My Experience of Removing Attachments in the Process of Cultivation

(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!

Master has encouraged practitioners to share their experiences and insights throughout their cultivation practice for the benefit of others, so I would like to share some understandings and experiences from Master’s teachings on how I have experienced the process of cultivation and how during that process I have come to experience higher levels. 

I will focus on removing attachments, as Master is continuously reminding us that if we cannot cultivate away our human attachments well, then we cannot be effective at saving sentient beings. I have experienced that when our minds are focused on removing our attachments, our compassion and sense of wanting to save sentient beings naturally arises, without intention.

Beginning Cultivation Practice

When I started my journey of practicing Falun Dafa in 2004, I deeply understood how my character had changed from its original nature of Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance) and what it meant to be a cultivator. As I read through Zhuan Falun, I started to understand that Falun Dafa was a spiritual practice from the Buddha school and that like attending school, there were different levels of attainment, like grades in school. Each level has a standard, and a practitioner is not capable of understanding those standards, or higher levels of Fa principles, without elevating his or her moral character by removing human attachments. I also understood that the process of cultivation is a process of understanding cultivation itself. 

As I kept reading the book and Master’s other teachings, I understood that Master was there with me. Therefore, every time I would read the teachings and did not understand something, I would ask questions in my mind as if the Teacher was there with me, such as, “How does one elevate?” “How does one remove one’s attachments?” “What do dimensions look like?” “What does it mean to save sentient beings?” and “What are the old forces and how are they affecting the salvation of sentient beings?” After removing attachments and improving my character, when I read the teachings again, the answers would naturally come. I gradually started experiencing and understanding many of the things that Master has discussed in Zhuan Falun and his articles. 

As an example, my first experience of seeing something from another dimension happened just after I had finished reading Zhuan Falun for the first time. When I started reading the book, I was amazed at how profound the content was and had a strong sensation of seeing how far my character was from Master’s teachings of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I became so excited about wanting to understand the teachings that I read half the book in four hours and then finished it the following day. After a few days, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a golden figure floating six feet in front of my bed with legs crossed in the lotus position and hands in the Jieyin position. I saw it in full vividness, but as soon as I focused closely, it disappeared. 

I started thinking about what I had just seen. As soon as that thought flashed through my mind, I started hearing and seeing the teachings from Zhuan Falun as if Master was there reading it aloud to me and showing me the section about Law Bodies (Fashen). At that moment, I understood what I had seen and how quickly visions could transform. I had a very deep sense that Master was always there, every day, arranging things to always bring my human attachments to the surface so that I could remove them.

Letting Go of Attachments and Saving Sentient Beings

How did I understand the process of removing attachments? I understood from Master’s teaching that as beings were being created and had interactions, some developed selfishness and could no longer remain at that level. The selfishness created karma, which also created debts, and gradually the beings would drop in levels. Looking at myself, I understood that karma was an intelligent entity that had become part of my thinking and that gradually, that selfishness would grow stronger and therefore create attachments that would change my very nature. I understood from Master’s teaching that as a human being, life is arranged to repay those debts, but that if we keep getting worse we will face destruction. Therefore, I understood that through studying the teachings and going through the process of being diligent, or paying attention to my thoughts and actions, Master would allow me to see those attachments that I would normally think are “good.” 

Master said, 

“Then, what happens? It will be divided into numerous portions and placed at the various different levels of your cultivation. They will be used to improve your xinxing, transform your karma, and increase your gong.” (Lecture Three, Zhuan Falun)

Master would break the debts up into little portions and arrange things to hit the attachments so that I could go through the process of recognizing them. By sincerely wishing not to follow the attachment, I would face hardship, whether mental or physical, to repay the debt and eliminate the karma. I understood that this process would repeat itself constantly until the attachment was removed and, in the process, my moral character would improve and elevate to new levels, and I would thus enlighten to higher truths of reality.

