PureInsight | November 3, 2003
[PureInsight.org] I feel very fortunate to be able to share my experiences with you all at our sacred Fa Conference. I often tell practitioners to come or to write speeches for our Dafa conferences. It is the holiest gathering. It is special to be here and a great honor to speak at one.
At the beginning of the Vancouver lecture this year Master said, "Usually when different regions hold Fa conferences they all want Master to attend and say a few words. But, sometimes you haven't fully grasped the requirements I laid out for you in the previous lecture, and then if I say more it's likely to dilute your understanding from the previous lecture and the things you need to do."
At the moment when I first read that statement, I was absolutely sure that I had not grasped what I should have from the previous New York lecture this year. I made a vow to study it earnestly. Then my understanding of cultivating in this period deepened a lot, so I wrote an article to share with other practitioners.
The article talked from the perspective of the difficulties of forging 100 percent pure iron ore, and that the last [one] percent is harder to forge than the previous 99 percent. This was an old discussion between practitioners and I used it as a metaphor to talk about what Master referred to in New York [this year] as, "The very end of changing the surface body is about reaching the highest purity." This has never been done before and our completing "the very end of changing the surface" is forging the path for the future beings so they can go back up when they fall. Master [also in New York this year] said, "This is part of the cosmos being able to harmonize itself." All matter is alive and all living beings are made of matter, when matter degenerates to a rotten state rather than meeting with destruction it can now be renewed and ascend on the path we will leave for future beings through our righteous cultivation in Dafa.
In Los Angeles this year Master said, "In the future this human place will be an extremely special place. And why do I say that? No matter how long humankind's history is, humankind was created to save all beings and for the Fa-rectification, and that's why this level of human beings was created…But I chose this place back then because I wanted to give the beings in the cosmos who've dropped down a chance to go back, and to make this a part of the cosmos' ability to allow beings to enter the harmonizing, all-encompassing, and no-destruction mechanism." (From "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")
Master said, "If you do well in your own cultivation, it will have bearing on major things in the future cosmos." (From "Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference") Didn't Master also say the principle of formation, stasis, degeneration and destruction would change? Of course this is done by Master, but what does it mean to follow to teacher closely?
This enlightenment shook me all the way to my core and my understanding became broader. I knew that my cultivation would have to become more diligent in order to remain responsible to my deepened understanding of my responsibility as a Dafa disciple and to live up to my conscience.
After the article was written I sent it out to many practitioners. I received some very positive feedback. I thought that I did not allow myself to get complacent or proud but deep in my heart I was and did not look deep enough in my heart to realize or change it. I only told myself not to get complacent, but failed to genuinely cultivate my heart.
One practitioner emailed me saying, "Thank you for your sharing, I thought I was doing so bad in my cultivation, but this sharing helped me out." This concerned me as my article only talked about our cultivation from the perspective of the special, sacred and uniqueness of our cultivation and the increased difficulty. It did not share how to cultivate through it.
I promised to cultivate sincerely based on this new understanding I had about our most sacred responsibility and opportunity and share it in the future. Yet, I did so without looking deeply and then to fundamentally change myself. I continued on with my concealed complacency and pride. How could I go forward to cultivate and validate the Fa when I was still attached to notions of self-grandeur and establishing greater self-grandeur? While attached to pride I am hiding the fact that I am trying to validate myself, not the Fa.
Without cultivating myself and fundamentally changing myself I was just like the old forces who were attached to what they want and use Master's Fa-Rectification to validate what I want. In Los Angeles this year Master said, "They've considered their choices the most essential, and have thought that everything I do should harmonize everything they want—they've completely reversed it." (From "Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")
Like the old forces, I too reversed it. I didn't fundamentally change myself, follow Teacher closely, nor validate Dafa. Instead, I used the environment Master gave use to cultivate, to validate my human notions of self-grandeur. Self-grandeur is something I wanted before obtaining Dafa. It was one of my deviated reasons for cultivating Dafa. When I obtained Dafa I didn't know that it was bad and actually thought that it was quite good and over the course of my cultivation I have been working through it. Yet, at each new level I find it deeper and deeper in me, and I either let it go or hold onto if for a little while. This time I held onto it and it proved fatal.
