Rectify Every Single Thought: An Analysis of My Deviated Thinking
By Wumi, a practitioner in China
(Clearwisdom.net) Today I was finally able to break through the
interference and write an article about my cultivation experience of exposing my
fundamental attachments in the past year. I hope to help fellow practitioners
who have had similar experiences. Since last October, the program I was responsible for at work was temporarily
terminated due to some restructuring in my company. However, my employer still
paid me. This meant it was perfectly justifiable for me to get out of my busy
work schedule and completely devote myself to practicing Falun Dafa. I would
have sufficient time to do the three things a practitioner in the Fa-rectification
period is supposed to do. I understood that this was Master's benevolent
arrangement since I hadn't been very diligent in my cultivation. I felt that
Master wanted me to make up the time I had wasted. For a long period of time, I
had no pressure from work, nor did I have any worries in my daily life. This was
a great opportunity that many fellow practitioners couldn't even imagine having,
so I decided to make the three things my priority: studying the Fa,
sending forth righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth. I told
myself not to slack off and not to allow an attachment to leisure to develop. However, things went contrary to my hopes. What followed was interference and
persecution from strong thought karma. I could hardly stand it. It severely
impacted my daily life and disturbed my normal mindset. Regardless of whether I
was awake or asleep, miscellaneous thoughts came up just like the tide coming
in. It was as if all the thoughts I had had in my entire life were all stirred
up. I felt like I wore a huge and heavy hat that made me dizzy and gave me a
headache. I tried hard to study the Fa and to memorize the Fa. I tried not to treat the
thoughts as mine. I wasn't able to get rid of them or suppress them. I tried to
send forth righteous thoughts about ten times every day for a year. It didn't
help that much. I struggled between the thoughts from my "fake self"
and my "true self." My brain didn't function well. My arms and legs
even felt stiff and were not very agile. As time went by, I became very anxious, and I wasn't happy. I didn't feel
poised anymore, nor did I feel the wonderful feeling I had experienced when I
first obtained the Fa. I became depressed, worried, and hopeless. I even lost my
confidence. I was puzzled because I didn't think I had slacked off on studying
the Fa and memorizing the Fa. I tried hard to make truth-clarification materials
and clarify the truth. I continued to send forth righteous thoughts. However, I
didn't understand how I got further and further off track. I kept looking
inward, but I was never able to find the root cause. Instead, I developed new
attachments by trying to get rid of this attachment. This morning, as I was getting up and getting dressed, I started having one
thought after another as usual. Suddenly, I clearly "looked at" the
thought that just came up, and then I thought: "This is obviously not what
I want. I don't want it. Why am I not stopping it? Would I die if I didn't think
this way?" I seemed to understand that it was my deviated thinking that was
allowing the evil factors to exert control. Strong attachments to fame, money,
and sentiment were behind these thoughts and continued to supply energy to them.
