(Clearwisdom.net)
Three years ago, I moved to Chicago from a rural village on the east coast, and entered a stage of cultivation during the Fa rectification period from personal cultivation. During the past three years, starting with doing assigned Dafa related tasks, to seeking appropriate work on my own initiative, to undertaking and coordinating several projects, until more recently handling more sophisticated tasks in media, I was improving in Chicago's group cultivation environment. Today, I am here to report my cultivation experiences to our Great Master, and to share with fellow practitioners.
I. Setting higher requirements for Fa study
Since the start of my cultivation, I had been learning the Fa by reading Zhuan Falun every day. Because I was very absorbed in the reading, it took me only 30 to 40 minutes to finish one lecture. For over 3 years, I had been reading three lectures every day. Gradually, I found this method did not work any more since the words could not penetrate my brain as before. Was it because I was too familiar with those words? No. When closing the book, I was not able to recite a complete sentence. I realized that I needed to enhance the quality of my Fa study. I decided to memorize the book. At the beginning of my memorizing, I had a lot of human attachments such as desiring to show off at group study, wanting to compete with some practitioner who could memorize and so on. Sometimes I worried how long it might take to finish memorizing such a thick book. Perhaps I could never make it before Fa rectification ends. Then I became anxious. And memorizing the Fa was on and off and on again.
Until one day, I suddenly realized: "No matter how long the Fa rectification continues, as long as I am still in the human world, I will try to remember a little more of the Fa. Thus, my body can carry a little more." My heart immediately calmed down, and no longer pursued the speed memorizing. On the contrary, the speed was enhanced. From trying to memorize sentence by sentence without missing a character, to writing down each paragraph with the book closed, I spent over one year to finish writing the whole book, Zhuan Falun. But the Fa rectification has not ended. After the projects I was working on ended, I picked up memorizing Zhuan Falun again. This time, it took me only four and a half months to write the whole book.
II. Being misled by the surface and forming the habit of looking outside
In 2005 I joined the newspaper's sales and marketing team as a full-time employee. It was during a cold winter. The harsh weather and chaos of the beginning period did not squelch my initial enthusiasm. However, along with time passing, the insufficiency of my cultivation began to emerge such as an unwillingness to go from door to door for small ads, unable to endure merchant's cold manner and repeated negotiations and so on. In the meantime, the chaos in management and dependence upon a small number of young practitioners slowly wore down my will. For instance, I hurried to an interview only to find the memory card for the digital camera already full, so I could not take any pictures; I had a reporting assignment but was not provided any concrete information; I had made arrangements for day-long work, then some urgent activity at the Chinese consulate disrupted all plans; when I handled a matter that needed the group's cooperation, other practitioners did not actively respond. In addition, some practitioners could not openly share their thoughts. Thus I gradually formed fixed views towards certain practitioners and was unwilling to cooperate with them. This also affected the work.
In August 2005, Chicago started to prepare for a big event, everybody was very cooperative, and the office appeared to have a new look. However, after the event ended and volunteer practitioners left, the office resumed its former state of disorder. Many negative thoughts began to accumulate and become exaggerated in my brain. They were so rampant that I could not control my temper. Whenever I entered the office, I got angry. At that time, I was not able to tell clearly what resulted in those disagreements among practitioners. I blamed it on several practitioners' behavior. Afraid that my moods were so negative that if speaking out I would hurt others, I did not directly express my opinions, instead, I chose to quit and quickly found an ordinary person's job.
Soon, another key member of the office left Chicago. Now even the newspaper's normal operation was facing difficulties. In this crisis, all Chicago practitioners began to take media problems seriously. We exchanged our views on our cultivation environment and proposed ideas for improvement. I began to realize how important it was to maintain our group cultivation environment so that each practitioner could honestly communicate with others. Yet I still did not see my own problems clearly, but based my expectations on a change in the overall environment. One practitioner once asked me, "You only pointed out these problems. What would be the solution then?" I sighed. I said that to thoroughly resolve these issues, one person was not enough: we must form a good cultivation environment to let everyone openly share views, moreover each person had to take initiative to improve himself from Fa study and cultivation.
