(Clearwisdom.net) A Dafa practitioner in our local area had been persecuted in prison for a long time and his health had become ruined. With the help of fellow practitioners, he was able to get out of prison. After he returned home, he had serious reactions. He felt acute pain all over his body, and couldn't even hold a book. Practitioners immediately began to send forth righteous thoughts for him every day, and at the same time, read the Fa to him, share experiences, and help him to strengthen his righteous thoughts. He expressed his firm belief that he would get well as long as other practitioners helped him to send forth righteous thoughts for four days in a row.

A few months have passed since then, and his health condition has not improved. A few practitioners decided to moved in with him. He felt better after that and could eat and sleep when practitioners sent forth righteous thoughts. However, when practitioners stopped sending forth righteous thoughts, he felt terrible and asked others to hurry up and send forth righteous thoughts again. At the same time, this practitioner became ill tempered, and often scolded his wife.

Under such conditions, some practitioners thought we should continue to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the dark minions and rotten demons until he got well. Some others thought it wouldn't help much unless this practitioner had strong righteous thoughts himself.

Several of us had a discussion and shared our understanding about this.

It is not wrong to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the dark minions and rotten demons. However, why didn't it work? As Dafa cultivators, we are either following Teacher's Fa, or the arrangements made by the old forces. Teacher told us to deny even the existence of the old forces. Many practitioners stopped doing the three things that Teacher told us to do, and went to this practitioner's home to send forth righteous thoughts. Didn't we acknowledge the existence and arrangements of the old forces? It surely would not work attempting to take action against the persecution under the arrangements of the old forces. This did not conform to Teacher's Fa. As Dafa disciples, we should do all three things well. However, what we did was exactly fall into the trap of the old forces by leaving ourselves no time to clarify the truth and to encourage withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations.

Some practitioners have suffered from persecution in prison for a long time without studying the Fa. We can't demand them to immediately reach a high level. To have strong righteous thoughts, this practitioner has to study the Fa himself, to improve his understanding of the Fa, and to improve his character (xinxing). A cultivator should not resort to only external means in an attempt to solve cultivation problems. Doing so would only give the old forces an easy way to interfere with us. "Aren't you all putting down doing the three things to come to send righteous thoughts for him?" Thus, the old forces kept him in poor condition, or even worse condition. By controlling him, the old forces were able to interfere with the whole group of practitioners in order to see how well we could handle things.

Teacher has said that everything that happens today in the ordinary society is the result of Dafa disciples' thoughts. ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.") Dafa practitioners are one-body. What happened was not aiming at any particular Dafa practitioners, but at all practitioners as a group. Its purpose was to check how we would be affected and whether we could continue to cultivate the Fa.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in helping a fellow practitioner in need. However, the Fa has higher requirements for cultivators. We should not regard "sending forth righteous thoughts" as a tool in ordinary human society and use it with human attachments to "help" a fellow practitioner. We believe we should continue to send forth righteous thoughts while continuously doing the three things. It's important to help this practitioner listen to Teacher's lectures and read Teacher's recent articles. Only through this way can we completely deny the existence of the old forces.

We are not sure if similar situations exists in other areas, so we wanted to share our understandings here. Please correct us if there is anything inappropriate.

September 13, 2006