When I look back, this fundamental attachment seems to have undermined almost everything I have done and fueled many other human notions and deviated mentalities. In the beginning, I never would have thought this would have been the biggest problem. It gave me so much strength to cultivate, or so I thought. But, that is just like the old forces as well.
Regarding the old forces, Master said in Los Angeles this year, "They never could have imagined that their involvement would be precisely the real demonic obstacle to this Fa-rectification." (From "Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")
Although Master told us long ago to give up our fundamental attachments, I had not been diligent enough. My inspiration to cultivate was exactly my interference in cultivating, which further undermined my Fa validation efforts and hurt my relations with other practitioners. It caused a lot of interference in so many different ways. The list is just too long. I have seen them, and I am trying to change them.
Although I was determined to cultivate based on my renewed understanding of this last percent of 100 percent pure iron ore, I was starting from pride because I left it concealed and didn't up root it at my new level in cultivation.
For weeks upon weeks, I couldn't understand what was wrong. I could not live up to the standard of a Dafa practitioner based on my old understanding, let alone my new understanding. Worse yet, I knew it and I was not living up to my own conscience. I have learned that not living up to one's own conscience is very serious.
When you know something and don't take responsibility for it or when you know something is wrong, but you still do it. This was all do to my poor cultivation state, which undermined my reading, and then everything is undermined. When my mind was not righteous I could feel myself used by evil but without proper grounding in the Fa, I didn't have the strength to break through. This resulted in knowingly not being responsible and knowingly doing wrong things and misusing the preciousness of this time that I myself had enlightened to. This is a very serious problem and issue, especially in the present cosmic climate.
In Vancouver Master said, "Today when human beings say something about Dafa they have to be responsible to themselves. Before, people could say that those words weren't their own intentions, since people were controlled and deceived by foreign evil beings. But, when the circumstance is that the foreign beings have been cleared away and people say something, then that's truly people speaking on their own, and so they have to take responsibility for it."
Taking responsibility for it in my experience meant increased tribulations to pay back, eliminate evil and face my uncultivated side. Yet, without proper grounding in the Fa and my deep fundamental attachment left deep in my heart, things became even harder.
When I wasn't responsible to my cultivation it would interfere with my reading, which would interfere with my cultivation and my working well with my fellow disciples in saving sentient beings. At first, it is not too bad, as I had only began to drift off course. So, projects I would work on would still see some results yet the further I drifted the less I saw the power of the Fa and the more I saw how capable I was.
Of course, I never thought I was above the Fa, but I was drifting and forgetting that the Fa rectifies the cosmos, and I have the honor to do my best in keeping up with its fast current. After a few times of seeing these good effects in Dafa work as a result of myself, then I drifted further away and without knowing it I was actually doing things in an ordinary way. Of course, my reasons and understanding of what I am doing and why I am doing it are from Master's many lectures, but fundamentally, I was holding onto a human heart and in turn strengthening it and giving the old forces greater control of me in the process, which correspondingly gives them help in interfering with Master's Fa-rectification.
It was not as absolute as I just described, as I was still studying Fa regularly and doing my best to cultivate myself, and some other smaller improvements where made along the way. Yet, on a fundamental level, when I look back and I am honest with myself, that deviation was indeed taking place.
Then recently. I was faced with an unprecedented tribulation in my cultivation. It was a tribulation between myself and another practitioner. A practitioner whom I have known for a long time. The tribulation resulted in tremendous mental and emotional pain. I had never experienced anything like it. I could barely think at some points. Sometimes, I wanted to cry and other times I felt so angry that I felt like an erupting volcano of fury.
