(Clearwisdom.net) (continued)
Part 1: http://clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2008/9/17/100712.html
Part 2: http://clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2008/9/18/100743.html
Continuously Expanding
We all know that many Falun Gong materials production sites have expanded over the years, as have the responsibilities of the coordinators involved. Some of us observed that some practitioners could only reach a certain stage owing to the levels of their xinxing, wisdom, grasp of Fa principles, and abilities. If they want to push beyond this certain stage, many problems occurred, including conflicts among fellow practitioners and shortages of funds. These practitioners sometimes treated such occurrences as sabotage, or as interference from evil forces. The rest of the team then works more energetically and try to expand our production. We go hither and thither and work harder without any rest. If we failed to reach what we had anticipated, we became thoughtless and impetuous, and attachments emerged. When a practitioner can't look at a problem or do things like a divine being, but more like a human being, he/she will tightly hold onto their attachments, not wanting to let them go. This gives the evil forces excuses for sabotage.
We all know that the mentality of accomplishing Dafa work as if it was a regular job is not good. How does this mentality manifest? Not many practitioners will seriously think about it and analyze it. As a result, some practitioners, especially new arrivals to the materials sites, won't notice the mentality arise.
The mentality manifests as a feeling of emptiness when you don't do things. To counter it, you do things to fill up the emptiness in your mind. Gradually, you will be dragged by things one after the other, which will constantly keep you on the run. Of course, the really diligent practitioners today have a lot of things to do and stay very busy. This is because they have the ability and the mission. It is normal to be busy from time to time, though being busy doesn't mean that you don't balance your Fa study, send forth righteous thoughts, and harmonize your work and your family. Being busy doesn't mean you are on the run all the time and cannot stop.
As a matter of fact, when you really feel you are too busy to stop and cannot balance your environment, it means that you must stop everything to give yourself some time to study the Fa and cultivate your mind. After all, we are cultivating. However, many of our practitioners are not clear minded about this. When you are not clear on the Fa principles you may use the Fa principles to cover up your own attachments.
Can we simply understand things like this? I think not. Maybe it was a righteous god that did this in order to protect you. Even if it was interference and sabotage by the evil forces, a righteous god might be using those arrangements to help practitioners to establish their mighty virtue. Of course, establishing mighty virtue is not like what some practitioners might think that it would be achieved by having a bigger materials site.
Conforming to the Ways of Society
If this persecution did not exist, I think there would be no need to have materials sites. For example, if a practitioner confines him/herself in a room for a long period of time doing things like downloading, printing and burning CDs and he/she only deals with very few fellow practitioners without any contact with society, is this normal? No, its not. Our cultivation way involves tempering our xinxing and elevating ourselves among everyday people. Without this environment how can we elevate ourselves?
From another level, our cultivation way in society is also a part of the harmonization of the future cosmos. It is the requirement of the future, therefore it is very important. Whoever damages this method sins, and whoever does not obey it violates the Fa. It was only because of the seriousness of the persecution, the lessons drawn from many experiences with blood and tears, as well as taking security into consideration, that these materials sites gradually developed. Since the Great Fa is boundless, the practitioners at these sites still can cultivate and elevate, and still can reach consummation like the rest of the practitioners.
The best help that practitioners at home can offer to the practitioners at a processing site is to create a group Fa study environment. Therefore, the practitioners at home voluntarily set up group Fa study sites to elevate as one body from the Fa principles and their xinxing, which gave the practitioners at the processing site very powerful support. This support was all round reflected in areas such as security, funds, pressure and forbearance. At the same time, practitioners who are good with technical issues and practitioners at the processing site promoted individual or family materials processing sites with their own initiative. (I firmly believe they were very much willing to do so. They also tried very hard to create conditions for this to happen). As a result, the environment of that area got better and better and the cases of persecution were reduced to a minimum.
4. Negate the Old Forces
While writing this, I have constantly adjusted myself as to whether to write from the angle of avoiding the persecution or from the cultivation in the Fa. If writing from the angle of avoiding the persecution my personal understanding fell into the same old concepts. If writing from the angle of upgrading ourselves during our cultivation in the Fa, it conformed to the requirements of the Fa and negated the arrangement by the old forces
Since Teacher spoke on the Fa about negating the old forces, fellow practitioners wrote lots of sharing on this aspect over the past few years. Their understanding is becoming more and more clear. In the final analysis it can be summarized in one sentence. That is that doing the three things well itself is negating the old forces, therefore we are no longer part of their arrangement.
