(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings, benevolent Teacher! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I'd like to take this opportunity to share with fellow practitioners how I rectified myself in the Fa in a busy work environment during the past year. Please kindly point out any shortcomings.
Over the past years I'd always enjoyed a relaxed work environment. Last year, our department was reorganized; many were transferred to another division and our tasks were changed. There was much more work, so we were a lot busier and three shifts were set up. Additionally, our clientele was difficult to work with, which made it harder to deal with managers and the workload. I felt an unwelcome pressure I hadn't experienced before. It became so disorganized that I didn't know how to handle the situation.
I realized that this situation was a form of persecution by the old forces, and I understood that I had to look within and sent forth righteous thoughts. I realize now that my actions at that time couldn't be counted as righteous thoughts, because they contained resentment and hatred. Therefore, they couldn't possibly play a positive role, but more negatively influenced the intent of my sending righteous thoughts. In my heart I blamed the persecution on everyday people and treated it as a person to person persecution. I behaved just like an everyday person and complained about the leadership. Actually, that was using human thoughts to deal with the persecution. In other words, I was looking outwards and failed to cultivate myself.
Teacher said:
“For a long period of time the sentient beings in Dafa, especially the disciples, have had a misunderstanding of the Fa at various levels regarding xinxing improvement. Whenever a tribulation comes, you do not see it with the side of your original nature but view it completely with your human side. Evil demons then capitalize on this point and inflict endless interference and damage, leaving students in long-term tribulations.” (“Expounding on the Fa” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
I realized that, over the years, I perhaps was looking at cultivation with my human side. To be honest, I failed to cultivate genuinely, so all the tests had piled up to create a big test, which I found hard to pass.
Through Fa study, looking inward, and sharing with fellow practitioners, I gradually came to realize that, although I still needed to improve a lot, I understood the Fa principles and found my weakest point – to view my cultivation practice with my human side. In the end I began to rectify myself in the new work environment.
Looking Inward and Rectifying Myself in the New Work Environment
I understood that Fa principles require practitioners to fully negate the arrangement by the old forces and look inward when confronting tribulations. When I first was transferred to the new job, I felt exhausted both physically and mentally because I had to deal with unskillful people. I knew that I had a problem. I felt reluctant to do this new job, disliked it, and felt very resentful, but I suffered passively and thought I'd just kill time and put up with it. I missed my previous work assignment. This actually was my attachment to evading hardship and craving comfort and pleasure. Whenever I found my human attachments, I would measure them with the Fa and eliminate them. Some of the human attachments I had to write down, so I could understand them more clearly, which helped to get rid of them. Some of my human attachments were anchored within me, so they would recur from time to time. However, I felt that I was improving and the situation eased up. However the workload got very heavy, and I had to work a lot of morning and evening shifts. In the past I would think it was interference, which couldn't be denied. Then I would analyze it with human thoughts. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became, which made me think negatively of the director.
Recently, I read a lot of articles on genuine cultivation and realized that my behavior was preventing me from looking inward and that it interfered with the three things I was doing. It was a very serious issue. If I failed to genuinely cultivate myself, no matter how much I had done for Dafa, it was as if an everyday person had done it. I acted like an everyday person, which meant that I had to follow and be governed by everyday people's principles. I reasoned that the director would truly give me a heavy workload, and so he did. If I dealt with the issue with righteous thoughts of a practitioner, my xinxing would be elevated and the everyday people's principles could no longer govern me. Even if the director wanted to assign a heavy load of work, he not would be able to. Therefore, all the trouble I ran into was the result of my thoughts, which were not righteous. Only when I let go of human thoughts and let go of human principles would the situation change.
Besides, the director was very conscientious in his leadership role and set very high standards for his staff. People often complained that this director wanted to see people suffer. I sometimes went along and complained, too. On the human level, a department manager tortured his staff and didn't show any consideration if the workload was too much for the staff. This was an indication that he was conscientious in trying his best to fulfill the quota assigned by his superior. He wanted to win recognition from the managing directors of his level. Recently, I was thinking how the work status of the managing directors is very similar to our cultivation status. Over the years I had a strong attachment to seeking fame and always wanted to be recognized by others at work. I especially paid attention to other people's opinions of me, just as I did in my cultivation practice. It didn't show on the surface, because it was buried deep in my heart. I would feel uncomfortable if others were not good to me or didn't pay attention to me, though I would not say it. I paid too much attention to myself, which was nothing more than selfishness. From another angle, if I paid too much attention to myself, I would neglect other people's feelings, and in cultivation practice I would not balance correctly the relationship between sentient beings and me or the relationship between the Fa-rectification and me.
On the other hand, if what the managing directors wanted would require people's time, it was not a big deal, since everyday people would use their spare time on entertainment anyway. However, if it indirectly interfered with practitioners' time it would unintentionally be a sin, as it interfered with practitioners' ability to validate the Fa. I realized that if a practitioner failed to cultivate himself/herself well, he or she would bring losses to the salvation of sentient beings. If a practitioner does everything righteously, he/she will restrain or even eliminate unrighteous factors in the surrounding environment and do well in saving sentient beings. We must therefore be very diligent in our cultivation.