This tribulation demanded that I seriously study the Fa and fundamentally change myself, otherwise I would not have been able to move forward. When I look at it now it was like getting a very big "stick warning" for not enlightening and cultivating well in the past.
In the midst of my emotional and mental chaos, sometimes I couldn't bear it and felt completely lost, alone and barely being able to distinguish truth from falsehood and reality from illusion, but at those seemingly unbearable moments I would think of Master, or Master would remind me by giving me a thought of him. Then I remembered that I was a cultivator, and I could not only bear this but also break through it.
Yet, when I calmed down and evaluated the situation, I thought I was in the right, and even when I was in the wrong, I was a victim. None of this seemed to help me break though it and holding onto my thoughts interfered with talking with the other practitioner I was in conflict with. I found it similar to doing Dafa projects when I would not be able to make a breakthrough in the project or with practitioners and I would hold onto my thoughts.
This also reminded me about the old forces way of thinking that Master described in Washington DC this year, "…no being would be able to escape this gigantic change in the cosmos, so the affected beings would all have their own understandings of the Fa-rectification, and they would thus look at this Fa-rectification affair using their own notions."
This year in Chicago Master said, "But as for the matter at hand, many of the cosmos's Kings and Lords know that it is critical to the survival of the firmament; if this Fa-rectification doesn't succeed everything will be gone. Yet they don't want fundamental changes. So it's exactly under the effect of this complicated state of mind that the beings of different levels have demonstrated the true realms deep inside themselves and their behavior."
Being calm helped me to evaluate the situation more clearly, but I still couldn't make a breakthrough. So I began to look long and hard deep into my heart. When I felt angry, hurt, betrayed, jealous, spite or even more mild thoughts like "fine I don't need that person anymore, forget about him," I would try to look at why I felt that way, where it was coming from. When I found it, I tried to find out what standpoint I was looking from that guided me the wrong way. At each level looking deeper and deeper. Although I found a lot of bad things, in the end of searching I still always understood the situation that I was right or a victim. This was because I hadn't and didn't want to make a "fundamental change."
Then I thought even if I am right if I look at my conduct and the way I behave in this tribulation or my thoughts: are they the conduct and thoughts of a new being formed by Dafa worthy of entering the new and incomparable future? Each time I asked, the answer was clear. Whether I thought I was right or not, I discarded all of it and told Master that I don't acknowledge any of that thinking one bit. I only want thoughts that conform to Zhen–Shan–Ren. I only want thoughts that are worthy of the future universe.
For days, I was severely tested and huge waves of impure thoughts covered me. Violent, angry and subtle thoughts came and tried to deceive me. When I looked deep and put the highest standard on my mind, it was always clear no matter how the thoughts came. Measured by Dafa the good thoughts were kept and the bad ones weeded out.
Then I could see that this rationalizing of myself as right or a victim was my fundamental attachment tricking me into sustaining its own future by telling me I am not wrong.
Worse still, I see now, the relationship between our uncultivated side and the old forces is also very intimate. It seems that the left over evil and black hands of the old forces were using this left over deviated matter in me, that I had not cultivated, to interfere with my cultivation, my ability to work with other practitioners, save sentient beings and validate Dafa.
Just as cultivation is very significant at this time, so are our notions and attachments. In Chicago Master also said about the old forces notions, "So what's really polluting me, creating trouble for me, bringing the Fa-rectification trouble, and persecuting Dafa disciples is actually not those filthy elements here but is the cosmos's beings' warped concepts manipulating those elements. Those low-level elements are resistance that the old forces specifically produced, and they have brought about those cases of persecution and different forms of trouble."
I always want to do things based on the Fa and that always involves my understanding of the Fa. Now I see that not genuinely cultivating myself will stop me and my understanding from keeping up with the Fa-rectification, so that my understanding is in the Fa not just in my mind.
I wish I had cultivated better so that I could have shared about enlightenment from righteous actions instead of from doing poorly. I will do better from now on.
