Thoughts on Why Some Practitioners Are Constantly Harassed

(Minghui.org) In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has initiated one campaign after another to harass Falun Dafa practitioners on a massive scale in China, including the harassment for filing lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, the “Knocking on doors” campaign, and the “Zero-out” campaign.

Some practitioners were confused, wondering why they kept being harassed. I would like to share some of my understandings.

How to Look at the Persecution and the Police

In 2009, I was arrested for having several thousand yuan in paper bills with truth-clarification messages printed on them. In the detention center, I thought to myself, “It would be great if the messages on them said, ‘Reciting Falun Dafa is good will help you be safe.’” I felt I was doing the most righteous thing and I should be totally confident about it.

However, when I turned over a few bills on the tops of the stacks, I saw that they all said, “Heaven will destroy the CCP.”

“Oh dear,” I thought, “it’s one of those days. I could be jailed for a long time.”

I lived through the Cultural Revolution, so I know how evil the CCP is—whoever is against it is in for a lot of trouble. I thought, “Now that I won’t be released, I should just focus on clarifying the truth to the police.”

But after I failed the physical exam the next day, I was released.

That came as a total surprise to me—how could I possibly be released when I’d been found with so many banknotes with truth-clarification messages on them? I couldn’t comprehend the true reason behind it because I had already accepted the persecution in my own mind. I didn’t expect to be released, and yet I was.

With all these human notions, no wonder I found my quick release rather hard to believe and was even a little bit excited. I failed to find the root cause for these notions and to rectify myself at the time. I kept bumbling along for a long time before I finally realized that I should change my wrong notions and rectify my unrighteous thoughts.

In fact, Master had given me quite a number of hints, but I was only focusing on doing things at that time and didn’t really know how to truly cultivate. When something happened, I analyzed it with human thinking.

When I saw that many police officers were changing their attitude about Falun Gong after learning the truth, I thought to myself, “There are good people in the police force, too. I’ve been too negative about them.” In fact, I didn’t realize that it was Master who was protecting us and that there was something supernatural at work. I looked at things from a human perspective and tried to think good things about the police and held them in too high regard.

If I’d had stronger righteous thoughts, I would have completely negated the persecution I experienced later on. But I was trapped in a kind of “Stockholm syndrome,” and the old forces capitalized on that loophole and my other attachments. I failed to negate the persecution and accepted it as it was. As a result, I was persecuted.

After I was released, I still could not free myself from the “Stockholm syndrome,” thinking that the environment should be more relaxed now and that the police were trying to help me, but they couldn’t because my case was already in the system and their superiors were making the decisions, etc. I was still thinking about how good our local police officers were, as if the attitude of the police could decide my cultivation environment.

When some officers were even a little kind to us, I would feel as if there was no longer any persecution, but for a long time I was still constantly harassed, and the police officers I came across were pretty nasty.

I was confused and frustrated, thinking that I was just unlucky as I always seemed to run into the two bad policemen in our area. One of them even said to me, “You are a counter-revolutionary (for having those banknotes with truth-clarification messages). You would have been shot in the old days.”

I thought this police officer was truly evil at the time, and I did actually accept the things he said. Deep down inside, there were still areas that failed to comply with the Fa and were taken advantage of by the old forces.

Later, I learned how to cultivate and how to look within myself. I realized that it was not accidental that I always ran into those officers. From the cultivation point of view, I ran into them because of my wrong way of thinking, but I failed to realize my own problems, so I was harassed repeatedly.

As my xinxing elevated through Fa study and looking within, the police ceased to harass me.

Don’t Unknowingly Acknowledge the Persecution

Master said in Zhuan Falun,

“We’d say that people invite all those troubles just because that idea they have isn’t right, and their thoughts aren’t proper.”

Perhaps we thought we were doing pretty well when the police harassed us and that there was no reason we needed to look within, while, in fact, we failed to find the root cause of the problems. We might still have hidden notions that deviate from the Fa, and such loopholes are capitalized on by the evil.

Even though we negate the persecution, we still need to genuinely look inward and see if we are still lagging behind in any way based on the requirements of the Fa. We should look within under any circumstances instead of looking externally.

Some practitioners said, “The police are coming. Good. We can clarify the truth to them.” I’m not saying that we should not clarify the truth to the police, but in our minds, perhaps we did not completely negate the persecution. Instead, we thought the police would definitely come, and there was nothing we could do about it.

In a way, we allowed the police to come and we were resisting the persecution while acknowledging it.

We must fundamentally negate the persecution and not ease off on the first line of defense. For example, when we think our ID cards might have been tampered with, we tend to think, “I will send more righteous thoughts when I use my ID card.”

Again, such a mindset is still based on acknowledging the persecution. We must completely deny the persecution in our thinking, whatever the evil might be doing. Only by basing our thoughts firmly on the Fa can we completely negate the interference.

I also feel that interference is not inevitable. For example, when I was lodging criminal complaints against Jiang Zemin, the post office said that there were too many letters, so they put my mail in another envelope.

Later, the police questioned and harassed all the practitioners in our area who lodged complaints against Jiang, except for me.

Master said,

“If the matter has absolutely nothing to do with you or doesn’t involve any of the attachments you should break, then that thing would rarely happen to you.” (Teachings at the Conference in Europe)

This experience also helped me to gain a deeper understanding about what Master said in “Expounding on the Fa.” Nothing happens by accident. If we truly understand the Fa and let our knowing side take charge, the persecution indeed has nothing to do with us.

What Is Our Mindset?

Take the campaign to sue Jiang Zemin for example. On the surface, we all did the same thing, but our states of mind might not have been the same. We were evaluated not by whether we lodged complaints or not, but by what was on our mind when we did it.

When we don’t have any selfish intention and do things completely for the Fa-rectification, and when our thoughts comply with the requirements of the Fa at our various levels, the external environment will change accordingly. In other words, human society is only an illusion Master uses to improve our xinxing.

When in a tribulation, we very often tend to focus on the superficial form instead of using the opportunity to elevate our xinxing. My understanding is that, whatever forms of tribulation we come across, they are for us to enlighten to the Fa principles. Things may not be good from an everyday person’s perspective, but when we look back after we have improved ourselves, they are actually good things from the cultivation perspective.

I have come to the understanding that what is considered “inevitable” among everyday people is not necessarily the case from the perspective of the Fa. Things may be viewed as being fixed, unchangeable, or helpless in the eyes of everyday people, but in reality, everything is dynamic and changing constantly.

During the harassment campaigns, the police were often instructed to harass every practitioner on their list, including those who had given up cultivation after the persecution started in 1999. While some may find it hard to believe that the police never harassed me in those campaigns, I think it’s because when my thinking reached the Fa’s requirement for me, the persecution didn’t exist in my field anymore.

The above is my own cultivation experience and understanding. Please kind point out anything inappropriate.