I agree with this saying. I'd like to discuss the issue from another angle:
The entire cosmic body deviated from the Fa and sentient beings are deformed. At the time when we came down level by level with Teacher, the old forces made a lot of meticulous arrangements. To make sure that these lives can return to their origin, one of the important arrangements they had made was to place attachments in them. They arranged various attachments for practitioners with the premise of letting practitioners temper themselves in their cultivation so that the pain they experience in passing the tests would leave them with a deep impression. They actually used these things, which should not have existed in the first place, as part of their depraved arrangements in an effort to interfere with Teacher's Fa rectification.
Since the arrangements were made at very high levels, therefore the lives in layers upon layers of the universes underneath took them as rules, rules of the operation of the universe and the rules for the elevation of lives. From this we can see the deep marks left in the culture of past cultivation. Therefore, today we treat letting go of attachments and tests as natural and regard them as important. This actually is admitting the existence of the old forces.
When lives deviate from the principles of the universe, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, they only need to study the Fa, harmonize it and rectify it. At very high levels, there is only one choice. There is no cultivation, then why would tests of tempering and experiencing the pain in passing these tests be needed?
Of course this doesn't mean we could let our xinxing drift and should not let go of the substances that don't conform to the Fa. Instead, we must totally negate the arrangements made by the old forces, and we should not even acknowledge this arrangement itself. We only need to study the Fa and a life will then be rectified. Why would we need tests, tempering, suffering or passing the test?
Nonetheless, there are many fellow practitioners who think that we must experience all kinds of sufferings since we can cultivate ourselves during the sufferings, and that we should bear the sufferings so that we can let go of the substances in our bodies and minds that stop our genuine cultivation practice and stop us from elevating. From my personal enlightenment, these notions and substances are from the old forces. These things pressure you to walk along the path of elevation according to their enlightenment.
However, we don't acknowledge even the manifestation and the existence of the old forces. How can we negate it? The only way to achieve this is to study the Fa, recite the Fa and melt your main consciousness into the Fa. This shows that we are assimilating to Dafa with our own initiative, and it is the choice we have made in our lives. We must use the Fa to guide our every thought, our words and deeds in our daily lives. Practitioners can then naturally form a harmonious relationship with Dafa and place ourselves under the protection of the gigantic energy field. This is true cultivation in Dafa and practitioners is not in the same dimension as the old forces. Though we are still in the old universe and space, in essence we no longer exist there.
If we fail to study the Fa diligently, don't have an active and positive attitude and every day act like we are just doing our jobs, but don't have the strong wish of melting into the Fa as we had when we first learned Falun Dafa, we actually express our choice. If you don't understand the beauty of Dafa, and its pure and true inner meaning, then you understand and act in accordance with the old ways of thinking, and will be interfered with by all sorts of troubles.
As how to correctly place relations between practitioners and the old forces, I think of what Teacher said in Zhuan Falun:
"I am a person who dislikes fighting with others, and neither was it worth a fight with him. Whenever he brought some bad things upon me, I would just clear them up. Afterwards, I would resume my lecturing." "Because he always committed bad deeds and interfered with my teaching of Dafa, I then eliminated him completely."
Personally I think this, as a matter of fact, also provides the guidance in our understanding of sending forth righteous thoughts and walking along a correct path of cultivation. Today we must study the Fa and cultivate ourselves well in accordance with Teacher's requirements and clarify the facts in order to save sentient beings. If it comes and interferes with me, I send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate it. If we don't pay attention to sending forth righteous thoughts, this in a way gives consent to the arrangements of the old forces. We must send forth righteous thoughts. The prerequisite is to clean our own fields first and then clean and eliminate the evil forces that sabotage the Fa rectification. This is the manifestation of our pure act of harmonizing the Fa, obeying Teacher's instructions and conforming to the rules of the cosmos.
The Fa is boundless. This is only some sharing based on the materials production sites. It's only my personal understanding. Please kindly help me understand any shortcomings I may have.
(End)
