute Dafa practitioners is to use those practitioners who have been brainwashed to "help reform" other Dafa practitioners. They boasted that they would "use their methods to break the Fa." Among those who were sent to "reform" other practitioners, except for the ones who had enlightened along an evil path, most were unwilling from the bottom of their hearts to help the evildoers. They did so basically because they had not let go of their human attachments, because they were frightened, or because they wanted to seek comfort by getting out of detention early. To achieve this goal, they could even go as far as giving up Dafa and slandering Master. Their actions have negatively impacted the reputation of Dafa and Dafa practitioners as a whole. Some practitioners have specific expertise. For such practitioners, the authorities usually lure them to use their expertise to do something, and then take what these practitioners have done as "achievements" they have made in their efforts of reforming the practitioners. As Dafa disciples, how could we cooperate with these people? Acting in such a way could only help them hide their crimes.

In fact, the root cause for these problems to occur lies in the fact that we have not studied the Fa well enough and because we have failed to treat cultivation with sincerity. Master has told us about all of these problems a long time ago in his Fa lectures, but why are such problems still happening? The fundamental reason is because of our attachment to self, our selfishness, and the human notions of looking out for our own interests. We would never go astray in cultivation if all we have on our minds is to validate Dafa rather than looking out for ourselves, protecting our own interests or trying to gain notoriety in human society. Although most of the practitioners have already realized their mistakes and begun once again to diligently do well the three things that Dafa disciples should do, what they have gone through is indeed dangerous.

There are still a few who are stubbornly sticking to their wrong views. They do not study the Fa nor practice the exercises and they are still attached to proving that they did nothing wrong in accepting the "reformation." Some of them even quote the Fa out of context to prove they are right. Some culled some phrases from Dafa but not the meaning and then used these phrases as their evidence to viciously attack Dafa. They even brag that "they will jump out of the Fa and see the other side of the Fa."

Master has said,

Where do the "reformed" want to jump? How irrational they are!

Some are still actively cooperating with the authorities. They go to the labor camps and the brainwashing centers to brainwash others, saying things like they are not afraid of "annihilation of both body and soul." They even deny the existence of the evil persecution and the validity of the facts of the persecution, saying something like, "clarifying the truth is fighting with the ordinary people." They have, in fact, become the helpers and hatchet men of the evildoers.

As Dafa disciples in this Fa-rectification period, we are shouldering huge responsibilities. To walk every step of our Dafa-validating journey well and to offer people salvation, we have to get rid of our human notions and mentalities. Only then will we be able to act with righteous thoughts when faced with grave tribulations. As Master says,

Please point out anything that is improper.