(Minghui.org) Something happened recently in our small Fa study group that really struck me.
Another practitioner, “Amy,” shared a thought that the rest of us in the group found faulty and offered her another way of thinking, but she couldn’t accept it and insisted on the correctness of her own idea, even though we all assured her, “We tell you this for your own good.”
What happened made me feel that everybody was teaming up against her just like my family members had teamed up against me. They treated me like that before I started to practice Falun Dafa, and they treat me like that even now. They also talk to me in almost the same way, except that what practitioners say involves Fa elements.
Amy told the whole group, “If I don’t want to change my opinion, nothing you say can convince me.”
That was just what I always said to my family: “That’s just the way I am. You can’t change me. Why can’t you understand?”
After I obtained the Fa, I was all the more unwilling to change. I would use the Fa as a shield or as an excuse to cover up my mistakes.
My reasoning went like this: “I have Dafa in my life. I’m at a higher level than all of you. I’m luckier than all of you. How can I let ordinary people to talk to me like that? How can I allow ordinary people to control my thoughts?”
What happened in our small group suddenly opened my eyes.
I realized I had always resented my parents. I had also resented my sister. I always believed my parents were partial to my sister, because she was the bright and lively one. She knows how to talk, to make people like her. She always got better grades at school.
I grew up with my heart full of resentment. If it were not for Dafa, I wouldn’t have recognized that attachment that had festered within me during all my youth and into my 30s.
Now I understand why my mother and sister found it hard to accept it when I clarified the truth to them. It was because I was speaking to them with resentment in my heart. How could what I say have any positive effect?
In other situations when my mother would tell me, “I’m saying this for your own good. Why won’t you listen to me?” I couldn’t accept what she said. I only heard her words on the surface, but they didn’t touch my heart.
I would reply to her, “Why don’t you get to the point? I really want to hear it. I’m waiting for you to tell me. Why won’t you make your point clear?”
After I started to pracitice Falun Dafa, I truly wanted to trust in Master and Dafa 100 percent, but I always had a feeling that my feet were not planted solidly on the ground and that my heart was floating about aimlessly.
Why couldn’t I give myself up completely to Dafa, to Master?
Now I’ve enlightened to the fact that Master can do anything for us, but, first, we have to want to change ourselves.
Master often uses the example of a sick person who always thinks that if he practices, then Master will cure him. As a result, the person dies.
The problem is his thought.
That was my problem. I didn’t really want to change myself but was just waiting for Master to save me, to do everything for me.
When I dug deep, I found that my problem was selfishness.
That is when I realized my mother did not merely touch the surface. She had already told me the truth--that it was time for me to change.
That was when I was still an ordinary person.
Now that I am a practitioner, I know Master has already done everything for us. Master has borne for us everything in history, but I was still stubbornly hanging onto my one notion: not wanting to change. That’s why I’d always felt I hadn’t given myself completely to Master.
By the same token, in Amy’s case, it’s not that her fellow practitioners have just touched the surface. They have actually expressed themselves rather clearly. It’s just that Amy doesn’t want to change.
When so many people are saying the same thing, whether these people are ordinary people or practitioners, is that just a coincidence?
Definitely not.
The reason they say what they say is most likely that they see things we don’t. They point that out to us, but we won’t accept it, we don’t want to change.
It is in this conflict--between someone pointing out our mistakes and our obstinately refusing to accept them and change--where resentment starts and grows.
As a life in the old cosmos, the self was the most important, and it manifested as narrow-mindedness.
Very often we naturally believe we are correct, so when others point out and recommend a different opinion, a different way to look at things, we find it impossible to accept.
We don’t realize our obstinacy, because our way of thinking has already been firmly rooted, much like our natural habits of breathing, eating, and sleeping.
But cultivation is about getting rid of the notions that we have always perceived as correct, because those past notions are based on selfishness.
When other people give us suggestions, if we are willing to listen, to think, and to accept, then there is no room for resentment.
I also enlightened to the fact that having attachments is not shameful. What is shameful is not being aware of the existence of the attachments. What is more inexcusable is, after becoming aware of them, there is no willingness to make amends.
I used to worry that I had attachments to laziness and lust and this and that. Now I don’t worry anymore. I just concentrate on cultivating away any attachment that pops up, using Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance as the standard to look inward.
Basking in that enlightenment, when I pick up Zhuan Falun, I feel as if I were reading the book for the first time, and Fa principles keep revealing themselves before my eyes.
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Category: Improving Oneself
