(Minghui.org) The issues talked about in the Minghui Editorial “Flattery and Demonic Interference from One’s Own Mind” have existed for a long time in our local cultivation environment, as we have been praised and flattered excessively. I had tried in the past to write a sharing article to address the issues but struggled to put my thoughts into words. I’m glad that the Minghui editors pointed it out.
Our local practitioners have done a great job in personal cultivation and clarifying the truth. But as we reached out to help practitioners in rural areas, we began to frequently receive excessive praise, which eventually led to the problems I will describe below.
Our Local Cultivation Environment
Our small town is home to a lot of practitioners. Before the Chinese Communist Party began to persecute Falun Dafa, it was common to find several practitioners living in the same neighborhood. Even in the face of the persecution, most remained steadfast in their faith. Our righteous actions deterred the persecution in our region to a great extent.
For two decades, we’ve maintained daily group {{Fa study. Recently, many practitioners committed to studying the Fa together twice a day. Through group Fa study and memorizing the Fa, we help and encourage each other to be more diligent and better handle tribulations.
In addition to regular Fa study, we persist in distributing Dafa materials and talking to people on a daily basis. This effort has helped local residents as well as government employees, law enforcement officials, and street committee members to better understand Dafa and the persecution.
In our spare time, we went to surrounding rural villages to share our cultivation experiences with the practitioners there. There used to be many practitioners in those villages, but only a few in each village remained steadfast during the persecution, struggling to maintain a cultivation environment.
We brought these practitioners audio players with podcasts of sharing articles from Minghui so that they could listen to the articles during their busy farming seasons. If a practitioner didn’t have much money, we gave them the device for free. As their cultivation progressed, we began to give them computers and printers so they could print informational materials about Dafa themselves.
In 2015, we also helped most practitioners in nearby villages file lawsuits against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for his role in the persecution.
The Pitfalls of Flattery and Admiration
Over time, our regular visits to these villages led the practitioners there to admire us. They began to flatter and compliment us. At first, a few of us saw this as validating our efforts to help them. However, the flattery and compliments began to subtly nurture our attachments to showing off and seeking fame.
As our reputation spread, practitioners from neighboring counties and cities asked for our guidance on group Fa study and how to form one body. Once, we were invited to share our experiences with coordinators from different townships. The praise and commendation we received afterward should have raised alarm bells, but none of us realized the problem.
Our local practitioners also welcomed practitioners who were forced to live away from home to avoid the persecution or going through sickness karma tribulations. Most of them had positive experiences here so they eagerly “promoted” us to other practitioners they knew. This led to an influx of practitioners seeking help in our region, one after another.
Eventually, some of us began to realize that we had unconsciously veered away from the Fa, with visiting practitioners regarding us as role models. We then acknowledged that our healthy cultivation environment was the result of steadfast cultivation and righteous minds. We also recognized that everything is the result of Master’s support and we had no reason to show off. When our actions led fellow practitioners to admire us or rely on us, we had already deviated from the Fa. Once we came to this realization, we stopped accepting invitations to share our experiences with other areas.
Two things happened during this time that were a bit of a wake-up call that we’d strayed from the Fa. On one occasion, three local practitioners were arrested on their way to another region to distribute Dafa materials. The police threatened them with heavy prison terms. With Master’s protection and support from practitioners in nearby regions, they were eventually released after several months.
On another occasion, during the recent Chinese New Year festivities, the local authorities removed Dafa-themed couplets from practitioners’ homes and forced some practitioners to dismantle their satellite dishes that were broadcasting overseas programs. Things like this had never happened in our region before and we believe it was a reflection of the evil forces exploiting our loopholes to disrupt our local environment.
I understand that it is important to share experiences among practitioners so that we can improve together, but any praise and flattery that feeds our attachments to recognition and fame must be recognized and stopped. We must carefully balance our actions and cherish our cultivation environment so that we remain steadfast on the righteous path of cultivation.
Please kindly point out anything inappropriate in my sharing.
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