(Minghui.org) I had a lot of spare time while stuck at home during the pandemic. Though I should have studied and memorized the Fa, I didn’t. I ended up being carried away by the lifestyle of ordinary people and spent my spare time watching TV, browsing the Internet, and practicing calligraphy.
Thinking of how I should have spent my spare time, I feel ashamed. Time is so precious for us! Many ordinary people believed a prophecy that the world would end in 2012, and even made a movie about it. Our time has been extended by Master. We should seize the day to do the three things well. My human notions encouraged me to practice calligraphy to show off and win praise. It’s essentially an attachment.
I worked for a technology company after graduation. I thought it would pay off to work hard, so I worked overtime almost every day, including during weekends, and studied the technology on my own. Ten years have passed, and my work and my life haven’t improved much. On the other hand, I’ve barely remembered that I’m a cultivator over the past 10 years, and I’ve barely done the three things. My spare time has been spent on worldly things instead.
I used to work day and night practicing certain skills. However, I forgot what a great honor it is for us to cultivate according to Falun Dafa at the time of the Creator’s presence in the world! We have long been awaiting and preparing for our cultivation, life after life. We probably have great inborn quality to become Falun Dafa disciples, and we may represent enormous cosmoses. What a pity it would be if we indulged ourselves in an everyday life. We had the abilities of divine beings, but they were sealed off so that we could cultivate ourselves in this world and help Master rectify the Fa. Everything we encounter in our lives is related to our cultivation, and we have little spare time for the things of ordinary people.
In the famous story “Golden Millet Dream,” a young man had failed the national exam. He ran into an elderly man, who gave him a pillow to rest on. The young man fell asleep while resting on the pillow and dreamed of a perfect life, in which he married a beautiful woman from a good family, became a high-ranking official, and his children prospered. By the time he awoke from the dream, his host hadn’t even finished cooking a millet meal.
If we follow ordinary people’s notions to view things, we will deal with things using ordinary people’s ideas. How issues appear to us depends on our xinxing. As people say, “The exterior environment depends on internal thinking.” Low-level principles will apply when we view things with low-level notions. As cultivators, our thinking should play an active role in guiding things in the right direction for doing the three things.
As a consequence of applying human notions, experience, and knowledge, the brain automatically searches in the memory for ways to react and expects certain results. Sometimes solutions come to mind right away. Athletes are trained to have muscle memory so that their movements can be automatically generated without conscious thought. Once such a system is established, it will bypass the main soul to find a solution. We think the idea is our own because it’s from our brain. As a matter of fact, it’s not. The brain can be controlled by the main soul, the assistant souls, or even beings from other dimensions.
When we hear a person’s question, we ask ourselves, “What does it mean? What exactly does he want to know? How do I reply politely but avoid his trap?” That kind of thinking is the so-called “being sophisticated” or “being quick.” However, cultivators who view things from the perspective of the principles of Dafa should think about how to look at things as genuine cultivators. As we improve our xinxing, the part of us that has cultivated well will play a proactive role in guiding our thinking.
If we haven’t assimilated to the Dafa principles well, our human notions or beings in other dimensions will direct our brains to react like ordinary people, going against the criteria for cultivators. We will probably regret it afterwards.
The idiom “ride with slack reins” means letting things take their course. We have to make a distinction between “riding with slack reins” and “following a natural course.” When we must make a decision about a matter and don’t know which option to choose, we have to measure the ideas in our mind against the Fa. Following the natural course means behaving according to the xinxing requirements without getting attached to the results, and this conforms to the Fa.
Our minds are like containers. We have to remove our human notions to make room for better and higher principles, which will elevate us to higher realms.
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Category: Improving Oneself
