(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
I am a practitioner from Northern China. I would like to report my cultivation experience in the last 6 years to Master, and share my lessons with fellow practitioners.
I obtained the Fa in 1998, which benefited me both physically and mentally. After July 20, 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa three times, and I have been jailed in a detention center four times. I was illegally sentenced to forced labor for 2 years. Because I refused to renounce Falun Dafa, I was transferred to other labor camps twice, and my sentence was extended for 2 months. In the labor camp, I was brutally tortured. At the end of 2002, I was released.
After my release, I devoted myself to clarifying the truth, and I was arrested again in 2003 and tortured. During this tribulation, I solidly believed in Master and Dafa, and I had a determined thought, "This is not the place that a Dafa disciple should stay. I should go out to expose the evil persecution, clarify the truth and validate Dafa." Under Master's protection, I escaped with my righteous thoughts a few days later.
Afterwards, I calmly read the Fa and looked inward. I realized that, since I had only focused on Dafa work, I hadn't solidly cultivated myself, and developed some human notions when doing Dafa work. Thus my attachment had been enlarged, and the evil forces took the advantage of my loopholes. Through this tribulation, I really understood that no matter what we do, we should do it as a Dafa disciple, and no matter how much Dafa work we have done, it is not a substitute for cultivation, because improving one's xinxing level is the most important.
Later, I tried my best to keep up with Fa study while doing things to validate Dafa, and tried to do Dafa work with a pure heart, although I still have some attachments including those I haven't realized yet.
Striving forward, breaking through my notions while clarifying the truth
After I escaped from the detention center in 2003, my physical wounds were healed very quickly by Dafa's amazing power, but it took some time for me to recover from the psychological wounds. Whenever I recalled the torture I had suffered in the detention center, I had goose bumps. The notion of fear kept me from striving forward in validating Dafa. Every time I was close to the police station where I had been brutally tortured, I would make a detour. When a fellow practitioner who was walking with me asked why I didn't take that way, I told him that we should be rational, and should not give the persecutors an excuse to arrest us. Afterwards, I looked inward and found that, on the surface level, my behavior was rational, but actually, I used it to cover my notion of fear, which was hidden underneath. I was in this state for a while.
One day, I learned that a fellow practitioner was arrested, and I needed to inform more practitioners to rescue him. We split into several groups and spread this news to the local practitioners very quickly. That night, when I was home, I realized that the street I took that day was the one I always tried to avoid. That day, the only thought in mind was to rescue that practitioner, and I didn't think of myself.
In order to expose the evil, and save the people who have been deceived by the lies, fellow practitioners decided to expose the evil behavior of the police at the police station where I had been tortured. We needed some detailed information. One morning, when I was doing the fifth exercise, one thought came to my mind - "A Dafa disciple should save people no matter what the situation." I knew that this was a righteous thought, and that I should not let fear or other unrighteous thoughts interfere with it. So I went to that police station with two other practitioners. We collected a lot of detailed information about this police station. Since then, my fear was gone. I didn't have any unrighteous thoughts when I passed by that police station.
After I was released from the labor camp, since I was constantly busy with Dafa work, I never went home. The police in my residence area are very evil. Three practitioners have been persecuted to death by them, and they have sent more than 10 practitioners to a labor camp. With more and more evil behaviors of the local policemen exposed to people, more and more people learned the truth and some upright people also questioned the evil policemen, which made them restrain themselves. But the police in my residence area still didn't stop their evil behavior after being exposed many times.
I started looking inward and I realized that I didn't have a clear understanding from the Fa on the issue of exposing the evil to local people. First, I didn't expose the detailed evil deeds the policemen committed. Instead, I just briefly mentioned a few things to people. I didn't completely expose their evil nature, leaving the evil some space to exist. Second, when exposing the evil, my fundamental purpose was not to save people, so my heart was not pure.
After I realized what the problem was, I started writing down all the brutal tortures that my family and I had experienced, including the financial, psychological, and physical persecution. I wrote down all the details, including the names of the policemen, corrupt officials and organizations that had been involved. I published what I wrote on the Minghui website, and also showed it to local people. After this, I wrote the detailed information about other practitioners who had been tortured at this police station. In this process, we kept correcting our thoughts, exposing evil, and clarifying the truth. After a long time, the chief of the police station and a policeman who was in charge of our area, were relocated.
