(Clearwisdom.net) I am one of the thousands who learned Falun Dafa early on. I started practicing in December 1994, just two years after Teacher introduced Falun Dafa to the public. I felt very blessed to learn such a great practice and to be protected by a true Teacher. However, at that time, I did not understand how much fear I had hidden within me.
Life and cultivation changed after July 20, 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began. I started to experience fear at times. I was afraid that the police would summon me to the police station and arrest me or that I would be arrested if I went to Beijing. I was also afraid of being arrested if I were to go out to distribute materials, talk to people about the persecution or download Dafa materials.
Since I knew that it was not right to have these fears, I tried to pull myself together and do some truth-clarification work despite them. However, I was doing Dafa work with human mentalities, treating it as something that I had to do, and fearing that I might be left behind if I did not do it. When I first started posting flyers and distributing materials, I had a dry mouth, my heart raced, and I perspired a lot. I was scared to the core of my being.
When I started posting, I was using starch glue instead of scotch tape. When I returned home, I took off my padded jacket and washed it because I was very afraid that I had splattered glue all over myself while rushing through the posting. I feared that the police would follow me home, find my padded jacket with glue on it, and use it as proof that I had posted the materials. My imagination was running wild.
As Fa-rectification progressed, and as I studied the Fa intensely, the black substance of fear gradually dissipated. Teacher taught us,
"If you are not afraid, the factor that would make you afraid will cease to exist." ("Eliminating Your Last Attachments")
After the publication of the "Nine Commentaries on Communist Party," I watched the VCD of it once and read the Nine Commentaries three times. I realized that my fear comes from fearing the Communist specter. After this insight, my fears greatly diminished.
However, recently, I witnessed so many practitioners being illegally arrested, and other practitioners have died because they could not release their fears of sickness. Others have become destitute. I became fearful again upon witnesses these things. Sometimes, my heart beat so frantically that I had to press down on my chest to control it. When this happened, I asked myself, do I have heart problems? Am I being taken advantage of by the evil? Then I realized, no, I am a disciple of Teacher, a Fa-rectification disciple. Although I may still have all kinds of attachments, I will not allow the old forces, dark minions and rotten ghosts to interfere with me. I will walk the path Teacher arranged for me.
I sent forth righteous thoughts, but my understanding still fluctuated. I read articles by fellow practitioners who wrote about their fundamental attachments, and I studied Teacher's article, "Towards Consummation." I also looked for my fundamental attachments, but failed to find any. Yesterday, when I was typing, I saw the Chinese character "fear" a couple of times. At that point, I thought perhaps Teacher was telling me something. What am I afraid of? I thought I was just afraid of the communist specter. I had to acknowledge that there was far more to it.
I enlightened more after I shared with fellow practitioners: My fear of losing everything - being arrested, fear of all kinds of troubles, and losing my human body, came from my fundamental attachment of selfishness. Then, other attachments grew out of it. Just as Teacher said in "Towards Consummation:"
"Do you know that one of the biggest excuses the old evil forces use at present to persecute Dafa is that your fundamental attachments remain concealed? So in order to identify those people, the tribulations have been made more severe."
"Additionally, they manipulate wicked human beings to examine Dafa and its disciples, putting them through a comprehensive and destructive test that targets all human thoughts and attachments. Had you truly been able to get rid of those fundamental human attachments in your cultivation, this last tribulation would not have been so vicious."
I looked inside, and I knew that my fears existed because of my lack of righteous faith in Teacher, and not being clear on the purpose and meaning of validating Dafa, which created a separation between myself and Dafa and Teacher. Thus, I failed to immerse myself in the Fa. I thought I was cultivating, but there are also elements of validating myself. Some fears are human fears; I am still in the realm of an ordinary person. The latter fear relates to cultivation and it all originates from selfishness. I had not rid myself of the fundamental attachment of being a human.
I enjoyed writing before I started practicing, and I even wrote some literary works, but I stopped writing after I took up the practice, believing that writing was just feeding into attachments of qing. So, I let go of this pastime. However, I recognize that I seldom wrote about my cultivation. Since I have not cultivated well, I cannot write well. You may have noticed that I do not quote Teacher very much. It is not that I do not want to quote him; it's that I do not remember the quotes, or I cannot remember where the passages are. Therefore, I cannot quote Teacher often.
Perhaps what I have enlightened to at this point is not my fundamental attachment. The purpose of writing this article is to share with practitioners who may have similar experiences so that we can catch up with the Fa-rectification, rid ourselves of our fundamental attachments and walk our paths well and righteously.
Please point out anything inappropriate. Heshi.