III Changing from looking outside to looking inward
It was right before the Chicago Fahui this June that the newspaper office was undergoing all sorts of personnel changes. And the media was in urgent need for more practitioners to join. But many practitioners did not speak English, could not type, nor did they know how to conduct interviews or write reports. They could not take up the job immediately. Seeing this, I was very worried. I wanted to write a paper on how I improved from doing all kinds of Dafa projects. I hoped eagerly other practitioners could take more initiative to try different work so as to catch up rapidly.
I spent one day and one night finishing this article that had over 5000 words. Feeling very proud I showed it to another practitioner. Quite unexpectedly, she criticized me. She said this article read like a work report without mentioning cultivation of Xinxing. I thought it over and found she was right. I did overlook those matters that truly attacked my innermost heart during these years.
I began anew and wrote a second article, revised the self-enhancement content and added more sharing on cultivation. I submitted it to the editor. He said although my article did mention how to handle conflicts among practitioners, it read like average people's methods such as promoting communication, respecting others, etc. He said these methods resembled very much those management trainings in large corporations. I told him, "Let me think it over again." I felt that I had still not examined these issues from the viewpoint of cultivation.
Perhaps because I resumed the high quality Fa study during this period, I felt there was some formidable force pulling me toward the inner side. I realized more and more clearly that my expectations about the entire cultivation environment change were not correct. There must be some barrier that blocked me from seeing the nature of the problem. What on earth was it? I was still puzzled.
One day, I was memorizing the Fa and typing on the computer as usual. Suddenly an idea reflected to my mind: it was my own notions that blocked me. I had already developed my own way of thinking and doing things during these years of participating in Dafa projects. Since I attained certain good results, I became more stubborn in persisting in my own ways. On realizing this point, I felt the volume of my heart was rapidly expanding. I instantly saw all sorts of shortcomings in myself.
IV Looking further inside and getting rid of the attachments
I found I needed to get rid of many notions which resembled those attachments in early personal cultivation. Because of the title 'Dafa projects", it was even easier for me to develop an ordinary person's irritable mood, and form an average person's way of thinking.
For instance, why did I get so anxious about other practitioners' capability of improvement and taking initiative? I constantly complained and criticized, which easily undermined other practitioners' confidence and enthusiasm. And the result was just the opposite, making others dare not join in. Also, why did I rely so much on the overall environment change? When the changes did not occur as I expected, I then fell into a passive mood. I forcefully imposed on other people the values I took as correct, such as one needed to be active and take initiative, one needed to share views with others, etc. The counter effect was that other people could not accept my aggressive manner, which in turn affected the progress of projects.
I also realized my attachment to results was huge. When I saw there was a long way to go for our media to become a regular company, or some aspects of a project could not be done well, I became anxious and impatient. I put the blame on the group environment and individual cultivation. But never did I think whether the anxiety and impatience belonged to me, whether they were reasonable? With this kind of anxiety and impatience, how could I see the truth? In Zhuan Falun Lecture 2 "The Issue of Celestial Eyes" Master said,
"A physical object's form of existence appears like this, but the way it actually manifests is not. Our eyes, nonetheless, have the capability to stabilize physical objects in our physical dimension to the state that we can see now. The objects are not actually in this state, and they are not in this state even in our dimension." verified
In retrospect of the three years of cultivation in Chicago, I found I was easily driven by human attachment to results. Gradually I became rude and arbitrary. For instance, I used an accusatory tone to urge other practitioners to do their work; I made arrangements and changes at will on projects that other people were responsible for, regardless of possible impact to those individuals. In "Teaching the Fa in Canada, 2006", Master said,
"Remember, what is for human beings conventional wisdom is inverted. So when you encounter troublesome things as you cultivate, don't regard them all as problems, as interference to your rightful tasks, or as attacks against those tasks, or think, "This thing I'm doing is of utmost importance, that thing I'm doing is of utmost importance..." Many things might not truly be how you see them, in fact. Your true improvement will always be first and foremost, and the consummation of your cultivation is always first and foremost. " verified
V Eliminating prejudices and being cooperative with fellow practitioners
As I participated in more and more projects, I needed to transfer some duties to others, or try to bring more people to the team. However, skepticism in other practitioners is one of my big attachments. Because I was critical of my own work, unconsciously I tended to evaluate others by my criteria. When someone proposed to take a task, I would think: is this person capable? When someone was good in all conditions, I would think: is his initiative strong? Can he persist? Therefore I often ended up doing the task myself and got exhausted, yet the task could not be done well. When Chicago launched the English newspaper, almost all distribution work fell onto my shoulders: driving older practitioners to and from downtown train stations, arranging young people to deliver papers to residential buildings, and I needed to deliver papers to high-rise buildings myself. Sometimes I overslept and could not even hear the alarm clock and delayed the whole distribution process. To avoid this problem, I sat on the sofa half-sleeping until it was time.
