Newer Western Practitioner: Cleaning my Room and Removing Selfishness

(Clearwisdom.net) I am a Canadian practitioner, and have been practicing Falun Dafa for almost a year.

Cleaning My Room

The other day, after leaving my room unkempt for awhile, I decided it was about time to clean it. As I put my efforts into tidying things up, I noticed a bug crawling around. At that point, since my room is connected to the backyard and I have a sliding door, I tried to drive the bug out. It was really stubborn and it was really hard to get it out! On top of that, by opening the door to let one bug out, several more came in. I realized this was a fruitless way to go about getting rid of the bugs.

I then remembered that the whole reason I noticed the bugs in the first place, was through the process of cleaning my room. I then realized that it would be better, instead of trying to get rid of each and every bug and perhaps cause even more trouble, to instead focus my efforts on my whole room being cleaned in a basic way, because if my whole room is clean the bugs will have nowhere to hide, and neither would this be a suitable environment for them to live in, so they would naturally go away. So at that point I didn't pay any more attention to the bugs and focused on cleaning my room. Once my room was clean I couldn't even think of where the bugs went. Ever since then they haven't disturbed me.

Removing Selfishness

Today when I was looking inward in the morning after doing the five exercises, I was removing all of the attachments that I had coming up, but there were so many! Each time I would remove one, another one would pop-up, and not only that, I had to get to work, but at the same time I wanted to get rid of my attachments, so I really was befuddled as to what to do. At that point, I realized this was due to my attachment to laziness recently, which caused me to deny and neglect taking care of the many attachments I had individually. After realizing this, I proceeded on my way to work.

On my way to work I was speaking to a fellow practitioner on the phone and I came to a realization. I realized that the root of all of these attachments is selfishness, and that if I were to really remove them all, it would take forever for me to deal with each one, and I might get distracted and go on a side road which could even prevent me from taking care of my responsibilities promptly.

I realized that this was just like the case with cleaning my room. Instead of focusing on each of the bugs, which could maybe let more bugs in, I should focus on cleaning my room. In other words, instead of focusing on each one of my many attachments, I should focus on the root of the problem, my selfishness. That way those attachments would have nothing to cling to and would naturally be removed.

With this I find it a lot easier to interact with people around me which allows me to better walk my path of saving sentient beings according to Master's arrangement.

These were just a few of my humble understandings, please point out where they are unrighteous.