PureInsight | July 10, 2016
[PureInsight.org]
Hello, Revered Master
Hello, fellow practitioners
In the past I changed my job three times, the main reason being that I did not want to be the person in charge. Being in charge means guiding people. From my experiences I know guiding people requires guiding their hearts, but people’s hearts are hidden behind their bellies and are really hard to understand. It would be even harder to make people sincerely convinced. If I accept the heavy burden of being in charge, I would surely be exhausted both physically and mentally. What did I do? Walked away to evade it. In the end I retreated to my family. After obtaining the Fa, I felt that Dafa’s direct focus on the mind is what I wanted. Practitioners immersed in the Fa should be able to communicate with each other unimpeded, right?
After half a year being the coordinator for the multimedia message group, recently I wanted to escape again. However, I was clear about my role, the responsibilities on my shoulder, and my vows after I began cultivation. I only had two options: one was to escape and another one was to continue onwards. If I continued, that would be following the cultivation path; if I chose to escape, that would be going back to everyday people, would it not? After sixteen years of cultivation, should I give up? Is there anything hard to overcome? Yes, there are too many human thoughts that really prevent me from continuing. Looking at myself, why did I still have these human thoughts after cultivating for so long? Included in these human thoughts were attachments to validating myself, evasion, laziness, jealousy, holding grudges, competitiveness, showing off, zealotry, sympathy, etc. I think it is because I am still revolving around in the old cosmos. I wanted this human thought after that one; I disdained this human thought, but generated another one. I even thought I had gotten rid of many human thoughts…
I am lucky to have the opportunity to find out that holding this position is the best opportunity to expose my human thoughts. The good wills of fellow practitioners who wanted to help me improve were like deeply penetrating lights, shining on my human thoughts. However, those human thoughts I exposed in sharing were different. Some were realized very soon after evaluating against Master’s Fa, while others were like a wall that could only be seen by penetrating inside after reaching a certain level in Fa study. However, some human thoughts were like granite with delicate and different packaging layer after layer. In the beginning it was hard to see through them. I might have thought I found it when seeing something; I even thought it was selfless to share them, but actually it was still selfishness which was doing mischief. I would like to talk about several forms of self-validation.
1. Going to Extremes
For instance, in the case where Gao Yixi was persecuted dead, I had been going too far without even realizing it. On that day, out of sympathy for Gao Yixi’s daughter and mother, I developed resentment towards those national security cops. To save fellow practitioners, I did not prepare dinner until my son said he was hungry. It was really late and nothing in the fridge could be used for a dinner. I said to my son, “You can eat instant noodles which I usually do not allow you to eat. You can also add a poached egg which would make the meal rich.” Later after reading articles shared by fellow practitioners, I found something deep inside: it was the attachment of proving my commitment. Superficially I cooperated well with truth clarification activities such as making calls, sending multimedia messages, or searching for information online, but I actually did all these to prove that I have had strong abilities and good cooperation. I did not realize the lurking human thought masked by superficial excuses such as a sense of justice, sympathy, saving people, and clarifying the truth.
2. Validating Myself While Sharing with Others
Many times I was just proving that I had the courage to speak in sharing, but what I found were only attachments that could be seen by others. I did not mention some worse and embarrassing attachments such as the attachments to desire and lust. Upon hearing or feeling some male practitioners’ voices, dispositions, capabilities in work, or compassion, I would still fall into fantasies. Those ready-made notions of everyday people, such as attraction between opposite sexes and feelings between men and women would come out. Upon noticing that thought, I still allowed it to stay and was intoxicated by it. For example, I knew when a male fellow practitioner would arrive, so I changed multiple outfits before leaving home as if I were dating my boyfriend. Does this outfit match? Would it be more feminine to wear a long skirt? Or would it be more elegant to wear a long blouse? Wasn’t I supposed to clarify truth? Then where was the heart to save people?
3. Using Master’s Fa to Validate Self
Sometimes I found human notions that deviated from the Fa, but I downplayed them. However, I quoted long sentences from Master’s Fa teachings. By using Master’s Fa, I not only intended to point out my human notions and how they deviated from the Fa, but I also wanted to make myself stand out by adding a perfect comment to my sharing or to show off the difference of my understandings from others. I should acknowledge my faults to Master and apologize to fellow practitioners for not keeping a pure heart in sharing.
In the end, I would like to remind myself that exposing my deficiencies does not mean everything is fine, nor should I take it for self-condolence even if I have found something or had some new understandings. This is not the whole process of cultivation. What Master deems as solid cultivation is: doing well is actually cultivation.
The above sharing of mine is limited by my level. Please give your compassionate corrections, fellow practitioners.
Translated from http://zhengjian.org/node/153025
