(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa before the persecution began on July 20, 1999. I know that the Fa is good and is not easy to obtain, and that I should cherish this rare opportunity. I know that I need to do the three things well and look within when faced with trials and tribulations.

I recently realized that I didn’t genuinely know how to look within. The following are some lessons I learned from not looking inward. I hope my fellow practitioners can learn from my experiences and avoid unnecessary losses.

A few years ago, my son’s family was going to travel abroad for ten days. He asked me to water his flowers and plants while they were gone. I wholeheartedly agreed because I don’t have the best relationship with my son, and I wanted to improve it by watering the flowers for him.

I did my best to take care of the flowers, but a small stem in one of the pots wilted, and he was angry about it. I thought he was overreacting, but I knew that since I was a practitioner, I had to look within. I apologized to his family for not fulfilling my responsibility, and they smiled back.

Looking back, I thought that I’d passed the test very well and had exhibited forbearance. I recently talked with a fellow practitioner about this occurrence and she reminded me to dig deeper to find the root cause of the issue.

I recalled how I carefully watered the flowers for ten days, but not only did they not thank me, they even found fault with me. From an ordinary person’s perspective, this would be unreasonable. But as a cultivator, I should analyze the attachment this was targeting.

I realized that I had an attachment of pursuit. I wanted to make him like me and gain his approval by watering the flowers. I should have let go of this human attachment.

After that experience, I thought about another time that I was wronged nearly two decades prior. It happened two years after I’d started cultivating. My father had passed away, and while dealing with the funeral affairs, I wrote down the names of my coworkers who’d attended the funeral and who’d brought money or gifts. My intent was to return the favor to them in the future. My sister-in-law misunderstood and thought that I was recording how they handled the funeral, and told many relatives that I had bad intentions. As a result, most of my relatives started to despise me.

I didn’t know at first who had badmouthed me. When I later learned the truth, my mother stopped me from explaining to our relatives what my intent was, to avoid further conflict.

I was sad and resentful, and I cried countless times. Later, I slowly improved in the Fa, thinking that I might have owed them something from a previous life. But this matter dragged on for a long time. It took about ten years before I could let it go.

I now understand that this occurred because I had a strong attachment to saving face and a desire to rise above my family’s social class and fulfill my parents’ wishes.

I grew up in a poor family, and my father taught me that I should study hard so that I could some day live in a high-rise building and drive a car. To please my father, and to earn and compete for fame, I studied hard and got good grades from the time I was young. I loved it when my neighbors praised me for being a diligent student. Later, when I went to work, I always competed for first place just to maintain my reputation.

As soon as I started to practice Falun Dafa, Master arranged for me to get rid of the attachment to fame, but I failed the tests, one after another. My desire to save face, accompanied by resentment, is deeply hidden, making it difficult for me to pass these tests.

My cultivation state has been up and down in recent years. Now I know it is because I focused on saving face instead of looking within for my attachments.

I must let go of my self, be altruistic, and concentrate on doing the three things well.