(Minghui.org) Recently, I heard practitioners talking about how their minds were affected by distractions, and that they felt sleepy when studying the Fa. Not long ago, I also had a similar experience when reciting Zhuan Falun.I felt dizzy and dozed off from time to time. In the end, I only managed to focus a little bit after trying very hard.
I looked inward afterwards to find out why this had happened. I received a hint from Master and a picture appeared in my mind: There is an episode in “Journey to the West” in which the Monkey King released many insects with his supernormal power. The insects flew towards the man opposite him and flew around his head. Soon the man became dizzy. He fell to the ground and was sound asleep.
We cannot see the truth in the human world, but everything is truly happening in other dimensions.
Master said,
“The old forces wouldn’t venture to directly persecute Dafa disciples at present—none of the larger beings that assume a form would venture to do that. Then what sorts of things are doing that now? Things like worms, bugs, bacteria, and all kinds of foul things like that. Sending righteous thoughts is extremely effective in these cases!” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference”)
During the New Year holiday I was lying on the sofa and feeling very sluggish. I didn't want to do anything. My husband said: “What are you doing? Get up.”
I knew he was right, but I just couldn't get up. I felt dizzy and my body was heavy. It was almost time for sending forth righteous thoughts, so he sat down by my side and started sending righteous thoughts.
Soon, I felt his strong gong coming towards me, and all of a sudden the misty substances around me disappeared. I became clear-headed and I was out of the sluggish state of mind. I regained my righteous thoughts, the strong sense of responsibility of a Dafa disciple and the feeling of urgency to save sentient beings.
The fact is that when we indulge in laziness and comfort we are already interfered with by the evil. Only by strengthening righteous thoughts are we able to reject it and eliminate it to avoid any loss. It's always easier said than done. The attachment to laziness and comfort, deeply embedded in our notions for thousands of years, are not easy to let go of, if we don't have a clear understanding of what we are dealing with.
I gradually came to the understanding that the attachment is a form of matter. When it comes towards our true self, our main consciousness would become confused and lose control over our mind and body, making us feel sluggish in this human dimension and unwilling to do anything. We would feel lazy or want to fall asleep. If we give in, we would soon be fast asleep.
If you carefully observe your thoughts, you would see that the attachment to comfort is everywhere. For example, if we fail to immediately look within when conflicts arise, it could be due to our attachment to comfort. When we realize our attachments, we allow them to linger around instead of immediately eliminating them. It possibly is that the attachment to comfort is at play. Put it simply, if we cannot focus on diligent cultivation, especially now, if we do not feel the urgency to save sentient beings, we still have the attachment to comfort.
Any thoughts, such as “I have been cultivating for so many years, so I must have reached a certain level” or “I have done so much to validate the Fa, it doesn't matter if I take a rest.” If we hold such thoughts and slack off in cultivation with various excuses, we are already at the edge of dropping down.
Master said,
“If you are still unclear about what a Fa-rectification disciple is, you won’t be able to step forward in the current tribulation, and you will be led by the human world’s pursuit of comfort to 'enlighten' along an evil path. Master’s heart has always been pained by those who have fallen, and the majority were ruined by that pursuit.” (“Fa Rectification Period Dafa Disciples”, Essentials for Further Advancement II)
I understand that once we have slacked off in cultivation the evil would take advantage of our loophole and enlarge our attachments to comfort and laziness, making us even more sluggish. The consequences are very serious, and other attachments of lust and desire would take advantage of our weak points, interfere with us, and drag us down. The reality is absolutely shocking! We must not relax for a moment in breaking away from the evil interference.
Master told us,
“…, the cultivators of the past didn’t dare to slack off for even a second, and that was when it took an entire lifetime to complete the journey. So how can Dafa disciples—who are to achieve the celestial rank of a being who is saved by Dafa and who have the most convenient cultivation way—not be even more diligent when they are given this most glorious honor of Fa-validating cultivation in a brief cultivation period that passes in the blink of an eye?” (“The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be”, The Essentials of Diligent Progress, Vol. III)
Once, while I was doing the exercises, the above words from Master came to my mind and struck me deeply. I felt this is the requirement for Dafa disciples. We must not slack off for even a moment!
Besides solid cultivation at all times, we must eliminate the evil interference with strong righteous thoughts. We must be very clear that this is a huge trap set by the old forces to push Dafa disciples toward destruction step by step. They claim that this is all for the improvement of Dafa disciples and these are necessary tribulations and tests for Dafa disciples' cultivation.
Master pointed out,
“Before the Fa-rectification, the old forces crammed the lowest-level section of each of those tens of millions of remote cosmic systems into the Three Realms of the central cosmic system where we are. 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”, Essentials for Further Advancement II)
The mindset of the old forces is very similar to the craftiness in everyday people's society. However, since they are high-level beings, their “kindness” is also hypocritical.
Master said,
“When a monk worships it, it’ll take charge of him—'Aren’t you worshiping me? It’s obvious you’re worshiping me! Well, don’t you want to cultivate? I’ll take care of you. I’ll arrange your cultivation.' So it’ll arrange things for you, but where will your cultivation take you? No discipline in the heavens will accept you now that you’ve cultivated according to its arrangements.” (The Fifth Talk, Zhuan Falun)
Once we have found our human attachments, we must do our best when sending forth righteous thoughts to eliminate all the arrangements and interference by the old forces. However, we cannot calm down very often when sending forth righteous thoughts because we have too many distracting thoughts in our minds. If we don't send forth righteous thoughts long enough, it won't be effective either.
Master said,
“People's thoughts are unstable. A person's brain is just a processing center, and all kinds of messages and information go through the human brain, play out and display themselves, and affect that person. The origins of a person's thoughts are extremely complex.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2005 Manhattan International Fa Conference”)
So, where do those distracting thoughts come from? My celestial eye is not open so I cannot see what is happening in other dimensions, but I have come to the understanding that during the battle between the righteous and the evil in other dimensions when we send forth righteous thoughts the evil would also resist and the reflection of such resistance in the human world is that our minds will have all kinds of uncontrollable thoughts. In other dimensions, the evil would try to attach to our weakest points, and where we have failed to understand the Fa principles.
For example, if we still hold onto the attachment of lust, we would have distracting thoughts in this regard. We may mistakenly think that they are our own thoughts while in fact it is the evil that is controlling our minds. It always uses things you have experienced or heard about in this lifetime to interfere with you.
If you still harbor resentment, they would make you think about the conflicts you had with others and how you were arguing with one another.
If you feel pleased with yourself, you need to check if you still have an attachment to showing off and if such attachment has been taken advantage of by the evil.
So, when we become fully aware of the distracting thoughts we have while sending for righteous thoughts, we would be able to dig out the human attachments we still have and be able to rectify ourselves and remember: I'm sending forth righteous thoughts right now. I must not be distracted. Then, we will be able to focus our mind again.
Not long ago, while I was sending forth righteous thoughts I found that the evil was using the attachment to comfort as the most effective way to interfere with Dafa disciples.
I was sending forth righteous thoughts at home one evening. I kept my palm straight up for about 40 minutes. During the process, I could feel the strong force of the righteous thoughts, and even though I could not see anything, I could feel that many evils were eliminated. Just then, I had a thought: I've been sending forth righteous thoughts long enough. I need to take a rest. My bodies in other dimensions also need a rest. As soon as this thought came to my mind, I indeed felt confused and thought: Since I cannot see other dimensions, should I stop now?
Just then, Master's words appeared in my mind “Strive forward with every effort until Consummation.” (“Enlightenment”, Essentials for Further Advancement) With Master's encouragement and guidance, I strengthened my righteous thoughts and continued with what I was doing. Master's words have also enlightened me to some deeper understandings.
Falun rotates non-stop and it constantly transforms and gives us energy. My flashing feeling of tiredness was a false appearance created by the evil interference. It tried to take advantage of my weak point in understanding the Fa principles. This is the evil's last trick. Once I broke away from the false appearance, I greatly improved sending forth righteous thoughts both in quality and the length of time. I can now enter a deeper tranquility for a longer time, with stronger energy when sending forth righteous thoughts.
The false appearance of “tiredness” is often used by the evil in persecuting Dafa disciples, and some practitioners fell into the trap.
I often hear practitioners say “My job is really tiring!” Then, they feel they must take a rest or sleep. They have no time left for Fa study or doing the exercises.
Another example is that they feel tired and heavy after a Dafa activity. They don't feel like doing any household chores and just want to take a rest. When they do things, they appear to be very inefficient, with their minds wandering elsewhere.
There are also some practitioners who feel like eating something as soon as they sit in front their computer. They keep eating while working on the computer and cannot focus on what they do. They feel sleepy as soon as they start to read Dafa books or to send forth righteous thoughts.