I was the one who didn't want to completely eliminate the attachments. I was
afraid, afraid of letting them go! So, although I was trying hard to get rid of
them, I was still not successful. The fundamental reason was this underlying
factor. On the surface, I seemed to be very diligent in studying the Fa and
cultivating. In fact, from the bottom of my heart, I kept the human notions to
myself and didn't want to let them go. As a matter of fact, I was trying to use
Dafa to bring me a healthy body so I could enjoy a good human life. Although I
perceived myself to view fame, money, and sentiment lightly, it was only because
I was comparing myself to regular people or to myself in the past. This is
definitely not the standard for a practitioner. It's far from the standard of a
Dafa practitioner cultivating to consummation. I know that, as a practitioner,
it's not right to chase after fame, money, or sentiment. So I hid my attachments
in my fantasies and imaginative thoughts. I enjoyed them, protected them, and
didn't want to let them go. After a while, this became a habit. Now the
attachments have become a huge granite mountain on my cultivation path. They
manipulate me. I never paid attention to them like I did today. I just blindly
negated them and eliminated them. In fact, I was avoiding them, I was afraid of
them, and I didn't want to face them. I had the pursuit of having a clear mind
when studying the Fa and sending forth righteous thoughts. Therefore, I wasn't
able to completely eliminate my attachments because, in the end, I still wanted
them. Since I was very young, I have been, on the surface, very gentle and plain,
and I was never good at promoting myself. However, in my heart, I was very
complicated. I liked to daydream. I could have several dozen thoughts within a
second. Oftentimes, while I was doing one thing, I was thinking about something
totally unrelated. When I read novels, I imagined different scenes and pictures,
and I was easily moved by the characters, becoming happy or sad and laughing or
crying. I put myself into the different characters as I daydreamed, and I became
very involved. I indulged in my imagination and dreamed of things that I wanted
to do but was afraid to do or things I wanted to have but didn't have in real
life. I imagined many vivid pictures like movies in my mind. I enjoyed the
satisfaction and happiness that I didn't enjoy in my real life. The dreams I had when I was young were certainly full of kindness, purity,
and aspirations for the future. However, as I was growing up and experiencing
more and more of life's pressures, this habit negatively affected my normal
thinking. I developed headaches, a weak and frail nervous system, and neurosis
when I was in high school. When I was under pressure, this daydreaming habit
immediately increased the pressure in my mind. I became a perfectionist and, in
the end, I developed insomnia. I was nervous, anxious, dizzy, and tired all the
time. Although I later became a doctor, I understood that this disease is not
curable--it can only rely on psychological treatment. Sometimes it improves,
sometimes it worsens. In 1998, I began Dafa cultivation. I didn't pursue anything in Dafa at the
time. It turned out that not too long after that, I suddenly realized that I had
become happy and mentally and physically healthy. My mind became so clear and
both my body and mind felt purified. I was so thrilled. I deeply understood the
wonderfulness of Dafa. I made up my mind that I would never slack off in
studying the Fa, practicing the exercises and cultivating my xinxing. Not too long after I started practicing Falun Dafa, I was transferred to work
at a shopping center and became a sales representative. Although I warned myself
not to be contaminated by the business world, I still learned to be less than
honest or to guess what others were thinking in order to discover what they
liked. I knew I should have restricted my behavior, but I slacked off in
controlling my thoughts. I didn't have enough righteous thoughts and my main
conscious was not strong enough. In the end, my human side was occupied by
different evil thoughts and bad things. With my outstanding performance at work, I developed a show-off mentality,
the attachment to zealotry and jealousy, a competitive mentality, and the
attachment to self. They were becoming my natural habits. In my daily life, I
hadn't been very strict with myself in every single thought, word, or action. I
didn't cultivate as diligently as I should have. When doing the three things, I fell into a state of just doing them, and I
felt anxious and became attached to time and to consummation. As Fa-rectification
has reached the final stage, the requirements for Dafa disciples have also
become increasingly higher. Moreover, the evil beings in other dimensions are
menacingly glaring at us. My habit of degenerated thinking could be even more
easily exploited, aggravated and intensified by evil factors. Master said,