As I have gone through this process over the years, sharing with and observing other practitioners, I understood that the strength of attachments varies greatly from person to person. This teaching is explained in Zhuan Falun, where Master illustrates it with the example of the person eating meat. As an example, the process of removing the attachment of emotion to family and friends lasted a few months for me compared to others who have been facing it for years. I faced this attachment at the very beginning of my journey. As I started understanding the truth of Falun Dafa, I was naturally filled with a deep sense of wanting others to practice, as it was what they had been waiting for and is a way to not face destruction. This was my understanding of the heart of wanting to save sentient beings. The attachment to sentimentally to family and friends started to come out, as I had a strong feeling and sense of wanting them to practice Falun Dafa. During this time, I also faced the attachment of being too excited. I was constantly thinking about different ways to try to get my family and friends to practice. Every week when I saw my friends and family, my mind was always on finding some way to talk about Falun Dafa. 

Master is always trying to find some way for us to see our attachments, and for me this manifested when my father, after a few months of me visiting them, told me, “Rich, I know this practice is good, as I can see how it has changed you, but right now is not the time for me to do it.” After hearing this, I did not take the hint and still let my attachments drive me and I kept thinking, “Well if my father does not want to practice, then I will focus on the others.” 

The following week, I was talking with my mother, and she said the exact same thing that my father said, word for word. “Rich, I know this practice is good, as I can see how it has changed you, but right now is not the time for me to do it.” As soon as I heard this, I immediately recognized that Master was using my parents to point out my attachments and I began the process of recognizing the feelings and thoughts related to my family, friends, and excitement. 

One day, as I was going through the removal process, I started hearing Master’s teachings. Master said when talking about lifetime after lifetime during reincarnation, 

“In addition, there are also predestined relationships formed by being close relatives and good friends, students or disciples, or by the kindness or spite owed among people, all of which can make you become a family or belong to the same group. You have social connections in society, and this allows tensions among people to be resolved and kindness and spite to be repaid.” (“Fa Teaching Given in New York City,” Teachings at Conferences in the United States) 

I immediately started seeing how many lifetimes there are in just 5,000 years, not to mention one million years. What if one lifetime was 10 years long, the next lifetime was 40 years long, and the next was 70 years long, and in each lifetime roles changed due to the karmic debts. I also could understand that those lifetimes included animals, inorganic things, and were on different planets across many dimensions. 

After I experienced this awakening, I no longer had those very focused feelings toward family and friends, and my heart opened to see all beings as important and that they were all waiting to obtain the Fa. Throughout the years of cultivation, I have experienced the sense that even people just walking past me at a shopping place were very close friends and family in other lifetimes. I could also understand that these visions were also testing me to see if I would get attached again to family and friends.

Demonic Interference

These visions (seen via the celestial eye) lead to another experience of facing demonic interference in cultivation. One of the strongest attachments I have faced in my cultivation is complacency. This attachment has caused me to look down on others, thinking that they are not very smart, and complain about their deficiencies. I am constantly working through the process of removing it and noticed that it goes hand in hand with fame. Just as the attachment to friends and family was not very strong with me and strong for others, the attachment of complacency is strong with me, but may not be for others. 

It is natural when validating Fa well that wisdom comes forth and especially in the workplace you will do a good job. With this comes praise and acknowledgment, and these stimulate these attachments. At my workplace, I have been awarded the Most Valuable Person in my department for two years in a row and this is the result of putting my heart into what I do. Although this is a result of my character, it is also a process and test to wear away the attachments of complacency and fame and not for my personal benefit. Master teaches about this attachment in Zhuan Falun with the example of a person who obtains gong and starts healing people. I understood that after all the praise and acknowledgment about how capable he was, and he was not being diligent, his attachments grew, and the person started wanting things and became conceited.

When I went through the experience of seeing Master’s Law Body and then focusing on it so that it disappeared, I had a sense of how fast it took for things to change. It was faster than it would take to blink our eyes. Think about how fast the intention of blinking our eyes is. We don’t even think about doing it and just do it naturally, and this disappearance occurred even faster than that. Over the years, as I have elevated my character and experienced higher-level truths, this has given me an understanding of how quickly demonic interference can really destroy a practitioner’s cultivation. For example, at the beginning of my cultivation, I started noticing that things at a certain distance would shrink a few millimeters daily. Buildings that were three inches tall at a distance would be two inches tall after a few weeks. When this started happening, I shared it with another practitioner to ask him what he thought might be happening. He said to me, “It is part of your improvement, so don’t pay too much attention to it.” The more days that went by, the more I wanted to see it, as things kept getting smaller and smaller, to the point where cars, buildings, and people would look like children’s toys or ants. This attachment was driving me to want to see more. Every morning when I went to work, I would drive by a lake that kept getting smaller and I was laughing and smiling about how tiny it looked. 