Treating the New Job Rationally
In my new job, all of my past knowledge and work experience were useless, so I had to start from scratch. Before practicing Falun Gong, I would have put in all my energy into it, since I was a perfectionist and everything I did would have to be better than anyone else's, and I would not care how much time and effort it took me. However, after practicing Falun Gong, I realized that time did not solely belong to me anymore. Of course, when I say that my thinking had changed, it didn't mean that I could do my work mechanically: I still had to do it well. What had changed was my mentality, and what had been eliminated were my human thoughts. I realized that the fewer the human thoughts, the more efficiently the work went and the better the result. Moreover, doing a better job with this kind of mentality could also validate the Fa. On the other hand, no matter how well I had done in the past, I would have only validated myself.
I also found out that, whenever I achieved great results and was honored before becoming a practitioner, my coworkers would be angry with me. At the time I thought they were jealous. Now I understand that I might have taken what didn't belong to me. If this was the case, then I really owed others. That explained why they were angry with me.
Although work is not cultivation, it provides an environment for cultivation practice. In that environment, we must therefore measure things with the Fa and not go to extremes. Otherwise it will bring unnecessary interference to our work and cultivation.
Totally Negating the Old Forces' Arrangements
As for the interference by the old forces, I think we not only need to understand it from the Fa and send righteous thoughts to eliminate it, we also must not cooperate with it. If it didn't let me have time to study the Fa, I would study during the idle time at work. Every day I took some time to memorize the Fa and sending forth righteous thoughts. The duration of the time is not an issue. What is important is persistence and sincerity, not mechanical behavior. If it refused me time to do the three things, I would distribute truth-clarification materials about Falun Gong during the evening shift or look inward in the form of writing articles or sharing. I found this to be pretty effective.
During cultivation practice we must also let go human thoughts. I understand from the Fa principles that practitioners' time should not be governed by human beings, since practitioners are looked after by Teacher. Therefore, I realized that the control of practitioners' time wasn't a human act but a trick used by the evil forces targeting practitioners. We must see through it and refuse to obey it. As long as we changed from within, the evil would be eliminated.
The following episode should explain my reasoning. A few days ago I realized that my weekend day-off was long overdue, but the management didn't grant me a weekend day off, telling me that I had to wait until the 14th. At lunchtime, fellow practitioners and I enlightened that this was an interference targeting the Internet Experience Sharing Conference for Practitioners in China. In the past, when the closing date for submitting sharing articles was around the corner, we would be busy processing a lot of articles. We realized that we had to send righteous thoughts to eliminate the interference by the evil forces. As a result, after the lunch break and before we sent forth righteous thoughts, we were given a few days off. My fellow practitioners and I didn't think about ourselves but worried that the articles would not be ready before the deadline.
Looking at Issues with Divine Thoughts
Teacher talked about “The Opening of the Celestial Eye,” “The Supernormal Ability of Clairvoyance,” and “The Supernormal Ability of Precognition and Retrocognition” in Lecture Two of Zhuan Falun. I enlightened that Teacher wanted us to change our human thinking and human concepts, which had been formed over tens of thousands of years, once we entered the gate of cultivation practice. Teacher hoped that we could get out of the humanness so that we could look at issues with our Wisdom Eyesight and deal with tribulations with divine thoughts.
“But with the lowly, impotent human body, whatever one’s thoughts align with will dominate the person. In other words, when beings of different planes notice that you want something, or are attached to something, and that it precisely aligns with them, they take effect and even direct you. When a person is not rational, or is venting anger, negative elements are taking effect. Everything is alive, and those things include evilness, desires, and hatred, among others. So in such situations they naturally take effect.” (“Dafa Disciples Must Study the Fa”)
I enlightened that I always said that I was tired. That meant that I wanted to be tired, so it would naturally play that role and control me. I decided to think that I was not tired, that I wanted to eliminate it. Instantly, it was eliminated and I didn't feel tired anymore.
I also needed to face my work environment. Although everyday people had a mentality of hopelessness towards the environment, practitioners must not think that way, but think righteously. We must not think the environment is fixed and cannot be changed. We must know that practitioners have powerful energy. We do not fear tiredness or hardships, and we must not bear the tiredness and hardships that we should not bear and will not pursue. This is because our mission is to cultivate ourselves well, save sentient beings, and help Teacher with the Fa-rectification. Everything must align with Dafa and open up an environment for practitioners to save sentient beings. Besides, everything has a life, including the work environment, so the work environment will be kept if it is in line with the practitioners' mission of saving sentient beings. On the other hand, it will be eliminated during the Fa-rectification if it interferes with Dafa and practitioners' mission of validating the Fa.
In a word, tiredness is unable to defeat practitioners, and free time should not make a practitioner slip into the mode of comfort. This is because we are practitioners of Dafa.
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