"Having humanly fostered the evil demons, you allow them to capitalize on
the loopholes in the Fa." ("Expounding on the Fa" in Essentials
for Further Advancement) The old cosmic forces' ultimate goal is to control
my thinking, make me unknowingly give up my true self, weaken my will and
righteous thoughts, and finally ruin me. This kind of degenerated thinking could also easily incur demonic
interference, and it could transform into different false scenes following my
mind intent. When I cared about my vanity and was afraid of speaking in large
meetings, the following imaginary scene would come into my mind: I am speaking
with either emotion or eloquence, there are no vacant seats in the room and all
the audience members applaud thunderously. When I felt that my appearance was
not good enough, I imagined: I am speaking and walking with charm and elegance,
and all praise me for my poise and charm. When I became attached to myself, to
showing off and to complacency, the following scenes would appear in my mind:
Others are praising me and speaking about me favorably regardless if they are
facing me or not; both my customers and competitors are speaking highly of me,
and they genuinely praise and admire me; the others also talk about me
favorably; I am modest, have accomplished a lot, and have done well in business;
I, by myself, can do as much work as several other companies, etc. However, the difference between reality and my fantasy again gave me a strong
sense of inferiority because I knew well that I was far from being as
"good" or "strong" as I was in my imagination. I had
perceived the marketplace to be like a battlefield and that everything there
could hardly be predicted. With my strong vanity, I was afraid that a minor
slip-up in my actions would cause damage to my reputation. Therefore, I tried
hard to maintain my superficial modesty. In actuality, I had not really let go
of my attachments to reputation, gain, and sentimentality. These attachments had
instead become even more hidden and sly. When my jealousy strongly surfaced, I
felt that no one was better than I was. Thus, I was like a flashlight that pours
light only on others but not itself. When I saw that fellow practitioners did
better than I, I then thought: "She still has this or that attachment,
which has not yet been eliminated." What came next into my mind were those
past incidents that showed how the other practitioners were not as good as I
was, as well as various scenes that I transformed to accommodate my thinking
that I am better than other practitioners. When I felt fear, my mind would
churn: I felt as if someone was following me, and I always wanted to turn around
and take a look. If someone did follow me, how could I escape? If I failed in my
escape, what should I say? If I was arrested, how should I handle it? Should I
stage a hunger strike first or do something else? This scenario went back and
forth in my mind all day long. When I first started practicing, Master purified my mind. I did not know to
cherish the opportunity and I took a laissez-faire attitude. I do not
know when my mind started to gradually become muddy and heavy. At first, this
kind of imaginary thinking occurred only occasionally and during the day.
Because I did not stop it, it got worse with time. In the end, it developed to
such a degree that I was in this kind of murky thinking from morning to night,
and even during my sleep. It was hard to control. Facing the dilemma, I knew in my heart that only Dafa could save me. When I
read Zhuan Falun and studied the Fa, my eyes seemed to be covered with a
layer of shimmering light. I sent forth righteous thoughts and tried my best to
calm myself down. I had to open my eyes wide to be able to clearly see each word
of the Fa. My head was so heavy that I could not even raise it. My mind seemed
to be carrying a mountain when my eyes moved from one word to the next. In my
mind, there were numerous miscellaneous thoughts that were wrestling and in a
stalemate with me. Every day I persisted to send forth righteous thoughts over
ten times; I targeted the thought karma, the warped way of thinking, and the
evil Party's culture, which essentially does not belong to me. I used my
righteous thoughts, which were so powerful they could chop mountains in half, to
completely eliminate, disintegrate, and negate the old forces' arrangements. I
read through the Fa and recited the Fa from memory twice. (I just partially
recited the Fa; I could not recite the Fa with the book completely closed.) As I
memorized the Fa, I slowly got to a level at which I could recite some whole
sentences. With perseverance, I could recite whole sections. From studying the
Fa, my main consciousness gradually became strong. I could clearly feel that
"my" thinking had become clear, clean and elevated, and I could
differentiate and recognize the interfering thoughts. I could quickly realize