One morning, as I was going over the bridge by the lake, time froze, like you see in science fiction movies where nothing is moving but I am fully aware of everything around me. I noticed in the distance by the lake a clear, circular looking object that was very slowly moving toward me. In a matter of about two minutes, it reached the front of my face, and at that moment everything started reverting back to normal time. The circular thing went into my head, and I immediately started having the same thought I had in previous days about wanting to look at the tiny lake. 

At this moment, I started hearing Master’s lecture about demonic interference and immediately understood that the circular thing was my attachment in another dimension reaching my human mind. After the next few weeks, as I kept seeing things small, I would go through the process of removing the attachment. One day, as I faced removing the attachment, I started hearing Master’s lecture. I understood the general meaning was that in a single level there are millions of dimensions and that there are beings in each dimension. I also was seeing the teaching about how Master’s Law Body would know my thoughts even before I did, due to the differences in time between dimensions. I then started sensing how in the Fa rectification, things have changed, and that even higher gods can’t see things as they are. 

I understood at that moment that what I had seen that was small was just one of those dimensions and that the time in the human dimension was very slow, but in the other dimension where the attachment was it was very fast. Just like with the attachment to family and friends that was focused on a few people, once the attachment was removed to seeing things (via the celestial eye), I understood that what I could see, whether something small, another dimension, a previous lifetime, or a higher being, is just one out of millions of dimensions and that there was no reason to accept it as something important. It was the attachment and feeling about that attachment that made it seem as if it were absolute, and the transformation of the vision occurs so fast that we don’t even realize that the attachment is controlling what we see. I also understood that like other attachments, anything that I see (via the celestial eye) and experience, is part of the process of not getting attached and of learning to treat it as cultivation and not truth. 

I share this in the hope that any practitioner facing this, or who is going to face this, can quickly look within to get rid of it, as it is very easy to take these experiences as truth and in what is faster than a blink of an eye, face demonic interference. It is very noticeable when a practitioner has this attachment, as they are always talking about what they see and telling it to you as if it was the absolute truth of things, just like I did when I was seeing things shrink. Once I got rid of the attachment and was able to experience so many dimensions at different levels, I could look back and see how focused that attachment was. It is ridiculously impossible to talk about all these things with a human mouth, which is why it is not even worth thinking about. This attachment, combined with fame and showing off, can quickly bring a practitioner’s cultivation to a very harmful level. And during the process of saving beings, a practitioner can be taken advantage of by old force factors, bringing a practitioner to ruin.

In conclusion, I have shared just a few experiences that highlight some of the processes and understandings of my cultivation and enlightenment. I take these experiences and the removal of attachments very seriously, as I understand that the old force factors are still around, focusing on practitioner’s human attachments and that Master has repeatedly told us that if we cannot cultivate away our human attachments well, then we cannot be effective at saving sentient beings. For example, an attachment of combativeness may be arranged to cause two practitioners, or even a practitioner and a person we are trying to save, to argue with each other. If a practitioner is not diligent and paying attention to their thinking and actions, then the argument could become strong to the point that they will even contend with the very person they are trying to save, causing the person to leave or even have a bad attitude toward Falun Dafa practitioners. However, if the attachment can be worn away during that tribulation, then the karma from the attachment that is controlling the person will disappear and they will be able to listen to the truth.

I sincerely hope that my experience sharing has helped someone, and thank you for the opportunity to be here, as I understand that helping each other improve in our practice is the reason we have experience sharing conferences. 

Thank you, Master, and thank you, fellow practitioners.

(Presented at the 2024 Southern US Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference)