(Clearwisdom.net) I would like to share a few thoughts on the article “Ms. Liu Xinyu Recounts CCP Brainwashing and 'Transformation'” (see http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/4/14/124391.html), which was recently published on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. The article talked about a Dafa practitioner who was jailed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for her belief. The CCP was not able to “transform” her through various torture measures over a period of two to three years. Finally, the CCP used temptation and eventually “transformed” her. This was a painful lesson to this practitioner.

Before we analyze how this practitioner's loophole was taken advantage of by the evil, let us first look at the two different methods the CCP used to persecute this practitioner. Both depict extreme cruelty disguised by the communist propaganda. They are also life-and-death tribulations in the course of cultivation.

The first tribulation relates to extreme physical hardship, and the human instinct may be to treat it as the most unbearable bad thing. If, when faced with such extreme hardship, a practitioner cannot eliminate his human notions and replace them with a practitioner’s thinking—treating everything that happens in one’s cultivation, whether good or bad, as a good thing, and truly elevating their xinxing during this process—then the evil will destroy this practitioner by forcing upon him extreme hardships that exceed one’s level of endurance.

The second tribulation relates to an everyday person’s personal gain, human emotions, and pursuit of comfort and leisure. If a practitioner cannot have a clear mind while facing these temptations, which are purposely arranged by the evil, and still holds on to human notions, then he will be destroyed by these tests.

If a practitioner can truly understand Master's words, “Let joy be found in hardship” (“Tempering the Will,” from Hong Yin), and face hardship with a righteous attitude (both mentally and physically), then he or she would not be forced to endure hardship due to loopholes in his or her cultivation. Similarly, if a practitioner can resist various temptations in the ordinary world, then he or she will not be tempted by the evil to betray Master or Dafa due to loopholes.

A practitioner should clearly understand that the human world is nothing but a big dye vat full of deviated beings and hardships. If one cannot transform his human notions on a given issue, then he is not a true practitioner on that particular issue. For example, there are quite a few examples of practitioners outside of jail who treat hardships as bad things with their human notions. Since such practitioners do not want to physically endure hardship, they are forced to endure hardships for an extended period of time. Such a person then feels that it is unbearable, and cannot think of himself as a practitioner. Although this person studies the Fa, he does not strive to change his human notions. Instead, he still values ordinary people's views. If a practitioner places everyday people's attachments to fame, personal gain and emotion as the most important things, then this practitioner will not be able to effectively resist various temptations in the ordinary world. There are quite a few examples of such practitioners; they will regret their mistakes after they find themselves mired in serious problems.

In the ordinary human world, various kinds of temptations are always placed in front of practitioners. They permeate a practitioner’s day-to-day life and are formed by habits and notions. Once a practitioner forgets Master’s teachings about getting rid of human notions, then one can easily forget his true purpose and get absorbed in human emotion. The consequences of this are huge. One will gradually stop following a higher standard required of a cultivator and will gradually go back to being an ordinary human being without realizing it. The same thing goes for practitioners who were tempted and moved by the evil in disguise. They forgot that they were in a dangerous situation; instead, they deceived themselves and mistakenly followed the evil. In the end, they unknowingly went to the evil’s side, bolstered the evil’s arrogance, and were finally ruined by the old forces.

The practitioner in the article who had been “transformed” still had the chance to show regret and apologize, but what about those practitioners who were supposed to die of cancer but had their lives extended for Dafa cultivation? Once they forget that their extended life spans are meant for cultivation and return to the ordinary person’s fundamentals, the evil will use this loophole to deprive them of life; then such a person would not even have a chance for regret.

Cultivation is serious. That is why we should handle ourselves as true practitioners at all times. The process of writing this article is also a process for me to re-assess myself and warn myself of the importance of this matter.