(Clearwisdom.net) As Dafa disciples who truly cultivate ourselves, we should know that Dafa is precious and feel honored to be Dafa disciples. Nonetheless for a while, I occasionally had feelings of loss, and wondered why I had these feelings.
After the persecution of Falun Dafa started, I was demoted from a managerial position, deprived of responsibilities, and became an unimportant employee. During that time, I experienced a very serious, extremely painful test involving reputation, personal interest, and sentimentality. With help from fellow practitioners, I walked through that difficult journey by studying and reciting the Fa to improve my understandings of the Fa, looking within and letting go of attachments. Most of the time, I was able to separate those human notions from myself and eradicate them with righteous thoughts. The feeling of loss indicated that I still had gaps in fully understanding the fundamental issue of loss and gain. Although the persecution deprived me of my authority and personal interests, my human notions still existed. In the article "The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be," Master said,
"Going through hardship and suffering is an outstanding opportunity to remove karma, be cleansed of sin, purify the body, elevate your plane of thought, and rise in level--it's an extraordinarily good thing. This is a correct and upright Fa-truth."
I was still thinking about this with human notions and did not consider them as good things. If I had, how could I harbor a feeling of loss?
Upon digging further, I found many human notions still existing in me to varying degrees. When facing the persecution, I sometimes seemed to accept it, thinking about what had happened and what would happen. After making efforts to oppose the persecution, I still pondered the outcome of the persecution and what it would be like afterwards. In addition, I had expectations--waiting for the persecution to end or the situation to improve. These thoughts are actually based on human notions and they were arranged by the old forces. When we acknowledge the persecution, it is hard for us to effectively oppose it.
In order to clarify the truth to officials at my workplace and headquarters, I decided to send them letters. To be safe, a fellow practitioner helped me send out the fact-clarifying letters from other cities. Later, I was still worried that the officials suspected that it was me who sent the letters, thus suppressing me even further, such as limiting my access to the Internet. With that thought, I was indeed unable to access the Internet. So I made plans to request the restoration of the connection if the problem still existed the following week, and I even thought about how to approach the officials about this. By Monday of that following week, the Internet was still down, which strengthened my suspicions. I called my department administrator and was told there were no such problems. A networking expert arrived and the problem was fixed within two minutes. The entire incident of linking this problem to the officials was just my imagination.
My wife, a non-practitioner, had a child with her ex-husband. She cares about her son very much, even to an extent of being paranoid. I sometimes encouraged the boy to step forward and interact more with others, because I was concerned about his psychological development. My wife, however, always thought I was biased against him, so we never agreed. I thought, "I am speaking truthfully and doing this on behalf of the child. Why doesn't she agree with me?" Two days ago, my wife and I had another argument, this time about her son's internship. She thought his poor performance was due to lack of support from his sponsoring employer. I attributed it to his poor schooling and lack of enthusiasm. My wife became very emotional and strongly disagreed with my opinion. Later, when I looked back at this exchange, wasn't my wife's stubbornness reminding me of my attachment to self-defense and not allowing others to criticize me? For many years, I tended to be assertive when talking with others, unwilling to listen to them. I was grateful for my wife's help on this and felt much better. Surprisingly, her attitude also changed for the better.
There is nothing accidental for a practitioner, and everything that happens to us is related to cultivation. The critical thing is that we have to view things with righteous thoughts by looking within and improving ourselves. To achieve that, we have to study the Fa well. With solid cultivation as a foundation, we will be able to do much better.
Views expressed in this article represent the author's own opinions or understandings. All content published on this website are copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
