(Minghui.org) Master has told us to help bring former practitioners back to the practice. I myself have returned. I also helped to bring another practitioner back to Dafa.
I have come to realize that only Dafa, not any particular practitioner, has the power to bring former practitioners back to cultivation.
I wanted to come back to Dafa after I stopped practicing, but I didn't have the courage to talk to the practitioners that I knew. I said to myself: “If someone comes to me and asks me to practice, I will go back!”
Amazingly, a practitioner named Joe called me. Joe said he was at fellow practitioner Linda's home and invited me over.
I went and felt the warmth of being together with practitioners again. There was no distance between us.
Joe had something to do and left. Linda then spent a lot of time to help me find my attachments. I could tell that she was doing it for my own good. However, I had stopped cultivation for six years. Her serious attitude made me uncomfortable.
She invited me to stay for the night and spent the whole evening talking to me. I felt that I should not waste so much of her time. On the other hand, I didn't want to ask her to stop since she was doing it for my own good.
The next day, she started helping me look within again. She continued to talk even when another practitioner, Mary, arrived.
I couldn't handle it anymore. “Actually, I came here just to look for Master's Fa,” I said.
Mary sensed my frustration and stopped Linda, and they gave me Dafa books. I started reading and gradually, I came back to cultivation.
Later Joe and I visited Bill, who once did the Dafa exercises at our exercise site.
Joe kept talking when we found Bill. Joe was a teacher, and it sounded like he was lecturing. When I recalled my experience with Linda, I stopped Joe.
“I have only one thing to add,” I said to Bill, “I hope you will read the Dafa books. Then you will understand everything.”
Bill eventually came back to cultivation.
From these events, I feel that Master has been watching over former practitioners and arranging for them to come back to Dafa.
They understand Dafa to a certain extent and have experienced the benefits of Dafa. Maybe they don't fully comprehend or don't cherish Dafa enough, and the old forces took advantage of their attachments to push them away from Dafa. I believe that deep in their hearts, they still have a righteous understanding of Dafa.
However, they may have left the Fa for a while and their xinxing may be at an ordinary person’s level. They may not be used to looking within for their own attachments.
It is important for practitioners to look for them and talk to them. We need to be a positive influence. We need to adjust our approach to their situation and level. We should be more understanding, not pushy or preachy.
After all, it is the Fa that has the power to bring back former practitioners. Those practitioners come back for the Fa, and we are just helpers. We want to connect them to Dafa and encourage them to read more Dafa books. Once they start, the Fa will help them become true cultivators.
Teacher had told us this in Fa Teaching at the 2016 New York Fa Conference:
“Some Dafa disciples left the ranks of Dafa disciples, and when they come back, you should not consider them veteran students—absolutely not! It's because, at that time, he had become exactly the same as an ordinary person for sure, and he could not remember at all any of the Fa he had learned before. He completely didn't know what state Dafa disciples should be in. Make sure you do not consider him a veteran student, and you must treat him as a new student, and then he'll be able to make it. Otherwise, if you consider him a veteran student, you will chase him out, as he won't be able to bear it or take it. He is completely a new student.”
Let's follow this way to help former practitioners come back.
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