As soon as you give in and lie down for comfort, the evil will be really pleased, for it has defeated you. What is left deep in our hearts is painful regret.
Some practitioners tried to make a breakthrough, but after they failed a couple of times, they gave up. In fact, this is the very time when we need to strengthen our willpower and send forth righteous thoughts more often.
To eliminate the evil, I read Master's article “The Effect of Righteous Thoughts”, Essentials for Further Advancement II a number of times and memorized the last paragraph. We also need to study Master's new articles more often and gain a clear understanding about Fa-rectification cultivation. For practitioners whose celestial eye is not open, it is also relatively easy for them to give up since they cannot see the truth in other dimensions. Therefore, we must keep improving our enlightenment quality.
After I recited the section “the Issue of Treating Illnesses” in Lecture Seven in Zhuan Falun, I gained an even clearer understanding about sending forth righteous thoughts.
My understanding at my current level is that Master has talked about how people treat illnesses and he has also taught us how to eliminate the evil and pointed out that it is easy to develop human attachments in the process. This could lead to problems, but Master told us how to ultimately solve these problems. Master even showed practitioners who cannot see through their celestial eye what happens in other dimensions.
Once I was doing some translation work at home, I got stuck on a phrase. It was close to the time for our project team members to send forth righteous thoughts in unison. Because I had a deadline to meet, I didn't join them. However, while the team was sending forth righteous thoughts, I suddenly remembered the phrase I was struggling to remember. I realized immediately that fellow practitioners' righteous thoughts helped me solve the problem by clearing out the evil elements that were blocking me in my dimensional field.
From this I have further understood the importance of sending forth righteous thoughts, and that it has a direct impact on what we do.
When we do truth-clarification face to face, if two people cooperate well, with one sending forth righteous thoughts while the other is clarifying the truth, the result is also very good.
We must not overlook sending forth righteous thoughts simply because we do not live in China. Some practitioners may say, “I have not been persecuted personally.” Such a comment shows that this practitioner has not gained a clear understanding of the Fa principles and there is an attachment to selfishness. He only looked at things from the perspective of his personal cultivation and failed to look at things on the basis of assisting Master in Fa-rectification. He has failed to see that practitioners in China are still suffering persecution, that the persecution has impacted a huge number of people, and that the countless beings they represent have forever lost the opportunity to be saved.
Very often, practitioners who hold such a view have also failed to see that they themselves are being persecuted – by sickness karma, difficulties at work, financial hardships, and grudges towards friends and family members. The fact is that the evil is watching us all the time and will take advantage of our loopholes.
I had a dream a few years ago in which I saw evil beings staring at me from a distance but they didn't dare come near me. I was a giant and my strength was my supernormal power. I could crush them easily with my little finger. They followed me everywhere. When I walked slowly, they would follow me leisurely at a distance. I started to play with them, and suddenly, my superpower disappeared. At first, they didn't dare to do anything, but when they were convinced that I was in a state without superpower, they rushed at me. I started running, and then I woke up. I realized that when I fail to maintain my xinxing, my power in other dimensions will become weak and the evil is waiting for such a moment.
Master said,
“Each instance of human thinking during a test, each instance of inadequate righteous thoughts, and each attachment that a cultivator has will be seized upon by them as an excuse to drag you down and take you out from among the ranks of cultivating Dafa disciples.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference”)
Things like worms and bacteria that Master mentioned in his teachings try to attack us at any time and see if we can keep up with righteous thoughts, whether we are outside or at home, at work or doing household chores, during the day or at night. I noticed that they were great numbers of them. Sometimes, they came back only two or three hours after I cleared them out, some reappeared as soon as I finished eliminating them.
I realized that the more we don't want to send forth righteous thoughts, and when our minds are more confused, the more we must send forth righteous thoughts, and we need to keep doing so until our minds become calm and clear. We must eliminate the evils thoroughly. Sometimes, it needs dozens of minutes, and sometimes it needs hours, depending on the situation on the battlefields in other dimensions. Even though we may not see it, we can feel it and will understand. We must keep it up every day. It is also an attachment to comfort to think “It's enough to do it a couple of times a day.”
My understanding about such interference during the last stretch of Fa-rectification cultivation is that the old forces want Dafa disciples to stop being diligent in cultivation, so that all our efforts on our cultivation paths would come to nothing. Their ultimate goal is to destroy Dafa disciples and to attack our cultivation realms.