(Clearwisdom.net) As to the arrangement of the old forces, many fellow practitioners will say, "Thoroughly negate them." Here I would like to share my understanding on this.
Firstly we know that the path arranged by the old forces is to be accompanied by gigantic trials and tribulations, since on the surface they let Falun Dafa disciples establish their mighty virtue through them. If we cannot completely negate the arrangements of the old forces, then we will have many tribulations in cultivation. If we cannot pass the tribulations, we will be ruined; even if we pass the tribulations, we were cultivating under the arrangements of the old forces. In "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference" Teacher stated:
"Now as practitioners, if in this tribulation you can manage not to acknowledge the old forces' arrangements, then you can make it through. And those who haven't done well, the bottom line is, aren't you acknowledging the old forces' arrangements? Once you acknowledge them isn't it like you're one of them? Because you haven't done well amidst the persecution it's caused instability among the practitioners and aggravated the persecution, so aren't you, too, adding fuel to the fire and helping the evil? Negate them, completely negate everything of the old forces!"
From this I understand that if you accept the old forces' arrangements, then in the end you cannot make it through the tribulation. Some fellow practitioners around us were persecuted by the old forces and passed away; some died from illness karma and they left with the regret of not being able to fulfill their prehistoric oaths. Therefore it is extremely important to thoroughly negate the old forces' arrangements.
Secondly we negate the old forces' arrangements from the standpoint of the Fa, not from the basis of selfishness. The fundamental attribute of the cosmos of the past is selfishness during the Fa-rectification.
"Seemingly, this was to prevent them from being left out of the Fa-rectification, and was to show that they took part in Fa-rectification, when in reality they were using Fa-rectification to reach their selfish goals." ("The Effect of Righteous Thoughts")
Using Fa-rectification itself was committing a crime toward Dafa. If we cannot understand this fundamentally, we cannot negate the old forces' arrangements.
Thirdly, the old forces' arrangements permeate every aspect of our cultivation, including our every thought and action. If we do not eliminate them from our every single thought and action, we haven't stepped out of the old forces' arrangements.
We have several examples:
1. When the evil has incited the authorities to arrest or persecute fellow practitioners, many have thought: they will find so much evidence, such as the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, printers and computers; they believe that the evil has already collected the evidence.
2. When Falun Dafa disciples are arrested, they are prone to having human thoughts. They have often given in and paid the money the authorities were attempting to extort from them and viewed the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of practitioners as a persecution of human beings toward human beings, regarding the release of practitioners as "good intentions." They did not realize the power of practitioners' righteous thoughts and that Teacher did that for us since as a whole body we met the standard.
3. Recently a fellow practitioner was arrested and the authorities planned to sentence him. All of the local practitioners sent forth righteous thoughts together to disintegrate the illegal trial. At the beginning of the trial, a fellow practitioner sent forth righteous thoughts at home and saw Teacher's Fashen sitting on a large lotus flower and floating into the court room. Afterwards the fellow practitioner was declared innocent. Because we viewed the result as the evil not being so evil and as a gift from the evil, we did not have a good understanding. Although the practitioner was declared innocent, he was still detained at the detention center.
4. On "politically sensitive" days, we have always followed the thinking of the evil by being extra cautious with safety and hiding everything important. We may not be aware that this is enlarging the field of evil and reinforcing the evil.
5. Some fellow practitioners said: "As long as we reinforce sending forth righteous thoughts, the evil dares not persecute us." We can feel that this understanding has a factor of accepting the evil. We don't acknowledge the existence of the old forces and their arrangements. Sending forth righteous thoughts is one the three things Teacher requires us to do, and its aim is not only to alleviate the persecution. We forget that we send forth righteous thoughts to save sentient beings. We have the field for the existence of the evil in our thoughts, so the evil exists in our attachments and thoughts. In fact, the essence of the problem is the extent to which we admit the evil's existence, thereby allowing the evil to exist. All these things happen because of our human thinking.
Teacher told us in "Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Washington DC Fa Conference:"
"At present, the old forces have already been completely weeded out. From the ones in the highest forms all the way down to the so-called Gods and warped beings who have, as arranged by the old forces, taken part in the Fa-rectification and affected the Fa-rectification at different levels, all of them have been weeded out entirely. They're gone. And those dark minions who actually carry out specific tasks are being completely weeded out, too."
Nevertheless, four years have passed. Why has what Teacher did for us not manifested in our area? Why are we instead manipulated by the old forces and cultivated in the old forces' arrangements? At the same time, morality has declined dramatically. What a shocking state of affairs!
Some fellow practitioners have said: "Even if the police release Dafa practitioners, we still need to negate the evil and expose the persecution by the evil." To negate the old forces and their persecution against Falun Dafa is unconditional. No matter in what form it appears, we cannot acknowledge the old forces' arrangements.
To sum it up, whether we regard truth-clarification material as the evidence of being persecuted by the evil or the release of fellow practitioners and declaring practitioners innocent as good intentions, or the first thought during a tribulation was not to disintegrate the evil but to balance it with human notions, all of these show that we did not have a clear understanding of the Fa principles. We did not fundamentally negate the old forces, and so they existed in our area.
A local practitioner was arrested and his family members disintegrated the evil by exposing the persecution and writing letters to advise people to be kindhearted. Fellow practitioners cooperated with his family and significantly reduced the persecution on the fellow practitioner. The family members were anxious about "awaiting trial while on bail." When they were not clear in their understanding of the Fa principle, we encouraged them to understand it from the Fa's perspective. In the end the family understood that it was Teacher who had done this for him, it was not the evil that had released our fellow practitioner. When we improved our understanding, immediately there was news of our fellow practitioner's unconditional release. The power of Dafa was thus manifested. If we had not understood it clearly from the Fa principle, then we might have appreciated the authorities' "awaiting trial while on bail" arrangement. Then the evil would have used this as an excuse to test fellow practitioners who lacked righteous thoughts so that they could improve and to persecute fellow practitioners with all kinds of methods. Just like the above-mentioned fellow practitioner, he was declared innocent; but he is still illegally detained.
Actually many practitioners in our city cultivate very solidly. However, because we haven't changed our thoughts, the Fa-rectification in our city has lagged behind the progress of Fa-rectification and we have not completely negated the old forces' arrangements. As a result, the final factors arranged by the old forces will continue to play a role.
Here we suggest that fellow practitioners in Dalian calm down and study Teacher's Fa lectures on negating the old forces' arrangements, comparing every single thought with them and changing our human notions first. Because every thought arranged by the old forces is to destroy us, the first thought we must have is exactly the manifestation of our xinxing standard.
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