A practitioner from overseas sent me an e-mail telling me about the power of sending forth righteous thoughts every hour. She suggested that I should try to do it as often as I could. I agreed with her that I should send forth righteous thoughts well and as many times as possible, but I did not pay much attention to doing it.

Then I remembered reading "To fellow practitioners," an editorial from Clearwidom.net. It said that as Fa Rectification disciples, there are three things we must do well: 1. Study the Fa, 2. Send Forth Righteous Thoughts, and 3. Clarify the truth to the precious Chinese people. It was very clear and explicit on what we should focus on at this point in time. Reading this article inspired me to think about whether I was doing the above well, and if I could say that I was following Master closely.

I had been reading day and night, and this was the most important activity I did. I read whenever and wherever I could. Reading the book was my top priority. Therefore I could say that I was doing okay in this regard.

As for sending forth righteous thoughts, I had been doing it two times a day. That's it. In terms of its quality, honestly speaking, my righteous thoughts were not really righteous. I was more or less just going through the motions and getting it over-and-done with. I felt something was wrong with this, but I let it slip by without rectifying it.

I rethought the comments on Sending Forth Righteous Thoughts in the article, "To fellow practitioners" and the other practitioner's suggestions on doing it more regularly, and decided to really focus my efforts.

At the outset, I just did it whenever I felt like it. But later on, I remembered a practitioner mentioning how her mindset in sending forth righteous thoughts became disorderly by doing it a few minutes earlier than the set time or sometimes a lot later, and how bad this made her feel. Then I understood that I should do my best to do it at the set time. I do not know why I have to do it exactly on the hour, but I know that all the Dafa disciples around the world are doing it on the hour. When we all exert a collective effort, our righteous thoughts will be amplified. Therefore, I decided to keep the set time.

Even when I really began to send forth righteous thoughts, I felt my effort was not really working out and I could feel it. I would sometimes think about something else while sending forth righteous thoughts, my posture would become droopy and my mind wander off. Most of all, I felt that I was not really doing what I was supposed to be doing: eliminating evils! Then what should I call it? Was it a meditation? Or was it just sitting there? Neither!

I felt bad. Nevertheless, I kept on doing it an average of 6 times a day. After I had been doing it for a few days, one night I had a dream. I saw a gigantic snake crawling up a tree looking at people, and I was sure that it was up to no good. I saw its tongue sticking out while those vicious eyes preyed on people who were so mindless about what was going on. I felt the evil preying on these people's attachments and using them to do bad things. Soon, I saw this snake on the ground, dead, with its blood splattered on the tree. Its limp body had lost its essence and was just lying there on the ground. But what I also saw was that this snake had a human shape under its snake's skin. So what was it? I suppose it was a demon in human skin doing bad things. I felt encouraged by this dream. Even though my righteous thoughts were not yet up to standard, they had done their job in eliminating evil. I was happy.

In another dream, I saw that my room had been flooded and that all of my belongings were floating in the water. I was trying my best to keep them from being swept away, but no matter how hard I tried, a big portion of my things got swept away with the current, making me feel helpless. But upon awakening, I felt it was the Dafa current that swept out my old stuff and got rid of it for me. I felt good. All of these changes started to happen to me and I could see it in my dreams, but I could also feel it in my consciousness. I felt good.

In the meantime, I thought about how to improve my quality of sending forth righteous thoughts. I didn't want to feel like I was sitting there confused for 15 minutes. I tried to think about all the bad elements that were trying to damage and destroy Dafa, Dafa disciples and sentient beings. I thought about all the vicious attacks practitioners in Mainland China suffer, and all of the life and death situations they have to deal with because of these evils. Even with this, I still could not strengthen my righteous thoughts. I kept reading the book and reading Clearwisdom articles describing what practitioners in Mainland China go through, and about all of the effort and sacrifice they make to clarify the truth. Those articles made me realize how negligent I had been as a Dafa disciple. How could I sit there feeling it had nothing to do with me! I began to wake up from being asleep.

I started to think about what I could do to help the practitioners in China. What could I do to help them? All of these thoughts arose, and I realized I needed to do more and better than what I had been doing. I had to put more effort into clarifying the truth and exert my efforts in every way I possibly could. Then things started to come up; projects were suggested and connections were made where I got more of a chance to clarify the truth and rectify the Fa. Unlike in the past, I felt more determined and firm. Instead of feeling that those were things I needed to do as a Dafa disciple, it now came from my heart. It was something genuine.

Practice makes perfect. In less than a week of my ongoing efforts to send forth righteous thoughts, I felt the difference every day. My mind became more concentrated and peaceful, my posture improved, and the duration of time I could sit got longer. Most of all, I really began to feel that I was eliminating evils.

The overseas practitioner also mentioned to me that it is also important to have righteous thoughts throughout the day. Another practitioner who heard about my sending forth righteous thoughts effort said that he found that having righteous thoughts is very powerful.

I took those two e-mails as a message from Master asking me to have righteous thoughts throughout the day. But how would I do it? I feel that if I keep on reading the book, reading Clearwisdom and sending forth righteous thoughts, I will know how to maintain righteous thoughts throughout the day.

Study the Fa well, send forth righteous thoughts well and clarify the truth well.

I wondered why these three things are suggested in one breath! My understanding is that they are all related. Through my experience, I understand the following: that without studying the Fa well, our righteous thoughts are not that well founded. Without sending forth righteous thoughts well, all of our efforts of clarifying the truth in various environments become weak. Without putting a good effort into clarifying the truth, which is a very important component in Fa rectification, our sending forth righteous thoughts has no foundational support. Studying the Fa but failing to do a good job in clarifying the truth is like only chanting the scripture without improving xinxing. So, to be good Fa Rectification disciples, we have to do all these three things well. All of these three compliment each other--if there is one that we aren't doing well, it is as though we are limping around.

I am still learning and improving daily as I try to do better in all three. Kindly point out anything improper in my understanding.

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Category: Journeys of Cultivation