their existence and then send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate them. Every
day I repeatedly recited in my mind that my main consciousness should be strong! Although my mind is still not as clean and clear as when I first started
practicing, and although I still have inference when I study the Fa and practice
the exercises, the demonic interference can no longer affect me much. I am
confident that through studying the Fa and cultivating myself diligently, I can
definitely have a rebirth in my cultivation. I can cultivate the mindset that a
cultivator should have and allow every thought of mine to be genuine,
compassionate and righteous. Just as I was about to finish this article, I still felt that I had not
completely dug out everything in my mind. It seemed that I had not found the
ultimate root cause and that some even more hidden and huge fundamental
attachments were still there. Master also hinted to me that there were still
loopholes in my cultivation. It has been eight years since I started my cultivation, and I have tried hard
to cultivate myself diligently. So why did I always feel that the more I
cultivated myself, the more tired I felt, and the more I studied the Fa, the
more backward I was going? The demonic side of my thoughts had also gotten
increasingly larger. I always felt that there was a very thick layer of
insulation separating me from Dafa. I always had a panicky feeling in my inner
mind. I did not have that kind of candid and natural mindset at all. It was even
more so that I did not have the feeling of enjoyment like a lost child having
found the way home. For a long time, a voice has been asking me, "Why do I have to persist
in cultivation practice under such hardship? Is it because of my faith in
Teacher and the Fa? How much faith do I have? Is it one hundred percent? Am I
steadfast enough?" I think that I was fairly steadfast during the first few
years. Faced with the evil understanding spread by those who turned away from
Dafa, although I could not subdue them, I told myself in my heart, "I will
never give up! I will hold on until the last minute!" I then lost contact
with other practitioners and the Minghui/Clearwisdom website for three and a
half years. Wading through the mist, I made it to today. During dangerous
encounters with the demons of lust and sentiment, I almost fell, but with the
remainder of the faith in my heart, I made it. Countless times, Teacher has
imprinted in my mind the Fa, "What's there to fear? My body would still sit
there even with my head cut off." ("Huge Exposure" in Essentials
for Further Advancement) The steadfastness of my faith in Teacher and the Fa
has helped me make it to today. In the last year or two, as my cultivation environment has eased up, I have
tried to be as diligent as I could and keep up with the process of Fa-rectification.
However, I felt my once steadfast faith was shaky and I was having doubts. This
especially occurred when the thought karma was rampant and when I became
depressed. I thought, "I was not meant for cultivation practice. What sense
does it make for me to hang on? It isn't bad to just become a new human in the
new universe." In fact, the problem that lay deep in my mind that I never thought of or
exposed was that I have the fundamental problem of not firmly believing in
Teacher and the Fa and the attachment of fearing hardship. For the past eight
years, I have studied the Fa a lot and have been doing the three things.
However, I was merely doing them. I was reluctantly following the big external
environment and big trend of Fa-rectification cultivation practice. When I read
the articles from the Minghui website or saw other practitioners doing
something, and when Teacher articulated the principles behind it, I told myself,
"Oh, I should do this, too." It was not because I truly understood the
Fa from the depth of my mind or because my xinxing had reached a certain
level that I did those things. Instead, I did those things without touching the
rock-hard substance in the depth of my mind even a little bit. Just as Teacher
has pointed out in "Determination" in Essentials for Further
Advancement: "If you take up this path out of some interest, your mind will
definitely not be firm and you will definitely forget the fundamentals while
living in human society. If you don't firmly hold to your faith you will gain
nothing in this life." I also have this deeply hidden attachment to fearing hardship and seeking
ease and comfort. I felt, "Even if it is possible for a human to become a
god, how difficult it must be and how much effort one must put into it."
Besides, Dafa practitioners carry big responsibilities in that we not only have
to cultivate ourselves, we also have to save others. I did not believe I could
do it, and I complained in my heart, "Why did I choose to come down here?
If only I had chosen to stay up there and wait for Teacher to finish the Fa-rectification!"
