(Clearwisdom.net) Recently a senior practitioner in our local area died. She crashed into a scooter and landed on the ground. A car driving by ran over her and she died immediately. At the same time, my father was suffering another form of persecution. With Teacher's help and practitioners' efforts sending righteous thoughts, he survived.
The old forces had been persecuting my father for two years. My parents, my older sister, and I are all practitioners. We are terrible practitioners and that is why these things have happened to us. In October 2006, at 3 a.m. white foam came out of my father's mouth and he went into a spasm. His face and mouth turned dark purple, as if he was going to drop dead. We sent righteous thoughts for him and he was fine in the morning. This has happened almost every month since then. He would act as if he were chewing bones when meditating, sending forth righteous thoughts, or studying the Fa. Then he would pass out and what I just described would happen.
My father is very stubborn and his mind was full of Party culture. He rarely looked inward or admitted his faults. He was always unhappy about the Communist Party and society. He practiced Dafa because he wanted to heal his illnesses. Everyday he studied the Fa and did the exercises, but I felt he did not know how to cultivate his heart. He would criticize the Party for hours but would not say a word in experience sharing. He hardly went out to clarify the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong. Even though he wasn't behaving like a true practitioner, Teacher gave him chances again and again and saved his life many times.
My mother wanted to be a good practitioner but somehow she couldn't break through her bad cultivation state. My sister barely practiced the teachings of Dafa. In a family like mine, evil can easily exploit our gaps. Every time my father was persecuted by the old forces, the three of us would get nervous and think about how to be diligent and follow Teacher's arrangement. However, this never lasted for long and we became like who we once were. The evil used my father to interfere with us. We dragged our feet, but Teacher forgave us numerous times.
This year we realized that, besides the three of us needing to be diligent, we also needed to help my father improve his character. That way we could stop the evil persecution. My father did not realize that his head was full of Party culture and he could not consciously eliminate it. It was hard for us to communicate with him based on the Fa. This had something to do with me as well. I have made mistakes on my cultivation path and was put in prison twice. This caused my family tremendous pain. I knew I had to be diligent and improve my character so the energy around my family could be rectified.
Teacher said in Zhuan Falun, Lecture Three,
"If you only practice the exercises without improving xinxing and without the powerful energy that strengthens everything, it cannot be called cultivation practice; neither can we treat you as Falun Dafa disciples. If you go on like that without following the requirements of our Falun Dafa and behave yourself as usual among everyday people without upgrading your xinxing, you may still run into some other troubles though you practice the exercises. You may even claim that it is the practice of Falun Dafa that makes you go astray. This is all possible."
This was the problem my father had. He did not cultivate his xinxing. I asked other practitioners to study the Fa and send forth righteous thoughts with my father to help him.
Fellow practitioners helped us selflessly. We decided to fundamentally change ourselves. From then on, we studied the Fa everyday from 7:30 to 10 p.m. and sent forth righteous thoughts at the end of the group study session. Within a month, everyone had benefited from it. It helped everyone to conquer the attachment of laziness and guaranteed the amount of time and quality of Fa studying. A practitioner said the energy field at our group study was very righteous, and he wanted to come here all the time. He never wanted to miss one day. The changes in my father were obvious. He was reluctant to do group study in the beginning, but now he is energetic and can't get enough of it. His character has improved and he is willing to listen to different opinions. He openly acknowledged one night that he did not do well in the practice and always thought he was right.
One of the reasons my father was persecuted was that he did not respect Teacher and the Fa. Dafa books and materials in our house were all over the place. My father's copy of "Zhuan Falun" was wrinkled and dirty. A practitioner came to our house and saw this problem immediately. He told us we needed to neatly put our Dafa books in a clean place. When we read the Dafa books, we needed to sit up and hold the books in an acceptable manner. He took my father's Zhuan Falun home and spent three hours re-binding it, put a new cover on it, and flattened the flipped corners on all the pages. When he delivered a clean and nice looking Zhuan Falun back to us, we were moved and ashamed of ourselves. We still leave the books everywhere, but we are working on getting rid of that habit. I hope other practitioners can learn a lesson from our experience.
Group study is too important to ignore. I had gone astray ever since the persecution started. At one point I felt that nothing could change my father, not even the Fa. Through group Fa study and the power of the group, my father gradually improved. We've all improved.
The practitioner I mentioned in the beginning of the article lived alone. Although she attended group Fa study everyday, I felt she might have been coming just for the sake of coming. Also, practitioners did not pay attention to her incorrect cultivation state. I heard that, before she died in the accident, when she studied the Fa or did the exercises in a practitioner's house, the whites of her eyes turned up. Sometimes she laughed as she read the book. She was, in fact, controlled by the evil. If other practitioners had paid more attention to her incorrect state and sent righteous thoughts for her, she might not have ended up like she did.
I can't say I am a good practitioner. I've had a lot of interference in the practice. Many times I have dared not look at Teacher's picture because he looked so serious. I want to improve myself so I won't disappoint Teacher.
