(Clearwisdom.net)
I have not practiced Dafa for a very long time, however with Master Li's compassionate protection, I am able to enter the great current of Fa-rectification, assimilate to Dafa and save sentient beings. I don't have a deep understanding of Dafa yet, so I often walk a tortuous path. I wish to share this experience with my fellow practitioners and diligently move ahead together.
I recently read the article on Minghui "Build Up Truth Material Sites from Scratch - A Practical Technical Manual." I remember Master's teaching about establishing many material sites over a wide area, and made up my mind to build a truth clarification material site. After I had this thought, I realized I had been doing things with a human mentality. I thought surely I could finish the work easily using my skills and the knowledge I learned in everyday society. I forgot that Master always reminds us in the Fa-lectures that Dafa practitioners cannot do things using an everyday people's mentality. This is the difference between a human and a god. We might otherwise leave loopholes for the evil to take advantage of. I forgot to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate interference from the dark minions while working on the internet. I only paid attention to following the instructions in the manual, proceeding with one step after another, like completing a task. I even carried with me many bad habits of everyday people. Later on I began to develop attachments to the software and downloaded more and more of it.. It was obvious that one, two, or even several kinds of software would be enough to use, but I began to develop selfish thoughts of collecting more software for my own convenience. I did not pay attention to reading the articles about security on internet. I had the opportunistic mentality to taking chances, and was deviating more and more away from Dafa. My computer had many problems, I could not connect to Internet for two days and I was being used of by the old forces.
After this incident, I still had the thought to use everyday people's methods to solve the problems. However when I calmed down to think about it, I found my mentality of fear and attachment to doing things. I realized that Master was guiding me. Therefore, I tried to get away from such a busy and messy state. I paused to study the Fa carefully and look inside myself.
When I later reflected on this period of time, I could see I was not very diligent in cultivation and often had a lazy mentality, spending my time casually. When studying Dafa and sending forth righteous thoughts, I no longer had the diligent attitudes that I used to have when I initially obtained Dafa. I often felt dizzy and sleepy. When my everyday people's mentality came up I would think that my health might be affected and I should have some rest. The result was I often slept and missed the time to send forth righteous thoughts. The more I slept, the worse my spirits became.
I also had strong attachment of fear when clarifying the truth. I was afraid of being persecuted. I put the selfish thought of protecting myself as the first priority and failed to genuinely consider others first. When I spoke about important issues to clarify the truth, I often just touched upon the issue and stopped, or just briefly mentioned it. Master Li is always compassionate, and so I feel that it is Master Li, not me that is genuinely saving beings. Master Li often arranged for people that should be saved to come to me and for people to start a conversation so I could clarify the truth. From these incidents, I could see the eagerness of the clear-minded sides of people to know the truth. On the other hand, these incidents also exposed my bad thoughts.
I was attached to my own consummation and security. As a result, I unconsciously acknowledged the arrangements of the old forces. This caused me to drag behind the process of Fa-rectification. After reading a practitioners' experience sharing article I recently enlightened that we should completely deny the old force' arrangements and should not worry, blame ourselves, or blame other practitioners for being persecuted, or for having attachments or a human mentality. We should instead clearly understand that our remaining attachments and human mentalities are arranged by Master for us to pass the tests and remove them. They are not arranged by old forces. Thus we cannot accept any of the persecution no matter what excuses are used!
Another attachment to fear I had surfaced when I was clarifying the truth. I was afraid other people would say I was superstitious or anti-government. I looked inside and realized that this was related to my attachment to saving face. I attached too much weight to my own image in other people's eyes. I was always afraid of losing the interests I obtained and the reputation that I have among everyday people. The main reason for this shortcoming though, was that I failed to look at these issues from the perspective of the Fa and did no't understand the implication of the Fa-principles. I didn't have strong enough righteous thoughts, which made it even more difficult to help other people understand the truth.
In fact, all these problems were caused by my failure to study the Fa well. Master keeps telling us to study the Fa and study the Fa. I didn't follow Master Li to strive forward diligently and delayed myself and sentient beings. As long as we study the Fa well, our righteous thoughts will be strong and it is easier for us to break through ordinary people's confusion and attachments when clarifying the truth.
After I calmed down and studied the Fa for 2 days, I removed some of my attachments to doing things and removed some attachments to time. Therefore, my original technical problems were solved, and Master Li arranged for an everyday person to listen to the truth and make a statement to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
I still have many shortcomings I need to remove. For example, when I successfully persuaded others to withdraw from the CCP, I am complacent and forget to clarify the truth further, so that it has a more righteous impact. I also forget to pay attention to my own righteous behavior, and treat others too nervously and anxiously. This causes me to not be able to reach others until I almost wanted to give up, and then my tone calmed down. This revealed my deeper attachments and human mentality.
Generally speaking, on occasions one after another, I feel that our compassionate Master is dragging all the lag-behind practitioners to catch up with the process of Fa-rectification. Every time we take the tortuous path it will cause some losses, which all could have been avoided. I hope every practitioner will be more diligent so we can form one body to follow Master Li to finish our missions and fulfill our pledges.
Written on February 10, 2006