I was only thinking of gaining--I was not thinking of repaying my debts. I only
wanted to take advantage of the benefits of learning Dafa without thinking of
the great responsibility bestowed upon Fa-rectification period Dafa disciples by
the universe. All lives in the entire universe, regardless of their level, must assimilate
to Dafa unconditionally, follow Teacher's arrangements during Fa-rectification,
and position themselves according to their true xinxing standard during
Fa-rectification. This is what Fa-rectification is! It is the choice of the
future, new universe! Dafa disciples, especially Fa-rectification period Dafa
disciples, are so fortunate to be with Teacher in the same world and to be
chosen by Teacher to come to this world to assist in Fa-rectification. Master
told us that this is the highest honor and glory of all the lives in the entire
universe, and is the title that numerous gods envy but cannot obtain--even
though they want to. I was so poor in my understanding of it, and I did so
poorly in treasuring it. I did not firmly believe in Teacher and the Fa. I did not respect the Fa, and
my mind often wandered while reading the books. I treated the supernormal Dafa
and cultivation practice with a human heart. Thus, I allowed the evil thoughts
in my mind to grow rampantly. I only cared about how to conduct myself to become
a good person and how to take advantage of the benefits brought to me by
practicing Dafa, so as to have an easy and comfortable life. I had never thought
of indeed becoming a god. I did remove some attachments, but those were only to
bring me a healthy body and soul, for peace of mind, and to become a decent and
refined human. I could not get rid of all of my attachments. Therefore, there
were always everyday things in my mind, and I always liked to talk about
everyday matters. If I indeed wholeheartedly thought only of Dafa,
wholeheartedly thought only of how to look inside and cultivate myself well, and
wholeheartedly thought only of saving sentient beings who have been
painstakingly looking forward to being saved, how could those filthy thoughts
exist? They would have disappeared a long time ago. I feared bearing hardships,
I was lazy, and I was after ease and comfort; therefore, my righteous thoughts
were not powerful. I did not remove my attachments completely. Instead, I always
carried pursuits while studying the Fa and doing the exercises; therefore, these
bad substances piled up in my dimensional field. Holding on to these fundamental attachments, I have been trapped in the
following alternating situations for a very long time. When my mentality of not
believing took the lead, I would slow down in cultivation practice, pursue ease
and comfort and think subconsciously, "In case cultivation practice is not
real, I did not waste my time. After all, I have tried a relaxing way of living
and have obtained health benefits from practicing Dafa and doing the
exercises." When my mentality of believing took the lead, I would rush to
do the three things wholeheartedly, and I regarded anything or anyone that was
not related to these things as annoying and interference. I felt an urgency of
time and worried about my lack of accomplishments in so many aspects. Therefore,
I could not attend to one thing without losing track of another, and I developed
attachments to all kinds of things such as irritability, doing things, time, and
consummation. Being back and forth like this, my behavior was far from the
standard of a practitioner. When I was clarifying the truth and persuading
people to quit the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations, I
did not fully believe it myself. Even though I put a lot of effort into talking
to people about it, people would always ask, "Is this real? I know the CCP
is not good, but is it really going to collapse? Even if it happens one day, it
probably won't happen in my lifetime." Some even said, "I suppose it
won't happen for 100 years." And some said, "Why bother thinking about
that much? It has nothing to do with me. I would just take care of myself. What
do you think?" I always got responses like these. In looking back, I
realize that such comments were nothing but reflections of my own mentality. For a long time, I had admired other practitioners who steadfastly believed
in Teacher and the Fa as soon as they started cultivation practice, including
those who had very little education. I was quite frustrated by the fact that I
could not be as steadfast and diligent as others. Now I see that I had been
taking these thoughts of doubt as my own thoughts, thinking of high level
matters with my human thoughts, and trying to judge the Fa and prove the Fa with
my human knowledge and understanding. I also convinced myself using the
manifestation in other dimensions as seen by other practitioners whose third
eyes were open instead of strengthening my righteous faith and righteous
thoughts through understanding the Fa from the Fa. It turns out that by doing
this I had made a terrible mistake! I now realize that my enlightenment quality was really poor, and I had fallen
in the maze of the human world too deeply and for too long. Today, regardless of
which category I belong to, I am so fortunate to have obtained the Fa, to have
received Teacher's merciful salvation, to finally understand the true meaning of
Buddha Fa cultivation practice, and to understand the mission of Fa-rectification
Dafa disciples. Our merciful and great Teacher has again scooped me out of hell,
washed me clean, helped me elevate, and bestowed upon me the highest glory so
that I can return to my real, long-departed-from home of pure gold. As long as
the Fa-rectification is not over, I will grasp every moment to advance
diligently! I firmly believe that I will not let down Teacher's merciful
salvation, and I will not let down the sentient beings in my world who have been
painstakingly looking forward to being saved! Please point out anything improper. Thank you again, our esteemed Teacher! Nov. 25, 2006
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/11/29/143269.html
Yearly Archive
Printer Version
feedback@clearwisdom.net