In 2005, a practitioner was arrested by this police force. When his relative, who is also a practitioner, went to the police station, asking them to release him, this relative was arrested also. When we learned this, many local practitioners went to the police station to send forth righteous thoughts. Since the police from this station had often harassed my family and looked for me, I always tried to avoid being seen by them. But when fellow practitioners were arrested, the first thought I had was what Master said, "The next person's things are your things, and your things are his things." ("Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference")
All practitioners are one body, and we should completely deny this unreasonable persecution. So, I went to the police station with another practitioner, and discussed with other practitioners how to rescue them. Due to the power of the whole body, they were released that same day.
My personal understanding is that, in the Fa-rectification cultivation, it doesn't matter if we have all kinds of fear and attachments, as long as we can face them, and keep breaking through one's own limits according to the Fa. When we always consider others, and actively assimilate to the Fa, all of our fear, attachments and other bad substances in our thoughts will be disintegrated, and our true nature will emerge.
Letting go of selfishness and taking responsibility
At the beginning of my cultivation in 1998, I was a new practitioner at our exercise site. I just knew that I should read the Fa, do the exercises, and look inward during conflicts. I didn't actively attend the activities of spreading the Fa. I just felt happy when I occasionally joined their activities, but I never thought about the influence on today's Fa-rectification. After July 20, 1999, the Fa-rectification cultivation started. I realized from the Fa that, as a Dafa disciple, I must uphold Dafa, so I tried my best to do what a practitioner should do, but I never thought about the whole body. Improving as a whole was just a concept in my mind. I never thought about the importance of cooperating as a whole in the Fa-rectification, and never thought that I would be a coordinator later.
I remember how, when I was jailed in a labor camp in 2000, I realized that a practitioner should solidly cultivate in any situation and rectify all the unrighteous factors in the surrounding environment. There were 18 practitioners in my detention team. I took every chance to talk to them and share my understandings with them. Soon, a group of 15 of us shocked the evil by doing the exercises together. At that time, I realized that, in an evil situation, when practitioners do something as a whole body, we have immense power. And since that time, I learned the significance of cooperating as one body.
In 2002, a lot of practitioners from my area were arrested and sentenced to forced labor and jail. Some practitioners were persecuted to death. Most of our material production sites and internet sites were destroyed. We were badly in need of truth-clarifying materials. We had to rely on practitioners from other towns. Only a very few practitioners were making the materials, so most practitioners could not access the information from the Minghui website on time, which made truth-clarification very difficult, and also made the environment of validating Dafa very tough.
After I was released from the labor camp in 2002, two practitioners who used to work with me were arrested. Since very few practitioners stepped forward to do Dafa work at that time, I took the responsibility of a Dafa disciple, and started doing local Dafa work again. We were facing some real problems, such as the sites being destroyed and being short of manpower. The major problem we had was how to recruit more practitioners.
In such a difficult situation, I first talked to some steadfast practitioners. We shared our understandings from the Fa, and unified the understanding that as disciples in the period of Fa-rectification, our responsibility is to clarify the truth and save sentient beings. We discussed how to solve the problem that we were in need of Minghui Weekly (collection of important articles from the Minghui website) and other basic truth-clarifying materials. Gradually, more practitioners got involved in the material sites work. But, since the manpower was very limited, and there were very few material sites, every practitioner who was doing that work, worked very hard and took on many responsibilities. Due to the heavy workload, some practitioners reduced the time they spent sending forth righteous thoughts and studying the Fa. Moreover, due to the praise they received from other practitioners, some of them developed all kinds of attachments, and treated Dafa work as an everyday person's job without realizing it. They ignored cultivation, failing to look inward and improve their own xinxing level.
In September 2003, many material sites, which had been in operation for only a few months, were destroyed by the police. Many practitioners and I were arrested. After a few days, I escaped due to my righteous thoughts. (To be continued)
October 14, 2005
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Category: Improving Oneself