Some practitioners suggested I transfer the responsibility of driving older people to downtown to another practitioner. I did not know that practitioner very well. She seemed to me always in a hurry, and sometimes she spoke in a harsh tone, so I was a little afraid of her. On several occasions I was so busy that I had to ask for her help. She helped, but seemed not so enthusiastic. I instantly thought: maybe she did not want to do it. Finally at the request of other practitioners, this duty was transferred to her. Surprisingly, she greatly enhanced the whole process. Owing to her efficient arrangement, the number of papers handed out increased two-fold. Moreover she got along well with those older practitioners and frequently shared cultivation experiences with them.
I then took off my 'colored glasses' and carefully observed this practitioner's behavior. Slowly I discovered that my original thoughts were just my prejudices. For example I though she spoke too severely. But actually she was a reasonable and considerate person. She often joked to alert others of their shortcomings. Perhaps because she always treated me as a child and pointed out my fault directly, I thought she was lecturing me. The reason she sometimes seemed not so spirited was because she had to work the night shift, which made her sleepy during the day.
VI. Without notions, communicating with fellow practitioners.
When we were blaming a practitioner that he was not so diligent or did not work hard, did we consider maybe he had some worries, or obstacles, or a knot in his heart, or was unwilling to cooperate with someone? An incident happened to me three years ago. At that time, every Saturday I would drive a friend living close to my home to the Chinese consulate to send forth righteous thoughts. One day after the activity, this practitioner was about to get into my car. I did not notice and hurriedly drove away. All of a sudden, she fell heavily to the ground. At that moment one of her feet was already in the car. And since it was summer, she wore a thin skirt. This fall was really heavy. I heard people in the back seat shouting, so I stopped the car quickly. This practitioner was very upset. She refused to ride in my car and went home by herself.
I felt very heavy in my heart. From then on, I dared not to look into her eyes directly. I felt I was too careless to have her injured. Then I noticed she was also unwilling to look at me, which made me feel even more guilty. I feared to face her expression of 'complaint', actually which was merely my own feeling. We then had a heart knot. Several weeks later at a group study, she walked up to me. Thinking that she would blame me I wanted to walk away. Surprisingly, she apologized to me saying her response was too intense the other day in front of Chinese Consulate. She also said, she thought her being thrown down was a hint that she needed to learn to drive. Since quite a few practitioners had urged her to learn, she assumed I thought the same. She reasoned that I was to teach her a lesson by making her stumble. So she felt embarrassed at seeing me. I was touched by her words. The self-blaming of both parties resulted in the barrier between us. Although we had entirely different thoughts, our manners on the surface actually worsened the misunderstanding, which finally turned into conflict.
Looking back at these three years, I discovered the tasks I did were more complicated technically and involved more diverse interpersonal relationships. I was so easily misled by the manifestations on the surface that I overlooked my own cultivation. I hope in the coming year, I can steadfastly do the three things of studying the Fa, sending righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth and fulfill the mission bestowed by history with wisdom and a clear mind.
Thanks everybody!
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