PureInsight | January 6, 2003
(from Clearwisdom.net) Practitioners in China are always facing life and death situations because the police are omnipresent. The pressure obliges them to go further and further in clarifying the truth. Their choices are limited: whether they walk or run, they must advance constantly, or else be taken to prison or to forced labor camps to be tortured and killed.
In Switzerland, I have a tendency to 'let myself go' between Fa-rectification activities, to sleep more, to go out less for truth-clarification, to take time to do the ordinary day-to-day things my precious ego likes to do.
When my thinking is based on the Fa, I perceive that in some ways it is more difficult to cultivate in the West than in China. We have nothing external to lead us on, but must rely on our own inner motivation.
If my thoughts are not righteous, forms of interference such as the desire for comfort, laziness, and procrastinating prevent me from advancing and these factors can easily damage my cultivation. That is why in my heart of hearts I'm agonized when I allow my attachments to comfort to fill up time that I could have used for making progress in the Fa-rectification.
Little by little I am making an effort to overcome this arrangement of the old forces, which makes use of the gaps I have not yet closed properly. I realize that I too am continually making far-reaching decisions, just like the Chinese practitioners who cannot take time out; the difference is that in China they have fewer choices, while I have too many. Perhaps that is what is most difficult about cultivating in the West at this historic time.
As Dafa disciples we must be very strict with ourselves. We always have the choice to forge ahead or to take it easy; we have no one behind pushing us, but the evil is always there, waiting around the corner for the smallest sign of weakness to appear. As Dafa disciples, we must be very clearheaded and responsible with ourselves, and continually study Zhuan Falun and our Master's articles in order to be able to keep up with the current of Fa-rectification.
