(Clearwisdom.net) Practitioners in tribulation, especially those who suffer illness karma, seem to walk the path arranged by the old forces--taking shots, medicines, or checking into hospitals. However, it is closely related to the overall cultivation condition of the local practitioners. When a practitioner is in trouble, some practitioners seem numb and indifferent; some are really worried and frequently ask the practitioner to look within expecting him/her to past the test soon; and some believe that the practitioner's understanding of the Fa is not very strong and give the practitioner advice that he/she needs to study the Fa more. All the condemning, complaining, worrying and hoping, not only is adverse to helping the practitioner but make him/her feel bad, ashamed, worse than ordinary people, and/or that he/she has given Dafa a bad name. Sometimes these reactions even make the practitioner want to quit cultivating. In fact, all of the above are old forces' interferences and persecution. The old forces persecute the practitioner and interfere with other practitioners advancing as one entity in Fa validation.
The practitioner in tribulation has a good understanding of the Fa principles and knows what to do. Then how come he/she does not do well? I believe this has something to do with the old forces. It is like the Chinese regime's persecution of practitioners in China, which is becoming more subtle and hidden. In the past, the illness karma appeared very strong and went away as the practitioner let go of the attachment of life and death. As practitioners continue to improve in the process of cultivation, the old forces know that letting go of life and death is not a problem for the practitioners any longer. Hence they exploit practitioners' every thought. If a practitioner has one thought that is not based on the Fa, the old forces will tightly hold on to the thought and magnify the attachment behind it. They, through all means, intensify the thought and have the practitioner walk the path they arranged. They created all kinds of phony images to confuse the practitioner and weaken his/her belief in the Fa. If the entire body of practitioners look at this practitioner differently and have opinions about him/her, this readily acknowledges the old forces' arrangement. Hence, practitioners' every thought needs to come from the Fa and they should think and act every moment with the divine thoughts. Teacher said in the “Fa Teaching Given at the 2010 New York Fa Conference,”
“Human or divine—the difference lies in one thought. If what arises is a righteous thought, and you take the position that all of this is false, that it’s the old forces meddling, and you remind yourself of how long you’ve cultivated Dafa for and that no such thing is possible, if that thought truly comes from within, instantly the problem will vanish.”
It is every Dafa practitioner's responsibility to help practitioners who suffer illness karma. How do we do it?
1. The rest of the practitioners should send righteous thoughts in a timely fashion and together deny the old forces' persecution. When they send righteous thoughts, their minds need to be very pure without any human notions.
2. Helping the practitioner requires patience, confidence, and persistence. The practitioner in tribulation is very fragile and needs encouragement and consolation to ease the pressure of thinking that he/she did not do well. Other practitioners need to help him/her rebuild the confidence in the practice and righteous thoughts. We need to put ourselves in the practitioner's shoes and not force our understanding upon him/her.
Something really simple in other practitioners' eyes may be an unbelievably tough test for the practitioner in tribulation. We need to be clear that the bad thoughts and actions of the practitioner in tribulation are not his/her own. The thoughts and illness karma are false images created by the old forces and the practitioner easily thinks of it as his/her own thoughts and karma. We need to help the practitioner realize the old forces' persecution and to not acknowledge it. Other practitioners also should deny the old forces as well, study the Fa with the practitioner and help him/her find his/her righteous thoughts. We should achieve the state of “The next person's things are your things, and your things are his things.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference”)
3. All practitioners need to look within. In the process of helping other practitioners improve his/her xinxing, we should eliminate our attachments and improve as one entity.
