(Minghui.org) After I went to college in Beijing, it was like I was outside of Dafa, and it was a disaster for me. I became addicted to my mobile phone and was exposed to so many things that were simply not good. I often skipped studying the Fa teachings. As a consequence, I started failing my exams. My intelligence seemed curbed, and my memory declined. I felt depressed and lived a degenerate life. I’d changed into another person.
I knew this wasn’t right, and I wanted to break through it, but I felt powerless. I felt that every attachment was ingrained in my mind, and I could not see any hope of letting it go. The only thing I held as the bottom line was that I had to continue practicing Dafa, hoping that one day I could clear my mind and practice Dafa diligently.
Sending Righteous Thoughts
When I was in my junior year, my mother helped me find the software to circumvent the Internet firewall at school. I started to read Minghui and The Epoch Times. It happened to be just when the editors of the Nine Commentaries published the new books The Ultimate Goal of Communism and How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World.
Those books reveal the sources of many warped things in today’s culture and their relationship with the evil spirits of the Communist Party. Reading them eliminated the thought constructs that I had absorbed in this material world and gave me the confidence to get rid of my attachments. I started with the problems that I had already identified. I sent righteous thoughts to the undesirable cultural factors that trapped me, resisted the karma they generated, and resisted the illusory disease karma that attached itself to the surface of my body.
During this time, I sent righteous thoughts three extra times a day for a long time. The first time, I said to all the beings in my dimensional field: “Now I am going to rectify family ethics and correct my space according to the principles of Dafa. Please follow me to send righteous thoughts. Whatever does not conform to the Dafa standard will be rectified where they are.” When my thoughts became righteous, I started crying.
The second time that I sent righteous thoughts for a long time, there was an evil life that froze my lotus-hands mudra. It turned out that the gong coming out of my palm melted the evil. I felt like a haze was about to overcome me as the demon of lust tried to block my way. I immediately sent forth righteous thoughts, which eliminated that substance. Immediately a bright light rushed out, and the haze disappeared. My main consciousness entered my repaired body, and it was so huge and splendid.
The third time I sent forth righteous thoughts for a long time, the old forces gave me an illusion of illness and a thick layer of material to separate me from my main consciousness. However, after five minutes of meditating while sitting in the full lotus position, I entered the state of ding. All the feelings on the surface of my body were separated from the state of my main consciousness. My crossed legs hurt like never before. I knew they was hurting even though I felt like I was not in my body. Then I felt the top of my head split apart, and Master used powerful gong to cleanse my body. The impact of the energy flow was so strong that I had to sit straight up to avoid being knocked over. I sat upright with my head up. Although my head felt swollen, I was very happy.
Cultivating Forbearance
My father, who is also a practitioner, was sentenced to prison for his faith. During the holidays, I had to help my mother. At first, I couldn’t take it. I was dizzy and tired after sweeping the floor and had to rest to recover. Then, one hot day, I helped my grandfather carry his luggage up and down the stairs. After returning home, I was in bed all afternoon.
Many relatives came to our house to celebrate the Chinese New Year. I had to wash the pots and dishes. Then, during this summer vacation, I shared some of the chores around the house and did my internship. I gradually adapted to the intensity of the labor. I was bitten by mosquitoes all day. Nevertheless, my forbearance and willpower increased little by little.
I found that the more I forbore, the less intense my human feelings were. I used to be bothered by loneliness. From my current level of understanding, loneliness is a kind of material field. It closed me up, made me unable to perceive the outside world, and often made me feel unbearably lonely, even in a welcoming environment. After I went to college, this material field was enlarged by the old forces. I seemed to be isolated from the world and lived in my own world.
I was cynical about everything. My heart became so fragile that nobody could touch it. At that time, I was completely constrained by this field and sought to escape from the confines of society. I continued to seek psychological comfort in more and more unsavory literary works, poured a lot of corrupt things into my dimensional field, and continued to nourish the loneliness material field and the demon of perceived loneliness. My wisdom and true nature became more suppressed.
