(Minghui.org) Every notion and every attachment is like a prison that is detaining our true self (or main consciousness). Their intention is to deceive us, persecute us, harm us, and ultimately replace us. Unfortunately, we often regard our notions and attachments as ourselves and obey them, accommodate, and maintain them. 

We are more aware of and fearful of tangible prisons, detention centers, the communist party, and police, but we ignore the invisible jails we have built in our own minds, which are the real prisons and are even more sinister. They render us unable to move forward.

Why do I think this? Because I recently studied the Fa and shared experiences with a fellow practitioner who had returned from prison this year. He had been illegally detained for 10 years, and before that he had served a forced labor term of two years.

I felt sorry for him. He has been a Falun Dafa practitioner for 20 years, but he has spent more than half of those years in a black den! From another angle, however, he is still studying the Fa and improving his character, which is a blessing within the misfortune.

It is most unfortunate for those who gave up cultivation after the persecution started in 1999, as well as those who had given up studying the Fa in recent years. Although these people now seem to be comfortable on the surface, their true selves are deeply trapped in the prisons of their minds. They cannot extricate themselves from their own fears and human notions.

There are also people in the world who are deceived by the lies of the communist party and even dispute the truth when informed about Dafa. Such people may still face total destruction of mind and body! It seems that their situation is the most tragic! 

With this in mind, I am no longer sad for the fellow practitioner. What is important is for practitioners to let go of their attachments. What is the value of the pain and insecurity of our own bodies? It can be turned into a good thing for us. (But we must recognize the arrangements and persecution by the old forces behind it, and we must cleanse them when sending forth righteous thoughts!)

The world’s prisons and detention centers are not the most terrible places in the world. The most terrible thing is when our true selves or main consciousnesses cannot escape the prison of the human mind. They become lost in the temptations of the various false realities of this world and are deceived by the evil communist specter. They may miss the opportunity to be saved and lose that chance forever!

Breaking through this prison of the mind can lead to the light and help one be more diligent. Once out of confinement, one can truly escape, go home, and find true happiness in life.

One must focus on cultivation, improve mind nature, look inward, and pay attention to one’s thoughts and attachments.

We are Dafa disciples during the Fa-rectification period and shoulder the great mission of saving sentient beings. Doing more of the three things that Dafa disciples should do is necessary for us to break through this mental prison. The faster and more fundamentally one can demolish the prison in one’s mind, the more one moves toward great fulfillment!