(Clearwisdom.net) Fa-rectification has reached its final stage; however, some practitioners are still bothered by sickness karma. In some serious cases, practitioners have even lost their lives, which is a big loss in our efforts of saving sentient beings, and has also caused negative effects among non-practitioners. The following are my experiences about a recent reaction of sickness karma, which I want to share with fellow practitioners.
I am in my 30's and I have been practicing Falun Dafa for 15 years. Before 1999, I rarely experienced sickness karma. Sometimes it happened in my spare time, but disappeared when I went to school or to work. After the evil persecution started, in the second half of 2000, something similar to a kind of skin disease developed. It was very uncomfortable and, except for my face, my whole body was covered with it. I did not take it seriously nor did I know how to use righteous thoughts to eliminate it. It was very serious for half a year, but did not affect any of my activities. Since then, I have rarely experienced sickness karma, not even a cold. Under the evil persecution, I lost my original job and moved to a new work environment. My colleagues all believed that I was very healthy since they had never seen me "sick." This lasted for 3 to 4 years.
However, this April, I started to experience a toothache, and the more I sent forth righteous thoughts, the more painful it got. It was so painful that I could not even sleep. I felt that this was the most physical pain I had ever suffered from. In the past, when I tried to eliminate sickness karma, the pain penetrated deep into my bones; however, I could still find some sort of comfortable feeling amidst the pain. This time, it was totally different. It was so painful that I had nowhere to hide. Since I could not relieve the pain by sending forth righteous thoughts, I started to look inside myself, to see where I had gone wrong thus allowing the evil to persecute me. I found that the more I looked inside, the less pain I had. I remember a practitioner mentioned that once we look inside, the evil will be frozen. Since I could not fall asleep at night, I used the time to study the Fa, do the exercises and send forth righteous thoughts. In the process, I found many of my shortcomings, corrected them, and thus the pain was no longer as strong.
For example, a colleague of mine at my current workplace has a good impression of me, so he left me two technical books. Because the books were published a long time ago, most of the graphics in the books are pictures of the Chinese Communist Party's evil leader. I wanted for a long time to burn them, but I did not do so because of human sentiments (my colleague was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and is quite afraid of the CCP. I told him about quitting the CCP; however, he was a little afraid to do so.) The day after I realized this problem, I went to my workplace and tore all of the pictures of this evil leader out of the books, brought them home and burned them. After they were burned, my toothache improved, although it did not totally disappear. I was finally able to sleep at night. I also found another attachment. Because I rarely experience sickness karma, I did not sincerely help those practitioners who suffered from sickness karma or other interference. I rarely considered others, nor did I really help them. Since I realized this, I knew that I had to cultivate this part (not for getting rid of the toothache). At that time, we received news that the evil was going to persecute a certain practitioner. After hearing about this, I sent forth righteous thoughts and found an opportunity to visit his home and share experiences with him. The day before my toothache had started, my son was naughty and I was a little angry while punishing him. Because of my anger, I slapped him twice on the face. Two days later my son saw that I was in pain and asked me, "Is it because you hit me?" There were also other issues. For example, when it was very painful and I could no longer find any cause, I tried to neglect it. I thought, "Let it be painful, I will give all of myself to Master and let Master arrange it." After another 2 or 3 days, the toothache was almost gone. However, another tooth was also quite sensitive and ached when I touched it. Once when I was eating, I felt something pressing against it and then I no longer felt that tooth protruding or moving. I enlightened to the fact that Master had taken care of it for me.
During this experience, I enlightened that when veteran practitioners experience sickness karma, we cannot treat it the same way as we do during the stage of personal cultivation, nor should we only try to solve the problem by eliminating persecution factors. The most important thing for us is to look for our shortcomings, but we cannot look for the shortcomings solely for solving the problem of sickness karma. This kind of relationship is hard to handle for those practitioners who are in extreme pain. It all depends on our daily Fa study and belief in Master and the Fa. Master said in Zhuan Falun,
"So why is it okay to do that for cultivators, then? Because nobody is more precious than a cultivator. He wants to cultivate, and that's the most precious thought. In Buddhism they talk about Buddha-nature, and that when a person's Buddha-nature comes out the Enlightened Beings can help him."
and
"When disciples have ample righteous thoughts, Master has the power to turn back the tide" (Hong Yin II)
From the Fa cited above, I enlightened that Master can help us to solve the problems, because we want to be cultivators. If during the interference of sickness karma, we lowered ourselves into the level of a non-practitioner, then it would be hard for Master to help us, because we would be restricted by the law of the universe.
There is another issue here. Most of the elderly practitioners came to know about Dafa and started cultivation in order to cure their diseases and improve their health. Therefore, they have a special kind of feeling towards "sickness," including some fear. Recalling Master's Fa, when gong appears it might not be comfortable. Why do we, when we experience something physically, think about it being sickness or sickness karma, instead of gaining gong? I think we should look deep inside regarding this issue. This is how I understand this. The old forces, dark minions and rotten demons need to first shake the belief of practitioners in the Fa before they can persecute them. Once practitioners have lost their righteous belief in Master and the Fa, they can then use this excuse to conduct a persecution.
Also, we know that the evil beings are not qualified to test practitioners, so when we face persecution, most practitioners send forth righteous thoughts thinking, "Even though we have loopholes, we will not allow this persecution." My understanding is that this is what the Fa displays on one level, which is that we do not acknowledge the existence of the old forces at all. Therefore, there is no reason for the existence of this persecution; however, we cannot use this as an excuse for not looking inside. As long as we cultivate in Dafa, we should always look inside unconditionally. We do not need any outside driving force or factors, nor is there any factor that is qualified to do something like this (to have us improve through persecution), so the old forces have no reason to exist, nor any excuse to persecute us. On one hand, we disagree with the so-called "help" from the old forces; on the other hand, we should look inside. Because looking inside is required by Master, it should be the fundamental nature of our life.
Also, we sometimes do not know the real reason for something, nor do we know the excuse the old forces use. For example, the evil destroys Dafa books with the excuse that we do not cherish them; the evil brutally tortures practitioners because they called out "Mom" instead of "Master" at critical moments; etc. Before Master disclosed these issues, I had not enlightened to them. I then realized that if we cannot find the true reason, we should give up and submit ourselves to Master. We do not make decisions anymore and only follow the arrangements made by Master. This way, any excuse used by the old forces becomes invalid and Master will make the best arrangement. However, this is not something superficial, it needs to come from deep within our hearts.
These are my personal understandings. If there is anything incorrect, fellow practitioners please correct me and share your understanding with me.