However, in the midst of constant hardship after my father's imprisonment, I didn’t feel lonely. Instead, I have become more open-minded, and more compassionate. I am more willing to see people’s good and hopeful sides. When contradictions arise, I dismiss them and keep away from them. The best way is no attachment – being empty.
Cultivating Self-discipline
In the process of constantly pushing through the barriers, I also dug deeper into problems that I didn’t recognize in the past. I found that I had not disciplined myself. I have been relying on my mother, a practitioner, to get me to study the Fa and do the exercises. I relied on letting attachments “gradually leave me.” However, whenever my main consciousness let up, the external demons would break in.
For example, if I made a mistake and wanted to change, I had an idea in my head: “The thought you had on changing for the better is not pure. You have another purpose, and you will do it again.” When my mother taught me the Dafa principles, this thought would come up: “This is what she said; it may not fit you.” At that time, I didn’t take the initiative to distinguish external interference, so I went with these thoughts and was numb all the time.
Every time I made a mistake, I felt depressed for a long time and wasn’t motivated to correct it. After I went to university, as soon as I looked at my cell phone, just like the spirits leaving practitioners’ bodies after they drank alcohol, my rational and sober thoughts instantly disappeared. Rather, the thought karma formed a very thick layer in my brain, cutting off the connection between my main consciousness and my righteous thoughts. The evil that persecuted me hid itself under this layer of karma and made me drowsy. I couldn’t find or think about who they were or where they were.
This semester I disconnected the Internet, tried not to look at my mobile phone, and actively fought against the drowsy demons and the thought karma. I no longer leave them alone. The more sleepy I am, the more I keep my eyes wide open to stay awake. I realized that I should take the initiative to cultivate, identify the state that is not right, and look inward immediately. I can definitely find what I need to work on. I felt that, after so many years of cultivation, I suddenly realized what needed to be done.
Being Humble
Another problem is that I have a very strong sense of superiority in my dimensional field. I haven’t separated it from myself for many years. When this concept is particularly strong, I was even unwilling to light incense below Master’s image, and I was inundated with all kinds of thoughts when I studied the teachings. Because I didn’t resist it, I always subconsciously avoided my problems and looked for the cause elsewhere.
I have always been very reluctant to “regret” anything. Even though I often heard my mother say, “I have to be remorseful about it from the bottom of my heart before I can hope to do it better next time,” when I read fellow practitioners’ experience sharing articles, I tried to avoid confronting that shortcoming. Another example is, during the early stages of my breakthrough, when I realized what the old forces had arranged for me, I tended to think, “These are all the old forces’ ideas, not mine; my nature is very pure, and I don’t have these things.”
The old forces said, “You shirk responsibility, you have pushed all the responsibility on us.” I didn’t look inward, either. Rather, I fought with them with a superior attitude, including when I first started writing this experience sharing article. I exaggerated without being aware of it. After reading it, my mother said that it was too flamboyant, and I showed off. I immediately revised it from scratch.
Recently, I have felt that Master is pushing me forward quickly, whether or not I pass the level or understand the Fa. I only have to stay at a level for a short time and immediately turn the page. Sometimes when I realize something in the morning, I find it wrong in the afternoon, and then I try to understand it again. Then, finally, I can to put it down and forget it. After a while, I pick it up again and find that it is right when I examine it from another perspective.
I realized that this had not only allowed me to quickly make up the courses I missed a few years ago but also showed me a rationale: “Cultivators not only have to pass the level, they also have to part with that level and not linger on any level, that all levels are just a part of the cultivation process.”
In retrospect, I even surprised myself: How did I go from being in such a negative and wrong state to where I am now? Perhaps it was because, at the lowest point, I sent out a thought that I had to face up to a kind of catastrophe. And now I'm doing it, step by step.
This article is just to sort out some lessons learned in the process of personal cultivation, and I hope that it may encourage us all.
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