Being Rational and Awakening

[PureInsight.org] (Geneva Fahui, 2006) A few months ago I had the honour of learning one of Master's poems in Hong Yin 2, my first in Chinese:

I should add that at the surface, I chose this poem because...it is
simply the shortest poem in the book. But as it turned out, it's
exactly the Fa I have needed to remember since. Somehow, reciting the
verse in Chinese has a power absent from the English.



The self-reflection, that genuine self-reflection that is described in
the verse, has become for me an important part of raising my level, and
beginning to let go of some of those more deep-seeded and hidden
attachments.



It has been 6 years since I discovered Dafa, yet I have only been able
to truly sit in lotus for the last 8 months. I had had reconstructive
knee surgery years before, and I had been convinced that lotus was
simply impossible for me. But with some sharing with a series of
practitioners over a few months, I realized that I COULD do it, and one
day after Fa study I put my up my legs, properly for the first time. It
lasted about 5 seconds – but since I have been steadily increasing my
sitting time in lotus. It is still excruciatingly painful, but there
are days when the tranquility is greater than I have ever experienced
before. I was inspired by Master's description of the practitioner
who's legs were severely broken due to torture, deciding to bear the
pain and sit in full lotus nonetheless – and within a short period of
time she completely recovered. I realized, I can really do better in
this regard.



Now when sending Righteous Thoughts, my understanding is that I should
not be in pain, or more correctly relaxed and not distracted by any
pain. Usually, I decide to make the decision about whether to sit in
lotus at the beginning of Fa Zhen Nian, just before starting to
eliminate bad thoughts, notions, and interference.



Those first five minutes, as I understand it, are crucial. Cleaning out
all of the things that interfere with the sending forth of the purest,
strongest Righteous Thoughts possible sets the stage for the next 10
minutes. It is also the easiest time for me to get distracted by
precisely the flagrant thoughts that I am letting die before starting
to send Zheng Nian proper.


I strive to hear these words reverberate when I say them in my mind, so
I express them with total dedication, especially on the word, mie.



Recently I was sitting sending Righteous Thoughts with another
practitioner, who until recently got lost in the everyday world for
awhile. He is a childhood friend, and for years I was attached to
seeing him do well, yet felt uncomfortable when he actually did so – a
tacit attachment that Master has described as jealousy, in my
understanding. So, the attachment came from both sides, on one hand I
felt as if I wanted to "save" him – but the reality was that as a
practitioner he was already having to make the fundamental decisions
about his dedication to Dafa himself. On the other hand, when he did do
well, I secretly begrudged it, just a little; there was a sort of fear,
I believe, that he would do better than me and be ahead in levels. What
an attachment! In Zhuan Falun, Master says:

Although I know that this attachment has been gone some years, I have
been searching in myself, though not obsessively, for any attachments
that the evil may be trying to take advantage of. I was forced to admit
vestiges of this sort of jealousy, namely with those cultivators
closest to me, such as my wife.



We have been living on and off in Thailand for the past year. Thailand
has had its share of difficulties over this time, for example with
Chinese refugee practitioners being arrested under pressure from the
CCP's embassy in Bangkok. Through these difficulties however we have
seen an incredible positive change in the cultivation environment in
Thailand.



Some of the pivotal moments over the past year have centered on
eliminating evil in front of that embassy. I want to share with you one
brief experience from that time.



After the arrests last December, my wife shared with us her
understanding, namely that absolutely ANYTHING that prevents Dafa
disciples from validating Dafa and eliminating evil should be
considered interference, and that we should not capitulate to is. This
came in the context of the Thai police alternately threatening us with
arrest or deportation, and then also apparently being "nice" by warning
us ahead of time that arrests would happen if we came to the embassy
again. Both of these approaches were geared at having us not eliminate
evil at the embassy, my wife reasoned, and that this was all
interference that should be eliminated with strong righteous thoughts.
I was moved by the righteousness of her words, aware that while I was
reaching that level of understanding as we shared, her understanding
had been "better" than mine – again there a bit of that sort of mental
discomfort that I described before. But, I also quickly eliminated that.



When thinking about going to the embassy the next time, despite being
very calm and collected about all the events thus far, I realized that
I had some fear. Perhaps they would deport me, and I wouldn't be able
to go to Thailand again? Perhaps they would try to arrest other
practitioners? I immediately realized that these were again notions
being taken advantage of by the evil—but a bit of this fear still
lingered on. I resolved to eliminate it, knowing that what we were
going to do was righteous.



When we arrived at the embassy the next time, I immediately sat down to
Send Forth Righteous thoughts. I had been eliminating my notions prior
to arriving. The moment I sat down there and uttered the Fa Zheng Nian
formulas, all of the fear instantly vanished. I put my feet up into
lotus, and managed to sit that way for the better part of an hour,
sending strong Righteous Thoughts all the way through. As I sat—this
was the most incredible experience—I felt as if Master's Fashen was
behind me, sitting in lotus erecting His palm. I became a conduit for
the elimination of evil. Yes, it was I that was doing it, but I
incredibly conscious of Master's support. Droves of evil were
eliminated that day in other dimensions.



But I have not experienced something quite like that since.



I realized recently that when it comes to Righteous Thoughts, I had
been sort of going through the motions, instead of truly, deeply
sending forth Righteous Thoughts as I should. Another way of putting
it, perhaps what I was doing when sending Zheng Nian may have been fine
as a standard some time ago, but now this standard has now changed, and
I know that I must do better. I realized again just HOW important
strong, focused Righteous Thoughts are, though this is not surprising
given Master's regular comments on the topic.



For the last month or so, I've been suffering from some very strange sort of symptoms of illness—this
is one of the things that got me thinking seriously about Righteous
Thoughts and attachments.  It started soon after I decided to go
to Poland for a month to help clarify the facts, and the Polish
practitioners decided to hold the first Polish Jiuping seminar while
taking advantage of me being there as an extra hand.



This, what I first thought was sickness karma, caught me totally
unawares. It started slowly, little sores coming up first on one and
then many different parts of my body. Almost six years ago, when I
started practicing, Master gave me a new life, as I recovered from the
rare neurological disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome. I have not had any
significant symptoms of illness since, until now.



At first, I thought that it was just karma being released, as the sores
were not really a big problem, and I felt that I had really been held
back in the releasing of karma through my years of avoiding sitting in
Lotus position. But as I began my trip to Poland, I suddenly found that
I couldn't walk properly, the sores on my foot leaving me with a bit of
a limp if I wasn't consciously trying to restrain it. This only seemed
to get worse and worse, and during a visit to Norway I realized that it
was really impeding with my ability to do what I needed to do.



Master arranged for me to stay with practitioners who had experienced
some really severe sickness karma, and the sharing we did helped me
upgrade my understanding: I realized that it was the evil that was
interfering with me, using the fact that I was still concealing some of
my fundamental attachments. The evil has no business interfering with
Dafa disciples' historic missions.



I had a realization then, but for awhile I seemed to have "forgotten"
about it. In "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference
in New York," Master says,

When I read these words, I was struck by Master's boundless compassion,
by his true desire to see all sentient beings saved. As I understand
it, Master was answering a question about thought karma, but I believe
that the same applies to all forms of interference.



So now, back to Poland. There are very few Zheng Fa Dizi here, and
putting together a Jiuping seminar virtually on our own has been a
significant challenge. We started by setting the topic, China and a
world without communism, and a young Polish parliamentarian stepped up
to sponsor the event. Given the highly partisan nature of Polish
politics, we had to work hard to find representatives from several
different political parties to attend. As we started to seriously
promote the forum about two weeks before the actual date, many of the
speakers were still not confirmed. Also, contact lists had not really
been compiled, and I found myself spending 15+ hours per day mining
emails and other contact information so that as many sentient beings
could have the chance to read our promotional materials as possible.



Then, the young parliamentarian I spoke of earlier was promoted to the
role of Vice-Minister of Economy, and had to give up his hosting of the
conference due to new duties. I felt a small bit of panic. Even though
we had succeeded in finding some excellent speakers and guests, there
was SO much which was still up in the air, and the work that we were
doing one to two weeks ahead should really have been started at least a
month earlier—I say this as someone who has worked professionally in
organizing events.



We shared together, and saw that the evil was trying to interfere with
us even more than before, now that we were meeting with more success. I
even suggested that since the parliamentarian had pulled out for a
legitimate reason, this could be a good opportunity to postpone the
forum by a few weeks, giving us a chance to promote the event more
completely and take care of many loose ends before the very last
moment. I also saw the evil acting on our omissions in allowing much of
what we needed to do to be left to the last minute.



However, the young dynamic Polish practitioners would have nothing of
that. They declared that it was the evil that was trying to stop us, so
we should continue as is. In our discussion, they saw me as wanting to
postpone the forum, and perhaps some small part of me did. However, I
let them know that really I was there as a support person, one who
really wanted them to know all of the options, and that whatever we
decided, I would support it with my whole heart, with total dedication.



This is perhaps the biggest the lesson I have learned over the past
year. When practitioners take this approach, namely to support each
other totally even if the methods employed aren't exactly what they
would have chosen, the evil suddenly has A LOT less room to operate. I
have seen this again and again: When practitioners are very fixed in
their way of doing things, this creates a huge loophole for the evil to
take advantage of. And when these same practitioners decide to put
aside their differences and work together as one body, the evil is
shocked and retreats.



Working as one body, we recovered from the loss of the sponsor quickly,
and within days there were several other parliamentarians wanted to
endorse or participate in the forum. As I write there will be sever
speakers on a variety of topics, mostly directly related to China. Many
VIPs and embassy representatives will be attending. Tens of thousands
around Poland have received invitations for the forum, so at the very
least they have a chance to learn the truth of the situation in China.
The evil continues to try to play its old tricks, but Polish
practitioners are denying it at every step. The forum is being held on
March 21, which is the day following my writing this sharing, and also
the first day of spring. Today, we are looking forward to taking this
historic step with Poland as Poles step out to denounce the CCP.